Nor Iron Bars A Cage (8 page)

“But where did the other kinds of magic go? Did people just forget how to do the spells, or wouldn’t they work anymore?

“No one knows.”

“Couldn’t you call up the ghost of an old mage and ask?”

“Believe me, it’s been tried. But you can only call spirits who are still hanging around the material world. Spirits who have strong reasons to linger. I guess true mages don’t. You also have to have a focus, an object that was precious or personal to the ghost you’re calling. The custom of burning the dead mage with all his personal effects was probably intended to help prevent that.”
I’d guess I’d inadvertently been following ancient tradition, when I gave Meldov his send-off by fire.

“So all that stuff from the old tales is lost?”

“Perhaps some of it never was true. But there are enough artifacts like that tower to say that mages once had talents that no one now can duplicate.”

“And no one wrote that stuff down, to pass it on?”

“That was Meldov’s holy quest. Finding an old book that would unlock the secrets of the mages. He never did though, no matter where he looked. You know, the plague years coincide with the passing of the last true mages. Meldov theorized that maybe in the dark years that followed, when a lot of people died and books were burned to keep warm, the secrets passed out of human keeping. He still thought they might be out there somewhere. He summoned other old spirits to question about it, but never learned more than that.”

Tobin shuddered and I almost laughed. He didn’t know the half of it.

 He said, “I can understand wanting to know. But summoning spirits sounds uncanny. Not something I’d care to do. Although I guess, if that’s where your talents lie…”

“I was fourteen when he apprenticed me and began teaching me the basics. You remember.” I’d been flying high as a kite, because the marvelous Meldov had chosen me. “He told me I had a rare gift, but I’d have to earn true apprenticeship. Lots of basic chores, of course, and languages the hard way.”

“There’s an easy way?”

I shuddered in my turn. “Oh yes.” Eventually I said, “When I was sixteen he began including me in the rituals. You were gone on your first campaign by then, and he told me I was ready. Summoning takes strength of will and attention to detail. Get the spell wrong, let your attention slip, and the revenant spirit may escape, either back out of reach or loose to haunt somewhere. Two people can hold fixed attention better than one, and two people checking the spellcraft means fewer mistakes.”

“Could anyone do it then? Raise a ghost? If they know the right spells?”

“I don’t think so. Meldov said we were special, that the focus of will needed to complete a spell was something not many men could accomplish. He said sorcerers were ninety percent training, but without the ten percent spark all the training in the world would be useless.”

“And you had the spark.”

“So it seems.” There, that was the easy part done with. I could stop there. Tobin had said he wouldn’t push me. But perhaps telling him just a bit more would help him understand my reactions. I hadn’t expected to ever share this with anyone, but then I hadn’t anticipated ever seeing Tobin again.

“When I was almost eighteen, things began to change. Meldov had always liked the nighttime more than the day. Since most summoning spells work far better in the darkness, he’d taken to waking at dusk and going to bed at daybreak.”

“I’ve heard most sorcerers do that. I know the king usually consults his mages after dark.”

“Maybe. But in the past Meldov would sometimes spend daylight hours awake too, working well past a summer dawn or even working straight through from one night to the next. So I was surprised to realize as winter became spring that he was still going to bed with the sun that year even as the nights got shorter, and not rising until dark. But I didn’t think much of it. He got more reclusive, more secretive. His personal habits changed. At the same time, he made superlative progress on some of the scrolls and old books we were translating. So maybe working only in the night was effective.”

“You were eighteen? I’d have been twenty then,” Tobin noted. “Commanding my first platoon.”

“Yes. Almost two years gone, in the hills of Galglay, I heard.” Even with my infatuation with Meldov, I’d kept track of Tobin back then, as my best and only friend.

“That was a bad campaign, slow and bitter. Give me defense over offense any time.” Tobin’s eyes held a shadow, hard to make out in the dim light, but I thought he’d found some pain of his own in those hills.

“I wish you’d been home.”

“Oh, I wished it many times too.” He sighed. “Maybe even more now. Tell me what I missed.”

I suddenly didn’t want to drag it out. Tobin didn’t need to know how Meldov had gone from being my teacher and mentor to the center of my universe, how I’d mooned over him and obsessed over every word and gesture, hoping to make him see me as more than his apprentice. Or how it went bad. If the wraith had only been willing from the very start to seduce instead of command me, it might well have owned me.

I said, “When a spell fails, the revenant spirit sometimes escapes. One night, when I was ill, Meldov decided to go ahead with a spell to trap a ghost he’d heard of, one with better language skills than any before. I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe he’d grown used to me checking his work, or sharing my strength.”

I hated to think that my illness had caused the disaster. I could probably have helped him that night. I’d been sick, but not on my death bed. I’d used my symptoms as the chance to take a break from the work. Since then I’d cursed myself up and down unceasingly for it. But there were also times when some part of me wondered if my illness had been Meldov’s deliberate doing, to keep me from being there, so he wouldn’t have to share his latest, best find. He’d shown signs of being jealous of my talents already. He’d been a complex man.

“Maybe he was tired or distracted. Or perhaps it offered him knowledge he wanted so badly that he chose to take a risk. It was an old, old spirit, with half a hundred languages at its command, including the archaic forms no one now remembers.”
Except me, perforce.
“But that spirit was no ghost. It was a full-blown wraith. And when it escaped his circle, it ate him.”

In the silence that followed, I added, “Metaphorically, of course.”

“Explain.” Tobin’s hand hovered near his hip, as if reaching for a sword hilt, and his eyes searched the darkness for enemies. It looked like at least that hypothetical sword wasn’t aimed at me.

“A wraith is one of the undead. They have autonomy far beyond any mere ghost. It took over his mind, controlled his body. It rode him like a horse. He was dead from that moment, and the wraith was, well, not alive again but animated, I guess.”
I hoped Meldov had been truly dead, and not confined back behind those eyes, screaming helplessly. I didn’t dare imagine that, for my own sanity.

“Could you tell it wasn’t really Meldov?”

“Eventually.”

“How long?”

“Six months. Or so.”

“Gods, Lyon!”

“I suspected something was wrong right away of course. But the wraith had access to all his memories. So I couldn’t be sure.” I’d thought the fault was in me. I’d gotten up the next evening and gone to work around the house, and when Meldov arose at full dark he’d called me into his study, accused me of being lazy, named a dozen errors I’d made, and laid down new rules…

“What did you do when you figured it out?”

I took a breath. Couldn’t say anything. I bit my lip so hard I tasted blood. Eventually I decided to skip ahead a bit. “I killed him, of course. Both of them.”

“You?”

I pushed to my feet, even though my thighs strongly voted against the move. “What? You think I’m small and weak and can’t protect myself?” I strode away from the fire, forcing myself to walk fast.

Behind me, Tobin said, “I never thought of you as weak.”

I went to the horses. Cricket ignored me, standing head low and eyes closed, but Dark looked my way and whickered softly. I moved cautiously, because warhorses were often taught to accept only one master, but he let me come up to him and lay a hand on his strong neck. I stroked him, feeling a faint ridge here and there on his skin. I slid a hand down over his shoulder, leaning against him. There was a knot of scar tissue there right where the saddle would end. I rubbed it firmly— small, slow circles like the ones that usually felt good on my wrist— and he shifted his weight against me.

I staggered, and then Tobin’s hand on Dark’s neck pushed the big horse off a bit. Tobin laid his fingertips beside mine on the scar. “That was the one that almost took my leg,” he said quietly. “If he hadn’t moved in time I’d have lost it. As it was we both took months healing, and fighting was over for both of us.”

“Where was I when that happened?” I muttered, in echo of his thought. He might have needed me. He had family, though, and other friends.

“Long dead,” Tobin said bleakly. “Or so I assumed. Did you burn Meldov’s manor?”

“Yes. I wasn’t sure the wraith would die when his body did. But it was trapped in him until sunset, at least. All I could think of was a fire, fast and hot, to burn them both while the sun still shone.”

“Good for you.”

I laughed. Never thought I would laugh about that, but Tobin sounded so fierce and proud.

“Remember when we saw those boys tormenting a kitten?” I said. “And I figured out how to get the stablemaster to catch them at it the next time and deliver a beating of their own. You said,
‘Good for you’
just like that.”

“I meant it then, and I mean it now. Whatever you did, to escape and survive, I’m behind you in it. I’d have been cheering you on.”

His arm on Dark’s neck was right beside my shoulder. If I moved two inches that way I could lean on it. I turned the other direction.

“It wasn’t quite that easy.”

“I gathered.”

“I’m leaving stuff out.”

“You tell me what you need to. Or don’t. Lyon, I’ve had your back since we were kids and I have it now. Believe me on this.”

I did. Or I wanted to. But it was dark out here under the stars and there were no wards on the windows. I thought of drawing a circle of protection around us all. But the ground was rough and I had no good tools, and a broken circle was worse than useless. Who knew that better than I? “I’m going to try to get some sleep. Maybe that horse of yours has beat my ass hard enough for me to drop off.”

“He has gaits like flowing water.”

“With big rocks in it.” But I was too wrung out to banter. He’d set my bedroll a small distance from the fire, between the flame and the rockface of the little cliff below the crown of the hill. Even a non-combatant like me could see it was the best-defended position. I wondered idly if that was a sop to my fears, or if he really had worries of his own. Or perhaps it was just habit. Put the weak ones in the middle. I was too tired to really care.

I found a place to piss, came back and dropped on the bed without removing my boots. After a minute he came over, and knelt at my feet.

“You don’ have to do that.” Even my voice dragged.

He still sounded wide awake. “You’ll thank me in the morning. And since I have to travel with you,
and
hear your grumbling,
I’ll
thank me in the morning.”

I closed my eyes and pretended that the tug and pull of his hands was a puppy, playing with my laces and not a man, removing a piece of my clothing. That idea was far too nauseatingly appealing to think about right now. He eased my boots off one by one, and set them aside somewhere. The blanket he’d used before settled over my shoulders. He might have said, “Sleep well,” but I wasn’t sure. Against all instincts I did sleep.
And of course, I dreamed…

The manacles were new. Or at least they were newly bolted into the red brick wall. I’d been in the workroom just yesterday, and the wall had been bare. I stopped short, but he was behind me and he pushed me forward. “Against the wall. Close one cuff on your wrist.” I tried to fight the instruction, and the brand on my arm flared to agony.

“It will ease when you put the cuff on.” It was still my mentor’s voice. The tone Meldov had used when I was being obtuse and not seeing something right in front of my eyes.

I was learning to take the pain. I could handle it for minutes at a time now. I gauged the distance between us. He’d been controlling me like this for days, but all he had was the pain. At first, he could put me writhing on the floor with it, nearly senseless at just a touch. But as I got better at living with it, I was gathering strength. Not long now, and I’d make a move on him. I’d get free and run.

I don’t know if the thing could see my resolve, or just got impatient. My arm flared white hot, dropping me to my knees. When the pain faded, my arm was locked in steel and chained to the wall. “Now,” my mentor wraith said. “We’ll put on the other one.” And the admagnium-laced steel closed on my left arm too.

 I woke choking. Tobin rolled me on my side and held my hair, and I was shaking too hard to even fight him. When my stomach was empty, he let go and I sat up. He passed me a canteen, and sat back on his heels. I rinsed my mouth, spat, and then drank.

He took it back. “Better?”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“More?”

I shook my head. “Was I screaming?”

“Just moaning a bit. And then that.” He gestured at the mess.

“Sorry.”

“You warned me. We should pull your bed out of the way though.”

I wasn’t going to sleep again, but I got up and let him move my bedroll several feet over. I sat on it, feeling creaky and old. “He wanted me. He tried…”

“You don’t have to explain.”

I needed to. All those years of silence— I needed him to understand. “Meldov— his body— was getting sick. I don’t know if that was coincidence or something to do with being taken, or gods forfend, two intelligences sharing it.”
That had been my biggest horror, that Meldov might be still inside there, watching, helpless.
“The wraith was frantic, searching through all the records for ways to stay alive, or as close as it was to alive. It didn’t dare leave the house, even in the night, because moving too far from Meldov’s workshop seemed to weaken it, but it had spent six months enjoying the pleasures of being alive in the flesh.”
I’d learned that from its mind, later.