Stealing Sorcery (39 page)

Asphodel threw the gauntlet again; five chains whipped around to deflect it. Velas had to duck to avoid the projectile.

“You want to stop doing that?”

“No.”

Velas growled, lashing out at the Overseer, her spear once again bouncing off the armor.

“Asphodel, what exactly are you – oh, gods, it’s so simple,” Taelien trailed off. “Landen, keep her busy. Asphodel, bring me the gauntlet, and Velas come here.”

“You should not do this.” Asphodel gave Taelien the gauntlet, but she had a disapproving expression.

“Yeah, I’ll feel terrible, but it’ll work.” Taelien laid his staff down, turning the gauntlet around. “Velas, stick the spear into the gauntlet where the hand would go.”

Velas blinked. “You’re joking.”

“He is not joking.”

Velas stuck the spear into the gauntlet, and Taelien closed his eyes. The wrist portion of the gauntlet tightened around the spear, sticking into place.

Taelien broke into a wracking cough, letting go of the gauntlet. When he recovered from the coughing fit, a trickle of blood was dripping out of his nose. “Now,” he said, “Go hit the blue parts.”

It finally clicked.

Her job was hilariously simple.

Velas spun, charging her target. “Landen, I’m going to hit her in a second. When she’s distracted, go for her head.”

Four chains shot at her, but Velas didn’t care.

Surge.

The burst of momentum shot her past the bladed chains, driving her one-armed spear attack straight into the Overseer’s torso. The red runes on the gauntlet flashed as they contacted the blue runes on the armor. Both flickered and died.

The Overseer didn’t stop moving.

The five remaining chains went for Landen, and he wasn’t fast enough to avoid them all this time. One of them speared his left arm and forced him to drop the gem. Another hit his right leg, knocking him to the floor.

Unable to make his swing, Landen threw the sword.

The Overseer ducked. The sword missed.

As the sword fell, the Overseer spun around, the chains that had been aimed at Landen whipping around toward Velas. She managed to knock three of them upward, but the others were coming in at different angles.

Asphodel stepped in front of her, grabbing the two remaining chains out of the air with her left hand. She pulled, and the Overseer came within reach. With her other hand, Asphodel pushed Taelien’s collar around the Overseer’s neck.

The blue collar met with red. The Overseer’s head fell off.

It was, more accurately, only a helmet. As the Overseer tumbled to the ground, Velas noted that much like the knight, the Overseer was just a hollow suit of armor on the inside.

Once it was down, Landen picked himself off the floor and quickly struck each of the remaining red sets of runes with the sword. They dimmed and faded almost immediately. Velas repeated the process using her gauntlet-spear against the blue runes, just to make sure the headless monster wasn’t going to start moving again.

Landen knelt down and began to pry open the breastplate.

“You know, it’s rude to try to get under a lady’s garments like that, Lan.” Velas leaned against her spear, curious about what he’d find. It took him a good minute to find a spot where he could pry open the breastplate, during which time Taelien managed to limp over to the rest of them, and Velas remembered his injury with a pang of guilt. She turned to face him.

“You okay, Sal?” He was still holding his side, leaning heavily on his makeshift staff.

“No, not really. Asphodel, we almost out of here?”

“Yes.”

Velas reached up and rubbed her neck beneath the amulet. “Best thing you’ve said all morning. Hey, Sal, tap my neck?”

Taelien seemed to get her meaning, taking the gauntlet-spear and prodding the back of her amulet. Like his, her amulet unlocked at the gauntlet’s touch, slipping off. She caught it in her burned hand, which wasn’t feeling quite as burned anymore. Dubiously, she took a look – her skin wasn’t actually damaged.

Just a mental effect,
she realized.
I was never actually injured. How did I fail to notice- oh, right, when the guard spoke, he did something to my head. Not to mention whatever they did to me when I was asleep – I could have all sorts of spells on me, since I wasn’t awake to detect the shift in my Dominions.

Well, that makes this simulation at least slightly more ethical. I was going to pound someone’s face in if they actually electrocuted Sal that badly. Still looked like it hurt like a knife to the gut, but it’s no wonder he’s up and walking again if it was just pain, not a real injury.

The group took a minute to breathe while Landen worked to pry a golden gemstone out of the Overseer’s chest. Taelien was pressing a hand against the injury on his side and Velas approached to take a closer look.

The wound was real. It wasn’t particularly deep, but when she touched a smear of the blood on his chest, her fingers came back wet. Fortunately, the cut didn’t appear to be particularly deep – but it was still a potential danger if they didn’t find him medical attention soon.

Maybe I need to bludgeon one of the instructors after all. Why would his injury be real if mine wasn’t? Did the electricity break his shield, or was he never protected at all?

The blood on his mouth was equally real, as was the numbness in her right arm. They had both overspent themselves on sorcery – and if this was a test, they’d probably be in some trouble for it.

Once the golden gem was secured, the group made their way further down the hall until they reached a door covered in blue runes – which, predictably, opened at a tap from the gauntlet. Landen swung the door wide, revealing brilliant daylight outside. Together, they stepped into the light.

Jonan watched as his family burned.

Don’t let her see me. Don’t let her find me,
he prayed. The boy stared intently through the space between the wardrobe’s doors. Packed between clothing, he was concealed as best he could manage, but he knew that a cursory examination would reveal his presence.

And then he would be added to the still-burning pile in the living room. The smoke from the flames was steadily filling the entire home, but their murderer remained within, kicking something toward the pile.

The latest of her victims was small, smaller even than Jonan himself. He forced his eyes shut, but he could not will the image away. The hateful orange-red glow burned his eyes even as the smoke seared into his lungs.

His eyes reopened. As he watched the latest kindling begin to catch, he found that he could not associate what he was seeing with what had once been his sister. There was enough remaining of her face to be recognizable, but he could not believe that it was her – that it was little Chel – in that motionless form. He could see nothing human left in that husk.

He could see nothing human in the woman that had burned his family, either.

She raised her hands to the fire, grinning as if warming herself at a hearth. The glow of the flames illuminated the details of her face, thin and angular and punctuated eyes that mirrored the conflagration in color.

He did not wonder at the murderer’s motives – her smile and behavior were sufficient to inform him of everything he needed to know. She was a predator, and they, unfortunate creatures, were merely her prey.

Reaching toward the flames, she seemed to tear a fragment of the fire away with her bare hand, rolling it within her fingers. The flames traveled up her arm, wrapping around it in a wreath, but they did not burn her clothing or skin. Her songbird laughter echoed as she turned and stormed toward the wardrobe where Jonan remained hidden.

Don’t see me.

Don’t see me,
he willed.

She swung the doors of the cabinet wide.

“Why are you hiding, Jonan?”

Lavender smiled at him, caressing his left arm and setting it ablaze. He screamed as his exposed flesh began to burn.

She shook her head, making a disapproving noise. “Jonan, Jonan. I always find you.”

Jonan’s screams faltered as he inhaled the smoke, and his voice faltered into a cough as the flames spread from his arm to his shoulder.

“There, there.” She patted his head with her burning hand, spreading the flames to his hair. The clothes around him caught as he brushed against them and fell to the floor.

“It will all be over soon.”

***

The scribe shivered as consciousness slowly returned.

The sensation of flames lingered in his limbs, but lacked the sharpness of the bolt’s initial impact. His eyes fumbled feebly to open, revealing a dark and blurred world around him.

Instinctively, he tried to move his arm to adjust his spectacles, but no arm responded to his command. A moment of panic gripped him as he twisted to the side, trying to get a better look. He heard a sharp breath from nearby.

“Jonan! Don’t move.”

The voice pounded into his mind, forcing his eyes shut. He laid back down, feeling skin pressed against his forehead a moment later.

“Hey – relax, slow down. You shouldn’t be moving yet. You’re in bad shape.”

“My…arm,” he managed to mumble.

“It’s going to feel cold for a while, I’m sorry. It’s the best I can do for now.”

The pounding in his head continued, but a dubious manifestation of consciousness was returning to him. He recognized the voice of the speaker as Rialla, and presumably she was talking about chilling his arm with ice sorcery.

Is that a good idea?
He wasn’t really conscious enough to be sure.
And if my arm is supposed to be cold, why does it still feel like it’s burning inside?

“Mmm.”

“You probably shouldn’t try to talk yet, either.”

Something wet was on his forehead now – a damp cloth, he realized after a moment. That, at least seemed normal enough. Having a fever made sense when he was poisoned.

Oh, right. I’m poisoned.

“Poison. What’s happening?”

He heard Rialla take a deep breath. “I did what I could, but I don’t have much left in me after all that fighting. We managed to chase off the rest of the attackers, though, and get you inside. Some of the guards went and got Aladir.”

“You’re too low. I mean loud. I mean, slow down. My head hurts.”

“Sorry.” Rialla lowered her voice to a more tolerable volume. “I’ll be brief. Aladir and I have been trying to keep you stable, but we haven’t been able to cure the poison. It’s necrotizing the tissue around the wound. I’ve been able to slow the process somewhat by chilling the area, and Aladir has been treating the damage near the injury, but we’re more worried about the poison that spread throughout your blood before I managed to chill the area.”

Jonan frowned. That sounded pretty awful.

“Can’t you, um, water sorcery it?”

The sorceress sighed. “I’m not very good at that, and I just dehydrated myself pretty seriously making you dominion essence of water before the battle.”

“Antidotes?”

“The ones you were working on all looked like they were for ingested poisons, so far as Aladir and I could tell. Neither of us is a poison expert.”

Jonan nodded weakly. “You’re right. Drinking a potion isn’t going to help anything in my blood – not much, anyway. And putting dominion essence of water straight into my blood would be deadly.” His body felt weak. Lifeless. “I need you to help me, Rialla. Can you help me?”

“You’re not going to like what I have planned.”

He tensed his jaw. “I’m not losing the arm. No.”

“You might have to, regardless of what I do. But that’s not the plan. I need you to follow my instructions exactly – this will be your best chance.”

Oh, that sounds promising. I can already tell this is going to be loads of fun.

He bit into his tongue just a little bit – deliberately, to make a distraction from the far worse pain in his arm and side. It didn’t help. “Talk.”

“Aladir is going to check on you soon. He’ll do a little more life sorcery on your arm. When he’s here, I need you to ask him to go get someone else to help with your treatment. Liarra Dianis.”

His mind was still swimming, but even in his half-conscious state that name sounded unusual. “That’s almost your name. Mother, or a sister perhaps?”

“She’s my sister.”

“Not seeing why this is such a problem, or why you haven’t asked her yourself.”

“I – You can’t tell Aladir I asked. Or that she’s my sister. And Liarra can’t know I’ve been here, at least not until I tell her.”

“Still not seeing why you haven’t asked Aladir directly.”

“If you ask, he’s not going to be all that suspicious. Just say she’s well-known for treating poisons and diseases. That’s true, and Aladir will almost certainly already know that. If I asked, he’d probably notice our resemblance, in spite of the efforts I’ve taken to change how I look.”

“Why wouldn’t he have gone to see her already on his own, if she’s an expert?”

“People don’t usually just randomly go asking strangers for help, Jonan. He’s not going to ask her on his own because he’s planning to go ask the Paladins of Tae’os to send someone in the morning. You need to convince him to bring Liarra here instead, and to do so immediately.”

“Because she’s more skilled or something?”

“No. Because she’s more likely to know the most efficient treatment for this particular poison.”

“Why?”

“Because I think she made it.”

You have got to be fucking kidding me.

“Okay. I want to ask why you think that, but on the other hand, I pretty much feel like I’m roasting in a fire right now, so let’s save that for later. Is it safe to say she’s not actually one of the assassins herself?”

“Probably.”

“Okay, I’m a little slow right now, so let me see if I’m getting this right. You want me to convince Aladir to go get someone who may or may not be one of the people who tried to kill us in the first place. I also can’t tell him that this was your idea, that she’s your sister, or presumably that she might be one of the assassins. And he already has another plan that seems infinitely more rational on the surface.”

“Yes.”

“You were a little off before, Rialla. You said I wasn’t going to like this plan. That would be somewhat like saying I wouldn’t like being actually lit on fire, in addition to the more metaphorical internal fire I’m already experiencing, and also that the fire was somehow made out of bees. An infinite number of bees. That’s more like the scale of how much I abhor this idea, Rialla.”

“Glad to see you’re feeling more like yourself.”

“Oh, be quiet and get the paladin so I can try to convince him that your sister is single and ripe to be impressed by his masculine healing abilities.”

“Actually, she’s only a couple years younger than he is, so that’s not necessarily a bad –”

“Just go get Aladir before I decide that cutting the arm off is the easier route.”

***

By the time a soft knock sounded on the door to Jonan’s room, the pain in his arm had shifted from consistent burning to an agonizing throbbing that pulsed with his heartbeat. Making the effort to ignore the pounding just drew his attention to it further, and the sound of the knocking – out of sync with the beating of his heart – somehow worsened the effect, like discordant notes in a song.

Not sure what the point of knocking is, since I’m not exactly going to turn away visitors.

“Come on in,” he greeted with false cheer. The door opened slowly, cautiously, a moment later.

Aladir Ta’thyriel was largely unremarkable to Jonan, as someone who had spent much of his life among Rethri. A hair taller than average and with forest green eyes, he moved with a certain timidness that masked the grace that Jonan had seen him demonstrate in earlier encounters.

This normalcy was not, however, why Jonan felt that something about Aladir was implausibly familiar. The paladin’s face, his eyes, even his voice struck the scribe as being a mirror to someone he had once known, but could not place. It was not the pain robbing him of clarity of mind – he had sensed this same fragment of certainty with each encounter.

Fortunately, that was not the most pressing concern on his mind.

“How are you feeling?”

Jonan groaned. “Come closer, I can’t hear you over the sound of my life slipping away.”

The Rethri gave a sharp smile. “Glad to see you’ve still got your sense of humor.” He sat in the same chair next to the bed that Rialla had used, but with a slight lean toward the right, most likely caused by his scabbard brushing against the floor. “Let me take a look at that arm.”

“Please, by all means. You might not want to buy it now, though – I hear it’s going to be on sale soon. Half off.”

Aladir rolled his eyes – which looked somewhat awkward to Jonan due to the Rethri lack of sclera - and leaned forward. The paladin put his hands on the injured limb, frowning as he moved his fingers across the surface.

Jonan frowned, too, even though he couldn’t sense whatever Aladir was diagnosing – he could barely feel the other man’s hands against his skin. He knew intellectually that that was probably due to the persistent chilling effect from Rialla’s sorcery, but nevertheless the lack of sensation was deeply disturbing.

“The necrosis is spreading in spite of our best efforts. I’ll do what I can to repair some of the damage, but life sorcery is best at accelerating natural healing – and natural healing can’t treat this kind of injury. Essentially, I need to force your body to try to rebuild the corrupted areas. It’s inefficient and unreliable, but it will slow the deterioration of the limb.”

Jonan nodded from his bed. Sensing that his usual sarcasm wouldn’t be an appropriate response to the diagnosis, he fumbled a more applicable reply. “I know life sorcery isn’t easy, and that you’ll pay a cost for helping me. Thank you.”

“Just wish I could do more. Hold still for a bit.”

Aladir began to hum softly, closing his eyes and slipping his left hand under Jonan’s arm. He pressed two fingers of each hand against the entry and exit wounds, and Jonan watched as a golden green glow manifested on Aladir’s hands.

No incantation? That’s unusual for a Vel – shit, shit, that hurts.

Jonan still couldn’t feel the pressure of Aladir’s hands, but the flames within his arm burned with renewed vigor. Gritting his teeth, he resisted the urge to complain, though only barely.

Minutes passed, though in his state Jonan had no capability to count them. By the time the glow subsided, the scribe was shivering in his bed and Aladir’s forehead was matted with sweat. A trickle of blood dripped from the paladin’s nose, which he wiped away with a cloth from one of his pockets.

“I’m sorry, I don’t believe I can continue right now.” Aladir broke into coughing after he spoke, covering his mouth with the other side of his now-bloodstained handkerchief.