The Smoke-Scented Girl (33 page)

“Probably no one’s ever watched you as
closely as I do before.” She leaned over and kissed him. “I like
that I can do that whenever I want.”

“You are welcome to do that whenever you
want. I positively encourage it.” He shouldn’t encourage it; as far
as society was concerned her honor had already been compromised
just by spending the night with him. But he could still feel the
warmth of her body curled close against his, could still remember
that look in her eyes when she’d woken next to him, and knew he
didn’t give a damn what society thought.

She kissed him again, then took her apple and
descended the ladder. Evon stared after her for a while, then shook
his head and tried to focus on his notes. He knew them so well by
now that he probably could have written them out again by memory.
Knew them well, and yet couldn’t find the answer. He thought of the
look on Kerensa’s face when she woke, and picked up his notes with
renewed determination. He just had to look at it in a new way.

His eyes passed over a rune, something that
triggered a memory. It had been in Haderon’s spell, the
resurrection spell, and in the finding spell too. He did a little
digging and found variations on it in every section of the spell.
He spread the notes out on the hayloft floor so he could see them
all at once, then found his lexicon and started reading the runes
as if they were words, one slow rune at a time. So many were still
missing, but it was easier, now, to identify those unknown runes by
context, though he also had to translate the resulting “sentences”
into modern language. The one he’d been looking at was “bind,” or
sometimes “bound.” He took out a pencil and circled the rune
wherever he found it, then stood up and took a few paces back. If
he linked each spell by overlaying the “bind” rune....

Suddenly, a new pattern emerged.
bind the
fire to destroy the one who has no soul,
he read. It wasn’t a
sentence fragment; he’d started in the wrong place. He ran his
finger backwards through the runes and tried again.
To the
destruction of the Enemy of life and the host that binds
it.

It was the spell. The whole spell, not just
its pieces. The secret of the fire.

Fingers trembling, he read on, making guesses
at the runes he didn’t know.

From the heart of Nystrantor we make our
instrument, blood and bone, host to the fire that she may defeat
the Enemy. In her we bind the fire to destroy the one who has no
soul. In her we bind the call. In her we bind our wills.

I, Minta, bind her that she may endure all
but the fire.

I, Leandrie, bind her that she be drawn,
host to host, to the one who has no soul.

I, Wadley, command that the fires be bound
within her and released by the one who has no soul.

I, Haderon, bind her to return again if the
one who has no soul escapes our instrument.

I, Danior, bind our commands as one and
command that binding to seek out the enemy of life. May the Gods
look with favor on our instrument, who chooses death that life may
return.

Evon’s heart sank. It wasn’t a spell; it was
an old-fashioned binding magicians used to use to connect spells.
It didn’t tell him anything new, since he’d already worked out how
the five spells interacted. He read through it again. So where was
the fire spell? This referred to it as if it were something
separate, some other spell they had access to. And what was
Nystrantor? The word had been spelled out, not written as a proper
name, but it couldn’t be anything else. He knew he’d heard it, or
read it, before. If the magicians had created the fire spell
separately, it was going to take a great deal more effort for him
to unravel it.

“That horse is lonely,” Kerensa said from
below, and her head rose above the ladder. “It was far more
affectionate than I was comfortable with. I almost wish we’d gotten
that other horse to keep it company.”

“Have you ever heard the word Nystrantor?”
Evon asked absently. And what did it mean, “instrument”? They
couldn’t have known Kerensa would come along, a thousand years
later, so there must have been some other woman bound to the spell
back then. Was that important, that it was a woman?

“Of course. It’s one of the places of power,
the ones saturated with magic. The Witch of Marhalindor made it and
it drove her insane. Why?”

Now he remembered. He’d learned of it in a
geography class, in a series of lessons about those dangerous
places and how to avoid them. “It says the magicians created the
spell from the heart of Nystrantor. No, that’s wrong, it says they
made their instrument in the heart of Nystrantor.”

“That sounds dangerous. Anything might have
happened.”

“They were probably very desperate.”
Something nudged his memory. Something about being changed. “What
did you say happened to Carall?”

“Um...he became undead?”

“No, the pragmatic explanation.”

“Oh. I said he probably wandered into one of
those places and was changed by it into something not quite
human.”

Evon began pacing. Something felt wrong about
all this. “And there’s no fire spell,” he said. “I’m certain of it.
Five control spells and nothing to control.” Unless the fire came
from something else.
From the heart of Nystrantor we make our
instrument host to the fire.
They
made
the woman an
instrument. She was—

“Sit down,” he told Kerensa, who was watching
him pace with curiosity. He took her arm and guided her to the pile
of hay where they’d slept.

“Evon, what’s wrong?”

“I hope nothing. Just sit.” He cast
epiria,
then, in quick succession,
vertiri
and
trattuci
. The spell-ribbons went wild and once again started
to flow away from Kerensa’s body.

“You found a solution!”

“I don’t know. Just...don’t say anything for
a moment, all right? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be impatient. I
just need to think.”

The blue snake of the spell once again cast
about until it found Evon’s legs and began spiraling up them. The
warm, unpleasant tingle grew into a mild burning itch. He resisted
the urge to scratch and held his arms well away from his body, in
case he was wrong.

“Evon, what are you doing?”

“Just tell me if you feel strange.” He felt
very strange himself, with the spell-ribbons weaving around his
body, past his waist and creeping up to his chest. Kerensa was
nearly free of them now. “I feel wonderful,” she said, her face
glowing. Evon took a closer look. She really was glowing, her skin
pinker than usual.

“You don’t feel too warm?” he asked.

“No. I feel comfortable for the first time
since we left Holdplain.” She took off her cloak. “Do you suppose
the storm is letting up?”

Her skin was rosy now, almost red. He reached
out to touch her face and felt heat radiating off it.
“
Desini!”
he screamed, and the spell-ribbons reversed their
course, but her face grew redder and beads of sweat appeared at her
hairline. She looked at him, uncomprehending, but frightened at his
terror. He grabbed the canteen and emptied its contents over her
face; the water steamed, and Kerensa cried out in pain. “What’s
happening?” she said, then saw the red skin of her hands and
screamed. Evon grabbed her and held her close to him, hoping this
would speed up the process of restoring the spell to her. She was
hot to the touch and the smell of smoke was stronger than it had
ever been. He closed his eyes and prayed he hadn’t been so much the
fool that they were both about to die and take this barn with them
in the conflagration.

Nothing happened. They were both surrounded
by flying ribbons of blue, which made it impossible to tell which
of them the spell was attached to, but at some point he realized
Kerensa’s skin was cooler and, when he drew back to look at her, no
longer red. She looked at him, confused and terrified, and he
released her and turned away. It was a guess that had turned out to
be horribly right.

“What did you do?” she whispered. She looked
at the backs of her hands again, shivered, and went to retrieve her
cloak.

“I...tested a theory.” How could he explain
it to her when he barely understood it himself? All he really had
were a few ancient lines and his well-honed instincts. “I’ve been
looking for a spell,” he said, beginning to pace again, “something
like the ones that urge you toward a target, that releases the fire
when the spell activates. I haven’t found anything because there
isn’t anything to find.” He couldn’t bear to look at her. “A
thousand years ago there were five magicians who were looking for a
way to stop Murakot, or the entity riding him, however you want to
look at it. They found a woman who volunteered to...she knew it was
suicide, but she agreed to be their instrument to kill the entity.
They took her to Nystrantor and used the loose magics there to make
the changes, probably. Then they built these spells to control what
she’d become.”

He paused, hoping she would understand and he
wouldn’t have to say the words, but she sat silently on the hay. He
could feel her attention on him, and it broke his heart. “The fire
wasn’t a spell,” he said. “It was a part of her. The magic changed
her, and she became host to the fire. I don’t know what happened to
you,” he went on quickly, as he heard her draw breath to speak.
“Maybe you’re descended from that woman; Alvor killed Murakot, and
the fire was never needed, so she probably lived to have children
and go on with her life. Maybe it was the entity’s re-emerging into
the world that woke up whatever lay dormant inside you. All I know
is that the fire is a part of you, and there’s nothing I know that
will remove it from you. If I transfer the spell to someone
else—well, you saw it. It’s all that’s keeping the fire from
consuming you. I’m sorry, Kerensa, I’m so sorry, I don’t know how
to save you and I know I promised but there’s nothing I can
do—”

“But you said,” Kerensa said quietly, “you
said you would find a way.”

“There isn’t any way.” He finally summoned
the courage to look at her and saw that her eyes were empty, her
face expressionless, and he moved to embrace her, but she stepped
away, her eyes never leaving his.

“It can’t be right. You said you would find a
way,” she said. Her voice was emotionless, that same terrible empty
voice he’d heard the first time she’d ever spoken to him.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” he said.

Her face crumpled into tears. “I don’t want
to die,” she said, and finally she let him hold her while she wept,
tears running down his own face. “It’s not true. You promised. It’s
not true.”

Every word struck his heart like a spear
tipped with ice. “I know. I’m sorry. I love you, and I don’t know
what else to do. I don’t.”

She wrenched herself free of his grasp. “Then
think
,” she said, furious even though she was still crying.
“You know more about magic than anyone else alive, you know it’s
true, and you know this spell better than anyone alive. They had to
use magic to make the fire, they couldn’t have...couldn’t have just
wished
it to happen! They did this to me and you love me and
you
will
figure this out.”

“But—Kerensa, it’s not a spell, I don’t even
know what it was they used to make it happen! For all I know, they
didn’t do anything but let Nystrantor work its will on her!”

“So? The magic is inside me. Find it and take
it apart.”

“I—”

“If you tell me you can’t, I’ll walk into
that blizzard and keep walking until I meet the Despot or die.”

Her eyes were wild, her voice shaking, and
Evon had no doubt she meant what she said. He looked at her, so
beautiful and so convinced of his abilities that he began, against
reason, to feel hope rise up within him. “I won’t let you die,” he
said. “I worked out the first spell. I’ll learn to defeat this one
too.”

“Good,” said Kerensa. “Then let’s get
started.”

“Where in the hell have you been?” Piercy
demanded. “I realize you have many demands on your time, dear
fellow, what with riding into what is fast becoming a war zone, but
you may recall that you promised to speak with me every evening. I
have been arguing with myself about whether the advantages of
contacting you outweighed the possibility of my dulcet voice
alerting enemies to your presence. As I am an expert arguer, you
can imagine how that conversation is going.”

“We were caught in a snowstorm, and I
was...preoccupied,” Evon said, reddening. It wasn’t as if he
couldn’t share the news of his changed relationship with Kerensa
with his best friend, but he felt a little shy about simply
bursting out
She loves me,
she
loves
me,
I spent
the night with her and it was wonderful
like a burbling fool.
And there were more important things to discuss.

“I made a discovery that changes everything,”
he went on, and began to explain the true nature of Kerensa’s
magic. The small circle of Piercy’s face grew increasingly confused
as Evon spoke, until he shook his head and said, “Stop. You are
making very little sense. The spell isn’t a spell, but it
is
a spell, just not the same one?”

“No. Look, we’re dealing with two things. The
magic
is the fire. The
spell
is what controls it. I
can remove the spell, but the fire is part of her. So we’re going
to find a way to remove the fire and still use it to kill the
entity.”

“I see. ‘Magic’ and ‘spell’ are different.
Can you do it?”

“I’ll do my best. But that’s what I have to
tell you. We’re turning aside and going east, to Nystrantor.”

“By the Gods, Evon, why would you want to go
to that desolate place? Is fire suddenly calling to fire?”

“In a sense. Nystrantor is where the
magicians changed the first volunteer. I’m hoping to learn how they
did it.”