The Weight of Magic, page 39
part #1 of Restriction Series
Only second tier.
That thought intruded and for good reason. There had been a time when a second-tier pattern had been the pinnacle of what he could even do, and now he regretted that it was all he could do.
“We move, Torian. They will come,” Visthor said.
There still had not been any sign of the Rusavian soldiers, but Torian agreed that they needed to get moving as quickly as they could because it was only a matter of time before they appeared. The moment that they did, he would have to be ready to either fight or run.
Torian raced toward Dary. He was the closest to Torian, though he wanted to get to Willa, as Torian would suspect she would have answers.
He found him with a shovel in hand, scooping a pile of earth. When Torian raced over, holding onto the lantern beam pattern, Dary froze. Maybe it wasn’t the pattern that made him freeze so much as it was that Torian was with Visthor—who had a Blade extended.
“Dary,” he said hurriedly. “We need to get moving. We can get you out, but we have to do it quickly.”
Dary looked up at him, blinking with a blank expression in his eyes. “Torian?”
“Come on,” Torian urged. “We need to get moving.”
“What are you doing here? Are you with them?”
He glanced to Visthor, understanding why Dary would feel that way. “Not with them. We need to get people moving.”
There was a weariness to him. What must he have faced in the time that he’d been away?
“I can’t. They’ve shown us what they’ll do if any of us tries to leave.”
Visthor jerked around. “Soldiers, Torian. Either we stay and fight, or we go. Not much time.”
Torian grabbed Dary. “I’m not leaving you behind. Or my sister.”
“Sister?” Dary asked and again sounded confused.
“Where is she?”
Dary shook his head. “Everyone who tried to escape was killed.”
Torian couldn’t move.
Did that mean that Liana was gone?
No. If she was gone, he would’ve said that.
Dary was afraid of leaving. He was afraid of dying.
“Torian,” Visthor snapped.
That stirred Torian into action.
“Go. Head south with as many as you can. I don’t know why they have so many sahir here,” Torian began, looking around and realizing that there weren’t as many as he had thought. Most were soldiers and not sahir. “There are wagons there that can offer some protection.” A pair of soldiers headed in his direction.
Visthor had already straightened and readied his Blade.
Torian didn’t give the soldiers a chance to do anything. He unleashed the stacked stone pattern, targeting the ground at their feet.
It was a third-tier pattern that he’d defaulted to without really meaning to, but the power that he’d been holding had built up to the point where it was easy to release that from him. The stone exploded in front of one of the soldiers, tossing him to the side, while the other soldier stumbled.
Visthor was there in a heartbeat. He impaled the man with his Blade.
Torian focused on the ground in front of the soldiers, and again he targeted, sending a burst of power out from him. He had enough trapped power that it was an easy enough thing for him to do, but he did not know if the soldiers would have some way to counter as they had in the other village.
Visthor squeezed the Blade in his hand. “We can’t stay.”
“We can get them someplace safe. Maybe to the university in Corsalt,” Torian suggested.
Dary looked at him with a strange expression in his eyes. “But we’re just outside of Corsalt.”
Could they have traveled that far already?
And it meant that the university wasn’t safe. Of course, it wouldn’t be. Gaspel had been trying to reach others at the university and failing. Torian didn’t know the technique as the two of them hadn’t the time to work together, but he believed that Gaspel had some technique that should have been effective.
“Torian,” Visthor snapped.
Torian shoved Dary and sent him toward the edge of the tree line. Several others went with him, including Desiree. Torian didn’t see Jensen or Eliza, but they had to be here somewhere, didn’t they?
And Liana.
Not only that, but Willa was here. If he could get to her, show her that they had helped, she might be able to help fight.
Until that time, Torian would fight.
Three more soldiers had appeared.
There weren’t as many as he had seen in the town, but still, five soldiers were nothing to ignore. Surprisingly, Torian didn’t feel nearly as afraid of the five soldiers as he had the last time that he had encountered soldiers. He wasn’t helpless any longer. Maybe he hadn’t been helpless at that time, either, but he certainly hadn’t known how to reach the power inside of him as easily as he did now.
Maybe not easily. But it was better and stronger.
With another stacked stone technique, he blasted his magic at one of the soldiers while another tried to step in front of him to block. Visthor was there, his Blade whistling through his patterns. He caught one of the soldiers with his Blade and then elbowed the other, twisting and forcing the man back. The speed of his assault forced both of the soldiers back before they had a chance to react.
“Run,” Torian said, mixing his words with a bit of a second-tier wind pattern that carried.
When there was no reaction, he decided to try something else.
A burst of a lantern beam pattern caused light to explode in the middle of the clearing, and he followed that with a quick second-tier stacked stone pattern directed beneath him.
It had the desired effect. Dary and the others scattered.
When they went the wrong way, Torian formed a stacked stone pattern and caused the ground to tremble again, pushing them in a different direction. Visthor chased down two more soldiers, but there were no more after that.
Torian had to get to Willa. To Liana.
He looked everywhere around him, but there was no sign of either of them.
Only…
Five soldiers were ushering several others away from the perimeter. One of them was Willa. Torian had known her long enough that he could easily identify her gray hair, her thin frame, and the tension in her posture. Liana seemed to be with them, and probably Jensen, as Torian still had not seen what had happened to him.
He started after them, already beginning to try to heave on the weight inside of him, readying an attack, when an explosion thundered right in front of him. Had he not been holding onto his own stacked stone pattern, it might have overwhelmed him, but Torian unleashed that power out from him, settling the ground. As the dust in the debris began to clear, he saw no sign of the soldiers. No sign of Willa. No sign of Liana.
They were gone.
“Torian,” Visthor said, pulling on him.
“My sister.”
“We will find. But we must go.”
Go. If he went, it meant that Liana would be dragged with the soldiers, and he had no idea if he could find her again. Another explosion thundered from a dozen paces from him. And then another. Fires began to burn in the night.
All of it was pressing on them.
Torian tried several of the other first-tier patterns, including using air to try to blow the fire away, but it didn’t work. As he attempted to reach for a second-tier pattern, he realized that it wouldn’t make a difference. The flames were just too much for him. They were powered by an advanced form of magic that he simply did not have.
Even if he wanted to pursue, he could not.
He turned away, tamping down the frustration inside of him. He’d lost his parents. He was not going to lose his sister.
The pit where the others had been working drew his attention.
Visthor grabbed him as he approached it. “It is only work farm,” he said.
“I don’t understand. Why would they have been digging if there isn’t anything here?”
“Work farm,” Visthor said.
He used a lantern beam pattern, angling it toward the pit, but there was only rock. Nothing else. Torian turned away, and he helped guide his townsfolk, along with other prisoners, through the trees. Sylvia was there and had added her own technique to try to guide people along with her. She looked over to Torian with a deep frown on her face.
“I have to go after my sister.”
“We will regroup. Then we can,” Sylvia said.
Torian appreciated that she didn’t tell him no. “Will Aldrich help?”
“Aldrich may not be in any condition to do so. We will see.”
“Did you know we were near Corsalt?” Torian asked.
“Not Corsalt,” Visthor said. “We are near Iliandar.”
Torian closed his eyes for a moment, wishing that his training in school had stuck with him better. And maybe it had, but he couldn’t remember if this was the same name as Corsalt. Many of the towns around his home had ancient names, often derived from when they had been populated by the Siansaal Empire. Even his own town had once been called Oscallian, but that had been so long ago that most would have forgotten it, including Torian, but the instructors had remembered.
“Corsalt,” Torian said. “Which is not at all far from my town.”
“You said your town was Sarot.”
“That’s right.”
Sylvia looked over to Visthor, and something passed between them, though Torian wasn’t entirely sure what it was. An expression lingered before fading.
“We need to get them back to the wagons,” she said.
“Now you are willing to bring them?”
“We can’t stay here. As soon as they learn that they’ve broken free, we will not be safe.”
They guided the others through the trees, Visthor taking the lead, Sylvia using her patterns, and Torian staying with Dary and Desiree, both of whom seemed shell-shocked. Every so often, they made some offhanded comment about how they were free and surprised by that fact.
Torian regarded the others. They were young, probably the same age as Dary and Liana, and given what he had seen, most likely sahir as well. Tamish had to have some reason for wanting the sahir—and only the sahir. Others had been slaughtered.
When they neared the wagons, Sylvia motioned for help, and Invat came to gather the people, guiding them off and away from the wagons and into a small clearing where they were able to rest safely.
Sylvia came over to Torian. “We need to talk.”
He didn’t argue and was surprised when she guided him to her wagon, stepping into the closed space and shutting the door, sealing it with a wind pattern that kept anything from passing out of it. Torian wondered at that, curious as to why she would’ve chosen to use a wind pattern on the door before kneeling next to the small cot that Aldrich was on.
He looked better than he had when Torian had come upon him at the edge of the trees, but still not good. His color was bad, and there was an irregularity to his breathing that Torian imagined could not be good.
Visthor stood in the corner, frowning.
“What is this really about?”
“It is about Tamish, and it is about his quest for power. The sahir should have prevented him from what he’s after, but unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have made a difference.”
“We need to go to Aldrich. We need his help.”
“Aldrich has suffered too much. He isn’t going to be of any use to us.”
Torian had to set his anger aside about what had happened. It wasn’t Aldrich’s fault.
“Aldrich wouldn’t have struggled with the number of soldiers that we saw in that work farm,” Torian said, glancing over to Visthor, who frowned before nodding. “He would be stronger and more competent than that.”
“Even Aldrich can be surprised.”
Torian understood that, but it didn’t feel right. Aldrich could be surprised, as he imagined that any magic user could find themselves overwhelmed in the right circumstances, but there was nothing about that work farm that had been too much for Torian. There had been a handful of soldiers, but not so many that Torian doubted that he would’ve been able to deal with them using his patterns were it necessary. It had been easier having Visthor with him, but given what he had been through, Torian had to believe that even he would have been able to handle that.
“We need to wake him up,” Torian said.
“While it is possible, it would be dangerous. He is in no condition to be awoken.”
“We need to know what happened.”
“Torian, you don’t understand what you ask. This is dangerous, even under the best circumstances, and we are far from the best circumstances.”
Torian looked over to Visthor, who still had not reacted, but increasingly, Torian believed he was going to need the large man to help him, even if it was only to convince Sylvia.
“Let’s say that we let him rest and recover, to come around whenever it is that he will naturally do so. What happens if something happens to us in the meantime?”
“We will travel away from it.”
They had new people to deal with, though. And though Sylvia had said that they could come to the wagons, Torian wasn’t even certain that she would let them stay with the wagons. Which meant that the people that they had just rescued might have to fend for themselves. Normally, Torian wouldn’t be as concerned about that, but having faced the shurrel, along with the duba, he knew the forest was not safe. Maybe it had never been safe.
So he formed a faint pattern, using wind and then a hint of the tracing of water, mixing the two together as he pressed it out from him as quickly as he could. Had he not been on edge the way that he already was, Torian wasn’t sure that he would’ve been able to do it so quickly. Then again, he also modeled after what he had seen of Aldrich using his connection on Torian. It was a faint whispering through Aldrich’s mind. This was a third-tier pattern. He used the minor healing pattern that he had only seen from Gaspel but had never been able to use on his own. Surprisingly, it worked.
As soon as he used it, Aldrich sat up.
Power exploded from the man, pushing Torian back. It slammed into Sylvia, who reacted far better than Torian did and resisted, placing protections to keep Aldrich from overwhelming her.
“What happened?” Aldrich snapped.
“It seems Torian decided to awaken you.” She looked over to him. “From what you told me, such an act is dangerous.”
Aldrich closed his eyes, and because Torian still traced some of the wind and water through him, he was vaguely aware of the way that Aldrich swept his pattern through himself. It was almost like a detection pattern, or perhaps a healing pattern so that Aldrich could recover much faster than he would have otherwise.
Aldrich let out a heavy sigh. “Thank you. I think that I would’ve taken far too long to recover without your touch.” He got up, wobbling for a moment. “And now, I need to leave.”
“You can’t leave. You aren’t in any condition to go.”
“What happened?” Torian asked.
Aldrich glanced over to him. “Tamish found me. Whatever they intend is significant.” He looked over to Sylvia. “They are camped at the edge of Iliandar.”
“Corsalt,” Torian said.
Aldrich tipped his head to the side as he regarded Torian. “That is what your people call it, isn’t it? You said that they destroyed the temple near your hometown.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “It wouldn’t be far from Zavilla. In fact, all of those old temples surrounded it, didn’t they?” Torian wasn’t sure if the question was directed at him or was more about Aldrich working through things on his own.
“They wouldn’t know about it. They couldn’t,” Sylvia said.
“They shouldn’t, but perhaps they do.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Where you found me,” Aldrich said. “It is a place that has long been protected, ancient sigils securing it from outside attention. It was untouched during the war, but unfortunately, Tamish has long known of its existence and has searched for a means of accessing it. It is a place that once housed many of the Valsahir and was the ultimate target of the war, the only one they failed to find.”
“But it’s not untouched.”
“You saw only a reflection,” Aldrich said. He took a deep breath, drew himself up, and met Sylvia’s eyes. “If he succeeds here, he will destroy our access and then Rusav will be able to move much more freely.”
“We are not strong enough to stop him.”
Aldrich looked over to Torian. “Not alone, but perhaps we don’t have to do it alone. We merely have to make him think that we have more power than we do. If we can scare him away, we can secure these locations and keep him from his plan.”
Torian didn’t care what Aldrich had in mind for him.
If it meant that he could go after his sister and others from town, then he was going to do so. Regardless of the danger, he already knew what he would do.
“How can I help?”
Chapter 45
TIME TO DANCE
Morning came slowly.
Torian was exhausted from their planning, as they all had theories about what was happening, along with what they might need to do to counter it. By the time they had finished discussing and planning, Torian could barely keep his eyes open. Aldrich sent him to get a nap, which Torian figured was his way of trying to keep him from listening to whatever additional part of the planning that he intended to do with Sylvia—as he was certain the two of them intended to discuss more without him.
He had just laid down—or it felt that way—when a knock came at the door to the wagon. He shot up, barely avoiding bumping his head, and slipped off the bunk. Torian didn't know how long he’d been sleeping, but it didn’t feel long.
Jakob was there. “They tell me that it’s time for you to go.”
Torian let out a heavy sigh. “What time… oh.”
Dawn had started to break in the sky, revealing only a hint of color, but enough that Torian understood that he’d not been sleeping nearly as long as his body needed. With what they had in mind, he didn’t know if he’d be able to stay awake long enough to be a part of it, either.
