The Daemon Prism, page 19
They had laid the burly shepherd on a pallet and tied his limbs to spikes fixed in the dirt. He fought, moaned, growled, and whimpered, spewing curses in what hoarse voice he had left. When I placed a hand on his forehead, he near bit it off. The boy lay beside his father unbound. Still and limp, skin clammy and breathing shallow, he was too wasted to be a threat.
Neither showed fever. The man was sweating profusely and stank of sheep, not drink.
Raghinne’s healing women had used a litany of symptoms to gauge illness: sweet and sour, tongue and teeth, stiff and soft, pulse and palpitations. The shepherd’s breath and his puddled urine smelled normal, neither sweet nor sour. His blood-pulse raced, as one might expect, but was strong. His joints flexed almost too much; as I struggled to rebind his arm, he tried to choke me in his elbow. Squeezing his head in the crook of my arm, I fingered his tongue. Disgusting …
The door creaked. Light footsteps hesitated, as the wind swirled the dust and smoke.
“Who’s there?”
“Dorothea,” she said in a breathy whisper. Her fear was like a fifth person in the room.
“I don’t see,” I said, “so I need your help. Tell me about these two. Does the man smoke blisterweed or something like?”
“Jono be an ill-luck man. But he’s my sister’s man and this her only babe …”
The sister had died birthing the boy, five years past. Then Jono had lost two sheep the next summer and one more the next. And only in the last tenday he had returned from Mattefriese market with scarce half the full price for two years’ worth of cloth.
“… but he’s a good da, and neither drinks spirits nor smokes any pipeweed. I can’t let them lie here, less’n you tell there’s no hope.”
“Can’t say as yet,” I told her. “Come tell me how his tongue looks….”
We stepped through everything I knew of mundane healing without finding a hint of the problem. The man’s fingernails near pierced my skin, and he screamed as if the bed were made of iron spikes. The child scarce breathed. I’d naught left but magic. Gods …
I was not so stupid as to mistake why I’d worked no magic since Castelivre. Andero had seen it. Some people have a terror of snakes, imagining them in their beds, transforming every tickle in their shoe or up their back to a slithering whipsnake. Some people feel spiders everywhere; some see bears in the shadows on moonlit nights. I had ever feared the dark. Jacard had seen it; thus his gleeful selection of my ruin.
But down there in Denys’s cellar, fear and anger—madness?—had taken me to a place so cold and so dark, my sightless state seemed but eventide. I had lost control, lost my self, and stolen life from a man who likely did not deserve it. Worse, I had murdered him with magic, my lodestone, my center. I had thought that feeling my skills deteriorate through sensory crippling was the worst torment the world could wreak. But to corrupt the work that had given my life meaning was far, far worse. And now they wanted me to raise magic next a child….
Gifted with strength that can quench the light of Heaven. The old man might have spoke his words anew in that moment. Cold sweat drenched my clothing.
“Are you well, mage?” The woman touched my shoulder, and I near jumped out of my skin.
“Well enough. What’s the boy’s name?”
“Luz. He is a cheery boy.”
Luz … light. I almost laughed. Or sobbed. “And the father is Jono?”
“Aye.”
A cheery boy and an ill-luck man who were going to die if I couldn’t help.
I curled my dead fingers about my staff and laid my left hand on the shepherd’s forehead. A simple detection spell. I could at least leave these people with an answer. I summoned every discipline I knew, then applied a miserly smat of power. “Maleferre, Jono.”
Stars exploded; cannons thundered, blistering, ripping, shredding….
“Damnation!” I yelled, rubbing palm and fingers on my cheek to convince myself my sole useful hand was neither bleeding, nor charred, nor fleshless. Dorothea moaned and crashed against the door, letting in another gale to choke us with blowing ashes.
“It’s all right. It’s all right,” I said, breathless from pain, surprise, disgust, and a smat of relief. “Come back. It’s just … the fool has gone and bought himself a gheket!”
Every marketplace had a gheket seller. Maybe the bone man, maybe the silk merchant. But always there was one who would note an idiot who was down on his luck and whisper in his ear, I’ve got my gammy’s luck charm or my da’s cure-all or my mam’s everheal. All it will cost is a quarter of what’s in your pocket. Or a half.
Outlawed by the Camarilla—one instance in which I agreed with the prefects—ghekets were luck charms constructed from fifty to a thousand elements, from shark’s teeth to pine needles, without regard to keirna, formulas, or good sense. The good ones were entirely inert. The rest, bound with some smattering of true power, could be a disaster. As they comprised so many things, there was always a possibility that the random combination would make a difference in the buyer’s life—about the same chance as a star falling on one’s head. But in general they were so ridiculous in composition that they caused much more trouble than they could possibly help. This one had been bound with a hefty dollop of true power, but the conflicting energies had shattered. The bits and pieces of spellladen junk were literally ripping this man’s mind to shreds. I could not ignore it.
Holding my power, I touched the boy. “Maleferre, Luz …”
Relieved, I called Dorothea in from the night, where she had retreated in terror.
“The boy’s not ill, and there’s no curse on him,” I said. “He’s hungry and overheated, and his father has most likely harmed him without meaning to. Look for a bump on his head. Get someone to carry him out of here, and send my companions to me.”
She fetched Andero and John Deune, and then picked up the boy herself and carried him out, crooning to the child as Anne did to her horses.
I told Andero and John what I’d discovered. “I can likely take care of it. I’ve done it before. But I’ll need a decent fire, lots of strong sweet tea, and someone to see the man doesn’t tear his limbs off or mine. And someone to see that I don’t … forget what I’m doing. Get carried away.”
“John will take care of the fire and the tea,” said my brother. “I’ll see to the rest.”
“Good.” Andero knew why my hands were trembling. “Watch carefully. Be quick. And do whatever is needed. Whatever. I mean that.”
The task I faced was daunting. It was as if a creature the size of an elephant, having the thickest, curliest wool of any sheep, had rolled in a field thick with briars. I had to remove each single briar, as well as every tiny spine of the briars that might have broken off, from that creature’s coat. There was no general sweep that would do it, and no partial solution. If the man was to be helped, every spell fragment must be dealt with individually. And I had no time to waste; he would be dead or irreparably damaged in another day. There was no choice.
Dragging my staff around the pallet, I scribed an enclosure in the dirt floor; then I knelt at the shepherd’s bedside and laid my hand on his forehead. Taking a deep breath, I willed Andero to be strong, opened myself to the aether, and reached deep to summon power….
The spell fragments abraded my senses like burrs, bee stings, needle pricks, and ant bites. I destroyed each with a tiny burst of power. One. Then another. Then another. With utmost care.
From time to time, I stopped, resting briefly by John Deune’s tidy fire, drinking his tea and eating honey cakes villagers left by the door. Only then did I hear Andero straining to keep the giant shepherd from harming himself, speaking as gently as if jono were some outsized babe. Yet I felt the burn of my brother’s eyes on me. Good. I nodded his way, then knelt and began again.
Fortunately, as each spell fragment was removed, the man settled a bit. By late afternoon, he slept peacefully. John Deune slept on the dirt floor next the remnants of his steady fire. Andero and I sat outside the door in the sun, too drained to speak. All three of us had done well. I felt clean again, or as if the hangman had withdrawn the noose a few centimetres. I had kept control. Hadn’t murdered anyone. The lingering intoxication of true magic warmed my blood.
Dorothea reported that the boy had indeed suffered a blow to the head and a sprained ankle. He was now awake and eating a hearty supper. I told her to bring him to sit with his father, so the child could see that all was right with him. Perhaps it would restore the lunatic father’s faith in his luck to see his boy on waking.
Andero sighed. “I suppose I’d best saddle the horses so we can be off.”
I croaked a laugh. “You’d have to stuff me in your baggage to get me traveling today. But I do need Devil. I’ve got to visit the hut where they found these two. A gheket is always bound to an artifact of some kind—a twig circle, a twist of cloth, or some such. If someone else finds it, we’ll have to do this all over again.”
He groaned. “Not in this life!”
The boy who had discovered the raving shepherd volunteered to take me to the hut. He had escaped the curse once, so I supposed he thought riding on a horse named Devil with a nasty-looking sorcerer behind him could do no harm.
The artifact was blessedly easy to recognize, a small paper cone, totally unremarkable unless one could visualize the tangled knot of spell-lines that dangled from it in garish disarray. One by one I detached each tendril and destroyed it. When all was done, I crumpled the paper and stuck it in my pocket.
I fell asleep in the saddle, as my young guide was telling Devil how fine it would be for the two of them to ride beyond the horizon to discover palaces and kings. On our return to the village, he elbowed me to get off. Trusting him to care for my horse, I crawled gratefully into my nest in the lambing shed, ignoring the horrendous clamor of Andero’s snoring. It had been a very good day’s work.
Yet, as I sank into the straw, my satisfaction was blighted by imagining Portier captive … buried, perhaps, for another whole day. The voices of the aether wailed in wordless hunger, as if my magics had reopened the wound in the Veil.
Surely through the next hours I walked the road of the dead. Every breath tasted of rosemary and ash. Fingers pawed at me like whispers: Daemon, daemon, daemon. One clearer voice spoke, too, gentle and firm. Pay them no mind. Thou’rt my worthy companion, stronger than you know. It matters not that you were born in darkness to another fate. His silken hair and long coat shifted colors with his stride, gold and gray. His smile that was not quite a smile soothed my fears. But when I woke once again to the everlasting dark, I was screaming.
CHAPTER 14
DEMESNE OF ARABASCA
The old doomsayer did not come to bid us farewell. Too bad. I wanted to tell him that this journey was about greed, arrogance, political power, and the truths of nature, not anyone’s myths of daemons and angels. He certainly wasn’t all that vigilant about his beliefs, as he hadn’t stopped me, the daemon, from helpingjono and his boy. Yet, locked in the dark with Anne’s image of the starving dead and my own nightmares, it wasn’t so easy to dismiss his words.
As we mounted up, the shepherdfolk showered us with gifts of honey and bread, and a barrage of hints and warnings about the road south. It was dreadfully difficult to sort out such busy conversation without being able to see the various speakers or judge which comment followed on another. Thus we were half a kilometre along our way before their meaning penetrated my thick head. “God’s teeth, we’re headed into Kadr!”
Kadr. The realm of the witchlords. A rugged, two-hundred-kilometre-long rampart that marked the boundary of Sabria and the remnants of Aroth. Certainly I knew Carabangor, the last refuge of the witchlords, lay in the deserts of the ancient empire, but somehow I’d assumed the route from Mattefriese would bypass the haunted realm. No wonder the shepherdfolk believed dead men walked this road and that the land ached from magework.
Nineteen years previous, Philippe de Savin-Journia and Michel de Vernase had chased the witchlords from their rocky strongholds and down to the ruins of the ancient city, completing the subjugation of the Arothi. Since then, King Philippe had repeatedly been forced to roust bandits or Arothi rebels from the caves and gullies of the witchrealm. It was in the aftermath of that earlier battle, of course, that Masson de Cuvier had first encountered the woman in white.
“Be careful,” I said … “Everything the shepherds said about water sources and not straying from the track, you must believe it. Untriggered spelltraps don’t just wear away through the years. The witchlords knew what they were doing. They considered anyone not of their own blood nonhuman and had no qualms about discouraging them in vile ways.”
The shepherds had told Andero and John Deune to watch for red markings on any water source and avoid any area that appeared blighted. Now I knew using magic wouldn’t necessarily transform me into something worse than a witchlord, perhaps I could do more to shield us.
“The whole place looks blighted to me,” growled Andero. “Looks like daemons gnawed away all the softness of the mountains and left only these rock bones. It’s no solid cliff, but a honeycomb where you’d never want to go. The creatures know. Haven’t seen a bird light anywhere.”
“Salvator—my teacher—told me that the witchlords would devour a land to feed their magic, and then move on. Supposedly they settled in Kadr because it was beautiful and fruitful, and corrupting it was particularly satisfying. I don’t know if that’s true or not.”
“I’m not averse to adventuring—like it for the most part—but damned if I would choose this land to explore.”
We used our water sparingly, but the road was steep, and though the air was cool, bright sun and dry wind left both men and horses thirsty. We stopped at every seep and mudhole to water the horses but dared not use any for ourselves.
As thirst sapped strength and spirit, my nightmares leaked into waking. Devil plodded onward, while in my dark world spectral beings pressed gaunt faces to walls of emerald glass. A never-ending tide, pushing and shoving each other aside, licking their colorless lips, their eyes wild and hungry. They licked the green glass as if their tongues might wear it away.
By our third night on the Kadr road, despite our care, three of our waterskins hung flaccid. One held only a few mouthfuls. One held perhaps a litre. We broke camp before dawn, unable to rest.
At midmorning, John Deune spotted a well a few metres off the road. He and Andero ripped away the weedy overgrowth to expose its crumbling stone. “There’s no red marks!”
“Wait,” I said when John Deune’s pot rattled. “We have to be sure.”
I touched the warm stone and dived into the aether. Spellwork enveloped the deep well. A clean-water spell, slender threads like dew-laden spiderwebs reflecting the rays of the morning sun. Spells of abundance, thick lines that frayed into a million parts all looping back on themselves. Spells of protection to prevent children and the feebleminded from falling in. All common, benevolent things one might find at any ancient well.
“I think we’re all right,” I said. Yet, just as I was about to release my inner seeing, I glimpsed a small gray thread tangled deep in the tracery of well magic. A single touch set my teeth on edge.
“Stop!” I snapped. “Don’t!”
The pot clattered to the ground in a splash.
“Don’t drink it. Don’t touch it. Leave the pot where it is. Something’s not right.”
“But we must have water,” said John. “There are no marks.”
I plunged once more into the well magic, peeling away the layers of spell threads that lay between me and the gray line, disentangling the energies that created it. When all lay exposed, I felt sick.
“Not this water, John Deune. Drop anything that’s touched it into the well.”
I’d seen the spell before. It was a particularly virulent form of a memory block, exactly the kind Finn had read from my notes back at Pradoverde.
“It doesn’t kill you,” I said. “You’re alive but with no memory of yourself. No memory of your past or your friends or why you do what you do. No memory of what makes you laugh or weep, or what books you enjoy, or what you consider good or beautiful. Only the knowledge that you cannot remember. Better to be dead.”
There was little to be done for the victims of such witchery. In my first days after collaring, I’d tried removing such a block from an old pikeman who had survived the Kadrian wars. Arrogant, stupid, I was sure I could manage what Salvator’s hedge-witch friends could not. And indeed, I had removed the block. But excising it had destroyed so much of the man’s underlying nature that he was left only a hollow shell, no person at all. Naught could repair my error. A terrible lesson.
“It would take me days to counter a witchlord spell,” I said, “and undoing them often triggers another layer of traps. We cannot delay so long.” John Deune took the news hard. He fidgeted and moaned, digging in his packs until he’d spread pots and linens everywhere. “How in the wide world are we to mark the well? Some unwary traveler will have his mind destroyed, all for the lack of something red. It’s kin to murder.”
“There’s always a solution.” Andero piled rocks on top of the well and drew his knife. I laid a spell of stasis on his blood offering to keep it fresh and red. It seemed fitting.
KADR
None of the water sources along the Kadrian road were drinkable. We watered the horses at the least questionable spots, then dismounted and led them to preserve their strength. We limited our own intake to a few drops every two hours and blessed all gods it was not summer. Another day or two should see us off the mountains.
On the second evening from the poisoned well, the road curved round a cliff or high embankment and the land fell away in front of us. The fragrant smoke of wood fires drifted past.
