undying legion 01 - unbound man (20 page)

“Good.” Laris straightened. “I’m sure you’ll do us proud,” she said with a parting smile.

Eilwen sagged against the wall, rubbing her temples as the Trademaster’s footsteps receded behind her.
Gods. Of all the times to run into a master.
She turned around just in time to see Laris stride past the locked door and disappear around the corner, leaving the corridor empty once more.

Perhaps she should just leave it be. Wait for Havilah to get back. But what if that wasn’t what he wanted? Maybe Laris was right. Maybe Havilah was nudging her out of the nest and sitting back to see what happened.

Or maybe he’s behind the whole thing.

The thought stretched in her mind like a great cat, all languid grace and sheathed claws. Something was going on. What if that something was him? Maybe that was why she’d been chosen for this position over one of his own. Maybe Havilah was counting on her inexperience to blind her to the truth of his own involvement.

The hells with that.
Eilwen pushed herself upright, wincing at the pain in her fist: the key, still clenched in her sweaty hand, its hard edges digging into her palm like an arrowhead.

The corridor was still empty, and the sound of her steps reverberated off the stone floor and panelled walls. She halted before the door and knocked twice on its polished timber grain, leaning close to listen for movement. Nothing stirred within.
Nobody there? Or do you just want me to go away?
It didn’t matter. She was done playing games.

Lips pursed, Eilwen slid the key easily into the lock and gave it a smooth twist. The lock responded with a satisfying
snick,
and she pushed the door open.

Darkness greeted her, black and impenetrable. She reached for the lamp beside the door, then reconsidered and hurried to the end of the corridor, plucking the corner lamp from its bracket. Wrapping her fingers around the leather-bound handle, Eilwen lifted the lamp high and stepped through the unlocked door.

The floor and walls were bare stone, bereft of carpets or panelling or other ornamentation. The wall on Eilwen’s left was close enough to touch, but the rest of the room extended away to the right beyond the lamp’s reach. Rough boards covered the windows facing the inner garden, edges filled so as to block the slightest glimmer of light from without. A faint scent of varnished timber hung in the air, but the room seemed entirely empty of furniture, and indeed of anything else. Eilwen glanced about the room, cursing as realisation sank in.
They knew we were coming. They knew, and got everything out before we could get here.

She swung her lamp to the right, peering into the shadows of the far wall. There
was
something, there in the corner. Something long and narrow, bundled against the wall. It looked almost like…

The lamplight fell on a hand, pale and unmoving.
Gods preserve.
Trembling, she edged closer. There was the arm, and there the head. Ashen hair spilled over the floor beneath an upthrust chin and nose. “Hello?” she said; but the word was barely a whisper, and the figure did not respond.

Dread closed around Eilwen’s heart. She crept closer, allowing the light to fall on the figure’s face.
Kieffe.
Empty eyes gazed sightlessly past her ear, one half-lidded as though frozen mid-wink. Small spots of blood marked the skin just below the man’s nostrils. The play of lamplight over his mouth revealed worn, lightly stained teeth. His limbs lay flat along the floor, the toes of his boots propped against the wall in ghastly nonchalance. Aside from the blood beneath his nose, his body showed no obvious sign of violence.

Gods,
she thought, staring stupidly at the corpse before her.
They killed him.
Her arm sagged, drawn earthward by the leaden weight of the lamp. She set it down and lowered herself onto the floor beside it, knees pulled up to her chest, arms wrapped around her calves.
They knew we were onto them, and they killed him for it.

A breath of air brushed her face, and she froze. The lamp flickered, casting wild shadows about the room. Footsteps whispered behind her; then came a rustle of fabric as someone crouched alongside.

Slowly, she turned her head.

“Eilwen?” The voice was soft, and deep, and richly accented. “Are you all right?”

“Havilah.” The Spymaster’s face hovered before her, concern in his eyes. She stared, then flung her arms around him and buried her face in his shoulder. “Havilah. Thank the gods.”

She held him a long moment, longer than she would have dared in daylight. But it was dark, and there was a dead man in the room, and she was no longer alone.

Chapter 8

Wisdom? Why do you ask me of wisdom? Wisdom is pragmatism, nothing more: the ruthless winnowing of the lesser in service of the greater.

— Daro of Talsoor
Dialogues with my Teachers

Clade closed the door to his suite and turned the key once, twice. The curtains behind the desk were already drawn, shutting out the bright mid-morning sun and muffling the noise of the street below. It was not merely a question of privacy today: the morning’s task required his undivided attention. Distraction could prove disastrous.

Since the night of his meeting with Yevin, the god had left him alone; in fact, it had apparently lost interest in Anstice altogether. Clade had observed no sign of it with any of his sorcerers, not even Sera. The timing of its visitation still bothered him, though he could think of nothing that might have tipped the god off. No-one but Garrett knew he had been out, and even if Azador had chanced to overhear him mentioning the fact, the boy knew nothing of his purpose. Garrett could not have given him away even if he wanted to.

Perhaps he was simply being paranoid. The god came and went as it willed. Some appearances were inevitably more inconvenient than others.

A perfumed oil lamp burned steadily on his desk, adding its soft yellow light to the glimmers of daylight around the curtains’ edge. Clade perched on a cushioned armchair, intent on the low table before him and the objects on its surface: two simple earthenware mugs, almost identical but for the thickness of their handles. Ink runes snaked around the surface of one, the lines dividing and joining to form a single, unified structure.

Sera had obtained the mugs and performed the binding at his request. Though she shared Clade’s primary proficiency — the binding of wood — the girl had rudimentary talent across a range of other elements, including clay. She’d screwed up her nose when he’d given her the assignment, giving her such an air of a mischievous child that he’d been hard-pressed not to grin outright. “A mug? Yuck! Do you know how nasty sorcery feels when you have to ground it in clay? All slithery and bony and quiet, like a snake.” But she’d done as he asked, leaving the ensorcelled mug and its unmarked twin outside his door some time during the night for him to discover as he rose for breakfast.

The runes covering the thin-handled mug were only a representation, not the binding itself. Sorcery did not depend on runes any more than music depended on a score, or a building upon an architect’s diagram. Drawing the desired structure on the target object was a beginner’s technique, useful for planning the order of the binding, but feasible only for spells of sufficient simplicity. Even the keenest penmanship could not hope to match the intricacy of a master sorcerer’s binding.

Clade placed his hand over the mouth of the mug. A whisper of cool air wafted against his palm. This particular binding reduced the temperature inside a vessel, enough to preserve the chill of an already cool drink for perhaps a day, if kept in the shade. Though too weak to serve any serious purpose, a chiller was the kind of spell beloved by dandies for its peculiar blend of the understated and the ostentatious: it marked the bearer as wealthy enough to afford so frivolous a binding, yet modest enough to allow such proof of wealth to go unnoticed by anyone outside the owner’s immediate vicinity. Closing his hand over the edge, Clade slid his fingers inside. The feeling was like dipping his hand into a still pool of pleasantly cool water. He withdrew his hand and the sensation vanished as though pulling off a glove.

Today was his first opportunity to put his guesses to the test. The accounts Yevin had given him were more comprehensive than he’d dared hope, but the descriptions of the bindings themselves still contained frustrating gaps. Clade had spent the past few evenings studying them, extrapolating as best he could, and considering how to apply his suppositions to the spell he needed to construct. The design he had come up with was suitably balanced, and seemed consistent with all he’d learnt; yet some aspects of the binding continued to elude him.

All sorcery was built on a physical anchor. Permanent bindings were grounded in the substance of the object being bound, like the clay of the mug before him. Transient effects, those involving fire, mist, and the like, required a physical source close at hand: a flame, or a wisp of vapour. But the spell he was about to attempt did not address any physical object. It was directed at sorcery itself: the binding Sera had constructed last night. What, then, could act as an anchor for such a spell? What physical ground could exist for something that had no physical nature?

A few years ago he would have called such sorcery impossible. But then, a few years ago he would have thought golems nothing more than legend.

Clade settled himself on the chair, centring himself: feet flat on the floor, back straight, forearms resting on his legs. He had removed the table’s usual collection of glassware, leaving it bare of everything save the two mugs. With an efficiency born of long practice, he cleared his mind, reducing his focus to the two objects before him: the one solid, plain and unmarked, the other wrapped around with runes and infused with sorcery. He took a deep breath and held it a moment; then, exhaling, he began to construct the spell.

For Clade, building sorcery was like crafting an elaborate mechanism, the work as delicate and precise as that of any clockmaker, but on a scope of which such an artisan might only dream. Every binding was different. The form of the object addressed by a spell dictated the spell’s shape, at once imposing constraints on what might be achieved and offering opportunities to build on its inherent properties. In a way, a well-crafted binding was like a bespoke suit, made to measure for one man. Though another might wear the same clothes with more or less difficulty, there would always be some small difference between the two men that called for a subtle alteration. And the closer one came to representing the object’s true shape, the more effective the binding would be.

Carefully, he laid out the first lines of sorcery, beginning with the ensorcelled mug. According to the accounts supplied by Yevin, the spell was to be constructed as if the targeted binding was its ground; and so, despite the apparent impossibility of the notion, Clade started there, feeling out the shape of the existing sorcery and moulding a foundation to its contours. Then he began to compose the spell itself, building on the base, taking care at each step to preserve the balance of the growing edifice. Some of the spell’s components were familiar, common pieces of sorcery used in a wide variety of bindings. Others were entirely new to him, or of his own devising, and these he fashioned slowly, rehearsing each addition before he applied it. Gradually, one piece at a time, the structure grew, extending from one mug and reaching toward the other like an invisible, handless arm.

The spur narrowed slightly as he went, tapering at last to a blunt point. Clade reached out and nudged the unmarked mug toward the thick branch, edging it across the smooth table until the gap between binding and mug was no greater than a finger’s breadth. The final connection was relatively straightforward, consisting of a lighter, simpler version of the spell’s foundation. He formed the last piece, tied it to the bare mug — and it was done, an invisible span of sorcery shaped in a gentle arc between two earthenware vessels.

Clade lifted his head. The binding was complete, but not yet active. The prepared sorcery still required his concentration to hold it in place and prevent it from disintegrating. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead, hanging in his eyebrow for a moment before dropping onto his cheek. The urge to set the binding off and so relieve its burden pulled at his will, tempting him as it always did. But the idea was foolishness, and doubly so for an experimental binding. Before the spell could be triggered, he must first examine it for flaws.

Some sorcerers claimed to be able to visualise their work, seeing it as a kind of web or lattice; others described it as sound, melodies and harmonies and chords. For Clade, sorcery was tactile, something he could reach out and touch with his mind. Taking care to maintain his concentration, he pressed his awareness against the span, checking for weakness or imbalance, verifying that each element was correct and in place. Twice he found a slipped line and stopped to repair it: one caused by an error joining one element to the next, the other a simple oversight. He felt his way along the branch, testing each point, and at last sat back, satisfied. The structure was sound.

Sound in construction, at least.
Clade returned his attention to the foundation of the spell.
Now we put the design to the test.

One gap remained in the construct’s base, left there deliberately to prevent the binding from activating prematurely, like a mound of earth separating a river from a newly-dug dam. Stretching out his mind’s hand, Clade formed the final piece of the spell and slotted it into place.

A thick, woody, splitting sound tore the air, almost obscuring the dull clack that sounded at the same time. Something flew past Clade’s face, nipping his flesh as it went by. He pressed his hand to his cheek without thinking, rubbing it to remove the sting. His fingers came back smeared with blood.

Shit. What just happened?