From the alley at his side, a gray form darted. Another. They crashed into Rupert. Flung a gray cloth over him. He was gone.
I blinked. Stared at the spot where Rupert had been, his groceries in a pile. Traffic moved on as if nothing had happened. As if no one had seen. Breath and fear blasted from me. I screamed. And ran, the walking stick in my hand.
Cold bit through my clothes. Ice beneath my shoes ripped at my balance as I rounded the corner. I loosed the blade. Shadows swirled at the back of the alley and I dove at them, screaming,
“Rupert!”
It was a battle cry.
I rammed into the first one, catching him unbalanced, flinging him across the alley. A solid thunk sounded, his head hitting the wall. On its echo, I flowed into savage-blade.
The walking-stick sheath whirled. My blade sliced across, beneath it, and down. Tore into the other assailant's coat at his hip with a ripping shush. Swept along my body as the sheath blocked his out-thrust arm.
Mage-vision blazed. The alley came alive with color, with energies, with the might of stone and mortar composing the buildings to either side. In a whir of speed, I clipped him on the side of the head. He blocked the stick. It landed on his shoulder with a crack.
I pressed the attack, stepping over a squirming body on the snow-packed alley floor. Rupert. “Be still,” I shouted. The body ceased its struggles.
Behind me, the other stirred and stood. Shook his head. Sluggish. No threat yet.
Fingers shaped in
the claw
whipped by my head.
Neomage move.
A leg swept out at me.
Swan-wing,
human strong, but human slow.
I hadn't been thinking, had just been hitting, not using my brain. These were humans, which meant they had more muscle mass, more strength, but less speed. They would hurt me if they actually landed a blow. Badly. I had weaponsâthree blades and the sheathâmy body, and speed. I altered my response to the claw and swan-wing moves.
Twin whacks of the walking stick reacted to them. A single fist glanced off my ribs. Breath grunted out. My blade cut along his damaged shoulder. Drew blood.
A black aura filled the sliced flesh and flowed toward me with the blood.
He was spelled.
Instantly, my palm drew on the power stored in the bloodstone. Linked to my amulets. All of them. Heat and force gathered, crackling around me. A simple, basic sphere of shielding snapped into place at my feet. Force rose from the earth beneath the snow, called by the amulet. He couldn't see me, flinging blows against my shielding. Mage-sight glared with energies. I shouted an incantation, the words scripture-strong and fast, though they sounded almost languorous. Sonorous.
“Their defense is departed from them!” Stored power coalesced. I shaped it into a talon with my mind. “Be thou my strong rock, for a house of defense, to save me.” A spur of might, it pierced into the rock wall at my shoulder. The shield blocked the Darkness flooding through the attacker's blood.
“The place of defense shall be the munitions of rocks,” I shouted. The talon of power twisted inside the stone. A huge crack blasted the alley. Dust flew. The other attacker launched at me. And I paraphrased from Joshua, chapter six, “And the wall of the alley shall fall down flat!”
The talon I had shaped curled into the stone, lacerated the mortar, and pulled. The wall gave way with a roar. Rocks that were mine to call, stone that became mine to use, blasted out. Sought out the man before me like an avalanche. Bounced off my shield. Pummeled the man behind me.
His eyes glowed an angry red. He shot out his hand. Power rocked me, black and murky against my shield. He turned and ran.
The man behind me cried out, staggered beneath the heavy stone, and followed, limping, out the alley mouth into brighter day.
“He set a mark upon Cain,” I said, pulling in the wild energies dancing on and within the stone at my sides and below the snow. “He shall be a fugitive and vagabond in the earth. Up, follow after the man, to mark the place where he shall lie.”
My might swept after them, stealing the energy that formed the shield, draining me to power the conjureâa flaming fireball of purpose. Through the air.
Idiot! Demon horns!
The attackers rounded the corner, out of sight. Gone.
With a near-silent pop, the conjure fell apart and splashed down. The power of the seeker chant ruptured, falling back to the earth, into the walls at my sides. Into stone. The snow all around me and down the length of the alley melted in a rush. I dropped to my knees, sucking air. The power I had called dwindled into nothing, a dissipating fog.
“Thorn?” The voice was muffled.
Gasping, I wiped the last of the attacker's foul blood onto the gray cloth covering Rupert. With a metal-on-leather grating, I sheathed the blade, knelt, and unwrapped my friend. His face was bloodied, a purple-red bruise beside his right eye. “What happened?” he asked, his words slurred.
“I don't know,” I said. And then I caught the faint after-stink. The black aura smelled, leaving a trace of its origins. A hint of Powers and Principalities.
“Glory and infamy,”
I whispered and then wished I hadn't cursed. They had used neomage moves, which meant a rogue mage had been training them. A mage had gone over to Darkness.
Chapter 10
F
ootsteps crashed at the mouth of the alley. I whipped halfway to my feet. Audric stood there, bare chested, framed in the opening like a black godling staring down the mouth of hell. A katana longsword and a wakazashi shortsword were crossed at groin level. A fighting stance. In an instant, I drew on my drained amulets to blank my skin, damped my mage-sight, and dropped back to the alley. Melted snow soaked into my pants. My indoor shoes were dripping. Shivers gripped hard in the aftermath of adrenaline loss. I was freezing, skin aching, teeth chattering.
Knees flexed, Audric advanced at an angle, allowing him a partial view of the street behind, repositioning the longsword to cover the entrance as he moved. He inspected the length of the alley, the wet cobblestones even now freezing over, the rock wall exploded out, revealing the webbing of ancient wood slaths. He looked at me.
I gathered up the gray cloth that had been tossed over Rupert. It carried the reek of Darkness in the smear of blood, and my hands ached when I touched it, but I balled it up and tucked it beneath my tunic as I helped Rupert to sit. He was groggy, confused, and the bruise at his temple was a rising lump.
A screech of wood echoed in the alley and voices sounded from above. Audric lifted the katana as if to ward off attack, before instantly lowering both weapons and hiding them along the lengths of his legs. Over our heads, two mostly bald octogenarians started speaking at once. “You folks okay?”
“That wall jist fell right on out.”
“Dang, woman, I see it.”
“I tolt you that wall needed attention. The mortar was rotten. Now them people are hurt. You folks need a medic?”
“Yeah, you tolt me. You always telling me something or other.”
“Rupert?” When he shook his head, I said, “We're fine. No one's hurt. But your wall needs repair.” Actually, it now needed to be replaced, but I didn't point that out.
“Fine, then. Glad you're all okay. And we got us a son what's a stonemason. You change your mind, you need help, you bang on the shop door at front.” The couple, still bickering about the mortar, lowered the window with a second screech. Only after the window closed did I recognize the proprietors of the bakery. It was the bakery's wall I had destroyed. I scented yeast and fresh bread on the morning air.
Audric relaxed his stance and rested his weapons as he advanced the rest of the way to us. His skin was puckered with cold, steam radiating off his chest. “Rupert? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Woozy.” He braced his arms and looked down his body. “I'm all wet. What happened to the snow?”
“Thorn happened.”
The blood in my veins froze. What had Audric seen? He hadn't been hereâ
“The wall can be rationalized, but we need to get you two away from this spot before anyone notices the melt. Can you walk?”
“Sure. Help me up.” Rupert raised his hand.
Audric slid the wakazashi into his belt and lifted Rupert. I stood up alone. “Audricâ”
“Not now.”
“Yeah. Later.”
Much later. Like never, maybe?
The swords disappeared into the folds of Audric's pants leg for the short walk. No one looked out a window to see two wet and wretched people and one nearly naked man. It was as if we moved beneath a cloak of invisibility or as if the light of the rising sun bent around us and vanished.
Heat blasted us as we entered Thorn's Gems. I shuddered hard, slipping off my shoes. My feet were so cold even the floor felt heated.
“Get dry and warm,” Audric ordered. I ran upstairs and locked myself in. What had he seen? What had Audric meant when he said,
Thorn happened
? I unsheathed my blade, recoiling at the stink on the steel. Wiping it hadn't removed the microscopic traces of blood.
Mage-fast, hoping to generate body heat, I pulled a bag of salt to me, one that had been used often, mostly to close circles of power, and plunged the mage-made steel into the bag. Brimstone burned my nose as the blood was cleansed. When I pulled the blade free, salt clung to the cutting edge. I held it beneath springwater in the sink as the final traces of blood were neutralized. I quickly opened a bottle of lightweight oil and wiped down the blade. It needed more attention, but the oil would hold it temporarily. To remove traces of spelled blood from the sheath, I poured salt inside and touched a little-used amulet at my neck. There was barely enough strength left in the stone to clean the inside of the walking stick. When I banged the sheath, pouring the salt down the sink, it had grayed, losing its savor.
The smell of evil was still in the cloth the attackers left behind. I could use it to track them. I could use it to scry. And so could they to me. It wasn't safe to keep or use.
I knelt and turned the fireplace flames up high. With my ceremonial knife, I cut the fabric, removing the bloodiest sections, and tossed the contaminated cloth on the flames. The stink would rise and be swept away by winter winds. Let them try and track it to me. It wouldn't be possible unless they had planned well in advance. The stink of evil wafted up the chimney.
The rest of the cloth, still tainted but less powerful, wasn't something that could be tracked easily, though I smelled brimstone and knew it contained traces of blood. I stuffed it into a stone jar, sealed the top, and wedged it into the bag of salt. It was effectively insulated until I needed it. No one could track it, not through the salt. I marked the bag with a black
X
.
Only then did I strip out of the wet clothes, hanging them in front of the fireplace to dry, re-dressing in warm underleggings and slacks. I wore navy this time, which wouldn't clash too badly with the teal tunic and ocean-toned scarf. My hair was mussed and I braided it hastily. I was shaking. A pale glow seeped from my skin.
My amulets were almost barren. I had panicked and drawn on them, all of them, wasting their power. I was shaking with after-battle fatigue, cold, even after moving with heat-generating speed. I was too drained to restore both the amulets and myself. Audric had seen me glow.
Because tainted salt wouldn't affect every incantation, I picked up the salt marked TRUTH/LUST and formed a small circle on the kitchen floor, not bothering to move the table, but sitting half under it in my exhaustion. I didn't have the resources to call on the power of the deeps, or to fight the temptation to steal power and force for my own if I did. So I settled on recharging the amulets I needed most.
Neomage amulets can be set up as empty vessels waiting for any incantation one might need, as if formatting a hard crystal disc for information storage. Or they can be adapted with a permanent matrix, as if an incantation or computer program is permanently etched in the crystal matrix of the stone or shell or whatever is used to hold the conjure. Such amulets are preprogrammed for only one purpose and can be refilled after each use. The latter version of amulet making is time-consuming, requiring several days, sometimes even several mages, to make one, but they hold an incantation and the power needed to fuel it much better.
Most of my amulets are the latter sort. I live alone. I require greater protection than a neomage living in Enclave, and when blizzards blow in, isolating us for days at a time, I have the freedom to make them. In Enclave, a mage might have hundreds of lesser amulets, each charged for a different use. To keep my secret, I made do with a few major ones. I dropped my necklace of amulets at my ashen blue toes with a clatter. My feet were an agony, but I could immerse them in warm water later.
With an effort of will, I called up mage-sight and added the last of the salt, closing the circle with a soft pop. The loft glowed, but dimly, as my own depleted forces dulled my perception of other energies. Too tired to think, I tried to pull energy from beneath my feet. Instead, a seductive lavender heat throbbed at me, pulsing power that soothed and enchanted. The amethyst in the storeroom.
It flowed up my body like a lover finally allowed an intimacy, heating my chilled limbs, even my frozen feet, my aching hands. Too fatigued to refuse the easy lure of such readily available power, I let it touch me, a sultry warmth. I didn't have to pull in the energy; it simply flowed in, like my own blood returned to me, my own strength, power, and life force. It quickly restored my strength, heated my cold body, then passed into the amulets at my pinkening toes. As I watched, my mage-sight swirling lavender and gold with tints of fuchsia, the stone in the stockroom recharged my amulets: the fish that held my shield, the elephant carrying the basic charmed circle, the black-and-green-jade bear that was keyed to mute my physical neomage attributes, the larger bear I called on when I needed power from the deeps for some crisis, the cougar carved from red brecciated jasper that offered the glamour I had hidden beneath at the Salvage and Mineral Swap Meet, others. Usually I required a whole day of intense recharging to achieve such restoration, and another two days to fill the amulets. Drawing on the amethyst, I was renewed in minutes, the amulets only a few minutes later. And still the power flowed, as if begging me to take it, so tempting.