Dead Magic (32 page)

"Because he's a good man," Jessamine said and sighed. "I may not have loved him as I do your father, but I cared for him nonetheless. I could not cast him out like baggage, merely on account of my heart."

Dorian watched her for a moment, silent. She looked sad and he wondered if she was worried about Aubin. The man had not come at the urgings of Delgora and was somewhere on the mainland. What he remembered of his stepfather was a cold aloofness, a distance that he'd only understood when he'd grown older and learned the truth of his parentage. There hadn't been any cruelty, not from Aubin anyway. Dorian wasn't certain when he'd come to sympathize with the man, but he did. If Elsie's heart ever strayed, he would be devastated.

"No, Mother," Dorian said quietly. "No, you couldn't have."

She reached over and clasped his hand in her own. She had slender hands, warm and strong in his grasp. He squeezed her fingers lightly and turned to look back at the crowd.

A scream pierced the calm procession. Dorian scanned the people, hunting for the source. All at once the crowd surged forward, pushing for the entrances as several more cries rang out. Three creatures leapt from the edges of the jungle, running fast for the people.

These were different from the cats in Lorant. They were more canine in shape, but far larger than a typical dog. Dorian recognized them at once as the creatures from Elsie's vision. He saw them separate and move to each of the different entrance lines.

"Go!" Jessamine said, releasing his hand.

Dorian drew his sword and bent time, pushing his body across the distance to intercept the nearest beast. He made it there just as it started to jump, intent on an old man who was scrambling to get away. Dorian released time and raked his sword in a horizontal slash that hit the creature at its exposed chest. It yelped and crashed to its side, safely away from the old man.

Dorian watched it as it struggled to its feet, backing away in the process. Its left foreleg was useless, curled up and dangling in the quick retreat. As big as the creature was, Dorian felt a pang of regret at having injured it. The move was so natural, so dog-like, that his compassion swelled.

"There doesn't have to be further bloodshed," he told it. "Please, I know you can understand me."

The creature snarled in response.

Dorian ignored the sounds of people running away and prayed someone else had managed the other two beasts. The creature before him hobbled on three legs, its hackles raised, and continued to growl at him. He had the sense it was debating the next move, glancing between him and the quickly fleeing crowd.

"Magnellum means you no harm," Dorian tried again. "Please. Don't do this."

"Magnellum is a scar upon the land," the creature said in reply. "The Wild will sunder it to oblivion."

"There can be peace," Dorian said, keeping his sword pointed at the creature.

"Return Magic, then."

"How?" Elsie asked, coming up from behind it.

The beast growled at them. "Just die."

"Killing us won't return Magic to you," Elsie said. "We didn't pull him out of the Host tree. Sure you can see this."

"It's worth a try."

Dorian scowled. "This is getting us nowhere."

"Agreed," Elsie said, and stretched her arm toward the beast. "
Susbeni temporum.
"

The creature froze, tongue lolling out of its mouth and half crouched as though to pounce.

"What was that one?" Dorian asked.

"Suspension without a time limit," she said. "Basically, he can't move."

"You're certain?"

"Mostly. I've never actually performed that one before. It could last a day or a few moments."

Dorian lowered his sword and eyed the dog-like animal with distrust. "Why were there only three of them?"

"Advanced party," Elsie said. Dorian could hear in her voice that she was repeating this news and glanced at her arm. "The Pillars are cracked and only a few could cross. But the rest will be here very soon."

"Lady Elsie!" Sir Callen ran up to them. He glanced at the wolf with a frown, but refocused quickly. "Everyone's inside."

Dorian looked back at the ark, surprised to find the people gone.
Nothing like a little motivation to spur things along,
he thought. He wondered if their frozen prisoner would howl at the news that his appearance had only hastened the retreat. He certainly hoped so.

"Seal the ark," Elsie said.

Dawn broke on an empty camp. Footprints littered the ground, both human and animal alike, stirring the morning snow into a mix of frenzied, muddy patterns. Campfires were black now, their charred remains hissing smoke as the snow continued to fall. Just an hour before, the place had been a raging, teeming mass of various creatures. From her spot, tied to a tree, Valeda had seen great cats of every size and color, wolves and bears, all restless with impending violence.

They had ignored her for the most part. Surrounded as she was by Remora stones, they must have assumed that she wasn't a threat. They were right, of course. Even if the stones hadn't been there, she still had the morphed one in her pocket. It bit into her thigh where she leaned against the tree, calling her to some kind of action. But she couldn't feel her magic anymore.

She wondered if it had been severed from her when Winslow was taken. Perhaps she'd only had it because of him, and now that he was mutated by the Dellidus, it was gone. That made a little sense. After all, she hadn't been Talented until that incident on his balcony.

Her eyes strayed to the pit into which they had thrown Winslow. It was several feet away, covered by a wooden grate. She could hear him screaming a berserk, half-man half-wild cry of outrage. Every now and then, the grate would rattle, giving evidence to his continued struggle for freedom. Her heart broke at the sound. She wished they'd just killed him.

She wished they'd kill her, too.

Why,
she wondered.
Why not kill us? If they hated us enough to call us abominations, then why keep us alive?

She looked away from the pit. Voruke stood by the massive, sick tree at the center of the clearing. He alone had stayed behind when the others had run off for Magnellum. He faced the tree and fell to his knees, raising his arms in something akin to worship. Valeda watched him. Twisted limbs began to move, curling and swaying as though in response to his prayers.

Valeda felt the stone in her pocket begin to heat. Confused, she shifted against the ropes holding her down and managed to cover the pocket with her hand. Warmth pulsed out, thawing her numb and frozen body. She could sense the Wild in her. She'd never attempted to communicate with it as she had her Talent. She didn't know how and, frankly, it scared her.

She could feel it now. It was angry. Frighteningly angry. At first there was no real form for it. The anger was just present, boiling in her center with no purpose behind it. Then Voruke began to speak, sibilant whispers urging that anger toward Magnellum, and her Wild started to respond.

"No peace," he said, "no mercy."

Valeda closed her eyes and shook her head, trying to dislodge the words from her mind. But shutting her eyes only seemed to connect her to the Wild. She was suddenly a part of a larger whole, no longer just little Valeda Quinlan, but a member of a community.
A community,
she realized,
whose singular purpose is to destroy everything I've ever known or loved.

For one aching moment, she wanted the Pillars to fall. But that was not her voice raging against Magnellum. She opened her eyes and forced the voices from her mind, cutting them off from her consciousness. She saw the tree again. It was still swaying with Voruke's chanting prayer of hatred.

The Wild was everywhere, imbued in all living things, but that tree was the source. She knew this like she knew her own soul. And she knew that there was something very, very wrong with it. It was a brackish gray color, festering with some kind of moss that drooped and hung off its branches. It creaked and moaned, straining to move, and she could sense that deep anger thundering through it.

But the anger was not for Magnellum. Not originally, anyway. Voruke was the one pointing the fury at their borders, not the Wild.

She gasped at the implications.

If the Wild was being directed by a man, then it could be stopped by a man, too. All they had to do was shut him up.

Valeda struggled to get her hand into her pocket. Voruke was alone. He'd sent everyone off to the war, believing himself safe from the "abominations." Whatever plan he had for them when this was over was most likely violent and painful and she would be damned if she just sat by and waited for it. This was her best chance at taking him down and she knew it.

Her fingers closed on the rough stone and she pulled it from her pocket. It had several sharp edges. She picked one and started sawing at the ropes, periodically glancing to where Voruke continued to pray. Her fingers warmed under the stone where she gripped it, but her knuckles froze in the winter air. The contrasting sensations reminded her of her Talent, its reaction to the Wildness in her.

There has to be a balancing point,
she thought;
like scalding water left to cool to the right temperature for tea.

Fates preserve her, she was comparing herself to a cup of tea. Magnellum was falling, people were dying, Winslow was screaming in pain and she was looking for an appropriate analogy.

"Mother, Maiden and Crone!" she hissed, annoyed with herself.

The rope snapped free and Valeda paused. That had been far too easy. Her toes and body were no longer numb from the cold, either. Somehow she had called on her Talent, and it had answered. She glanced at the Remora stones surrounding her.

"Half Wild, Half Talented," she murmured to herself.

"And still doomed," Voruke said from above her.

Valeda looked up, surprised at his sudden nearness. He sneered down at her, his pitted face wrinkling into the most sinister expression she'd ever seen. He had crooked, yellow teeth, with two prominent canines on either side of his mouth. She could see scars running over his bald skull, crisscrossing in small white lines as though he'd fallen headlong into a bramble patch and never healed.

"Magnellum means you no harm," Valeda said.

She didn't know why she said it. She knew he didn't care. But she wanted to buy time. It was one thing to attack him while he was vulnerable and chanting, it was another thing to try fighting him straight on. She didn't even have a sword.

"What harm are mice to a cat?" Voruke asked.

"They why kill us?"

He crouched down and grabbed her chin, bringing his face intimately close. His black eyes bore into hers, seething and hateful in their intensity. "Because you are mice," he said.

Valeda felt her Talent coil at her center, prepared for action. Without really knowing what she was doing, she shoved him back with one hand. He soared away from her, propelled by the force of her magic. Valeda blinked in mingled surprise and horror.

Before he hit the ground Voruke changed form, his body morphing and elongating into a giant cat. He landed on all fours and immediately sprang for her.

Valeda screamed and rolled out of the way. He came at her again, rocketing himself off the tree. Scrambling to her feet, she turned in time to strike him with the stone. It hit him in the head and Voruke let out a startled cry, falling back into the shape of a man. A great, purplish mark covered the left side of his bald head.

The tree suddenly let out a groan, bending toward them. Several of the branches looked to be reaching for her, clawing in desperation at the air.

"No!" Voruke shouted.

She looked back at him, but he was already up and moving. His fist caught her in the jaw with blinding accuracy. Her open mouth clattered shut, pain blooming through her teeth and straight into her temples. She staggered backward, holding tight to the stone.

He kicked her in the stomach and she fell back. Agonizing nausea churned in her gut. Her body hit something wooden and dizzy lights swirled in her vision, but she still had the stone.

She tried to call on her Talent to subdue the pain, but remembered at the last moment that only male Witch-Born could do that.

Such a stupid rule,
she thought, and rolled onto her side.

She was half on top of the wooden grate. In the gloomy shadows of the pit she could see Winslow's blond hair. He wasn't screaming anymore. Winslow leapt at her, far too fast for a normal man. He looked like a streak of blond blur and before she could react, he snagged her wrist and began to fall.

Valeda's arm slipped through a slat in the grate and she crashed back into the wooden surface. Winslow's descent jerked to a stop, anchored by her body. She felt her shoulder pop out of its joint and she screamed in pain. The stone tumbled from her numb fingers, landing somewhere in the pit below.

She called to her Talent-asking for strength, for a spell, for anything-as she tried levering herself up. But the movement only brought Winslow closer. His other arm snaked through the grates and he grabbed her neck. She fell forward again, choking. His fingers dug hard into her throat. She tried to dislodge him with her other hand, but he was too strong.

"Winslow . . ." she wheezed. ". . . please!"

The grate began to crack under their combined weight. She felt his nails pierce the skin at the side of her neck and saw him smile in triumph. The Dellidus had changed his teeth, giving him two curved and horrifying fangs. Darkness clouded her vision and her chest squeezed tight with grief.

Oh, Winslow,
she thought.

"This was meant to be done at our victory feast tonight," Voruke said from somewhere nearby. The grate splintered again and her body tilted forward. "But no matter. I'll just hang your empty carcass to the Host tree. The people can spit on you in passing."

Valeda couldn't reply. Where Winslow's fingers had pierced her, she felt a sudden wrenching. It tugged insistently through her, locating the core of her Talent, and began to pull the unseen substance from her. Her scream came out as a high-pitched, half-choked wheeze. The grate finally broke, but Winslow's grip was too strong. She felt him feeding on her Talent even as they fell into the pit.