Kirin guessed what was coming and steeled himself. Last time it had hurt—
Dona Abbithana’s spell hit fast and hard. He only had time to gasp before the world went red and every nerve in his body caught fire. His Shadow surged to his skin, writhing in shared agony, and then it curled under his heart into an impenetrable ball. He choked, fell off the stool and curled up on the floor, not feeling the hard stone in a universe of pain.
“Enough!” Zella told her colleague forcefully as she knelt by his side. Kirin sensed her aura sweeping through him, soothing, calming. Abbithana’s aura followed, probing and searching.
“It’s still there,” the younger priestess said fearfully. “How can it still be there?”
“I told you it’s not demonic possession,” Zella growled. “Help me pick him up.”
Kirin’s head swam as they lifted him back onto the stool. Zella held his shoulders until the dizziness ceased and he could sit by himself. Abbithana hovered over him, baffled and hunting for an answer.
“He’s not physically injured,” she muttered. “But his symptoms are real.”
The fire in Kirin’s nerves began to fade. He locked his jaws against the profanity that he badly wanted to hurl at the young priestess. He needed her help, and worse still, her ultimate superiors could order him burned at the stake if they decided he was demon possessed. He had to convince her that he was harmless if he wanted to win that introduction, and maybe even to live.
Zella had less reticence. “Satisfied that I’m not an inept relic?” she asked her assistant tartly. “Or do you need to hurt him again?”
“But, banishment should be a healing experience,” Abbithana protested plaintively.
“Does he show any sign of being healed by what you did to him? Any sign at all?”
“No,” she admitted uneasily, shifting her aura through him and wincing as it touched his inflamed nerves. “He’s suffered wrenching pain, but the Shadow hasn’t budged at all.”
“Because it isn’t a demon possessing him,” Zell told her patiently. “It’s a natural part of him. You tried to rip his talent out of his body. Fortunately for both of you, it’s far too well rooted for that to work.”
“I don’t understand!” Abbithana wrung her hands. “This isn’t how banishment is supposed to work!”
“Put less faith in your book learning and more effort into actually seeing the flesh-and-blood people you’re supposed to be serving,” Zella advised. To Kirin: “Can you sit up without support now?”
At his nod she released him. He held onto the edge of the table with one hand and looked up at the young priestess. She stared down at him, her face a roil of emotions. Revulsion, curiosity, fascination, even a dash of guilt.
“Dona,” he begged. “I only want to take care of my wife and my family. We’re expecting our first child this year! I have a talent to move shadows, but my tricks please people and harm nobody. I wouldn’t ever hurt somebody with it.” At least, not unless it was him or me. “I just want to live.”
Kirin stopped his babbling with an effort and stared at her fearfully. Had he said too much? Too little? The fading pain left room for his fear to grow. She’d probably refuse the introduction now; would she go further? Turn him over to the Inquisitors?
After a moment she sat down on the stool next to him. Her stare now held more fascination than revulsion. He dared to hope that his muddled appeal had gotten through to her heart. She must have one somewhere under those yellow robes.
“I never met a halfblood before today,” she said. “I never even saw a Gwythlo or any other foreigner before I came to Aretzo. You look very strange to me.”
She probably meant ugly and scary, he suspected. Her confidence in her Healer’s powers blazed; she believed she could stop his heart with a touch if he attacked her, which certainly would have been true for most men. She didn’t see him as one of most men in other ways though, if that meant most Silbari men. But he thought she could see him, now, instead of a cypher. It’s a start.
“I am what I am, I didn’t choose it,” he told her. “I can’t help being different any more than you can help being a healer. Would you want to stop being one?”
She snorted at that idea. “Of course not. It’s the most noble of talents. I prayed I would grow into it all through my childhood.” She raised her head in pride that her prayers had been answered.
You think you’re far superior to me; he thought but carefully did not say. He swallowed his own pride. “I can move my shadow. It’s my only magical talent. I have some magesight too, but I can’t make any of the elements bend to my will like many folks can. I can’t even put out a candle from across the room, like my brother-in-law Sevan, or to float bits of cloth on the air, like my wife Maia. But together, she and I can dance and weave our talents together into something beautiful. People pay to see us, we’re the stars of our family’s show, the DiUmbra Troupe. Only our performance space has been stolen, and I came here hoping you would help me find a new one. Please, Dona Abbithana. Help my family.”
She pursed her lips, shot a glance at her superior. Dona Zella smiled encouragingly. The younger priestess let out her breath in a huff.
“I didn’t intend to hurt you,” she told him. “I’ve banished a demon before, a small one that had seized a brain-damaged boy in our village. I thought you had a larger one hiding in you, more dangerous. But,” her mouth twisted sourly, “I now see my error and regret it. And yes, I will introduce your family to my cousin’s husband.” She sat back with an air of and that’s as far as I’ll go and a stiff glance at Dona Zella, who merely smiled.
“Thank you, Dona Abbithana, thank you!” Kirin bowed deeply, palms together, and gave her the double nods that were the most formal way to acknowledge her rank. He promised to send Uncle Sevan and Grandfather to her before next Holy Day, thanked Dona Zella too, and left in a hurry. He paused only long enough to dump most of the contents of his purse into the alms box and send up a brief prayer of thanksgiving.
He followed a different route home—he didn’t care to pass that bunch of drunken sailors and the giant Xir again—with a lighter heart.
We’ll find a patron, he told himself. A rich one who’ll give us lots of work. I know we will.
CHAPTER 10: TERRELL
“Two forty, two forty-one, two forty-two!” Terrell gasped as he topped the stairs of the Warburg’s tallest tower. “Whew!”
“Two hundred and forty-two steps,” Pen panted. “That’s twice the height of the New Keep at Gwythford Castle.”
“Still less than half of the Hill of Sight in Aretzo, though.” Terrell leaned on the flat parapet; putting merlons and crenellations atop this tower would have been pointless. He fought for breath. “Five hundred steps there!”
“But it’s got more landings, right?” Pen asked, leaning beside him.
“I think so.” He looked down a dizzying distance into this sprawling fortress that guarded the northeastern approach to Silbar. The Warburg bulked nearly as large as Gwythford Castle, two battalions of men held it for the Empire. Despite that, there had been room to squeeze his entire entourage inside, though it meant a lot of doubling up on the beds and pitching tents in courtyards.
He gazed over the valley ruled from this castle. The node that supported the fortress wasn’t well-situated for military dominance of the terrain, so this tall lookout had been built to enable command of the surrounding countryside. Its height let him see into the blue distance of other valleys surrounding it north, east and south. To the west a white-topped wall of dark forest and darker rock hid Silbar behind it; the Black Mountains.
“Look at that, Pen. Those peaks are amazing! Tall enough to still have snow on them even this far into summer.”
“The military dispatches said the route is open and the Storm Pass road is dry all the way over to Silbar,” Pen answered. “But you never know with mountains. The experienced troops say it can snow on the pass any day of the year.”
“Imagine that,” brea
thed Terrell in wonder. “Snow in midsummer! What a thing to see.”
“Let’s hope not,” General DiCervi grated as he caught up with them, gasping for air. “The baggage train and . . . the camp followers are . . . going to have a hard enough . . . time, your Highness.”
“Ah. I should have thought of that, General.” Terrell turned to look down into the shadowed courtyard below, where most of the Brigade’s married men’s wives and children had been billeted. “Can we do something to make this ascent easier on them?”
“I already have a tenth of the force, on a rotating basis, assigned to help push, pull, or drag them along, your Highness. More than that would weaken your protection too much. There are werecreatures and worse in these mountains and I refuse to take risks with your safety.”
Terrell thought about that. Then he nodded briskly. “I understand, General. I’ve decided to change the order of march. I’ll be riding in the middle of the camp followers tomorrow. I suspect the rest of my entourage will choose to do the same. Please see to the arrangements.”
Terrell felt secretly gratified when DiCervi’s face went slack with surprise for an instant. A moment later the commander of the Silbari Brigade smiled.
“As you will, Your Highness.” He saluted respectfully.
“Now, what about the route we’ll be taking?” Terrell asked, shading his eyes to look west. The suns were sinking behind two white-tipped peaks thrust high above the tower.
DiCervi pointed to them. “Tomorrow we’ll ascend to the left of that double mountain and camp at the head of the valley behind it. Next day we’ll cross the pass behind it. Beyond the pass there is another meadow in a high valley, one with ample grass and a lake as well as two good springs. The Warburg’s scouts report plenty of wood available thanks to an avalanche last winter. It’s also sheltered from the north by a ridge and opens to the south and west so that the sun will linger.”
Terrell nodded. “Which may be important if our men end up strung out on the road down the far side. We’d have more hours of light than they do down here in this narrow valley.” He glanced down again; torches were already lit in the buildings below them.
“Exactly, Highness.”
“Very good, General. Thank you for indulging my curiosity.”
“No trouble, your Highness.” DiCervi looked at the stairs and firmed his jaw. “No trouble at all.”
* * *
“I think we’re in trouble,” Pen said, looking up at the heavy clouds. They had begun to form out of nowhere shortly after the lead elements of the entourage topped the pass. The royal party and the camp followers plodded toward a vast gulf of air where the mountain tipped down again. Darker clouds approached from the far side. A rising wind promised to carry them straight to the little hillock where Terrell and Pen’s horses stood.
Terrell looked back over the strung-out line of march. The horse litter carrying Dona Seraphina struggled over the stony track. The swaying had got so bad that her husband Merritin had chosen to walk for a while. He leaned on one of the strong young swordsmen of the Brigade and gasped for breath. Terrell could see Dona Seraphina grimly enduring the jouncing of the litter while she cast spells on herself against motion sickness. He hoped both would be all right.
Shimoor’s smaller horse litter had an easier time of it, in part because he’d cast a gimbal spell on the suspended litter itself. It seemed to float along between the two beasts as if they towed it rather than carried it. Terrell could feel several small Nodes under these mountains. Nothing that could support a fortress, but enough that the Royal Wizard could afford the extravagance while also maintaining an elongated protection spell over the whole entourage. Shimoor lay still in his litter, his concentration so deep that he looked asleep.
“Not trouble quite yet,” Terrell answered judiciously. “But soon. A quarter of the Brigade is strung out behind us on this narrow route, and another quarter in our van. Those have instructions to prepare camp in that meadow as soon as they get there, which I suspect will be only shortly before the storm. I hope my entourage will be close to the bottom, but we’ll still have wives and children on the mountainside.”
“If anybody stumbles off this path in a snowstorm, they’re dead,” Pen warned. “We could lose dozens of our people if the winds are bad and the snow is thick.”
“Agreed. We need a way to keep them together.” He looked across the nearest riders, picked out the youngest of the mages and called the man over.
“Do we still have those eight ward poles that Shimoor prepared by the Severing River?” he asked.
The mage averred that they were with other paraphernalia on one of the packhorses.
“Find them, bring them to me. We’re going to turn them into lanterns.”
The mage caught on at once and set to work. When they were assembled Terrell touched each ward pole. It took him a long struggling moment before he found a way to divert the Light inside him into a stream that he could pour into the silver plaques. The second pole lit easier, the last easiest of all. In less than a quarter of an hour he had them all glowing brighter than the brightest flame.
“Lash each of these to a packhorse so that it stands high,” he ordered. “We want as many of our people to see them as possible.”
They completed the task as clouds closed overhead. Terrell rode beside Shimoor and made sure the old wizard stayed properly blanketed against the deepening chill. The other side of the valley below disappeared in the deepening dusk, then the valley itself and finally most of the mountain down which the Silbari party snaked in a long vulnerable line. But the eight glowing wards cut through the murk. Their light seemed to gain brightness even as the temperature fell. Snowflakes began to drift down and people pulled on extra clothes. The Suns faded into faint glows in the cloudy western sky.
Shimoor began to twitch and mutter; twice he groaned. Terrell got off his horse to walk next to the old wizard. Attendants had lashed the horse litter’s curtains shut on the downhill side to block the wind, so he walked on the uphill side, which also helped to shield him from the cold blast. He strained his ears and heard Shimoor mumble something about nodes. He thought he heard the word bears and another word, Ilvar, but could sort out nothing clear. He considered waking the old wizard, but that would risk breaking their protection spell. He didn’t know what dangers it might already be shielding them from.
Mother told me the Ilvar Clan is mostly air-mages who hold the territory on the Silbari side of the pass, he remembered. Is Shimoor trying to warn me about them? Is there treachery awaiting us?
“Pen,” he called to his friend, riding ahead of the wizard’s litter. “Pass word to the General. Shimoor is trying to warn us about something. We may have enemies ahead.”
Pen nodded and rode off.
If there is treachery, what do I do about it? Terrell wondered. He knew that the Brigade was strongest when camped, or operating on an open field, but horribly vulnerable when stretched out like this.
Terrell noticed a rising turbulence in the clouds approaching from the northwest. A change in the weather? Probably for the worse. He considered getting back on his horse, decided to stay by Shimoor’s side to see if the wizard could offer any clearer warning. The road cut into the mountainside here, the surface paved with close-fitting slabs of stone and the outer dropoff walled by a line of large close-set rocks. Patches of stunted trees grew on the slope above. The wind began to swirl falling snow into little vortexes that made moving shapes in the dusk.
Moving shapes—
Something huge and bear-shaped reared up on the mountainside above him. A ghostly black pelt glistened amid the snowflakes. Jaws opened, and black fangs gleamed.
The protection spell over the Silbaris glowed blue as lightning. It took the shape of a long slinky tube enclosing the line of people and beasts. The horses carrying Shimoor’s litter stopped and stood still, forcing those behind to stop too. Fearful human faces looked up as glaring ursine ones dusted with snowflakes looked down in eerie
silence. A whole line of inky black bear shapes menaced the humans from upslope.
Terrell drew his sword. “These are not natural bears!”
Soldiers pelted toward him and drew their own weapons as they lined up next to him. A scent of ashes and death rode the wind.
One man said, “If they get through the spell, they can drop right down on us!”
“We can’t let them through,” Terrell answered. “We’ve absolutely got to keep this one away from Shimoor. If it kills him the whole protection spell will go down.”
The closest bear stood up on hind legs thick as trees. The mountainside rose so steeply that its hind feet were even with his face. Black claws dug into the dirt only a foot beyond the protection spell. The creature raised paws armed with night-colored daggers and slashed at the upper curve of the spell. Sparks sprayed from the glowing tube and fur smoked. The spell dimpled and stayed that way.
“Hamstring it!” Terrell shouted.
He lunged up the slope, toes digging for purchase and the men at his side. He stabbed straight through the sparking blue glow and sank his sword-point into the right leg, instantly followed by two others. Shock jolted all the way up to his shoulder as his point sliced deep and grounded against bone. But no blood spurted when he jerked the blade free.
The men on either side of him snarled their fear. It doesn’t bleed!
The creature made a weird high shrieking sound that hurt like nails being driven into Terrell’s ears. But the sound gladdened his heart, for at least they seemed to have hurt it. He hacked furiously at the night-black fur.
“Chop it down like a tree!” he yelled.
The creature slashed with both sets of claws, a fast one-two strike that left deep gouges in the protection spell. Falling snow swirled and the wind rose.
If it tears through with me in front of it—”Cut it again! Keep cutting all of them, until they fall!”
He chopped at the leg in a frenzy, sent bits of black fur and flesh flying. If he could cut fast enough, he might survive.
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