Bloodring (22 page)

Lucas lay on the thin mattress in his prison cell, ankles crossed, one arm behind his head, his gaze locked on the bars, barely visible in the faint red haze from the passageway. Six bars ran vertically from the rock at the top and into the rock at the bottom. So far as he had been able to tell, there was no door. And no lock. So how was Malashe-el able to enter the cell? How was the other one, who tapped his blood, able to come and go? Before he was fed, he had been too drained to think, to ask questions, or to watch. Lately, he was always asleep when they came and went. Were they drugging him?

Something flashed by in the passageway, demon-fast. Several others followed, feet scurrying, brushing the passages, leaving behind the stink of burned things. He caught a wisp of sound, hollow and atonal, “Mage-heat. Mage-heat. Time, time, time . . .”

 
Together we forded the Toe to the old Pinebridge Complex. The river, only a trickle in winter, was already growing stronger in the fast melt. The complex's parking lot had been plowed, leaving huge mounds of snow and ice at the periphery. Melting slush trickled across the exposed blacktop. From both sides of the Toe, cars began to roar in: trucks, snow-Elbile, and El-cars—the battery-solar-powered vehicles that had proven so efficient since the reduction of the petroleum industry. People appeared from everywhere for the traditional, impromptu party, held when winter took a break from torturing us.

Tables were pulled out of the complex buildings and, like magic, food appeared, heaping platters of bread, muffins, salvers of bacon, jellies on one table, canned vegetables and sweets on another. Wonderful food, brought to be shared. A side of beef, freshly slaughtered, turned on a spit.

A table was set aside for surplus foodstuff. Hoarding was a sin, punishable by kirk sanctions, but over the course of the long winter, everyone ran out of something, and early thaws allowed us to bring out whatever we had in surplus. From Audric's bag came jars of strawberry preserves, a box of dried mushrooms, raisins, and three quart jars of canned pumpkin. Five women manning the surplus table descended on the offerings and laid them out with the others. As the crowd increased, people gathered around the food, eating their fill.

School had been called off and children were sledding in their shirtsleeves, joined by some of the younger adults. Storytelling had begun, and in a far corner, dancing. I saw Ciana and Marla, holding hands, laughing as they watched a teenager wearing a red clown nose trying to juggle. Ciana spotted me and waved before pulling away from Marla and running to a group of her friends. One girl had a long sled and the group raced up a nearby hill, pulling the sled behind them with a cord. Dogs barked.

Crafts and household items were set up in a flea market. A table appeared with fresh-baked pies; barkers carrying trays sold beer and meat-on-a-stick. We ate and visited with old friends and ate some more. Competitions started between groups of men, throwing cabers and a beer barrel filled with concrete. Mage-heat made me drowsy and itchy, made all the sweaty men appear so much . . . more. I basked in people watching, man watching, ignoring Audric's eyes on me. Hours passed as the sun beat down. Eventually, we ended up at the edge of the dance floor—the cracked and abraded parking lot. I leaned into Rupert as couples formed up, toes tapping to the beat of bagpipe, fiddle, and guitar.

The mage-heat was lessening as distance from the kylen persisted, and I could breathe easier, though my memories of the early morning were pretty blurry. Rupert said nothing else about my strangeness, so I was pretty sure I hadn't tried to take off my clothes and attack Thadd in the street. I also assumed Audric had given him a convincing story to explain my actions. Weirdness on top of weirdness. The story of my life.

The dancing started, a dozen couples whirling into a high-stepping clog, the beat of the dancers' feet like forty-eight drums on the frozen pavement. The music began to flow faster, and the dancing took on the air of a contest. My senses stirred. The sun continued to climb, warmer and brighter, glaring off the piled, packed snow. The townspeople and those from the rural hills continued to gather, a brightly dressed crowd in a holiday mood. Even the orthodox were dressed in light gray—a spring treat.

I caught the scent of beer and wine and a whiff of moonshine; the smell of roasting meat drifted over it all. The dancers' sweat was ripe in my nostrils, and when Audric put a package of dried fruit in my hand, I smelled raisins, apricots, bananas, berries, and apple. My friends smelled of roasted meat. My sense of smell was sharper than I ever remembered it. A side effect of mage-heat? Of taking too much amethyst?

The music raced, and the speed of the steps eliminated the less athletic. Couples fell away from the dance floor, exhausted. One man, slim and delicate, only a few inches taller than I, caught my attention as he twirled his partner into a fast spin. He was dark haired, with odd, amber-colored eyes. He wore a day-old beard on a deeply tanned face and moved with a grace that was almost more than human, fast and elegant. He looked like an Internet ad for men's cologne, wearing tight-fitting jeans and navy cowboy boots, a flannel shirt open at the collar, chest hair curling out. I wanted to curl the hair around my fingers to see whether it was as soft as it looked.

Seeing the direction of my gaze, and maybe my mouth hanging open, Rupert nudged me. “Eli Walker. Got a profitable feldspar mine a little south of here. Does some tracking for the kirk and the cops. Pretty, huh.”

“Oh, yeah,” I whispered, picturing the man at a different kind of dance.

When the sixth number finished, only four couples were left standing, including the miner, Eli. They all bowed, and the gathering, which had grown to nearly a thousand, cheered the winners. I stood on the edge of the dance floor, silent, unmoving, staring. As he stood, I caught his eye and he paused. A woman handed him a cowboy hat, and Eli turned his attention to her a moment, flashing her a smile that I felt all the way to my toes. I wanted him to look at me like that, dangerous and tough, self-assured, just a little cruel. I wanted him to bite me, oh so gently, with his strong white teeth.
Oh, yeah.

The sweating dancers left the floor and Audric moved closer. “Can you dance, little mage?” he asked softly. “Do you know the dances of Enclave?”

I remembered the beat of Enclave drums in my blood, the wild, almost violent, music. “It's been so long,” I murmured, eyes half closed with desire and memories. And the underlying pull of the amethyst. And the kylen. Eli. My blood thrummed.

Audric raised his voice to the musicians. “Can you pitiful excuse for a band play ‘The Dragon's Demise'?” The other dancers laughed at the challenge in his voice and gathered around the floor to watch. Audric thrust out his chest and paced the floor. I began to wake up, as if I had been trapped in a dream.

The fiddler called back, “We can play anything, mister. But you have to be more than just a dancer to keep pace with us on that one. Big man like you would collapse in a faint just trying.”

“Wager!” Audric shouted.

“Think you're up to it?” The fiddler swept into a glissando, sharp and piercing, and the bagpipe player put his disjointed instrument on a stand and picked up a guitar, following the passage with flying fingers. The banjo player retook her seat, and a mouth organ sounded a train whistle.

“The little woman and I can outdance you all,” Audric replied.

“A gamble, then!” the harmonica player called.

“Ten pounds of beef and a keg of the best beer if we outlast and outdance you.”

“And if you lose?”

“We'll not lose. But if we do, I have five Pre-Ap hammers and a case of unrusted nails, dead-mined from my own claim.”

“What are you doing?” I asked while the musicians and the owner of the cow conferred.

“Done!” the fiddler shouted, and instantly exploded into the first notes of “The Dragon's Demise.”

“Tiring you out, little mage.” Audric grabbed my hand and whirled me; I slammed into him. His huge hand secured me to his body as he stepped across the dance floor, fingers splayed on my back. “Dance,” he commanded.

Years dropped away in an instant and I found the steps to “The Dragon's Demise,” body flying fast, held in check only by Audric and his human speed.

The dance started with a tango of teasing, the story of Adam and Eve, the Pre-Ap, flawless world. It moved into the temptation and the fall, the dance a parody of the beginning moments of the apocalypse, a perfect world annihilated by the Most High, furious at the evil of humans. The pace of the dance sped up with the appearance of the seraphs, minutes passed as we danced the plagues, the wars, and the arrival of the first demons. I fled, keeping the beat, resisting as he pulled me into his arms, whirled me away, faster and faster. I was sweating, breathing so hard my lungs ached. The pace increased as we danced the end of the world.

I could hear the handclap rhythm of the audience, picked out the sound of bets being placed. Knew we were on the edge of giving ourselves away. “Audric,” I gasped.

“I know,” he said, his face full of joy and passion. “Just a little more.” And he followed the music into the final segment of the dance, already too fast, too frenzied. In the sequence of the Last Battle, he added a half dozen steps, forcing the cadence of the music even faster. Mage-quick, I followed. It was an Enclave move, but it looked like improvisation to the humans, and they shouted with laughter and encouragement.

“One more,” he said as he twirled past. And I knew what he intended. He was adding the story of the mages into the dance, a version of the Dragon's Demise as told only at Enclave. I stamped my heels and spun in a tight circle, arms over my head, face to the sun.

Audric leapt past me like a runner, toes pointed. In midair he threw up his hand and brought it down, the motion mimicking the first recorded action of the Mage War, the signal given by the U.S. Army general as he ordered an aerial bombardment of fifty teenage mages. Midwhirl, I leapt straight at the sky, the symbol of the missile of mage-power that struck at the U.S. troops. Audric fell to the ground in a ball, thousands killed in an instant. I landed and swept a leg over him, turned my back to him and fell backward, toward him. Just as it looked as though I might fall across him, he rose and caught my wrists, letting me down to the ground slowly, body tight with the vision of death and agony.

As I slid slowly, so slowly to the ground, our bodies in tune to each other, the band faltered, a missed note. Triumphant, Audric tossed me upright and spread his arms wide, the story of seraph wings outstretched. I coiled in the air and landed on my toes, arms curved in a circle around me. And Audric, faster than the music could follow, gathered me up and threw me across the dance floor. I landed in perfect position. We laughed, triumphant. The banjo player lost two beats. The mage-war and victory were steps they had never seen.

At the edge of human endurance, feet moving so fast it seemed that surely he must stumble and fall, Audric slashed with an imaginary sword and spread his wings again, attacking the unseen enemy, a Dragon of Darkness. The fiddler staggered, lost a full beat. Chasing the error, the guitar player missed a lick. The harmonica player began the chorus too soon. Faltering, the band caught the beat again.

Audric stabbed the beast, roaring as the music clanged to a disjointed halt. He held the position as if frozen, one arm out before him, as if his sword were buried in its flesh. For a long, silent moment, neither of us moved, chests heaving, breath so loud it could be heard over the breath of our audience. Then Audric twisted the sword and pulled it, cutting, from the flesh. He danced on tiptoe around the dragon, wrapping it in chains. I waved my body slowly from side to side, exhausted, the mages about to fall.

The beast chained, Audric turned to me and gently took my hand, a suitor once again. I lifted my chin, sad but victorious. We walked around the circle, hands joined, held out in front of us, a dignified gavotte as mages and seraphs had departed the battlefield together, leaving the field of victory to the few humans still standing.

The crowd shouted and whistled and swarmed us. The band abandoned their instruments and followed. Audric laughed and bowed, pulling me down with him. And as I bent, I saw Thaddeus Bartholomew in the gathering, his eyes on me. But my heat was gone.

As we rose, Ciana threw her arms around my waist, hugging me hard. “I didn't know you could dance like that!” she squealed. “That was so cool!”

Over the head of my stepchild, I met Audric's eyes and knew he had danced away my heat, knowingly. Which meant he had figured out who had triggered my heat and, therefore, what Thadd was. He knew too much.

A kirk elder climbed on top of a table and cupped his hands around his mouth. He shouted, “Thaw rest and sun-day is over. Remember and find solace.” Traditional words that meant a return to the real world, a return to school and kirk and work. Except the sun still shone and water still dripped, the resonance of spring.

 
That night, exhausted but far more relaxed than in days, I sat in a basic charmed circle, the
Book of Workings
at my feet. Beyond the first section, the part I had completed when my gift fell upon me and forced me out of Enclave, I had never thoroughly studied the reference used by all neomages. It was divided into thirds. The first third, titled “Common Things,” dealt with incantations for everyday life, heating water, incantations for fire, storing a charmed circle, creating a shield of protection, storing strength. The second portion, “Workings Together,” was for midlevel mages, those who had mastered basic incantations, could use their gifts without endangering themselves or others, and could work in concert with other mages, empowering—or even creating—new incantations for specific purposes. Midlevel mages used part two to steer a hurricane to someplace where rain was needed, or to put out a forest fire. Higher-level, individual workings were also here, like the instructions for creating a prime amulet, one tied to one person's DNA, and the guide for creating a glamour, and the incantation for healing a seraph with minor battle damage and burns. The final section of the
Book of Workings
was titled “Warfare.” For the most part, it was bloody stuff.