Authors: Victor Gischler
A minute later, the wagon rattled to a halt. Voices. The sound of someone unlocking the padlock on the other side of the door. More voices. How many were out there?
Maurizan was right. This is a terrible plan
.
The door of the wagon creaked open, flooding the interior with sunlight. She held her breath, shrinking down in between the barrels, willing herself to smallness. Voices and footsteps dwindled. She peeked around one of the barrels. The door of the wagon had been left open, so she crawled to the edge and looked around the corner into the wide courtyard.
Two of the brown-robed villagers carried heavy sacks of grain toward the tower, flanked on either side by guards carrying halberds. Nobody looked in her direction, so she scampered out of the wagon and darted around the other side, blocking the view of her from the tower. Hiding in the wagon had gotten her through the gate. Now she needed to devise a way to get into the tower and force an audience with the wizard.
Maybe if she could sneak around the back and—
A horn blared. The rattle of weapons and clank of armor. A dozen soldiers in Kashar livery came around both sides of the wagon, pinning her in a semi-circle, halberds lowered to menace her.
Or I could just get my idiot self captured. That’ll get me into the tower too, right?
* * *
There had been the momentary urge to fight them, to draw her rapier and tap into the spirit, to feel the power flow through her. Rina again considered Weylan’s warning. Would there come a time when she could no longer resist, when she would give in to every urge to tap into the spirit until she used herself up?
An unnerving thought, but she put it out of her mind. They’d taken her rapier and knife and were escorting her to the wizard.
Which is all Rina had wanted in the first place.
The man walking next to her had taken off his helm; an officer of the guard, she figured. He’d been terse but polite as they climbed the slow winding stairs to the top of the tower. She’d expected to be clapped into irons or hauled away in chains, but that hadn’t happened.
“Thank you for taking me to the wizard,” Rina said.
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “Little enough happens around here of interest. The wizard will want to know about an intruder. Disposing of you might provide some amusement.”
Great
.
You came a long way to get killed, duchess
.
“Can you at least tell me if the wizard’s name is Talbun?”
His eyes flicked to her face with a hint of surprise, maybe. “The wizard will answer all of your questions.” A shrug. “Or not.”
The tower’s top floor was spacious and open, a circle of arched and columned windows. A cool breeze tickled the flames in a half dozen braziers. The view was magnificent. She took a collection of brown humps on the horizon to be the village back east. The desert hardpan stretched north and south, and of course the mountain filled the view west. She passed divans, walking on lush and colorful rugs. A table to her left was laid out with fresh fruit and a silver pitcher and goblets. She realized she was hungry.
The guard took her to a nest of silken pillows. A woman reclined there. She regarded Rina from beneath heavy, bored eyelids. She was naked from the waist up and barefoot; a loincloth of some shimmering golden material gathered between long legs; breasts large and round and preternaturally buoyant. Her hair was so blonde it was almost white. Gold anklets glinted in the sunshine; her lips were full and red.
She was so breathtakingly beautiful that Rina almost turned away, as if the woman gave off some radiance that threatened to burn. Rina felt another urge to tap into the spirit but resisted.
The woman’s eyes slid to the guard. “What have you brought me today, Joff?”
Joff made a perfunctory bow. “She snuck in with the routine supply wagon.”
A long, luxuriant sigh. “Strip her and stake her out on the desert along the road. Her bones will warn away others.”
“I’m looking for a wizard named Talbun,” Rina spoke up quickly. “Weylan sent me.”
The woman narrowed her eyes, rose slowly and gracefully like a feather lifting on a warm current.
Again, Rina had the impulse to avert her eyes, but she held the woman’s gaze as she approached. She leaned forward, looking at Rina’s eyes. “That’s not makeup, is it?”
Rina shook her head.
“I’m Esthar Talbun,” the woman said. “What do you want?”
“You—?” Rina had expected a grizzled old man like Weylan. Not a beautiful woman barely into her twenties.
A knowing smile spread across Talbun’s face. “What is the point of being an all-powerful wizard if I can’t look young and beautiful forever? Weylan was never given to such vanity, but I like to indulge myself. You say he sent you?”
“He said you might …” Rina glanced at Joff. Magical secrets were closely guarded. She didn’t want to talk openly in front of anyone. “Weylan said you might have something that could help me.”
Talbun made an offhand gesture to the guard. “Leave us.”
Joff said, “But, for your protection, milady—”
Talbun laughed, traced a delicate finger down Joff’s jaw line. “Darling Joff. Do you really think there’s anything she can do to
me
?”
Joff bowed again. “Of course. I’ll be just one floor down if you need me.” He glanced again at Rina before turning to leave.
Talbun fixed her gaze again on Rina. The wizard’s eyes turned cold and sharp. “Now. Show me.”
Rina unfastened her cloak and let it drop. Her blouse followed. She unbuckled her belt, slid her pants down and let them puddle around her ankles. She stepped away from the pile of clothing, completely naked, the cool air breaking her out in gooseflesh.
Talbun circled, looking Rina up and down. Rina caught scent of the wizard, like cherry blossoms in spring, but not sweet or cloying like perfume. Rather it was like the woman’s natural fragrance, something fresh and clean coming from her pores, wafting on the breeze.
Talbun ran a finger down Rina’s spine, tracing the lines of the Prime tattoo. “Yes, this is Weylan’s work. It’s been years, but I’d recognize it anywhere.” She ran her fingers over the bull symbol on Rina’s shoulder. “This must come in handy. I’d like to see you in action, young lady. I’m sure it would be a treat.”
Talbun removed her hand suddenly, and the air seemed to go still. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”
Rina swallowed hard. “Yes.”
“How?”
“The wasting sickness.”
“If he were alive, he would have sent word ahead you were coming.” The wizard sighed. “A pity. You were his last. Not many wizards can ink the Prime. Perhaps he was the only one left. Maybe there will never be another Ink Mage again. If there is another wizard in the world who knows the secret, I haven’t heard of him.”
“You can’t ink it?”
“No,” she said. “Wizards don’t like to share their tricks. There was a time, many years ago, when I thought Weylan and I were close enough to—what’s this?”
Talbun bent, prodded at the single rune tattooed low on Rina’s side, so small it had almost passed notice.
“Weylan said my skin had to be perfect for the tattoos, but I had a wound,” Rina told her. “He slathered it with a healing bomb then followed with the tattoo.”
A slow intake of breath, a faraway look coming into Talbun’s eyes. “Weylan, you clever old devil.” She’d turned away from Rina, talking to herself. “Could it really be that simple? Maybe that’s why nobody had thought of it before.” She turned back to Rina, a sly expression on her face. “But easy enough to test.”
Talbun threw up a hand and spat words into the air, arcane syllables that Rina struggled to remember but couldn’t.
Across the room, a knife rose from the table and flew end over end toward the wizard, the hilt slapping into her palm.
Rina’s eyes widened. “What are you—?”
Talbun stepped forward and thrust the knife into Rina’s belly.
The blade sank to the hilt. Blood gushed hot and red from the wound, washing over the knife and Talbun’s hand.
Rina went rigid, eyes bulging, mouth working for air, shaking hands pawing at the knife without strength.
“Does that sting, darling?” A look of mock pity on the wizard’s face. “There, there. It’s almost over. It will all be over and done with very soon. And then no more pain at all.”
Talbun jerked the knife and twisted as she removed the blade, slashing the wound wider; more blood sprayed and splashed on the wooden floor.
Rina found her breath and screamed. She clutched at her belly with both hands, blood spilling out impossibly fast, sticky and hot between her fingers and down one thigh. She took a halting step, slipped in her own blood and fell, landing hard on her side, rattling bones and teeth.
Her head spun, vision blurring. She blinked up through the haze at the grinning face of the wizard. It was as if someone had pulled a warm blanket over Rina’s face, the world going dark as her life poured out of her and wouldn’t stop.
She refused to let the darkness take her.
Rina’s head hung heavy, but she lifted it to lock eyes with the wizard. It cost her almost everything she had left. The strength in her body leaked away, a bone-chilling cold seeping in to replace the blood that had left her body.
The darkness pulled at her. Part of her wanted to go there, to swim in sweet, silent relief.
No
.
She groped for the spirit, but for the first time it was out of her reach. It tickled the tips of her fingers, tantalizingly close, but she couldn’t seize it, couldn’t hold on. She hadn’t the will. She was slipping away. She kept reaching, stretching with her mind.
“Go on.” Talbun’s voice cut through the shadow. “You can do it.”
Rina gritted her teeth. A fresh surge of blood oozed between her fingers with each heartbeat. She lay on the floor in a red pool, body quivering and drenched in sweat.
So cold
.
“The question is,” Talbun said softly, “Are you worthy of Weylan’s gift, or will you waste it?”
Hate rose so suddenly within Rina it almost gagged her. She stretched her mind, twisted and contorted her willpower, strained every part of her—
And tapped into the spirit.
She pushed pain to the horizon of her consciousness, set her hatred aside. There was only cold awareness now, the wound, the wizard, her body, the blood—all merely elements of a scene unfolding around her, information to be weighed.
And there was something else.
A low warmth in her side, building and intensifying. It spread out from the bloody rent in her flesh, along her whole body until it reached the tips of her fingers and toes.
Rina looked at the wound. The gash began to close together, new flesh pink and soft, knitting and joining. Strength seeped back into her body.
She stood. She wiped blood away from the wound, smearing it across her belly. Where there had been a deep, ugly wound only smooth flesh remained.
She looked at Talbun, mouth agape. “How?”
“Think,” Talbun said. “You know how.”
In her mind, Rina traveled back through the weeks. She perfectly recalled the scene in the mountain cave, Weylan’s annoyance at the cut on her side and his application of the healing balm. His words were perfectly clear in her memory.
I’m getting a little inventive. This will either work out very well for you or ruin the entire process. We’ll see, I suppose
.
“Weylan somehow joined the healing balm with the Prime.”
Talbun nodded. “Weylan took a gamble, thought it might be a simple matter of timing. The healing balm was still working its magic in your flesh when the Prime bonded to you. Like the trace of some other metal introduced at the forging of a new blade. It will either make the weapon stronger or corrupt and ruin in.”
Rina traced her fingers through the blood on her side and across her belly. Weylan had risked her life on the experiment, and it had paid off. There’d been an equal chance it wouldn’t have. “He could have killed me.”
“But he didn’t,” Talbun said. “I’d release the spirit if I were you. Healing takes a lot of energy.”
Rina recognized the wisdom in this immediately and let go of the spirit. A vague fatigue pulled at her, and the raw emotions she’d kept at bay flooded in again. Anger flared in her eyes. “You
stabbed
me.”
“It wouldn’t have meant as much if I’d simply explained.” As Talbun spoke, she moved to a thin rope hanging along the wall and pulled it.
Rina thought she heard the distant tinkle of a bell.
“You can heal yourself,” Talbun said. “But it still
hurts
. You can still be killed. You can be damaged beyond the spirit’s ability to bring you back. You needed to know this, to
feel
it.”
I think I’d still prefer if you’d just told me
.
A servant appeared, an old woman in a veil. The wizard spoke to her in a foreign tongue, and the servant scurried away again.
“You’ll be my guest,” Talbun said to Rina. “We’ll discuss what happens next.”
“You’ll help me?”
“There is something I can do for you, yes,” Talbun said. “Whether you consider it
help
will be for you to decide.”
The servant returned with a brass basin of warm water. She knelt in front of Rina and began sponging the blood off her stomach and thigh.
“I’ll have my people launder your travel garments,” Talbun said. “In the meantime, I think I can come up with something civilized for you to wear while we dine.”
* * *
“The wagon is coming back,” Alem said.
After leaving Rina, Alem and Maurizan had reached the ravine at the foot of the mountain well ahead of the supply wagon with Rina hiding in the back. They’d found a grouping of large boulders with a hidden area behind it where they’d tethered the horses. They’d watched from their concealment as the wagon had passed through the first time on its way to the tower.
Now it went back the other way.
“What do you think?” Maurizan asked.