“Hurts,” Eileen ran her hands over the bloody hair on the back of her head. “But still intact, I think.”
“I’ll heal you as soon as we take care of the bishop,” Thomas promised.
“Heal Benjamin, too,” she whispered. “Saw him go down.”
Thomas had no answer to that. Henry came close, handing a soldier’s sword to George. George hefted it in one hand, his walking stick in the other. Henry gave Eileen Benjamin’s rapier.
Eileen took it and then realized what it was. Tears welled up in her eyes. “Oh, no.”
“Keep it,” said Henry, his voice as tightly controlled as Thomas was trying to
make his own. “He has no use for it.” Thomas exhausted and numb, forced himself to head for the horses. “Come on. Let’s finish this.”
***
They were a motley looking group by the time they got going. Strips of shirts and skirts served as bandages, and all four wore them. Blood—theirs and the soldiers’—stained their clothes. The smell made the horses skittish, and the lack of rest and a hard night’s riding made them listless. Thomas was pretty sure he knew how the animals felt, but kicked his beast hard anyway and managed to get something of a trot out of it. The eastern sky was beginning to lighten.
The others followed in his wake, forcing their own tired horses as fast as they could. They broke free of the forest and rode toward the town. The place was dark once more. Those who had gone to fight the fire had returned to their beds, leaving the streets empty and silent. The four passed through the town like ghosts in the grey pre-dawn light.
The bishop’s yard was a mess. Spilled water from the well had turned the dirt to mud. The stables were a mouldering ruin of jutting timbers and supports. Two stable hands, survivors from the earlier battle, were wearily tossing buckets of water on the few remaining hot spots. The house had sustained some minor damage, but the chapel was in much worse shape. The roof was half gone, and Thomas could see the light of flames, still flickering from within.
It took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t a fire running uncontrolled, but the flames of torches. He kicked his horse harder, and charged into the yard. The two stable hands turned and ran at the sight of the four riders, blades drawn and clothes spattered with blood. Thomas didn’t bother with them. From within the chapel he could hear someone chanting, and other younger voices, high and muffled, screaming in panic. He pulled the beast to a stop and dismounted, the others following. The doors were locked.
“George!”
George tested the doors once, then took a step backwards and kicked them with all his strength. They burst open, bolts flying off in either direction. Thomas stepped in, his friends right behind.
The front of the church had been changed. The altar had been pushed aside, the fixings cast into a corner. The entire place smelled of blood now, and the floor where the bishop was standing was awash in it. His chanting grew louder and faster, his eyes blazing as he stared at Thomas and his friends, but he didn’t move. He had a thick-bladed knife in one hand. On the floor, Thomas could see the children, tied, gagged, and blindfolded. One wasn’t moving, and his blood was oozing over the bishop’s feet.
Thomas and his friends charged.
The bishop held out a hand, spoke a word Thomas didn’t understand, and fire flew out from his fingertips to strike at them. Thomas ducked low and the flames passed over. George’s shirt caught fire. He howled, dropping his sword and using his big hands to slap the flames out.
A second word flew from the bishop’s mouth, and this time lightning speared out, catching Thomas and Henry both in the center of the chest and sending them crashing back. Thomas landed hard on his back. Henry, trying to dive out of the way, was slammed back into the boxed seats. The bishop was not nearly as strong as Thomas, and the spell only burned and knocked the wind out of them.
Eileen, untouched by the attacks, charged forward. She yelled, loud and long and full of rage, and swung Benjamin’s rapier at the bishop. The bishop jumped back and spoke a word. Fire erupted again, directly in Eileen’s face. The yell became a scream and she dove to one side, frantically covering her flesh and slapping at her hair to douse the flames.
The bishop raised his hand again, opened his mouth to speak. George, still on fire, threw his walking stick, hard. The thick knob on the end collided with the bishop’s skull.
The man reeled backwards, tripped on one of the children and fell, his arms sprawled out to either side. Thomas shoved himself back to his feet and charged. The bishop was half-way back up when Thomas drove the heel of his boot into the man’s face. Bishop Malloy sprawled back. Thomas slashed out with the rapier, cutting deep into the man’s wrist. The bishop’s dagger rolled out from his suddenly useless fingers. Thomas cast his sword away and jumped on the man’s chest. The bishop tried to grab for him and Thomas drove the pommel of his own dagger into the man’s forehead with a resounding
crack
. The bishop’s head snapped back, bouncing off the floor.
Thomas reached inside himself for the power that he knew was there. It didn’t want to come. He made it come anyway, forcing it out from a place deep inside. Suddenly it was all-encompassing. The world shifted and it was all Thomas could do to stay conscious as the power buzzed through his body. His rage kept the darkness back. He placed his hand onto the bishop’s chest.
“Give it to me,” Thomas enunciated clearly. “Give it to me, now!”
The bishop, hardly conscious, still realized what Thomas was doing and started to struggle desperately. Thomas smashed him again with the dagger pommel. The bishop’s head lolled sideways. “Give it to me!”
The bishop moaned and tried to fight, but had no real strength. Thomas now felt what he was pulling, felt the bishop’s magic in his hand. He pulled harder, calling out all his power to do it. “You will give it to me, NOW!”
There was a feeling of tearing, and the magic, ripped from the bishop’s body, flowed into his own. Thomas’s exhaustion faded at once. The bishop had been collecting for a long time, Thomas realized. He sat there, astride the man’s chest, feeling the power flowing through him.
“They’re mine,” the bishop said, his words slurred. “They’ll always be mine.”
“No, they won’t,” Thomas pushed himself to his feet, stumbling back from the bishop. He found his sword and picked it up. “I’m sending them back.”
“They won’t go.” The bishop rolled over, pushing himself to his knees. Thomas watched him try to get up and fail. The man started crawling towards the boxed seats, slipping on the blood on the floor. “The magics follow the path they came from,” the bishop slurred. “If you let them go, they come back to me.” He reached the boxed seats, leaving bloody handprints on them as he pulled himself to his feet. “They will always come back to me.” He sneered at Thomas. “And I will have yours, after the High Father’s court gets through with you. I will pull it from your broken body before they hang you, and all your power will be mine.”
Thomas looked down. The children lay practically at his feet. Three of them were staring, horrified, tears streaming down their faces and sobs coming out from between tight-clenched lips. The fourth lay still, her head mercifully turned away.
“Where did you get the children?” asked Thomas.
“Orphanage.” The bishop let go of the seat box and wobbled. He grabbed it again. “Five miles from the town. It is run by followers of the High Father. I sent word when I arrived in town that we would have need of them, and that we might call unexpectedly.”
Thomas looked at the body of the child on the floor. “Did you tell them why?”
“Of course not,” Bishop Malloy sneered. “They would not understand.”
“The spell you were doing,” said Thomas, still looking at the child’s body. “It doesn’t work.”
“What?” For a moment, the bishop’s voice faltered. It grew strong again almost at once. “You’re lying.”
Thomas shook his head. “I can see magic, and there’s no magic in that spell. It doesn’t give any power.”
“You’re lying,” hissed the bishop. “I had power. You took it! It was raising power!”
Thomas turned away from the three terrified, squirming children and the one who lay so still, to look at his friends. Eileen was cradling her burnt face in her arms, George kneeling beside her, his chest black and blistered. Henry was on his feet again, unsteady and blinking hard, as if he couldn’t quite see. Thomas took them all in, then turned back to the bishop. Bishop Malloy was leaning against the boxes, struggling to make his way to the door. Thomas stepped lightly behind him. “Your Grace?”
The bishop turned, saw the weapon, and laughed, the sound bitter and angry. “Do you know what they’ll do to you if you kill me?”
Thomas dropped forward into a full lunge, putting the weight of his body into the thrust. The bishop stood, eyes staring, mouth wide, until Thomas twisted the blade free. He remained standing, staring, a moment longer, then collapsed to the ground, dead.
Thomas stood there for a time and then turned to Henry. Thomas gestured at the three children—one boy, two girls—who were still alive, crying and squirming in their bonds. “We need to cut them free,”
“I will,” promised Henry.
Thomas walked past his friends and out the door. He stopped on the chapel stairs and looked to the east. The sun was just breaking the horizon, casting rays of gold over the landscape. Inside him, he could feel the magic of many different spirits. There was power in him, now; power to wield all the magic that was in his book, without fear of falling unconscious.
Thomas watched the sun creep slowly up into the morning sky, and wondered what his family was doing.
It took only a thought to release the magic.
Most of the small magics flew out of his body, back to their owners. Some—from the ones the bishop had killed, Thomas guessed—stayed and merged into his own magic. He felt the joining inside, felt himself becoming more than he was before.
Timothy’s magic was inside him.
The thought made Thomas smile just as he realized that, without all the small magics inside him, he wasn’t going to remain standing very long.
He managed to sit himself down and lean against the wall of the chapel before he, very predictably, passed into unconsciousness.
Epilogue
It took over a month to get home.
Thomas, George, Henry and Eileen were arrested and gaoled that morning, charged with the deaths of the bishop and his men. That afternoon, the surviving children told their story. By evening, the four friends were out of the gaol and given rooms at the inn to await the High Father’s inquisitors and the king’s sheriffs.
They buried Benjamin the next day, in the Seaview cemetery, and spent the night grieving.
Thomas took the time before meeting the authorities (whoever they were going to be) to heal his friends, taking away the worst of their injuries and burns. The four also worked out their story, sticking as close to the truth as they could without mentioning Thomas’s magic. The inquisitors and the sheriffs arrived on the same day, and the arguments began. The right to arrest them was hotly contested between church and state. Both wanted them, though neither side was certain what they could be charged with. In the end, the state won more by numbers than legal right. The four were escorted back to the city and to the king’s Judgment. Henry sent word ahead to the Academy, and they were greeted by the head of the School of Law and his entire faculty.
After a week in a courtroom filled with much argument and debate, all the charges from Seaview were put aside. The four, it was decided, were heroes who fought bravely against great odds to try to save the four children. The manner of the bishop’s death was left alone in light of the acts he had been practicing, which were abhorrent in the eyes of both the law and the church. George, Eileen and Henry were set free at once and Thomas was put in the cells under the School of Law to await news on the charges from Elmvale.
Thomas spent two weeks in the Academy gaol, waiting. The cells had been built for those students who broke the Academy rules or the king’s law. No one was in them save Thomas. They were clean and well maintained, and the food he received was the same as the students ate in the dormitories. The gaolers, students themselves, gave him books to read. He wasn’t allowed visitors. He spent the time thinking; about his family, about his friends, about Benjamin, and about the men he had killed.
He grieved for them all, letting the tears run down his face and sobbing into the darkness of the night as he lay awake on the small, hard bed.
Thomas saw the full moon rise from through the tiny window of his cell, and felt the great power he had borrowed at the stone circle fade away. He stared out of the window, watching the inner lights of the world fade away and knowing he would probably never see them again.
They didn’t fade entirely.
The magics still inside him, from Timothy and from however many others the bishop had killed, were enough to let him see. The lights were dim but still there; faint, glimmering images of life in the darkness.
He sat on his bed, held out his hand, and called the ball of light. It glowed a strong, pale blue-white in the darkness of the cell. He thought of Timothy again, and smiled though tears flowed down his face.
In the middle of the second week, a messenger arrived from Elmvale. Ailbe had recanted her story. She was now saying that the bishop’s familiar had killed Shamus. It took three more days of argument and debate, but in the end all charges were dropped and Thomas was granted his freedom.
When he stepped out into the open air he found Henry waiting for him. He looked around, and Henry smiled. “They’re outside the gate. Given the trouble we’ve been in, I thought that sneaking them in wouldn’t be that good an idea.”
“True.” Thomas and Henry walked down the wide path to the main gate. Students passing by immediately started whispering to one another. Thomas watched them, then raised an eyebrow to Henry. Henry shrugged. “You’re famous,” he said. “Though notorious might be a better word.” He leaned in and lowered his voice, “Is the magic still there?”