The Warden, page 26
That was all she said, or all she seemed to say. The words themselves were so reasonable. Her voice was honey.
But underneath them was a current of power, a thrum so loud and heavy Aelis half expected the ground to shake beneath her feet. Next to her, Currin was clutching his head. Tun’s hand blades were out of his pockets, but he held them with thumb and forefinger, as if he meant to lower them carefully to the ground.
And though Aelis was rocked to her core by the roar of power that Nath managed to unleash, it was like a puff of heat from a fire that had harmless smokepowder thrown on it; intense for a moment and then gone.
Instead of lowering her sword, she tightened her grip on it, and kept her ward up. Slowly, grinding her teeth with the effort, she pushed the ward outward to Currin and Tun, enveloping them in it. Tun shifted his weapons into his hands; Currin stood straighter, imperiously shouting commands Aelis didn’t have time or energy to listen to.
The assault broke off. Now try the other way, Aelis thought. And instantly, Nathalie did exactly that. Lifting her wand, she gestured with it at the men surrounding her.
“Kill them. We don’t need them.”
In her mind’s eye Aelis could see the strands of power Nath was throwing in six directions. They wouldn’t have to be much. Simple suggestions should do for men who were as conditioned to the lash of her Enchantment as these men surely were.
But Aelis had a plan, and she grasped forward with her own spell.
In her lessons on swordsmanship and close combat, Lavanalla had always taken on all comers. For an elven woman the word willowy was waiting around for, invariably there was always some noble’s son who decided he’d put his honor aside and show off. And no matter how thickly muscled he was or how much training he’d had, the Arch-Abjurer would throw them, twist their arms till they begged for mercy, or trip them until they retired in embarrassment. Lavanalla had given special attention, in further training, to teaching the principles of angle, misdirection, and redirection that would allow a weaker opponent to stand up to a stronger one.
Those principles could be applied to magical combat as well.
So instead of reaching with her own Enchantment spell directly to the men who would attack them, she reached out for Nath, and her spell. Aelis threw out her own Second Order Enchantment—a slight modification of a Lash—and wrapped it around the enchantments that were already in place in the minds of Nath’s men. And then she tugged on the deeply embedded commands that had been placed there day after day, week after week, as Nath and Currin had built their following.
“Men loyal to Mahlgren! She’s ordering you to murder your earl in cold blood!” Aelis yelled. “She’s the traitor! Take her, but alive so we can know the source of her betrayal!”
Two of the men kept sighting down their crossbows at her, Currin, and Tun. Three blinked and lowered their weapons.
The sixth thumped the back of Nath’s skull with the shaft of his spear so hard that Aelis winced when the sound reached her. The Enchanter crumpled to the ground.
Then so did Currin. Then, one by one, like candles being snuffed, so did the six guards Nath had brought with her.
Silence reigned in the morning light, Aelis and Tun standing stock-still as if afraid to disturb the scene of their victory. A bird trilled in a tree behind them. Aelis jumped.
“I,” Tun said gravely, “am going to have to haul all of them up into the cavern, aren’t I?”
“Well, I think I can manage Nath,” Aelis said. “Let’s not lose any more time.”
Her shaking hands needed two tries to get her sword back into its scabbard.
* * *
Inside the cavern was much the same as out; Nath and Currin’s ragged band of desperate men had all fallen where they stood. It was a small miracle that none had fallen on a weapon or into a fire, but Aelis had no time to deal with them. She wrestled Nath’s limp form into the cavern with the other woman’s wand stuck through her belt, and set about binding her hands.
She took out the traveling case she’d packed, found a pot, filled it with water from a skin, and set it over one of the guttering cookfires.
“Bit too much work to do to be making tea, no?” Tun blotted out the light from the cave entrance, an unconscious man on each shoulder.
“Not tea. Something to keep her from casting spells.” Aelis plucked a vial and carefully scraped the wax seal with her thumb. She eyed a careful two drops into the water and carefully smoothed the wax back over the edge of the vial.
Meanwhile, Tun had lowered his load to the rock-strewn ground and gone back for another pair. By the time he came back, bubbles were forming on the surface of the water, and Aelis took the pot off the fire and set it down to cool.
“If you had something to keep her from using her power, why not lead with that?” Tun’s voice betrayed nothing of the effort of carrying the deadweight of two unconscious men up a hill.
“Because it has to be ingested and it seemed unlikely I could slip it into a cup, get her to drink it, and cover us for the quarter of an hour it would take for potency.”
“And what’re you going to do during the quarter of an hour it takes now?”
Aelis decanted her mixture into a nearby clay cup and gestured with her chin toward Nath’s unconscious form. Tun got the hint and knelt beside the Enchanter, then carefully pried her slack mouth open with his massive fingers.
“I’ll give her a pommel strike to the head if I have to,” Aelis said as she poured the mixture of water, herb, and somnolent carefully down Nath’s throat. The woman choked and sputtered, but Tun held her mouth closed till she swallowed. Her eyes fluttered for a moment, then closed again.
“However,” Aelis went on, packing up her kit, “if she can manage to get off an enchantment in the moments between waking up and feeling the full potency of this dose, with her hands tied, her mind fogged, and her wand on my belt, then…” She shrugged. “She probably deserves to win.”
“What do you plan to do with her?”
“Find out just where her power came from. I’ve never felt someone with that much force, that much energy to expend, over so long a period.”
“Possible she had it stored in amulets or what have you, somewhere?”
“Then I’d need to know where she got them and how they worked.”
“Such things are possible then?”
“Of course they are. Just difficult to make, and access to them is tightly controlled by the Archmagisters.”
Tun grunted and trotted back the way he’d come to gather the last of the prisoners.
Aelis surveyed the insensate men, wondered where they were going to get the cordage to secure them all, and said aloud, “Well. Now what the fuck do I do?” What would Bardun Jacques do?
She was saved from having to answer the question by the sound of a gurgle from Nath. She turned to find the Enchanter’s eyes flickering as she struggled to sit upright. She flopped to her side and her hands fluttered against her chest.
Aelis watched her in silence, until she saw Nath’s eyes come into focus and hone in on her, narrowed in rage. She began mumbling unintelligibly, trying, Aelis thought, to cast a spell.
“None of that,” the Warden said. “If you do manage to organize your thoughts and summon even a minor order, I’ll have to do something unpleasant.”
“Kill you,” Nath rasped, then spat into the dirt where she lay. “My men’ll kill you.”
“I don’t think they will,” Aelis said, “because I’ve already laid my own power over them. Riding atop yours, of course. Impressive trick, the depth and breadth of Enchantment you called on. How did you do it?”
Nath spat into the dirt again, twitched, tried to rise. “Kill you,” she mumbled again.
Aelis slipped Nath’s wand into her hand, and held it up. Nath’s eyes widened and focused on it; Aelis tucked it away. Nath’s eyes widened. “The wand is only a focus, you know. They say the best Enchanters—the Archmagisters—don’t even need their implements. That there have even been a few who could summon a Fifth Order spell without a word or a gesture.”
“I’m stronger than all of them.” The side of Nath’s face was covered in dirt that her own drool had turned to mud.
“And yet, here we are. You at my mercy. In truth, Nathalie—if that is your name—I only came here for one man. Elmo. He was here last night. I saw him. Where is he now?”
As she spoke, Aelis went and knelt at Nath’s side. With her wand in her left hand, she laid her right on the woman’s head, or tried, as Nath lunged and tried to get Aelis’s wrists between her teeth. Abjurer’s reflexes and Nath’s dulled limbs saved her the indignity. Before she knew it, Aelis delivered a short punch straight into Nath’s cheek.
The thud was loud in the stillness of the cavern. Her fist stung. Nath looked at her, glassy-eyed and unfocused, then suddenly let out a sob.
“I only want what I promised,” she said as she broke out into a cascade of tears, “and what was promised me. To protect this place, Mahlgren, and to see a rightful earl.”
“Nath,” Aelis said, fighting hard against the urge to shake her stinging hand, “I don’t care about the Earl of Mahlgren. I don’t care what you promised or what was promised to you. I care about my man, Elmo. He’s who I’ve come for. Where is he, and why did he come here?”
Nath had lowered her head, so Aelis laid her hand on the woman’s shoulder. With a flick of the tip of her hazel wand, she cast a simple Enchantment, not much stronger than a textbook First Order Encouragement. It seemed to her that Nath was driven by an ambition to see some work done, some reward earned. If, Aelis reasoned, she could convince Nath that there was still a chance—appeal to her ego and her hope at once—she might be forthcoming with the information. The spell Aelis released was designed to do just that; to draw out faint hope the way one might blow on the last ember of a fire.
“Elmo is on his way to another camp carrying messages of your attack on us, and he’s to wait there for a response.”
“When did he leave?”
“An hour, maybe a bit more.”
“How did he know to come here? Why did he join? Have you contact with Lone Pine?”
“The coins,” Nath said. “The coins I made must’ve been found, must’ve made their way there.”
“The coins?” Aelis could do little more than repeat the word in shock.
“The coins I made. They were supposed to stay hidden. The time wasn’t right.”
“What are the coins, Nath? What are they meant to do?”
“Stoke anger. Prey on hope. Drive them to me.”
“How did you make them?” Aelis readied another spell, prepared to force Nath to tell her, but it wasn’t necessary.
“He taught me how, led me to where to find the gold, and showed me how to work the magic.”
“Who did?”
“Dalius.”
Aelis froze. The cavern was empty and still and utterly silent. She could not even hear the sound of her own breathing, or Nath’s, or feel her blood beat in her ears.
Then the name sank in and she fought down the urge to scream expletives, to give Nath a good kick, or any number of other violent and counterproductive outbursts. Instead, she stood, yelled, “TUN! We’ve got to move, soon as we can.”
That done, she looked back to Nathalie. Her sobbing was under control, but her tears had cut streaks through the dirt on her cheeks.
“Who is Dalius, where did he find you, and what did he teach you? I need to know all of it.”
“I don’t have to tell you anything more.”
“That, Nath, is where you’re wrong,” Aelis said. “You do, if you know what’s good for you. I am literally the force of the law in this part of the world.”
“Fine. Cart me off to a trial if you must, but—”
“I’m a warden, Nathalie. I am the trial. I am the sentence, if need be. If I make mistakes, I’ll answer for it, have no doubt of that. But if I decide your crimes warrant death, the Estates and the Triumvirate of Crowns empower me to execute you.”
“Then do it. Murder us all and leave our bodies to rot the way you left Mahlgren!”
Aelis tried not to put her hands on her hips as though she were about to deliver a lecture. “I was four years old when Mahlgren fell. You can’t have been much older. I was fourteen when the war ended and treaties were signed and much of the land was given over to the orcs. I couldn’t change that even if I wanted to. Which I don’t. What’s more, I don’t want to kill you. But I do have to take steps.”
“And what’ll that be? Murder all my men, leave me tied up to rot?”
“No,” Aelis said. Casually, she pulled Nath’s wand from her belt and tossed it into the fire. Nath strained against her bonds and struggled to sit up.
“I don’t need that to use my power.”
“No, but it makes it easier. You’ve got a big hammer, Nathalie. But you don’t know how to swing it, and the wand makes it easier. If it was properly made it helped collect the energy you expended and it helped you focus it into something coherent.”
A puff of purplish-gray smoke erupted from the fire, briefly interrupting her. “And there I suppose it was; that was the reagent core inside the wood. It’s gone, and I’m guessing you’ve not got a spare, nor the tools and knowledge to craft one.”
“Are you done humiliating me, Warden?” The contempt Nathalie managed to put into that word was startling. “Are you done flaunting your power and your wealth and destroying what I’ve managed to earn for myself?”
“I don’t have time to argue with you, Nathalie,” Aelis said. “You’ve already broken laws enough for me to do as I will with you. You’ve run afoul of every rule laid upon Enchanters about the use of their power, you’ve created items of illicit magic designed to prey upon the mind, you’ve kidnapped, you’ve put other lives in danger with your recklessness. Could be that I should execute you. There are wardens who would’ve done it already.
“But I’m not going to.”
Aelis unslung her pack. She became aware that Tun was waiting in the entrance to the cavern, though just how he’d gotten there was a mystery.
“What I am going to do is force-feed you a dose of mountain catsbane and witsend so strong that if you ever touch magic again it’ll feel like rain in the desert rather than the river you were used to. The first drink I gave you was just to put you to sleep a while. This should put your power beyond your touch for a long time. Maybe forever. Tun, if you would, please.”
The struggle Nath had put up before was nothing compared to what she did now, thrashing her entire body in an effort to right herself. Had there been a wall to lean against, she would’ve found her feet, but then Tun was lifting her up, and her kicking feet had as much effect upon him as a fly on a castle wall.
“Pry her mouth open, please.” Aelis had snapped open her traveling case again and unsealed wax-closed packets of herbs. She dropped them into a small stone bowl and began muddling them together with a practiced movement of her thumb, adding distilled water from a vial to form a fragrant green paste.
When that was done, with a flat stick and Nath’s mouth opened by the expedient of Tun applying inexorable pressure, Aelis shoveled the mixture of herbs into the Enchanter’s mouth. Tun clamped it closed. Aelis set down her tools and pinched Nath’s nose closed.
The hatred, the panic, the fear that the other woman’s eyes screamed at her as she fought not to swallow were genuinely shocking. Aelis almost felt herself wilting. Then one of the nearby men Nath had deceived and enthralled stirred from the dirt, and it was a struggle not to pinch harder.
“I don’t want to cause you undue pain, Nathalie,” Aelis said, her voice low and sharp. “But I will not leave you unpunished. Swallow this or choke on it. All the same to me.”
Finally, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes, Nath forced the lump of magic-dampening and mind-fogging herbs down her throat.
Tun set her down. Aelis cut her bonds free. Around them, men were rising to their feet, blinking and disoriented. Tun’s hands slipped into his pockets; Aelis kept a tight grip on her hilt and cleared her throat.
“This is an illegal gathering, and a conspiracy to violate the treaty the Three Crowns and the Estates House signed with the orcs eight years past. My associate—” here she gestured to Tun with the hand that didn’t hold her sword—“could represent the wronged party of such a truce if he chose. Dismantle this camp, disperse, take this woman with you, and I will not clap any of you in irons nor drag you to the gallows. Do it now. I will not offer this clemency twice.”
Aelis let a First Order Ward form in her mind, and gathered it through the pommel stone of her sword; she had no intention of casting it unless she needed it, but it did have the effect of making the pommel stone glow a soft blue. To the men around her, that clearly meant only that magic was in the offing, but it was enough to set imaginations—and legs—moving at top speed.
She gathered up her gear, nodded to Tun, and the two made their way in silence from the cave entrance.
“Nath said that Elmo left an hour ago. Headed to an outlying camp.”
“To the northwest. They’ve got a back entrance. Already found the tracks, though I didn’t know they were his. Half a dozen of them, at least. Best we pick up the pace. If we run, we can catch him today.”
Tun had been managing both their walking sticks all this time through the simple expedient of tying them to the rucksack he carried. He pulled Aelis’s free and tossed it to her, then grabbed his own. Then they set off.
22
THE CAPTURE
They ran for an hour. Or, rather, Tun took long walking strides occasionally punctuated with a single trot, and Aelis trotted to keep pace.
“Feel like I’m learning the skirmisher’s trot into the bargain,” she muttered to herself. Or so she thought, until Tun answered.
“Except a skirmisher does this managing to stay in contact with eight or ten other men, knowing that the land swarms with people and things that want to kill him, and with specific geographical objectives in mind. You’re just following after someone.”
