“The Taint! That was you, before—but how? Adults can’t—”
Dev thrust an arm at him. A charm band covered in intricate sigils gleamed on his wrist. “Thanks to Simon. Guess that blacksouled viper was good for something after all.” He grimaced, his hands fisting. Creaks and pops echoed from the tree. The trunk shuddered, groaned, and toppled toward Ruslan’s crumpled body.
“No!” Kiran threw out a hand. A blaze of lightning speared up from burning grass and shattered the trunk to cinders.
Dev rounded on him, eyes burning with startled anger. “What the fuck?”
“You can’t kill him that way! Even unconscious, he’ll instinctively draw power to heal any injury you inflict—and your
ikilhia
is the easiest source! You’d be the one to die, not him.”
Dev’s glare turned skeptical. “Smacking him into a tree worked, no problem.”
“Only because the surprise broke his focus right as I struck with magic. His shielding spells absorbed the impact with the tree—he’s not physically injured.” This was only a brief reprieve; already, Ruslan’s
ikilhia
grew brighter. Hastily, Kiran drew in further draughts of confluence power to replenish his depleted reserves, readying himself to fight. “He’ll wake soon. You need to get out of here, now!”
“Not without you.” Dev shoved Kiran toward the forest. “If we can’t kill him, then for Khalmet’s sake, run!”
Kiran dug in his heels. “Running won’t help. He’ll find me the moment he wakes—better if I stay and fight while you run—”
Dev yanked his shirt down at the neck, exposing Lizaveta’s amulet. “Recognize this?”
“
That’s
how you survived when I disrupted Simon’s spell!” The amulet, designed to divert magical energies around its wearer like water flowing past a rounded stone...Simon had surely left it on Dev to prevent damage to his “useful subject” from the heightened energies produced by channeled spellcasting. The amulet shouldn’t have been enough to save Dev, not against a backlash of that magnitude. But Ruslan must have drawn off enough power through Kiran’s mark-binding link to inadvertently save Dev’s life as well as Kiran’s.
“If you say so.” Dev handed the amulet to Kiran. “Just tell me it still works.”
Two more gemstones were blackened, and deep scorch marks marred the silver, but if the pattern remained intact...hope rekindled, with painful force. Kiran’s heart pounded as he concentrated his inner sight.
“It works.” He slipped the amulet on, dizzy with relief.
“Thank Khalmet.” Dev pulled him into a stumbling run across the meadow.
About to raise his barriers, Kiran hesitated. The magic of the charm on Dev’s wrist was a whisper nearly inaudible beneath the powerful throb of the confluence—but it held an odd, dissonant resonance. Frowning, he narrowed his focus to exclude the earth-energies swamping his senses, though the effort tripped his feet.
Spiky lines of sickly green energy snaked throughout Dev’s body in a way he’d never seen. Dev’s
ikilhia
burned fever-bright in some places, mottled by dark spots in others.
Dev’s grip tightened. “Less daydreaming, more leaving.”
“That charm—something’s not right,” Kiran panted. You should remove it—”
“Take off my one advantage against Ruslan? Hell, no.” Dev yanked Kiran onward. “Simon’s horse is long gone, after all this excitement. We’ve gotta go on foot. Thank Khalmet the sky’s clear and we’ve got a good moon.” He halted just inside the trees. “Hold on, let me get my pack—we’ll need the water and food.”
He stretched out a hand. A pack flew out of the darkness straight into his grip. Dev slung it on, winced, spat, then jogged off through moonlit trees.
“Dev, wait...” Kiran tried to catch up, tripping over roots and rocks in the shadows. “If you can use the Taint again—you can fly, right? You should leave me and go—”
Dev shook his head. “It’s fading,” he said, sounding angry. “The further we go, the less I feel—” he gave a sharp shrug, and hurried on.
Of course—the Taint used confluence energy. Though veins of earth power yet coiled beneath Kiran’s feet, they were far weaker than the abundance present in the meadow. Kiran reluctantly rebuilt his barriers, wishing he dared leave them down to monitor Dev’s
ikilhia
. Those dark spots worried him.
“If the Taint’s fading, then take off the charm,” he called.
“Not so long as I feel as single speck’s worth,” Dev snapped, and picked up his pace.
Kiran scrambled after, a new concern rising. Dev was heading straight back down the valley. Surely that would be the first direction Ruslan searched. “Shouldn’t we climb out of the valley? Where are we going?”
“Alathia,” Dev said succinctly.
“Through the gate?” Kiran couldn’t help the sharp way it came out. He emphatically did not want to take any more hennanwort, or place himself helpless in another’s hands.
Dev’s teeth showed white in a grin. “I hope not.” He untucked his shirt and drew out silver crusted with gemstones. “That Taint charm isn’t the only one of Simon’s I’ve got.”
Kiran gasped, recognizing the charm Simon had used to cross the border. “Where did you get that?”
“Once a thief, always a thief,” Dev said. He coughed, then admitted, “Actually, I stumbled over it. Crawled over it, more like, on my way out of that rockfall. Damn thing has seriously sharp edges.” He held it out to Kiran. “Can you use it?”
Kiran touched the charm with a cautious finger. An astonishing amount of power lay within the metal, far more than even a channeled spell could have bound. The spell pattern was strange, covered in tangled, multiple layers as if Simon had laid new pathways overtop of old ones.
The pattern was too complex to fully analyze without long study, but the activation and power pathways were clear. Unlike most charms, this one wouldn’t work for an untalented man—from what he could sense, it needed a mage to constantly feed in power—but he didn’t have to understand the entire design to use the charm. He’d have to drop his barriers, but if the mark-binding link remained unstable, he might hold Ruslan off long enough to cross the border safely.
“I think so.”
Dev gave a gusty sigh of relief and shoved the charm in his pack. “Speaking of Simon’s magic...want to tell me what happened back in that cave?”
“It’s a little hard to explain.” Kiran’s breath came short as he clambered over the massive hulk of a fallen cinnabar trunk.
“Skip to the good part,” Dev said. “He’s truly dead?”
“Yes,” Kiran said, with savage satisfaction. His memory of Simon’s casting held only fragmented flashes of fire and agony, but he knew well enough what had happened. No channeler could have contained that amount of backlash—Simon had been destroyed utterly, in the same manner he’d intended to destroy Ruslan. Kiran’s satisfaction faded, and he shivered. Simon had come terribly close to success.
“Well, thank Khalmet for that.” Dev coughed, muffling the sound with his hands. “I guess Sechaveh and everyone else in Ninavel can rest easy.”
Surprise slowed Kiran’s steps. “You knew what Simon planned to do in Ninavel?”
“Overheard him talking to Pello, in Kost. And later, Pello told me more. Turns out Pello was working for Sechaveh, all along.”
“Sechaveh!” Kiran nearly fell face first over a log. “But Pello wouldn’t help free me, even though I offered to release him from Simon’s binding!”
“He said Simon stopped him—but yeah, I didn’t believe him either, until he gave me the hair he snatched off you at Ice Lake. I’d not have tracked you to Simon’s cabin without it.”
Dev, coming so far and facing Simon alone, all to help him...Kiran was profoundly grateful, but he still didn’t understand Dev’s motive, after Dev had handed Kiran to Gerran without so much as a warning. “You didn’t answer me before, when I asked why.”
“If you’re asking why I helped sell you to Simon, it’s a long story. The short version is, I needed the money to save someone who’s got no hope, otherwise.” Dev’s voice was tight. “If you’re asking why I came back...” He shrugged, awkwardly. “Look, I heard you talking to Ruslan in that cave. You told him you didn’t want to be the kind of person he is. Well, back in Kost I decided I don’t want to be that kind of person, either.”
“Thank you.” Kiran said it quietly, but knew from the sudden rigidity of Dev’s shoulders that he’d heard.
“Don’t thank me yet,” Dev said. “We’ve still gotta cross the border.”
The forest thickened, the moonlight fading. Kiran barked his shins on rocks and slipped on pine needles, an uneasy mixture of fear and hope churning in his chest. Ruslan must have awoken by now. He’d waste no time in hunting them, and he’d have all the energy of the meadow’s confluence to fuel spells.
Spells...where was Mikail? Surely Ruslan wouldn’t have come alone to Simon’s valley.
“I can hear the river.” Dev’s dark form halted at the edge of a moonlit clearing.
Relief scattered Kiran’s thoughts. He’d assumed the faint rushing noise was the sound of wind in pines. “How far to the border?”
“Quarter mile.” Dev’s voice had a brittle quality that brought Kiran’s concern flooding back. He hurried forward, hoping to glimpse Dev’s face.
Dev strode into the clearing. Halfway across, he stopped and doubled over in a series of harsh, tearing coughs. When he straightened, he ducked out of the moonlight, but not before Kiran saw the blood staining his mouth and chin.
“Dev! You’re hurt—why didn’t you say?”
Dev spat and wiped blood away. “Wasn’t so bad, before. Guess you were right about that charm.”
“Take it off!” Kiran grabbed for Dev’s wrist.
Dev jerked his arm away. “No! It’s still working, I can still feel—”
“Don’t be a fool!” Kiran snatched again for the charm. “The Taint won’t help you if you collapse before we reach the border!”
Reluctantly, Dev brought his wrist forward. “Fine,” he muttered. “You’ll have to do it. I don’t know the word to stop the magic.”
Kiran laid a hand on the charm. The pattern was horribly complex. “How did you activate it, then?”
Dev shrugged, scowling. “Mikail did it.”
“
Mikail
helped you?” Kiran’s hand fell from the charm.
“He said he didn’t want you to kill yourself fighting Ruslan.”
A pang squeezed Kiran’s heart, before a wave of bitterness crested. Mikail’s help couldn’t be trusted. He might not want Kiran to die, but he’d never want Kiran to escape. Kiran grasped the silver band with renewed urgency.
His stomach turned cold and hollow as he grasped the spell’s intent. The charm drastically altered the
ikilhia
of the wearer, presumably in a manner that restored a formerly Tainted adult’s childhood abilities—but did so by savaging the body’s organs. Simon wouldn’t have cared if his experiments killed his
nathahlen
subjects.
Curse Simon, where had he hidden the suppression pathway? Kiran sorted frantically through tangled spirals...
there
.
The band dulled and loosened. Kiran yanked the charm over Dev’s hand, even as Dev made a grab for it.
“Are you insane?” Kiran held the charm out of reach. “The charm was killing you! You shouldn’t even touch it again.” More than ever, he regretted his ignorance of healing spells. What if Dev had already sustained fatal damage?
Dev’s hands fisted, his eyes fixed on the charm. For an instant Kiran feared Dev would fight him for it. But Dev’s shoulders slumped, and he turned away. One hand crept to his stomach. He coughed and spat again, blood dark on the pine needles.
Kiran wanted nothing more than to throw the charm into the forest, but Mikail might be hoping for that—once the charm was away from Kiran’s amulet, Ruslan might detect it, even deactivated as it was. And now Kiran was too far from the meadow confluence to mount a successful defense.
“Let me carry your pack,” Kiran said. Wordlessly, Dev handed it to him. His lack of protest worried Kiran even more than the blood. “Will you be able to—”
“I’ll be fine!” Dev snapped, and started off again, as if to prove it.
Springy-branched bushes choked their path as the rush of the river grew louder. Dev forced his way through with grim determination. Kiran’s worry grew deeper yet at the awkwardness of his movements. At last the bushes thinned to reveal a grassy bank. The river beyond ran deep and fast, the other shore more than a hundred feet away, dimly visible through a bank of mist in the sourceless light of approaching dawn.
Dev groaned. “Damn it! Too dangerous to swim, and too far to jump between rocks.”
The deep, soundless thrumming of Alathian border magic penetrated Kiran’s barriers. The border must lie only a short distance past the far bank. He looked at Dev, whose mouth was a tight line, his body hunched in pain.
“I can get us across,” Kiran said quietly.
“How? You can’t—” Dev’s head tilted. “Oh. You mean with magic. Won’t that bring Ruslan down on us, if he’s back in action?”
Kiran nodded. “But the mark-binding link shouldn’t be fully stable yet, so he can’t attack me that way. If we hurry, we have a chance of crossing the border before he can physically arrive. The meadow confluence isn’t powerful enough to fuel a translocation spell. There are other ways to speed travel, not quite as fast, but still...” It would be close. But Dev’s condition was worsening rapidly—he needed help. Even if Ruslan came, Kiran might hold a gap long enough for Dev to reach safety, at least.
Dev coughed, wetly, and gave a sharp chuckle. “Well, I’ve been doing nothing but taking chances, lately.” Blood showed black on his teeth.
“Do you have a knife?”
Dev fumbled at his belt and produced a fingerlength blade. He watched, frowning, as Kiran sliced a line down one palm. “Do you have to cut yourself every time you work magic?”
“No, but it makes the power draw easier and more efficient if I do.” Kiran pulled the amulet off. The magic of his intended spell might be the final blow that broke the amulet’s pattern, if he wore it while casting. “The blood makes a sympathetic link between me and the power source.”
“Right,” Dev said, sounding blank, as Kiran handed him the amulet. He shook his head. “Here I thought all the finger-pricking to make charms work was annoying. That looks way more painful.”