“This is not up to you.” The elder returned her icy tone.
“Yes, it is. The oath must be freely given,” she reminded him, continuing in the face of his growing anger. “The laws state that no person apart from those convicted of capital crimes may be compelled to give the oath. There is no conviction against me.” And never would be. In order to convict her she would have to be Named, accepted by the Erith as a citizen.
“You are not a person!” Not in the eyes of the Erith, no. The fact that he was right did not make it hurt less.
“Not for many purposes, no,” Arrow agreed, setting aside the renewed pain of that knowledge. She needed to focus on the here and now. She had lost sleep in stolen hours of research for this moment. Oath-bound service had been uncomfortable at best, and on the hardest days knowing that there was the prospect of freedom at the end had been the one thing she held on to. They could not take that away from her without her consent. And she would not give her consent. “For these purposes the law simply refers to a person. There is no requirement that I am recognised as Erith, for the oaths may be taken by non-Erith.”
Temporarily silenced, Seggerat was as close to losing his temper as Arrow had ever seen him. Into the silence the sound of cloth rustling was unnaturally loud. Eimille vel Falsen, face a mask of anger, leant forward in her chair.
“Are we to understand that you are turning your backs on the Erith, who have housed you all your life?”
“By no means, my lady, but I will not continue under an oath of servitude.”
“Your very life has been a gift from us,” Seggerat hissed, colour burning high in his cheeks. His eyes were snapping with the faint sparks of amber that reflected his power. Arrow felt her own control slip a little and knew her own eyes would be shimmering silver. She blinked quickly, reasserting control. It would not do to let the Taellan see how much her power had grown.
“The Erith let me live in order to make use of me. You have done so and have sent me on a journey towards my death on more than one occasion. That I am still alive is not thanks to the generous gift of the Taellan.” Anger drove her to that last statement, but she could not regret it, a certain recklessness taking over.
“Without your service you have no standing amongst the Erith,” Juinis pointed out, clearly puzzled. Arrow bowed slightly; he had not meant to offend her.
“Without recognition as a person by the Taellan and Erith law, even with my service I have no standing amongst the Erith, my lord.”
“So, if we grant you your Name, you will give the oath?” Seggerat said scornfully.
“No, my lord,” she answered quietly, hurt stabbing through the recklessness. She could not afford to let the Taellan see how much her name meant. Among the Erith, a Name had many purposes. One of those was to give citizens a place of belonging. A House that would shelter them. Things she had never had.
“This is outrageous.” Eshan broke the silence, voice trembling. He bowed to the Taellan again. “My lady, my lords, allow me to withdraw this offence and see if the Preceptor and Lord Whintnath might have success in persuading it otherwise.” He gripped Arrow’s arm, deliberately hard, fingers bruising.
She made no move or acknowledgement. Partly through habit. Partly through a sudden apprehension of what she might do. Eshan had taken great pleasure in exercising power over her knowing she could not fight back. It would be easy to hurt him now. So easy. The temptation curled inside, and she resisted it. She wanted freedom, not more imprisonment.
“A moment,” Kester spoke up, distaste clear. “Are we to understand that you propose taking a fully trained war mage and asking the Preceptor and White Guard Commander to - what - beat her until she agrees to give an oath?”
“Something of that order, yes,” Eshan replied, impatient and irritated. “This matter has taken up far too much of your valuable time already, my lord.”
“An oath of service is not a light matter, Eshan,” Kester chided, rising to his feet, “and should not be treated so, no matter from where the oath is taken.” He glanced pointedly at Eshan’s hand, still around Arrow’s arm. The Chief Scribe released her as if she were burning and stepped away.
“It is not a light matter,” Seggerat agreed, also rising, “and we did not take it lightly when we required its oath fifteen years ago. We considered this the only way to adequately contain it.”
“I consider requiring the oath to be barbaric,” Kester said bluntly. Arrow started in surprise, wondering what had motivated him. A quick glance at Juinis, the older lord scowling, lips thin, gave her a hint. Many years before, on Juinis’ marriage to Kester’s sister, the younger lord had surrendered his House and his family Name. Not for the first time she wondered what kinds of agreements had been made behind closed doors. And what kind of sister would allow her own House’s surrender as part of a marriage bargain.
“We cannot have it amongst us without some binding,” the elder pointed out.
“Then bind it.” Eimille flicked an imaginary speck of dust from her skirts, betraying her ire in that sharp movement.
“You cannot,” Arrow answered directly and without courtesy, drawing hostile stares from everyone apart from Kester, who raised an eyebrow in silent enquiry. Answering him more than the others, she said simply, “I am a war mage.”
Comprehension swept across Kester’s face even as the others’ hostility remained.
“Then you will go. You will leave here and not return.”
“If that is your decision, my lord.” Arrow met Seggerat’s eyes and saw them hard and unyielding. Having spoken the banishment, he would not take it back. No matter how much the Erith might find her service useful, the elder would not accept being so bluntly contradicted. And he would not yield to her, of all people.
“Leave. You will take nothing with you but what you have about your person just now,” he told her, “and you will not return within the Taellaneth or Erith borders.”
“I understand.” Arrow made a small bow. “I bid you good day.”
She turned on her heel and walked out of the room without a backward glance, ensuring that the door closed softly behind her. Head up, she took a deep breath, trying to settle herself. It did not work. Her knees were shaking, her whole body light and heavy at the same time, eyes making no sense of what she saw. Exile. A horror, to the Erith. To her it was freedom. The ability to make her own choices. A smile tried to take over her face and she bit her lip, struggling to maintain outward calm, swallowing the unexpected laugh that wanted to bubble out of her throat. She was free. The hated oaths were done. But she was still in Erith territory. There was still danger. There was a long walk ahead of her to the Taellaneth gates, and she needed her composure.
The corridors had stretched between her entrance and this exit. It took an age before the main doors, standing open, were ahead of her, and the welcome scent of Erith planting coiled around her, along with the less welcome sound of footfalls behind her.
“Arrow.”
The use of her name stopped her in surprise and she turned to find Kester vo Halsfeld following her.
“My lord.” She inclined her head.
“This is a mistake,” he said bluntly, face pinched.
She said nothing, surge of earlier anger and recklessness held back by closed lips.
He was frowning, amber in his eyes a sign of some disturbance she did not understand. “I will see if I can persuade the others to rescind the banishment.”
Shock held her silent a moment. The youngest Taellan continually surprised her.
“My lord, that is most generous of you,” she began, restless feet wanting to be away.
As though sensing her wish to move, he reached out, one hand cupping her elbow, further shock holding her still. Not one of the Taellan had touched her before. In fact, she could not remember the last time any one of the Erith had touched her in anything other than anger. Kester was angry, but not at her. She was aware of each individual finger through the cloth of her sleeve. It was an o
dd sensation. A curl of warmth spread from the contact. Not magic. Something else.
“I cannot simply stand by and do nothing.”
“The elder has spoken, my lord, and it is dangerous to cross him,” she said rapidly, voice low, leaning slightly forward to ensure her words reached him alone. “My banishment was always a possibility. And not for the first time,” she reminded him.
“You …” Surprise swept across his face, amber lights brilliant in his dark eyes. “You knew he would banish you?”
“Not knew, perhaps, but certainly suspected.”
“And still you refused your service.”
His breath fanned across her skin. Abruptly aware of how close they were, she tensed, an instinctive reaction she could not check. He released her at once.
“I did not refuse my service.” Her voice was still low. “What I refused was the oath.”
“Your service to the Taellan has always been valuable.” He sounded sincere. “And I believe will be again. Do you require funds to aid you? I believe the human world is quite unforgiving of poverty.”
“Thank you, no, my lord, I have enough for now.” She lowered her eyes quickly. A Taellan had offered to intervene with the elder, and to support her? She was tempted to glance out the open doors to see if the world was ending.
“Then, do you have a means of communication, should we need to reach you?”
She hesitated a moment then dug into her tattered messenger bag, pulling out a pair of small slate disks etched with runes.
“Communication disks. They are not keyed to anyone specific, but will reach me if activated. They should cover the distance to the other side of Lix.”
“Thank you.” He took the disks and stowed them carefully in a pocket, glancing out the door. “It will be dark soon. You had best be away to find shelter.” He hesitated, eyes still lit with sparks as he watched her. “Good hunting, mage.” A warrior’s farewell.
“Good hunting, my lord.” She made another small bow before turning away.
Walking through the Taellaneth was surreal, as though she were seeing everything for the first time, trying to commit as much to memory as possible.
The first time she had been banished, before the oath-spells, was in punishment when she had set fire to one of the Academy classrooms. She had been bundled out of the gates and onto a Hallveran transport without a chance to draw breath.
This time she had space to look around, to catalogue all the beauty that the Erith had created and to allow herself to realise that she truly might not see this place again.
The elder had been deliberately cruel in only allowing her to take what she carried. For an Erith it would be a harsh punishment, with a lifetime of possessions left behind. For her, barely tolerated, it stung. There was a small box under the stone floor of the storage room she had used as her residence. She would miss the items inside. But everything she truly needed was in the bag settled at her hip. Bits and pieces of coinage collected over the years. Chalk. Odds and ends. And the remnants of the funds Eshan had provided for her last mission for the Taellan. She would not need to worry about starving for a while.
When the gates closed behind her, the White Guard not raising a brow at her departure, she was left with afternoon fading to night, last of the light highlighting the grasslands between here and the Erith border, cut through with the long, straight stretch of road, Lix a barely visible blur on the horizon.
She did not move for a long moment, different parts in conflict. She still had the urge to laugh. Free from the oaths. Free from the Erith.
But not safe yet, and far from shelter.
In a vehicle, or at night, when the muted glow from the humans’ streetlights was clearly visible, Lix had always seemed somehow too close to the Erith’s precious Taellaneth. On foot it was another matter. Several miles of straight road to reach the city’s edge. It was going to be a long walk, and a long night. She might still have power for magic. Her body was another matter, muscles heavy and aching with tiredness. She took a moment, in the deep shadows of the Taellaneth walls, to weave a spell to keep her functioning for another few hours at least, the time she judged she would need to reach Lix and something close to safety. The spell drained her power to levels that would leave her defenceless against another surjusi. Dangerous, but not as much as remaining within Erith borders.
Her stomach growled, reminding her that she had not eaten for a while. Digging through her bag produced an old, stale honey cake, Erith travel rations grudgingly provided by the Taellaneth kitchens long ago. Thankful that she had her human-made hiking boots on, she began walking.
CHAPTER 2
Arriving at the city’s edge well after dark, she had been lucky to find one of the human’s cross-city buses, the driver not raising any demur at her tattered appearance as long as she had coins, which she did. She was then luckier still to find a fast food shop open, the staff not lifting an eyebrow as she ordered a vast quantity of food.
The carrier bags were heavy on her fingers and the smell was distracting, her stomach grumbling almost constantly, but she was finally near her destination. The spell she had worked earlier was keeping her moving, but her energy was almost drained, the world looking flat without the use of power.
Tipping her head back she looked up at the seven story building, wondering what Kester vo Halsfeld would say if he knew that, in anticipation of the end of her service, she had identified several points of refuge around the city as a temporary respite. There had been no certainty that she would reach the end of her service, the Erith quite capable of arranging her death rather than let her go. And it had been possible that the elder would not banish her. Very remotely possible, for she knew the elder well. He would not have tolerated her presence longer than he had to.
Standing in the city night, sounds muted with the hour, she drew a deep breath, unexpected impulse to laugh rising up again. Free. For the first time in her life. Free.
The hiss of wheels against the road surface at the end of the city block snapped her back to focus. Free. Not safe. And vulnerable, with her body tired and power low.
This building was in reasonably good repair, the lower two floors occupied with retail businesses and their offices. The remaining floors were waiting for refurbishment before being sold as residences. A few quiet enquiries had revealed that the plans were tied up in Lix’ formidable bureaucracy and the contractors would not be here for several months if not longer. In between errands for the Taellan several months before she had managed to store a change of clothes in one of the many unused spaces in the empty floors. A spare set bought cheaply at one of the city’s charity shops. Threadbare, like the rest of her clothing, but clean. Unable to draw wards to protect them, thanks to the constraints of her oath spells, she hoped the clothing was still there.
Her luck held a final time for the day. The clothing still there, safe.
~
Waking stiff and cold from a night on the floor, she felt oddly leaden as she removed all trace of her presence from the empty rooms, cleansing magic coming easily to her hands, no restrictions now on the use she could make of her power. She made her way quietly down the stairs and paused just inside the door to wait for a few humans to pass by outside, the heaviness resolving itself into a dull pain in her chest, a weight of sorrow that she had not anticipated. For the second time in her life she was an exile from the Erith, the Erith not caring, still, how she might survive. Or if she would survive. Her jaw tightened. This time she was fully grown, trained, with some resources and a far better understanding of how the human world worked.
One of her deepest wishes, freedom from her service, had been granted. She had never quite believed it would happen. When she had set up a few places for a night’s stay at short notice, she had been hoping, but not daring to plan too much further, and not daring to hope too much. Time enough to plan in detail when she was free, she had thought then. The world open before her, places she had read about or seen images of and wanted to see f
or herself.
And now that she was free, in theory, she could still feel ties pulling her back. There was need for her attention, even if the Taellan would deny it. They might wish to believe that the surjusi threat was gone, that the humans discovered at the underground place that stank of unclean magic were the whole threat. She had told the Preceptor that she believed otherwise the day before. He had not seemed convinced, the magicians with him openly scorning the idea of further threat.
The tainted magicians that had been defeated in the underground were too deformed, and not powerful enough, to have created the spellwork she had discovered. There was still a master magician abroad, one capable of summoning and binding surjusi, and wielding magic she had never encountered before. And Evellan was holding information back that could be useful. He had been too distressed and angry at the presence of surjusi so close to the Taellaneth to adopt his normal, difficult-to-read, expression.
In the shadow of the doorway she shivered. The highest authority in Erith magic was holding secrets relating to an incursion.
The Erith might have banished her, but surjusi were a threat to everyone, including the human world she now occupied. She had lived through the devastation of Hallveran, seen first-hand how little the Erith cared when other races were in danger. There had been no surjusi, disease and conflict more than enough to all but destroy the city. Humans and ‘kin alike had died in huge numbers, and the Erith had not intervened, returning to the city only long enough to pull her out and back to the Taellaneth for their own purposes.
She had no faith in the ability of the self-interested Taellan to now deal with surjusi that did not directly threaten them. The Erith would retreat behind their borders, too fractured and too frightened of taint to be effective. By the time they realised the threat might affect them, the master magician would have had time to regroup and the surjusi hold would be stronger, and harder to push back.
Taellaneth Complete Series Box Set Page 27
