The Smoke-Scented Girl (36 page)

“All right,” he said finally. He held his
hand out, palm upward and fingers spread wide, and said, “
Spexa
torpia
.”

Nothing happened aside from a spicy-sweet
taste filling his mouth. There was a silvery-green thickening of
the air as an oculus tried to form, but failed to open. “Hmm,” Evon
said. No, of course,
torpia
was too obvious. He paced around
the clearing, feeling Kerensa’s eyes on him. Another iridescent
cloth passed near him, brushing his shoulder, and he flicked it
away. “Let’s try this,” he said, coming to stand in front of
Kerensa and repeating the gesture. “
Spexa madi
.”

An oculus with a rim made of silvery-green
light opened in front of Kerensa’s chest, and Evon winced. It was
like a round window on her innards, heart pulsing, lungs pumping,
blood flowing through her veins. “What?” Kerensa asked, alarmed.
She craned her neck to try and see through the oculus. “No, don’t,”
Evon said. “It’s really better that you don’t look.”

She gave him a narrow-eyed look, but said
nothing more. Evon turned his attention to
spexa madi
.
Golden fire outlined each organ, each rib; it was, again,
beautiful, if also a little grotesque. The fire didn’t seem to be
connected to any of the things it touched. “Um...
torpia
auctata
, I suppose.” The rim flashed pale blue briefly, and the
image quivered. He repeated the spell with the same results.

“What are you trying to do?” Kerensa
asked.

“See deeper into your body. But it’s beyond
my reserves.” His lower back ached. The spellcasting against
Valantis’s people, and performing the unfamiliar
presadi
spell, had wearied him. A cloth woven of pink and green brushed his
hair, and he ducked away from it.

“What does that mean?”

“I told you that spells give focus to the
incomprehensibility of magic, right? Well, when a magician uses
command words, he’s using his body to shape that focus, but the
spells shape him too, drawing power through him. Or her. The amount
of magic a magician can wield is called his reserves, and they
deplete and replenish the way…well, it’s a little like how you
start feeling tired when you’re hungry and you’re alert again when
you’ve eaten. That
presadi
took a lot of my reserves to
cast.” He sat beside Kerensa and saw that the oculus, from this
side, was opaque black and rippled from the center as if a steady
stream of water were dripping into it. He looked up and watched one
of the cloths undulate past. “I wonder,” he said, and flicked his
hands up and out. “
Desini cucurri
.”

Red ropes surrounded the cloth, tangling it
in an irregular web like the work of a drunken spider. The magic
convulsed and went entirely stiff, then drifted to the ground. Evon
went and picked it up. It tingled in his fingers, a pleasant
sensation like the purr of a cat. It looked like a heavily starched
napkin, if napkins were made of loosely-woven blue and white
threads that sparkled.

“This is essentially pure magic,” he told
Kerensa, who came over to touch it. She smiled and stroked its
surface. “I think I can use it to boost my own power, but...you
should step back, probably.” He turned to face away from her,
clasped his hands together while awkwardly clutching a corner of
the cloth, and said,
“Presadi.”

The shield came into being explosively,
knocking Evon down and blazing with red light that pulsed and
flared with a sound like a roaring bonfire. Kerensa came to his
side and gripped his shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Evon said, dazedly. He looked at the
magic in his hand. The threads had come a little loose and one or
two had pulled free of the weaving and waved free in the air. He
dismissed the shield and got to his feet. “That is a
lot
of
magical energy.”

“Is it safe for you to use?”

“I think so.” Now that he knew what to
expect, he thought he could draw on a portion of its power instead
of using the whole thing. “Stand still.” He bent the cloth a few
times until it was a little more pliable, then wrapped it around
his left forearm. It gripped him when he overlapped its edges,
which worried him, but otherwise simply continued to purr. He cast
spexa madi
again; it took almost no effort. It was a pity
these things probably couldn’t exist outside of this place.
“
Torpia auctata
,” he said, and the rim went from green
through blue all the way to dark violet, and the view shifted to
display a nebulous, pinkish substance that quivered with energy. It
was as deep as it was possible to see, and he felt barely any
strain. He also saw no golden fire anywhere. “
Torpia
adenuo
,” he said, and the lens’s rim flashed backward through
the rainbow until it was dark red, and the view reverted to the
semi-revolting sight of Kerensa’s organs outlined in fire.

“Well?” Kerensa said.

“I don’t—actually, would you cross your arm
over your stomach?” The binding spell had said something about
blood and bone, and maybe that was literal instead of metaphorical.
Kerensa’s arm came into view, the edges of the bones fiery. He
leaned in close. “
Torpia auctata,”
he said. Kerensa’s
forearm filled the oculus. Evon’s eyes widened. “Your bones are
covered
in patterns,” he said. “It’s as if someone took an
awl and scratched designs into them. It’s...actually it’s
beautiful. All these curves and spirals.”

“Forgive me if I don’t share your
enthusiasm,” Kerensa said. Her voice was a little shaky.

“I’m sorry,” Evon said. “I forgot again. I
told you I was prone to say stupid things.”

“And I love you anyway,” Kerensa said. “Is
that what you needed to learn?”

“It’s part of it.
Torpia auctata
.”
Soon the image showed a close-up view of one of the lines, a long
gray highway across a white field of bone. “I don’t see anything. I
expected to see the fire connected to this in some way, but...oh,
by the Gods, look at that.” Tiny spheres of gold drifted past,
following the line in the bone as if they were travelers on that
highway. Where they collided with each other, they merged with a
little flicker of flame.

“Look at
what
?” Kerensa shrieked.
“Evon, don’t say things like that!”

He looked in her direction. “I’m sorry, that
came out all wrong. There’s nothing to worry about, Kerensa, it’s
just not at all what I assumed.”

Her gaze flicked over his shoulder, and she
said, “Evon, that thing is coming awfully close.”

He turned to see a flying cloth, orange and
purple and somewhat larger than the others, descend toward his
head. He lifted his arm to fend it off and shouted as it wrapped
itself around his right hand and arm to the shoulder and began to
squeeze. Kerensa screamed and started beating at it with her fists,
while Evon tugged at its edges with his left hand trying to pull it
off. It felt as if his arm was being pumped full of air, swelling
painfully until he thought it might pop. His left forearm, still
wrapped in the paralyzed cloth, brushed against it, sending up
sparks of orange fire. The attacker shuddered, but didn’t release
him. Evon slammed his left arm against the thing over and over
again, creating showers of sparks every time and accidentally
striking Kerensa once or twice. All at once the thing loosed its
grip and drifted to the ground, convulsing as it fell. Kerensa
shrieked and stomped on it until it was half-sunk into the earth.
Evon examined his hand closely. It didn’t look puffy; it was
crisscrossed with the imprint of coarse threads and hurt a little
when he put pressure on it.

“Are you all right?” Kerensa said,
breathlessly.

“I think so, if my heart will just slow down.
That was stupid. I should have paralyzed it, but I panicked.”

“I thought you needed both hands for
desini cucurri
.”

“Oh. True. I must
really
have
panicked.”

“They just look so harmless, it was like
having a baby rabbit turn on us.”

They both looked at the cloth wrapped around
Evon’s forearm. “I think we should get that off,” he said.

They tugged at it, Kerensa trying to pull it
off like a glove, Evon picking with his fingernails at the seam
where it overlapped. Between the two of them, they had it removed
just as it started twitching free of the paralysis. Evon carried it
far away from them and did his best to crush it into the ground.
“It probably wouldn’t try to attack, it’s so small, but I’d rather
not have another incident like that,” he said.

“But now you won’t be able to finish what you
were working on,” Kerensa said.

Evon smiled. “I already did. I was just
distracted by being almost eaten by a tablecloth.” He dismissed the
oculus and picked her up by the waist and swung her around, unable
to contain his relief. “The fire is drawn to those grooves on your
bones, or they confine it, or something like that. Those grooves
are the alteration, not the fire. The fire isn’t part of you! I’m
certain the alteration was to make the original...I suppose she was
a host, too, like the Despot is to the entity—anyway, it was to
make her able to hold the fire, to make her a, a
hospitable
environment for it. The fire can be removed. I don’t know how, but
it
can
be removed and I swear to you, Kerensa, I swear I’ll
find out how.”

“I know you will,” she said, smiling up at
him. Then her eyes shifted to look past him, and her face went
white. “Evon,
look
,” she whispered.

He turned to follow her gaze and saw a great
dark blot a few hundred feet away, dozens, hundreds of flying
cloths, all coming directly at them. Coming
for
them.

“Get your bag,” he said, shouldering his own
bag and the backpack full of food. Individual cloths were now
visible, drifting downward and toward them in a casual way that
felt more menacing than if they’d swarmed them directly.

“If we get under the trees, they won’t all be
able to follow like that,” Kerensa said.

“Good idea. Let’s keep moving.”

They struck out in a random direction; Evon
had lost track of the way they’d entered, and now all he wanted was
to get them away from the aggressive magic. They left the copse and
crossed a piece of bare ground before entering another, slightly
larger grove of trees. They stumbled on in the late autumn light,
Evon wondering where the sun was and if it ever set, or if the
light even came from the sun at all. He looked behind them,
occasionally, and saw nothing following them, but they passed
smaller magics now and then and Evon was afraid to assume they were
safe. Eventually, though, he saw that Kerensa was breathing heavily
and had her hand pressed to her side, and he realized his chest and
legs ached and that he wasn’t breathing easily himself. “Stop,” he
gasped, and Kerensa immediately sank to the ground and tried to
calm her breathing.

They were in another small clearing just like
the first, except that there was no fallen tree, so at least Evon
knew they hadn’t been running in circles. Running had been stupid.
They should have found the way they’d entered and taken their
chances with Valantis. Now they were lost, with no functional map,
in a place of power that might well have taken them out of their
own time a millennium or more forward or back. Evon staggered to
sit next to Kerensa and put his arm around her shoulders. She
leaned into him and said, “We’re lost now, aren’t we?”

Evon nodded. “I’m sorry. I panicked again.
Those things really unnerve me.”

“I panicked too, so it’s on both of us if we
never get out of here.”

He laughed, a little breathlessly. “We’ll
find a way out. I can cast—”

“I think it was casting spells that drew
their attention.”

He stopped. “I...think you are correct.
Well.”

Kerensa dug in her pocket and pulled out
something that shimmered. “But I think this still works, even in
here.”

The coin with the finding spell. “You are
brilliant.”

“I like hearing that.”

Evon’s heart was still pounding from the near
catastrophe. Pounding too hard, really. Then he realized the
thrumming sound was coming from outside them both, hoof beats on
the hard ground, and they were coming closer. Kerensa looked at
him. “Could Valantis—?”

“Get behind me,” he said, backing them both
into a sheltered corner between the thick trunks of two trees. Too
late he realized they had left their bags in the open, but the
rider was too close now for them to do anything about it. He
thought about casting
presadi
until he remembered that the
bright red light would draw any attacker right to them, and
limbered up his hands for
desini cucurri
. He’d have to risk
drawing in more of the flying cloths if it meant protecting them
both. Was it Valantis? He’d gotten turned around, couldn’t remember
which direction they’d entered by to tell if the rider was coming
from the same place. Kerensa gripped his shoulder, then released
him as if she’d remembered he would need his hands and arms free
for spellcasting. The sound of hoof beats turned from one horse
into several, and Evon’s heart sank. Even with the help he’d taken
from the magics, he was still tired from all the spellcasting, and
if there were too many of them, or if they were magicians, he and
Kerensa would be hard pressed to defend themselves.

The first rider trotted into the clearing. He
was bearded, like Valantis, but his beard was black rather than red
and there were streaks of gray in it. He wore old-fashioned chain
mail over a loose-sleeved white shirt, stained at the cuffs, and
dirty leather trousers with boots scuffed and scratched from heavy
use. His right hand rested on something laid across his lap. His
eyes scanned the clearing and lighted on Kerensa, and he said
something in a strange language and pointed with his left hand at
her.