Reisil swung her sword around, poking Uldegas’s throat with the tip. Blood beaded on his skin.
~This one I wouldn’t have minded seeing dead. Or better yet, thrown into one of his cages, where he could rot forever.
~Kill him now.
Saljane’s voice offered no judgment.
Reisil hesitated and then slowly lifted her sword away.
~He’s helpless. I won’t be like them. Not today of all days.
It had been four weeks since Yohuac and Baku had been captured. In all that time Reisil had wrestled with a plan to get them out. She’d been overjoyed when she learned of the new year’s celebration. With all the Kvepis incapacitated, she had time to free her friends. If she could figure out how.
Satisfied the henbane would not soon wear off, Reisil retreated outside.
She paused to check on the two horses she’d cached in the trees near the entrance to Uldegas’s workshops. They remained where she’d left them, saddles and packs intact. Indigo greeted her with a nicker. The other was Tapit’s leggy gelding. She scratched the bay’s starred forehead and fed them each a handful of grain before setting off.
Uldegas had been as jealous as Kvepi Debess of his wards. But Reisil had listened vigilantly and finally discovered the keys to the spells. She entered easily. Inside was a long, oblong room with a row of tables down the middle. They were separated by fifteen feet. Each was set on a pedestal carved with
rinda
. More
rinda
etched the floors, the tables, and the straps dangling from their sides. Chunks of quartz and amethyst crystals dangled down over each table, serving as reservoirs for collected energy. Along the left wall were a series of workbenches and storage cabinets. Here Uldegas performed dissections of flesh. Here he stored his instruments in all their grisly array. Here he mixed potions and poisons. Here were jar after jar containing bits and pieces from
nokulas
, from humans, from Lady knew what else.
Cells lined the opposite wall. Their outer doors were made of heavy planks without openings. The cells contained cages much like those in Kvepi Debess’s workshop. Inside, Uldegas stored his victims like potatoes in a cellar. Reisil had never seen any other but Yohuac, and wondered who else suffered in these walls.
She shunted the thought aside, feeling Saljane’s steel resolve winding around hers.
~Let’s get him out of here.
Yohuac lay on a table midway down the room. His eyes were open and fixed on the ceiling above. He was naked, his head shaved smooth, as was the rest of his body. Straps inscribed with complicated
rinda
lay across his forehead, chest, waist, thighs and ankles. They weren’t fastened down, and they glowed with a faint green light. There was a patchwork of bandages all over his body and a bucket of bloody rags on the floor. His skin wrapped his protruding ribs and bones shockingly tightly.
“Yohuac? Can you hear me?”
He didn’t move.
~We’ve got to get him off the table.
But how? Reisil bent to examine the straps. These
rinda
were more complex than she understood. She stood up, scrubbing her hands over her face. They were meant to hold him paralyzed and senseless. Perhaps that’s all they did. They shouldn’t be dangerous to the wizard working over him. That would be foolish. She licked her lips. If she was wrong—But he was going to die if he stayed here, and she didn’t doubt he’d rather have her try than leave him here for Uldegas.
Reisil drew her sword, and the sound of it rang in the silence. She edged the tip beneath the strap across Yohuac’s ankles and then twisted sharply upward, flinging the offending strip into the air. Nothing happened. She repeated the process. His thighs, his waist, his chest, his head. When she’d flung the last one away, she sheathed the sword and bent over him again.
“Yohuac?”
He blinked. He drew a long rattling breath and then began to cough, deep racking coughs. She slid her arm around him and helped him sit up. He clung to her, his fingers shaking. She continued to hold him for long minutes. At last Yohuac regained control of himself and began to breathe more easily. He couldn’t stop trembling, and Reisil hugged him against her firmly, careful to stay away from the bandaged patches.
“Who are you? What’s happened?” he rasped.
“I’m Reisil,” she said, realizing suddenly that he couldn’t see in the darkness. “The wizards captured you,” Reisil said. “I still have to get Baku. Can you walk?”
“Whatever I have to do,” he said haltingly.
“I’ll find clothes.”
She eased out from under him and began rummaging through the storage bins where she knew Uldegas stored what he called
artifacts
. In one she found Yohuac’s clothing neatly folded. His weapons lay beneath the clothing in the bottom of the bin. Everything had been cleaned and mended. Even his armbands, earrings, and hair beads were there. As if Uldegas ever meant him to wear any of it again. What made her stomach clench were the four other bins full of clothing. She stared at them a long moment and then returned to Yohuac. She helped him dress, wondering how he’d ever get out of the valley, much less make it all the way to Mysane Kosk. He touched his head as she pulled on his tunic.
“What have they done? I don’t remember—”
“I don’t know,” she said.
She helped him with the rest of the clothing. More than once he moaned or flinched as she brushed the bandaged places. When he was dressed, he sagged back onto the table, his head dangling low, his entire body wilting boneless to the side.
“Let me see if I can find some food or drink.”
“A light,” he whispered. “I want to see.”
Reisil retreated to the outer room, rummaging until she found a drawer full of candles. She grabbed one, unwilling to think what Uldegas might use them for. Certainly not light. Next she found a jug of water and a quarter loaf of stale bread. She took them back to Yohuac. She lit the candle with a tendril of power and poured him some water.
“Not too much. You’ve not had any food for a while.” Then she dipped the bread into the other mug and let him have a bite.
He took the bread from her, chewing slowly.
“Will you be all right a moment? I want to look in the cells.”
Yohuac nodded, his eyes bleary.
~You must not tarry long.
~I won’t.
Reisil went to the first plank door and opened it. There was no one inside, and she inspected two more before she found anyone. A woman sat inside the cage on the floor facing Reisil. She was naked, her head and body shaved. There were no marks of torture or experimentation on her. She sat still and upright.
Reisil knelt beside the cage. “Are you all right?”
The woman lifted her head. Reisil scuttled backwards in shock.
Her eyes were just like those of the
nokulas
: silver and opaque, like the curved bottom of a spoon. The bones of her skull had widened, and her cheeks ridged upward. The skin covering the rest of her very human body was pale as milk. She was beautiful in a terrifying, alien way.
She tipped her head at Reisil, fixing one eye on her like a crow. “You’re not him,” she said in a voice that reminded Reisil of rain.
“No.”
“Can you free me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you try?”
Reisil hesitated. “I don’t know how.”
“Ah.” The woman bent her head down, dismissing Reisil.
Reisil examined the cage. The
rinda
glowed in rainbow light, layered one on top of the other, much like those holding Baku. She felt like spitting. She knew many of the symbols, but not the configurations, and she didn’t have the slightest idea how to unravel them. But everything in her rebelled at leaving this woman—or whatever she was—inside. She examined the cage again. There was no lock, only a latch. But clearly the latch was warded, and there was no way to turn it without dangerous repercussions.
“Do you have magic? Is that why you’re in here?” Reisil asked, wondering exactly how the spells on the cage were focused.
“Some. I’m a plague-healer.”
Reisil froze. “A what?”
“A plague-healer,” she repeated.
Reisil had sunk to her knees. “How? I can’t even touch it.”
The woman tipped her head again in that birdlike way. “The plague has no harmony. I sing it back to joy.”
Reisil stared uncomprehendingly. “Sing it?”
“I would like to leave here. It calls, but I cannot answer.”
A cure for the plague. Was it possible? Reisil’s stomach churned. Given that the woman was locked up in a wizard’s cage, Reisil was inclined to believe the notion. Though she could be lying just to trick Reisel into letting her out. Reisil swallowed. But what if her story was true? Reisil snarled. She should have killed Uldegas. She levered to her feet. She had to free the woman; there was no longer a choice, not if there was a remote chance of stopping the plague. But how? Again Reisil examined the
rinda
on the cage.
The cage was undoubtedly designed to suppress the magic of those within and make it impossible for them to free themselves manually. But the wizards never expected to have to counter an attack from without. She just needed an object. . . .
Reisil turned around, her hand falling on her sword hilt. No. She didn’t want a magic sword. She needed something else. She retreated out of the cell, alighting finally on Yohuac and the gold armbands sitting beside him. She snatched one up and returned to the cell.
“You did not leave.”
“With any luck, we’ll leave together.” Reisil set the armband on the floor and stepped back.
~Stay apart, Saljane. If this doesn’t work, leave Yohuac. Get to Juhrnus, and tell him what we’ve learned here.
She waited for Saljane’s reluctant agreement, felt her withdraw. Ruthlessly Reisil suppressed the pang that shot through her. Then carefully she extended a tendril of magic to the armband, anchoring it firmly. Next she turned her attention to the cage. The
rinda
were brilliantly active. She should be able to siphon off their power much as she had sent her own excess magic to store in the hunk of quartz. She stretched out another careful tendril. It touched the cage.
Magic flashed, incandescent as the afternoon sun. Reisil closed her eyes against the painful brilliance. Power sluiced through her. She staggered and dropped heavily to the floor. She couldn’t let go. She had no strength to do anything but hold on. Hotter and hotter, spurting and spitting, gushing through her like a torrent of lava. Reisil felt the patterns of the
rinda
softening, dissolving in the flush of raw magic. As they broke apart, Reisil at last understood their patterns and purpose. One after the other they lost cohesion. As each unraveled, the deluge surged and then dropped, dribbling away to nothing.
Reisil opened her eyes, feeling the hard stone of the floor against her back. She blinked. Spots of white and yellow danced across her vision.
“Cage is opened. Free others, yes?”
Reisil drew a shallow breath, all she could manage. Her lungs ached as if they’d been seared black. The rest of her body felt battered as though she’d fallen over a cliff. She sat up with a gasping groan. Between the spots on her vision, she saw that the cage was twisted and black. Unusable. She smiled in grim triumph. She clambered to her feet, leaning against the doorjamb, her head spinning.
“Free others, yes? Yes?”
“I’ll try,” Reisil answered hoarsely. She couldn’t leave any of them here. Plague-healers. She almost sobbed.
Please let it be true!
“Come. Before he returns.”
The woman gestured toward the door, uncaring or unaware of Reisil’s pain. Reisil bent and picked up Yohuac’s armband. It glowed softly in her spellsight, and she tucked it in her hip pouch.
There was a man in the next cell. He might have been the woman’s twin. This time as Reisil examined the cage, she understood the scrolling
rinda
. This one for pain, that one for stealing magic, that for sleep, that for locking the cage, the other for dampening magic. And more. The
rinda
were stacked together like overlapping bricks, repeated on every surface. Removing one, the right one, undermined the rest.
Reisil paced around the cage, the man and the woman watching her with the same unnerving avian expression. At last she found what she was looking for. The spell for dampening magic on the fourth bar from the bottom. It was unfinished. There had been no room left on the bar. A small gap. It was enough.
She pulled the armband out again and set it on the floor. The flood came more slowly, more bearably, as the spells caved slowly in on each other. Even so, the freed power gushed powerfully. But this time she was more prepared and did not collapse. When she was through, the cage was equally as useless as the last.
By the time she freed the fourth plague-healer, she could hardly stand. Her eyelids drooped, and her body shook. She pointed the freed prisoners to their clothing and stumbled back to Yohuac and Saljane. There was a spatter of water and bread on the floor where he’d vomited, but he continued to eat and drink, holding more food down.
“Let’s go. We still have to get Baku. I don’t know when the wizards will start waking up. But we have to be far out of the valley.” She spoke in a rough whisper. She was surprised when the four plague-healers—three men and the woman—offered to help. She leaned on their strength gratefully, barely able to raise her feet off the floor to walk.
They took Yohuac to the horses and sat him down next to a tree. Reisil offered him an apple. “Don’t eat too fast. Your stomach is going to take some time to adjust. Rest now. We’ll have to ride soon.”
She drank deeply from a water bag and bolted down a slab of cheese and a handful of nuts for strength. From her medicine pack she drew a handful of millesti seeds and chewed them. They were bitter, but their juices restored her vigor within minutes. The exhaustion dropped away like a discarded cloak. She’d pay for using the seeds later, she knew, but by then she hoped to be far out of the valley.