“You’re telling me that charm is so powerful you can walk right past another mage, and they won’t notice a thing?” Hard to believe, but it’d sure make my life easier if so.
Kiran stiffened. “There’s an actual mage at the border?”
My foot twitched with the desire to kick him. How in Khalmet’s name could a mage be this dumb? “Of
course
there’s a mage! Who the fuck did you think enforces all those ridiculous rules about magical imports?”
He glared at me as he eased down another slick gully. “The books I read about Alathia only discussed the border wards,” he said, tightly. “When I asked Bren if a crossing was possible for me, he didn’t seem to think there’d be a problem.”
“Bren knew you were a mage, then.”
Kiran nodded. I remembered Bren’s broad, smug smile, and scowled all the harder. Shaikar take that weaselly bastard! No wonder he’d rolled over on my demand for more profit. I should’ve known he was hiding a complication dangerous as this.
Then again, maybe Bren’s knowledge was a much-needed spark of good news. He wouldn’t have agreed to arrange passage if a crossing wasn’t possible. Unless he’d never meant us to make it...but no. If the Alathians caught us at the border, when they put me under truth spell they’d find out all about Bren and Gerran’s illegal trade, and Bren would lose a fortune. Besides, he wouldn’t have bothered with those extra instructions and warnings on discretion if he didn’t think I’d get Kiran into Kost.
A sharp line had formed between Kiran’s brows. “Do you believe there’s a way for me to cross the border?”
Oh,
now
he’d figured out Bren might’ve lied. My reasons why Bren hadn’t weren’t fit to share, based as they were on his covert instructions. Instead, I spoke with as much confidence as I could muster.
“There’s always a way. The border itself might be stronger than the walls of Shaikar’s innermost hell, but the detection spells at the gate aren’t exactly foolproof.” Though I wasn’t so sanguine I could figure how to fox them well enough to sneak a mage through before Ruslan hunted us down and burned me to ash.
I squeezed between two close-set pines and stopped short. The granite slab beneath my feet ended in thin air. Beyond, the slope dropped away in broken cliffs to the heavily forested floor of the canyon. Tatters of mist trailed off treetops in a sinuous line that marked the course of the river hidden beneath their boughs. The western side of Garnet’s great U-shaped trench held no cliffs, but the slope was wickedly steep nonetheless. Red fir and bristlebark pines crowded the lower slopes, thinning out and disappearing some thousand feet below the serrated ridges of the peaks that stretched to meet the brightening sky.
“Where do we go once we get down?” Kiran sounded daunted.
I unlaced my pack and pulled out harnesses and rope. “We’ll ford the river, then climb out the canyon to the cirque below Bearjaw Peak.” I pointed to a hulking mountain with a host of spires sticking up from its north ridge like crooked fangs. “On Bearjaw’s north ridge, see the little notch between the two largest spires? That’s what we’re aiming for.”
Kiran’s gaze followed my finger. “That looks, um.” He paused, and I could see him rejecting all the words like
impossible
and
insane
. He finally settled on “Steep.”
“The climb to the notch isn’t as bad as it seems.” Hidden behind a buttress was a protected rock chimney with plentiful, solid holds, a climb even a novice like Kiran should be able to manage with the occasional assist. Khalmet willing, we’d make the cirque tonight, then ascend to the notch early the following morning while the avalanche danger was lowest. “I’ve never met anyone else who knew Bearjaw has a viable route. When Ruslan asks, he’ll hear about the easier unnamed passes down south of the trail. If Khalmet favors us, he’ll assume we’ve headed for one of those, and send his searchers that way.”
Not something I intended to count on, though. I scanned the canyon as I worked, searching for any telltale glints from a spyglass. Ruslan’s searchers shouldn’t have reached the depths of the canyon yet, but Pello could’ve, with his head start. Hopefully he’d stuck to the trail, which switchbacked down a slope far to the south, but if he hadn’t...I sighed, and dropped my clutch of pitons back into my pack. Far slower and more difficult to use natural anchors like trees to set the rappels, but I didn’t dare leave a trail of metal pitons, not to mention the noise of hammering them into rock.
Kiran put on his harness and began uncoiling the rope. I caught another glimpse of the healed skin of his hands. Far as I could tell, not a trace of the ragged-edged cuts remained.
“What kind of mages are you and Ruslan, anyway?” I didn’t know what the different types of mages called themselves, but streetside storytellers had long ago come up with a bunch of nicknames loosely based on the materials mages used to fuel their spells. Wind mages, earth mages, metal mages, crystal mages, song mages...the list was endless, and gods knew I was no expert. But for one of the major types, maybe I could sift enough truth from tavern stories to give me an independent idea of what I was dealing with.
“What?” His hands slackened on the hemp coils.
“How do you raise power?” In Ninavel, you knew right off by the style of sigils on a mage’s clothes. Without that obvious clue, I was lost.
Kiran lowered his head and attacked the rope again. “I was trained to use forces that exist deep within the earth.”
Earth mage or sand mage, maybe. Only middling powerful, if you believed the stories—and without the horrific reputation of the strongest mages. Yet even a middling powerful mage was dangerous beyond any enemy I’d faced before. My stomach set to jumping all over again. “And Ruslan?”
Kiran’s mouth thinned. “He is the same.”
“But stronger and more experienced,” I said, sourly. At least I hadn’t made an enemy of a bone mage, or worse—a blood mage. I hid a shudder, remembering the contemptuous malice I’d seen in the smile of that cold-eyed bastard on Eranya Street.
“Yes.” Kiran gave a vicious yank on his harness belt knot. “I’m ready.”
I stepped into my own harness, after a last glance up and down the canyon. The sooner we finished the rappels and got back under cover in the trees, the happier I’d be.
***
Sunlight flooded the canyon by the time we made it down the final cliff. Kiran handled the rappels far better than I’d feared, though his exhaustion was plain in the cautious slowness of his rope handling and the shadows under his eyes.
No telling if anybody had spotted us. The instant we stowed the climbing gear, I set out over the canyon floor toward the river. The forest here was easy terrain, the last we’d have for a long while. The trees were all bristlebark pines, ancient and stately, with trunks too broad for one man to reach around. The lowest of their branches soared twenty feet over our heads. On a job once as a kid I’d snuck into the Temple of the Burning Moon, high in the airy sweep of Kahori Tower. The echoing marble chamber with its rows of massive columns had made me feel no bigger than a sandflea; my first sight of bristlebark forest had brought much the same sense of awe. Almost, I wished I could’ve seen Kiran’s reaction to it at a time untainted by our fear of pursuit.
As it was, Kiran hurried along after me with his head down. Occasionally he trailed a hand across a shaggy bristlebark trunk, as if to assure himself its girth was real. Otherwise he hardly seemed to notice his surroundings—until we reached Garnet River. That stopped him dead in his tracks, his eyes wide with a mixture of wonder and dismay.
“How do we get across?” he asked.
Garnet River was only a baby compared to the great waterways of Alathia, but it made the white roar of the stream back in Silverlode Canyon look like a mere trickle. Ten wagonlengths wide and deeper than a man was tall, the river swept along in a deceptively smooth flow that could knock a man off his feet in seconds. The water was clear as daylight; I could see speckled fish hovering in the pebbled shallows. The steep-sided banks were already green with knotweed and fiddlenecks. In a few weeks when the wildflowers blossomed, they’d blaze with color.
“We gotta find a place where we can rock hop, since I’m guessing you can’t swim.”
He gave me a quizzical look. “Can you?”
“Yeah. Not well, though, so don’t count on a quick rescue if you fall in.” I led him through the pines above the riverbank, hunting for a spot where enough scattered boulders poked through the water’s surface to allow a crossing.
“How did you—”
“Another outrider taught me, in mountain lakes.” Which explained why I wasn’t that good. Even in high summer, the lakes that dotted the Whitefires’ cirques could freeze a man’s blood in moments. Sethan had insisted swimming was an important skill for an outrider, but I hadn’t wanted to spend one heartbeat longer in icy lakewater than absolutely necessary.
I hopped down the bank onto a glossy, rounded boulder that overhung the river. Beyond, the water swirled and foamed past the exposed tips of a ragged field of rocks.
“We’ll cross here,” I told Kiran. “I’ll go first, and carry your pack. Once I make the far bank, I’ll let you know if any of the rocks are unstable. The rocks will be slippery, so step slow and make sure each foot is solid. If you slip and fall in, try not to panic. Turn on your back and keep your feet pointed downstream—better for your feet to hit a rock than your head. The river will eventually sweep you into an eddy, and then I can reach you.”
“Can’t we use a rope?” Kiran eyed the river with a distinctly nervous expression.
“If you were tied to a rope and you fell, the force of the water would hold you under, and the rope might get tangled in the rocks. You’d likely drown before I could pull you to shore. I can’t set a handline, either, because the path across zigzags too widely, and the water’s too deep and fast to use a branch as a pole.”
His knuckles were white on his pack straps. Time to play the confident minder. “Look, you’ve done fine on talus and cliffs, and this is easier. No question about where to put your feet. Just take it slow, and you’ll be safe on the riverbank before you know it.”
I made short work of the crossing. Only one rock was dangerously slick, coated in slimy river-weed. I pointed it out to Kiran, shouting over the noise of the water, and waved for him to start. He hopped from rock to rock with tight-faced concentration, his hands spread for balance. One foot slipped when he landed on the weed-covered rock, but he recovered nicely and kept coming. He was only two jumps away from the bank when he stopped short, his head cocked as if he were listening.
I called to him, but he didn’t respond. His body jerked, his eyes rolling up to the whites.
Fuck! I’d seen this last night. I sprang out onto the nearest rock. He was already tipping over. I snagged a sleeve with a desperate lunge, and pulled. He collapsed half onto me, half in the river. The current nearly tore him from my grip, but I heaved backward with a shout, and we toppled onto the bank.
I shoved Kiran off me, and winced, my hand shooting to my left side. From the soreness there, I’d strained a muscle. Gods all damn it, that was just what I needed. I eased to my feet. Nothing else felt more than bruised, at least.
Kiran coughed and pushed himself to his knees, water dripping from his soaked left side.
“Whatever happened to ‘powerful spells take time’?” I dumped a blanket on him. “Dry off with this and then tie anything wet to the outside of your pack. The sun will dry it as we go.”
Kiran put a shaky hand up to his temple. He seemed dazed, but not nearly as bad off as he’d been in the basin. “Ruslan can’t have prepared a properly targeted spell this quickly. He must have brought something general in nature...” He trailed off, his brow furrowing. I waited, but he tugged off his overjacket without speaking again.
“Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand, don’t shut down on me now! What kind of spell did he cast?” Whatever Ruslan had done, I was sure we’d soon regret it.
“I don’t know,” he snapped. “With my barriers up, I can’t
feel
—!” He made a violent, frustrated gesture with one hand.
“Fine, so you can’t tell exactly. Can you make a guess, at least?”
Kiran’s hands locked tight on the blanket’s edge. His gaze turned inward. After another moment, he said slowly, “The magic seemed oddly diffuse, like he meant to spread it over as broad an area as possible. A weather spell, perhaps.”
The sky overhead was pure, innocent blue, though we certainly didn’t have an unobstructed view beneath the screening bristlebark branches. “Weather spell—for what? Rain, lighting, snow, wind?”
He shook his head, his face grim. I sighed. Any of those would be dangerous on a route as exposed as ours, but we couldn’t wait around to find out what Ruslan had in mind. I’d watch the sky for threats as we climbed out of the canyon, and think up a bolthole in case a storm hit.
Kiran bent to tie his wet overjacket to a pack strap.
“Wait—what’s that?” I reached for his shoulder, where a dark stain spread over the wool of his shirt.
“What?” He clutched at his chest as if he thought he might’ve lost the amulet to the river, though the chain still glinted at his collar.
I touched the wet ends of his hair, then sniffed my fingers. “Gods all damn it, your hair dye’s coming out.”
He shrugged, looking relieved. “You used a binding charm to set the dye. The binding was probably disrupted when I pulled power to block the avalanche. Surely it doesn’t matter now?”
“Ruslan already knows you’re in the mountains, yeah, but you can’t go around dripping hair dye all over everything. It stains, and that’ll make the Alathians suspicious.” Damn. Washing it fully out would take far too long. But if Ruslan sent a storm our way, Kiran might stain half his gear.
I decided to compromise. I’d dump a few bowls worth of water over his head now, get the worst of the dye out. Any stains from what remained should be faint enough to explain away.
“Come lean your head over this rock,” I told him. “The river’s not done with you yet.”
***
(Kiran)
Kiran’s teeth chattered as he scrubbed a blanket over his freezing head. He’d been so disoriented from the lash of Ruslan’s magic that he’d barely noticed the river’s icy grip when Dev had dragged him off the rocks. But after enduring multiple bowls of frigid water poured over his head, his entire scalp burned with cold, as badly as if he’d been singed by a backflaring channel.