The Warden, page 28
Tun came over and squatted on the other side of the fire. He shrugged. “Old, young … all you people look the same to me.”
“Humans? But you’re half…”
“Wizards,” Tun replied. He waited, then coughed. “That was … a jest, Warden.”
“One of my first nights in Lone Pine, Dalius attacked me. He could only harness some illusions, very weak stuff. I decided he was a harmless hedge—”
“Hedge wizard. So you said. I have no idea what it means.”
“Ah, well … I guess the idea is they were, you know … taught in secret, by people who didn’t know much, and so they don’t know much themselves. As in they were … teaching in hedges, I suppose.”
“A hedge doesn’t seem a particularly conducive space to learning anything but, I suppose, the mating habits of certain animals. Perhaps topiary.”
“Tun, this is serious.”
“It is in my nature to make jests when I am anxious, Warden. I mean no harm.”
That caught Aelis’s attention, and she focused on Tun’s face, searching his eyes. “First time you’ve been anxious in the days I’ve known you.”
“And this seems like the first time you’ve been afraid. Back to business; if this Dalius attacked you, why not kill him?”
“Like I said, he seemed harmless. But then I kept forgetting to ask anyone about him. Sometime after I brought him into my tower a book went missing, and I meant to ask around the village who might’ve taken it. I never did that either.”
“Was this book dangerous?”
“Not really. It was a simple book of Abjurers’ forms. Stances, guards, sequences with sword or axe or knife, and how they work with the mind and with wards.”
“Could it be you were simply too busy to remember to ask? A new place, a new life, new responsibilities…”
“I’ve been busy since I was eleven years old. I’ve never been forgetful before.”
“His attack upon you and the book disappearing are not necessarily related.”
“I’m aware of the difference between correlation and causation.” Tun smiled, and she went on. “But the forgetfulness about both items … that’s not me, Tun. That’s not who I am or how I work. And now we hear that Dalius was ranging in this direction, teaching Nath to harness her power, and how to make these coins. That’s not coincidence.”
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know,” Aelis said, but she felt a certainty in her gut that they were connected. “But I’m going to take the pieces we’ve got—Elmo, the coins—and paint them into the frame. If we find more, I’ll keep painting.”
“What happened to solving one problem at a time?”
“Our first job is to get Elmo back to Lone Pine. Anything else we’ll deal with on the way.”
“Dalius,” Tun said, carefully enunciating all three syllables. “Do not forget the name again.”
“Let’s make an agreement on that score. Every stop we make—for meals, to rest—every time, we talk about Dalius. We remind each other.” She paused a moment, then seized on thoughts that were trying to escape from her even now.
“Tun,” Aelis said suddenly. “Dalius said he hung about Lone Pine. That he helped people, with their animals, with charms and … small things. And you don’t know the name?”
Tun shook his head slowly. “I have lived outside Lone Pine for three years. You are the first wizard I have seen there.”
“No one ever mentioned him to you? Not Rus or Martin? Seems like they know everyone.”
“They do,” Tun said. “If I have never seen him, and Rus and Martin don’t know him?” He shook his great head slowly. “Then he does not exist.”
“But he must. I’ve seen him, talked to him. So has Nath.”
“Perhaps he is some kind of spirit? A ghost? One that appears only to wizards.”
Aelis shook her head. “There are spirits that will do that. Etheric Haunts, Mad Echoes come to mind. The death curse of a wizard might appear to another wizard as a kind of spirit. But I know spirits. If Dalius had been a spirit, I would’ve felt it. Instantly.”
“Are you certain?”
“As certain as I am of where Onoma’s moon is in the sky.”
Tun sighed deeply. “I do not know what we can do other than what we have agreed to. Every night between here and Lone Pine, we sit and talk about Dalius. Remind each other that he exists.”
“It’ll have to do,” Aelis said. “If you would take the watch, I want to study these coins a little more closely.”
Tun stood silently and went back to pacing the perimeter. This time she couldn’t hear a step.
Aelis kept running her thumb around the profile of the coin. She held it up to the light of the moon. Stories around the College of Necromancy held that some of the most highly skilled Anatomists could perform operations blindfolded in the open air under Onoma’s fullness. Others said it could allow them to see through the outer layers of the body to more precisely make their cuts. Even if those were true and not mere undergraduate rumor, the moonlight was doing nothing to help her see anything new about the coin.
“Why make it of gold?” she suddenly wondered. “Where would they get all of it and how would they mint it?”
On instinct, she closed her eyes and held the coin tightly in her hand, willing herself to feel the surface of it. Suddenly the feel of it against her skin changed; the heft was the same, but it was no longer smooth.
Aelis opened her hand. She wasn’t holding a gold coin any longer; she was holding pitted iron, a cloak clasp or a brooch that had lost its pin.
The other coins spread out on the rock before her had changed as well. Some were similar to what she held, others were discs of flattened copper or silver.
Aelis lacked the presence of mind to curse. This was Illusion and Enchantment magic melded together on a level she didn’t understand. But with the Illusion apparently dissipated, she had a much better chance of understanding how the Enchantment worked on its own. She picked up a handful of them and smiled.
* * *
Aelis didn’t expect to find herself waiting on Tun to wake up, but there she was. Her gear was packed, the old magical brooches and coins were carefully stowed. But Tun had, she suspected, done more than his share of watch on most of the nights they’d been on the hunt.
Elmo slept on while Tun roused himself. It never took long for the tracker to pack; in a matter of moments, he was clear-eyed, walking stick in hand, nibbling carefully on one of the hard biscuits he’d brought.
“Could be we’ll see the men you turned loose again, haunting our trail, dogging our steps, ambushing us,” he said once the biscuit was consumed.
“It could be, but I doubt it. Most of them have only the vaguest grasp of what they were doing or why.”
“Then is it possible you’ve sentenced them to death, set them free to wander without the means to defend themselves?”
“Nath couldn’t have drawn them here entirely with the coins. It had to be a matter of location and vulnerability. In other words—”
“Most were already here, and inclined to the life she offered them.”
“Exactly. I can’t take the time and energy to determine exactly what every man was doing here, but they are breaking treaties and laws I am bidden to uphold. I don’t have the means to take all of them into custody. But I can scatter them in such a way that they are less likely to do real mischief. Now come on. Let’s get our man up and make our way home.”
“As you say.”
Elmo was difficult to wake. Probably the first real sleep he’s gotten since this all started, Aelis thought. Since he stabbed his brother, she corrected herself. Would Otto live? Was he already dead? Onoma, she prayed silently, I don’t want this to end with both brothers dead.
Think about all that when you get back. One problem at a time. In truth, she wasn’t deaf to Tun’s observations that she could’ve turned a lot of ambushers loose on their trail, but she hadn’t seen a better solution, and none were presenting themselves now.
Once they finally had Elmo on his feet and fed, Aelis considered how best to approach their biggest problem: him.
“Elmo,” she began, “if I have to keep you manacled all the way back to Lone Pine, it’s going to slow us all down and exacerbate any dangers we face.”
“Ex-what?” The stocky former scout narrowed his eyes in distrust.
“Make worse.” Aelis tried for patience, which she knew had never truly been one of her virtues. “If I don’t shackle you, you can contribute to the chores of travel and camp, defend yourself if need be. But if you run, even once, I’ll bind you and drag you.”
“Did I kill him? Is he dead?”
“What?”
“Otto. My brother. Did I kill him?”
Aelis bit her lip. “He was alive when I came after you. Badly hurt. But I’d done what I could.”
“Shoulda stayed with him, Warden. Kept him alive. Not bothered after me.”
“Not your place to tell me what I should do, Elmo.”
“S’pose not. Still, not worth comin’ after me. No one’s gonna care if I live or die if I’ve killed Otto.”
“I can think of at least one girl who might.”
“Not fair, Warden.”
“Neither is openly willing Pips to live without either of the people raising her. Now what’s it going to be? Shackles or no?”
“I’ll come. And I’ll not bother runnin’ this time. Found me too easy the once. Not likely to get away from the orc there.” He jerked his chin toward Tun, a barely breathing statue a few paces away.
“Fine. Fall in, behind Tun and ahead of me.” She pointed with her walking stick at a rucksack she’d stuffed full of food, with waterbags lashed to either side of it. “You carry that.”
“What about my knife?”
“What about it?”
“All I got left of my time in the scouts. Second of a pair we were all given.”
“You left its larger match in Otto’s guts,” Aelis said, without pausing to think too long on why the scouts Elmo had been a part of were deliberately issued impractical weapons designed to leave such terrible wounds. “I’ll leave your hands free, but I’m not giving you a weapon to fill them with. Except at need. Now come on. We’ve a deal of walking to do.”
* * *
Aelis thought to learn more of Nath and her plans for the Mahlgren men from Elmo, but he was noncommittal at best, and unable to answer most of her questions. He wasn’t sure how he’d found them, only that the coin had driven him there. When he brought up the coin he went grimly silent before asking if Aelis had it.
“I do.”
“Can I see it?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Elmo sighed. “It’s just … not often folk like us see gold. Especially gold that pure. Didn’t seem right, having to give it up on just a rich woman’s say-so.”
“A warden’s order doesn’t come from any one man or woman. It comes from the Three Crowns and the Estates House.”
“Never seen any king, or anyone sits in the House. So it doesn’t much feel like orders come from them.”
“I do not feel like explaining the underpinnings of our legal system, so we’ll skip this part. I have your coin, and you can’t see it.” A pause. “But it might help to know it wasn’t gold.”
Elmo stopped and whirled on her. “Wasn’t gold?”
“No. In fact it was simple brass. Just glamoured to look like gold.”
“Glamoured?”
“Magic.” Aelis lifted her free hand and waggled her fingers.
“Why make brass look like gold?”
“Probably more likely to make the folk who found it hang on to it. Made it easier for the other magics bound in it to take hold of your mind.”
Given the way Elmo’s face darkened and his shoulders slumped, Aelis realized this was another question that could’ve done with a less than fully truthful answer.
* * *
The ambush came as twilight gathered around them that night, but it didn’t come the way Aelis expected. It wasn’t the hail of crossbow bolts or spears or rocks that Aelis had prepared wards for when Tun had tipped her they were being watched.
Instead it was a hammer blow of magical force that washed over all three of them. STOP, it commanded, and they did.
The power had a familiar flavor that made Aelis cringe.
Then Nath and two of her men came over the rise. None had weapons larger than a shortsword, which was small comfort. The Enchanter was a few steps ahead of them, her hands free and her smile so calm and smug that Aelis burned to do it violence.
“Did you think simple herbs would stop power like mine? I am privy to secrets College-trained weaklings like you are forbidden to know the names of,” Nathalie said. Her voice was oddly distant and her steps hesitant—residue of the witsend and catsbane, Aelis would have thought, if her magic wasn’t still so potent and powerful.
“Throw down your staves, and you, half-breed, those foolish little blades in your pockets.”
Aelis tossed her staff away, as did Tun. It was quickly followed by Tun’s hand blades.
“Now, Warden, though a child unworthy of the name, I’ll have your wand. And your sword.” Nath sauntered past Tun and placed a hand possessively on Elmo’s shoulder. “In fact, take your swordbelt, scabbard and all, and toss it on the ground. My man here is going to pick it up and use it to run your half-breed through.” Nath took a step closer to Aelis and held out one hand. “Wand.”
Aelis unbuckled her belt and tossed it to the ground, but the throw was awkward and several feet from Elmo. She lifted her eyes to Tun, who clearly struggled against the compulsion laid on him. She did as Nath said, and slipped her wand into her hand, holding it out carefully to Nath, whose fingers curled around it almost delicately.
Nath’s gloating smile filled Aelis’s eyes.
“Nath,” Aelis said, biting down hard on every syllable, “please do not do this. I beg you. There is another way.”
The woman looked at her oddly; Aelis felt like she was being watched by a snake and not another woman.
“Fool girl,” Nath said. “The only way I do things is my way.”
“I warned you.” Aelis whispered these words, and twitched her right wrist the same way she’d done with her left to drop her wand into her hand.
Then she plunged Elmo’s knife directly into the side of Nath’s neck and pulled down toward her collarbone.
Aelis knew it severed too many important vessels for her to do anything in the moment. She knew because she was an Anatomist, and it was her business and her calling to know.
But she ran for her dagger and unslung her pack and she tried anyway. Nath’s guards collapsed while Elmo and Tun fell to their knees. Aelis grabbed the first piece of cloth she found and tried to apply pressure over the horrible wound in Nath’s neck, gripping her Anatomist’s blade to gauge the woman’s vanishing vitals. She tried grabbing at the same Binding she’d used to save Otto, but there was not enough left for her to seize and hold.
There wasn’t much she could do, or much she could’ve done even if conditions were right. Aelis had dealt a killing blow, and she’d known it when she’d done it, known it as soon as she’d slipped the knife into her hand and aimed it at that unprotected target.
All Aelis could do was hold the bandage as blood pumped warm over her hand and light vanished from Nathalie’s eyes.
Before Nath died, Aelis felt something change, a subtle shift in the other woman’s spirit, her perceptions. Something passed out of her eyes before they lost the light and turned sightless, and something insubstantial passed out of her body before her last ragged, wheezing breath. Aelis felt it through her knife, and then she felt nothing, because the woman before her was dead.
Tun, of course, was the first to come around, and he was at her shoulder. It took her a few moments to realize he was standing by her, watching her with compassion in his dark eyes.
“Had to do it, Warden.”
Aelis said nothing. She nodded, stood, and began wiping her hands with the clean edge of the bandage—which turned out to be her spare shirt.
“Have we a shovel?” she asked, surprised at the calm of her own voice.
“Neither that, nor time.” Tun cleared his throat, and said, gently, “No grave we could dig with the tools we have would stop the wilderness from taking its course. We can’t take her back with us.”
“No, I suppose not.” Aelis bent down and forced herself to methodically search Nath’s body. She wore an old, clearly homemade dress of no particular style other than sturdy. There were no papers in her belt pouch, only oddments: a needle, some thread, a small bell, a few coins—none of them magical. There was also an old and tarnished locket with no chain. Aelis thumbed it open; inside were poorly rendered miniatures of two people, likely enough Nath’s parents.
Aelis carefully wrapped it and stuck it in her pack, though she couldn’t have said why.
* * *
That night, at a fire where Elmo slept and Aelis felt certain she wasn’t going to manage it, Tun let her sit in silence for a while.
“First person you’ve killed.”
It wasn’t a question, so Aelis merely nodded.
Tun grunted. “I’m not going to get trite and spit platitudes at you. Did what you had to do. I do have to ask; how’d you resist her spell?”
Aelis reached under her tunic and pulled out a leather thong and a small pouch that had lain against her skin. She untied it and poured out three of the old bits of metal that had been turned into golden coins.
“Once I could see through their glamour, I had a better grasp on how they worked. I’m no artificer but I could repurpose them.”
“Spare me any magical details and explain in the plainest language you can, please.”
“These had a powerful compulsion upon them to make the holder forgo all other cares, all other ties, all other obligations in the defense of the Earldom of Mahlgren. It’s what brought the men here. Wasn’t hard to simply change the target of the obligation.”
