Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) (27 page)

Bytoris frowned.

Faia saw Delmuirie pale, though. “He’s going to hurt for that.” the man whispered.

Bytoris said, “I wish I could have caught him last night.”

“He got away?” Faia pushed her bowl back. The headache was destroying her appetite. She thought perhaps she would go back to bed and wait until it went away.

“He ran straight through the middle of a street fight and apparently went down an alley while I was trying to get past the fight without getting killed. I looked for hours, but it became obvious after a while that I had an Arisser’s chance in a wit battle of finding him.”

The front door slammed, and Bytoris’s wife Renina appeared in the doorway, soot-streaked and breathing hard. “They attacked the district marketplace,” she shouted. They were dropping fireballs into the stalls—the market is ablaze—fire jumping from house to house, and the roofs burning, and the beasts eating up the fire brigade!”

No one needed to ask who “they” were.

Edrouss asked, “Should we get out of here, then?”

Bytoris told him, “The marketplace is not near here, but all the houses are very close—this house will likely burn with the rest.” He frowned, then told his wife, “Gather the children; have them bring a few clothes. I’ll pull out the cart—we can carry more in that than in our arms.”

Faia looked at the grim, frightened faces around her. “You’re going to run.”

“Better to run than to burn.”

Edrouss said, “Show me where I can be of service. I’ll carry what I can for you.”

Faia nodded “Me, too.” All of them rose from the table; then a surge of magical energy blanketed the city. For an instant, the room, the people around her, sights and sounds and smells—all ceased to exist in her awareness. She felt magic shaped and aimed and fired; the power of the blast was so great she could feel the forms of the buildings it touched as clearly as if she stood among them.

Then it was gone, and sight and sound came back—she found herself sprawled on the floor of the morning room with Edrouss, Bytoris, and Renina around her, staring down.

“No fire,” she said slowly. The room still spun, an odd aftereffect that she thought might have been a result of the sudden magical blast but was more likely the result of Thirk’s whack on the back of her skull. She sat up slowly, discovering new levels of pain in her head as she did. “Gyels—I mean Witte—put the fire out. He was somewhere near the market when he did it, but he’s stopped using magic again, and I can’t find him.”

“I thought you said he only did evil things,” Bytoris said.

“He had some ulterior motive for putting the fire out,” Faia told him. She rubbed the back of her head, wishing the pain would stop.

Sounds seeped from outside: shouts, joyous cheering, applause.

“Oh. How foolish of me. I forgot how much he enjoys playing the hero,” Faia muttered.

She staggered to her feet, and without even excusing herself, returned to bed.

FAIA’S next few days passed in a fog. The pain in her head grew worse instead of better. She was endlessly sick—retching to the point of dry heaves, hearing voices she knew didn’t exist, all while the world pitched and rolled beneath her. Her vision blurred; at first she saw a ring of fuzzy fight surrounding everything she looked at—then the images grew darker, and she realized she was going blind.

Edrouss Delmuirie stayed with her, holding her hand, putting cool cloths on her forehead, talking to her. His calm, reassuring voice was always there when she woke, frightened from worsening nightmares. He encouraged her, he sang to her—and finally, as days passed and she got only worse, ever worse, when he was afraid she was dying, he told her he loved her and implored her to hang on.

At last a healer came—a woman with a bag of herbs in hand and a gloomy prognosis.

“I couldn’t get here any faster. Others worse who need help right away—and she hung on, then, didn’t she? For what good that will do in the long run. Blow to the head, was it?” The woman’s voice was weary, and offered little hope. She was talking with Edrouss and Bytoris outside the door, but Faia could hear what she said well enough.

“I can tell you exactly what’s the matter with her. She’s bleeding into her brain—slowly, or she’d be dead already. There’s a pool of blood pressing into the grey matter of the brain—that’s why she can’t see, why she can’t stand up, why she vomits all the time. I’ll tell you, she’s likely to lose movement on one or the other side of her body, too. This is a bad, bad situation. If the magic weren’t gone, I could fix it ready enough, just heal the bleeder and release the pressure on her brain—but as it stands now, she’ll either stop bleeding soon, and gradually get better as her body absorbs the blood back, or she’ll die.”

“Couldn’t you drill a hole in her head to let the pressure off?” Edrouss asked.

“Could,” the healer answered. “If I knew where in hell to put the drill. But without magic, I can’t see the bleeder, I can’t see the pressure spot, and I can’t tell how far in to drill or what tissue is healthy and what is dying.”

“There’s no hope, then.” Bytoris said that.

“I didn’t say no hope. There isn’t much.”

Faia heard a rustle in the hall—it sounded as though the woman was getting ready to leave. “Keep fluids in her if you can—don’t worry about solid food at this point.” A sigh. “There’s one other thing you might try. I’ve heard, in the past few days, of a priest who can do miracles—he’s brought back the magic water-fresher in the Sookanje district, and kept the flying nightmares from attacking the wall just yesterday. If he’s doing miracles, he might be your man. Your friend in there could use a miracle.”

Silence. To Faia, it felt wary.

“Is his name Gyelstom ArForst?” Edrouss asked her.

There was a pause. “No… that isn’t it. This is an Arisser name. Calls himself Holy Perabene Hannisonne… Heralsonne…”

“Huddsonne?” Bytoris’s voice then, with strain evident in those two syllables.

“Yes! That’s it. You know him, then?”

“Of him. He’s… not a friend.”

“Too bad. He’d be a good man to be friends with.” The shuffle again, then, “Good luck. If she’s still alive in the next few days, call me and I’ll stop by to take a look at her again.” The sound of feet, hurrying downstairs, muffled voices from below, a door slamming.

Another long silence. Then Bytoris’s voice, sad. “So he lied to her. The chalice was the source of magic after all.”

“I don’t think so,” Edrouss answered slowly. “I would guess… well, I would guess this is worse even than that. Imagine if Thirk found Gyels—er, Witte—and enlisted as Witte’s priest. Then we would have the God of Mischief and a madman as his chief worshiper and servant.”

“Yes. I can see that—but what would be in it for the god? Why would he accept Thirk, or give him power?”

“What could a god desire? If you know that then you know the rest.” Edrouss sounded thoughtful when he continued “Faia said Witte told her he liked to stir up trouble. How better could he stir up trouble than to give a madman magical power, then turn him loose to use it?” He fell silent, then, after an instant added, “Gods always want worshipers, too, don’t they? It will be a simple thing for him to gain worshipers in a city without magic if he offers them what they’ve lost.”

“Then disaster is coming.”

“As clearly as thunderheads on a horizon.”

Bytoris swore softly. “How do we avert it?”

Faia thought, I think I know the way. She tried to call to them, but her voice wouldn’t work as she wished. She tried to get out of the bed, then, to go and tell them, but when she sat up, she lost her balance and heard her pulse roaring in her ears.

And for a while, she knew nothing at all.

“FAIA, can you hear me?” A gentle voice, the warmth of a touch on her shoulder.

Faia opened her eyes. She saw light, and a blurry form in front of her. “Yes.” Her voice came out as a croak. “I can see you, too.” She blinked, but her vision didn’t clear. “A little, anyway.”

“You can
see?”
The voice belonged to Edrouss, though her vision was too blurred for her to identify his face.

Faia rubbed her eyes. She was amazed at how much effort it took to move her arms. “Everything is fuzzy,” she complained. “I’m starving. Can you get me something to eat?”

“You’re
hungry?”
He sounded overjoyed. He shouted through the house, “Bytoris! Faia’s awake—and she can see! And she’s hungry!”

The shout was loud enough that it made her head hurt. “I’m hungry. I don’t see where that requires you to scream in my ear.”

“You haven’t responded to anyone or anything for almost a week now. You wouldn’t eat, you wouldn’t drink, you wouldn’t move. When the healer returned, she put a tube down your nose into your stomach, and we’ve been giving you sugared wine through that.”

“A week?”

“A week. You’ve done nothing but breathe in all that time—until a few minutes ago. You seemed to be having a nightmare—you were talking about Witte.”

“The little god. There’s something about him that I needed to remember.”

“He’s become God of Bonton. The Bontonards have embraced him as the god of the city—and Thirk is his priest.”

Yes… that was it. Faia tried to sit up. She was weak, but she didn’t feel too badly otherwise. Now that Edrouss wasn’t shouting in her ear, her head didn’t hurt. She didn’t feel sick. The tube in her nose itched; she pulled it out—though that made her stomach twist. She coughed and gagged—and then she felt better.

Then Edrouss Delmuirie hugged her, and kissed her on the cheek, and she felt even better. She smiled and asked him, “What was that for?”

“That was because you’re going to live. The healer said when she came last time that if you ever woke up again, it meant you would get better.”

Faia snorted. “I’ve always heard that people get better just before they die.”

“That isn’t what
she
said. And right now, I’d rather listen to her than you.”

Faia lay back on the pillows. “Me too.”

Bytoris came up carrying a steaming bowl of soup and a glass of water. He put them on the little table beside the bed, then sprawled in a chair across the room. “Are you awake enough for company?”

She sniffed the soup—thin broth, but it smelled wonderful. She tried a spoonful—it tasted wonderful, too. “I’m tired,” she told her brother, “but company would be nice.”

“You’ve missed a lot,” he told her.

Edrouss said, “I already told her about Thirk and Gyels.”

“Witte,” Faia corrected.

“I only knew him as Gyels,” Edrouss said. “It’s easier for me to think of him that way.”

“Did you tell her about the First Folk?”

Edrouss shook his head.

“Thirk is making the First Folk behave like trained dogs,” her brother said. “They attacked not too long after you… um, stopped answering us—came in at the wall with their stones and Thirk was waiting for them. From what I hear, he was up on the wall, dressed in gold and white robes, holding a staff in one hand and a book or something in the other, and when they swooped down for the kill, he prayed for the hand of the One True God to touch him, then forced the First Folk to land on the parapet one by one and kneel at his feet.” Bytoris sighed. “It was all very dramatic. He and his One True God have been getting followers by droves ever since.”

“So the First Folk are tame now?”

“That’s the funny thing,” Edrouss said. They aren’t. They’ve attacked other parts of the city, killed people, and done a lot of damage. They haven’t been able to attack any place that was under Thirk’s protection, though—and I suspect Thirk has let them attack because the fear brings him and his god more followers.”

“That’s ugly,” Faia said softly.

“Yes. But effective.”

“Does anyone realize that the First Folk are people, too?” Faia asked. “Has anyone tried to communicate with them, to find out why they’re attacking?”

Both men shook their heads. “I haven’t heard of anyone doing that,” Bytoris said.

“They’re hard to talk to,” Edrouss added. “You have to know how to address them—you have to understand their culture, which isn’t at all like human culture. It’s easy to make mistakes dealing with them, and if you make mistakes, they kill you.”

“But you know how to talk with them, don’t you?” Faia asked.

“Well, yes—”

She smiled, suddenly hopeful. “Could you negotiate with them and convince them to leave the city alone? Find out why they’re attacking, perhaps?” She began to feel excited. “Think of what it would do to Thirk if the First Folk stopped attacking. People wouldn’t be so afraid—they wouldn’t flock to his religion anymore.”

“He’s giving them magic, Faia,” Bytoris said “They’ll follow him even without his protection from the Klogs.”

Faia wasn’t deterred from her idea. “Not if we could prove he let the Klogs attack people so he would have something to save them from,” she argued. “People in Bonton have died, Bytoris. If we can convince the Klogs to stop attacking and stop killing, and show them that Thirk could have made them stop killing at any time, they won’t follow him anymore.”

“Maybe.” Bytoris sounded doubtful.

“It’s worth a try,” Edrouss said. “Your wife said Thirk and his followers have started rounding up and forcibly converting nonbelievers. If we don’t do something now, we may not have a chance to do it later.”

Faia leaned back, picked up her soup, and sipped it from the bowl. She found she was too tired to use a spoon; that she was, in fact, becoming too tired to do anything at all. She listened as her brother and Edrouss discussed Thirk and his repressive new religion. Thirk was using the Bontonards’ desperate need for working magic to strip them of their independence.

She finished her soup and her water and lay down. She wanted to sleep, and was just about to ask both men to leave when Bytoris brought up an objection. “It’s all very well for us to say you’re going to talk to the Klogs, Delmuirie—but you can’t just walk up to them when they’re attacking and say, ‘Excuse me, but I’d like to talk with you for a moment.’ They’ll eat you alive.”

Edrouss sighed. “That isn’t as difficult as some things. We’ll make a roarer—it’s what we used before when we needed to call the Klogs. Such things aren’t difficult to make. We can carry ours outside the city walls to the top of a hill and use it to call them from there. I suppose they’ll still come to a roarer.”