Fimbulwinter (Daniel Black) (25 page)

magical forces were an addition to normal biology, not a replacement for it.

Living things had a natural magical field that acted as a sort of life force,

affecting and sometimes enhancing physical processes. But I still had organs,

cells and biochemistry, and so did the various people I’d healed.

Similarly, my understanding of magic made it pretty obvious that it was

a force of nature rather than a living thing. But this world was swarming with

tiny, invisible elemental spirits that were basically made of magic, and they

seemed to have at least animal levels of intelligence. So it was entirely

possible that when Cerise stole power from a magical creature she was

ingesting fragments of its personality too. That wasn’t exactly the same thing as

the ‘white’ and ‘black’ magic the book talked about, but it was close enough to

explain why people would believe in such things.

As the afternoon wore on I gradually began to see how these bindings

could work. At first I’d thought it was a matter of imposing commands on the

victim, but the human mind is far too complex and malleable for that to be

practical. Even if you invented a spell to let you perceive the subject’s mind,

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how would you ever pin down what the individual parts did in enough detail to

accomplish anything? You’d need some kind of mind control sorcery to make

that work, and I got the distinct impression that there wasn’t any such thing.

So instead, binding rituals always involved making the subject consent

to some sort of verbal or written agreement. A basic binding simply compelled

the victim to avoid any action she believed would constitute a violation of the

agreement. More complex versions could force actions or even changes in

mental state, which I found rather chilling. The victim’s own magic was the

power source for such a binding, so the more powerful she was the more

complete it could be.

With that foundation laid, the second half of the book was a dissertation

on how to word a binding to enslave a witch in the most abject servitude

imaginable, and how to torture her into agreeing to the binding.

After a few pages of that I was sorely tempted to march into town and

level the temple. Maybe try out some of their own torture techniques on the

priests, and see what they thought of them. A gang rape would be hard to

organize, but the hot pokers and thumbscrews would be easy to duplicate.

I kept reading, though.

It had struck me that the Church’s witch-binding techniques sounded

like they had a lot in common with the coven-bonds the witches themselves

used, and there were a lot of potentially important observations in between the

stomach-turning passages about the best ways to torture a young woman

without marring her appearance too badly.

The major loophole in these binding techniques, which the author

returned to time and time again, was that a binding’s meaning is interpreted by

the mind of the subject. A witch bound to tell the truth can still be mistaken. A

delusional witch will still be crazy after she’s bound. More subtly, a quick-

witted victim can choose how to interpret any ambiguity in her bindings.

That was an enormous problem with verbal bindings, because the

fallible nature of human memory meant details would inevitably be lost or

distorted over time. Make a homicidal witch swear to ‘never do harm of any

sort to anyone’ today, and she’ll eventually convince herself that only applies

to physical harm. Make the vow more complex, and that just gives her more

details to mix up and build loopholes out of.

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Written contracts could be far more complex, but had the drawback

that the binding was anchored in the physical document. A binding you can

break just by burning a piece of paper isn’t very reliable, unless you can be

very certain the paper is well protected.

The solution the church of Odin had come up with involved a standard

set of bindings known as the Riven Covenants, which were chiseled into stone

tablets and stored in some secret location. A clever bit of sympathetic magic

allowed anyone with a sliver of stone from one of the tablets to bind victims to

abide by their contents, despite having never seen them.

The last few pages of
In Tauro de Maleficis
claimed to be a copy of

the text of the Riven Covenants. The contents looked like they’d do an

exceptionally thorough job of making the victim into a devoted slave of her

binder, but of course there was no way to check their accuracy. For all I knew

the actual text on those tablets was completely different, and I wasn’t about to

bind someone just to see how they acted afterwards.

I was considering whether to add finding those tablets and destroying

them to my to-do list when a distant rumble and crash distracted me. A

cacophony of faint shouts and scream rose up as I hurried to the top of the

tower where I’d been taking my last break of the day.

I reached the parapet to find a pall of smoke hanging over the town.

From my vantage point I could see a wide gap in the old town wall, and dozens

of figures rushing across the snow-covered fields beyond. The setting sun cast

long, weirdly-distorted shadows across the mob, and for a moment I couldn’t

tell what they were. Large figures and small ones, some on two legs and others

on four.

Then the breeze blew some of the dust away, and I picked out a goblin

mounted on wolf-back. Beside him a troll lumbered through the snow, waving

a huge club studded with spikes over its head.

There were hundreds of them, and the lead elements were already

halfway to the breach.

“Damn it,” I growled. “Don’t these guys ever give up?”

There was no time to descend to ground level and make my way

through the crowded streets of the town. By the time I reached the fight that

way there’d be a few hundred goblins and half a dozen trolls inside the town,

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and I had no idea if there were enough troops in the garrison to drive a force

like that back out.

I vaulted over the parapet, pushed off from the side of the tower, and

threw myself into the air with a burst of force magic.

I still hadn’t figured out how to fly properly, but I had more than enough

power to throw myself around. I pushed again, sailing high into the air over the

town. Activating my force field muted the wind in my face, but the sudden

change in aerodynamics sent me into a spin.

I straightened out, found myself far too close to an approaching rooftop

and pushed off again. Up, arching high over a clump of three-story buildings. A

sideways push to correct the beggining of a tumble. A flex of my flesh magic to

suppress a sudden flash of nausea.

Up again, and now I could see the breach clearly. A thirty-foot section

of the old town wall had simply collapsed, crushing the buildings built against

it and throwing the townspeople into confusion. A band of goblins wearing

white cloaks were standing in the rubble, shooting arrows into the crowd of

fleeing civilians. Sappers? Some kind of goblin commandos?

Another push, angling for the center of the breach. If I could throw up

an obstacle before the main force arrived maybe we could keep them out of the

town. I could hear horns blowing and bells ringing all over the settlement now.

One of the white-coated goblins spotted me as I fell towards them. He

shouted, pointing and dancing around, and the others turned their heads

skyward. A rain of arrows rose to meet me, but my new shield was far stronger

than the one I’d used before. Goblin arrows weren’t going to do anything to it.

None of them missed.

The first few arrows rattled off my shield just as I’d expected, raising

little showers of blue sparks as they were thrown away. But these projectiles

were magical, imbued with all sorts of minor spell effects. Bursts of flame and

electricity flashed uselessly against the barrier, but speed and penetration

effects took a heavier toll on my amulet’s energy reserve. One carried a

dispelling effect that attacked the magic of my barrier directly, while another

struck with such force that it started me spinning again.

Then four shamans raised their little bone staves, and hurled dark blobs

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that trailed streamers of sickly green smoke at me.

I managed to dodge one, but the second went right through my barrier

and grazed my leg. Agony flared through me as the immaterial spell ate into my

flesh like acid, and for a crucial second I was too distracted to dodge. Another

curse smashed into my side.

I screamed.

I hit the ground moving far too fast.

My shield stopped first, but I’d intentionally designed it not to transmit

impacts to me. So an instant later I slammed into the inside of the barrier, still

tumbling from those last seconds of uncontrolled fall. I hit a solid mass of

stone, flipped over it and plowed face-first into a cavity in the rubble. For a

moment I hovered on the edge of unconsciousness.

But my amulet was still around my neck, mindlessly trying to heal all

my damage at once. With that help I somehow managed to cling to

consciousness. With a groan, I tried to move.

My right arm was a mass of pain, and my hand didn’t want to work. My

face was covered in blood, and my front teeth were missing. Worse, I couldn’t

feel my legs at all.

I managed to shift a little, so I could turn my head and see out of the

hole I was in. The flash of pain from my arm nearly made me pass out again.

Definitely broken.

An arrow smacked into my depleted shield with a flash of green smoke.

Goblin voices gabbled at each other in their own language, and then a shaman

cautiously peered over the edge of the hole.

His eyes met mine, and a toothy grin split his wrinkled face.

“We got you now, flying man,” he said. “No more running and killing

of goblins for you. Spirits of earth, crush!”

The stones beneath me shifted, and began to move.

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Chapter 11

The shifting stones pressed against my shield, raising showers of blue

sparks. It was holding for the moment, but I knew now they had non-physical

spells. I groped for my flesh sorcery, trying to focus enough to shut out the pain

so I could try to escape.

A silver knife opened the shaman’s throat, sending a spray of bright red

blood arcing over me. A lithe form vaulted the rock he’d been standing on, and

slid down my shield to land next to me.

“Daniel!” Cerise gasped. “Shit, you’re fucked up. What can I do?”

“Keep… off me…” I gasped. It was hard to breath, and my voice

wasn’t working right.

More goblins were coming into view now. One loosed an arrow at her,

but she sidestepped it neatly. “You got it. Fading light, flee from my presence!

Devouring night, make my shadow your home!”

The dim light of twilight suddenly faded to pitch darkness. I heard the

frantic jabbering of goblins, and more arrows whistled through the air. Then a

goblin shrieked in pain.

“I can keep them busy for a few minutes,” Cerise’s voice whispered in

my ear. “But the shamans will tear down my shadows pretty quick and then I’m

fucked. So work fast.”

“’kay.”

I gathered my focus again, and managed to get a pain block in place.

With that done I was able to levitate myself without passing out from the pain,

and get all my body parts arranged more or less the way they were supposed to

be. Damn, that was a bad landing.

Priorities.

I had broken ribs, and one of them punctured a lung. That was why I

couldn’t breathe right. Okay, push the ribs back into place, clear my lung and

stop the bleeding. No time for anything more. Why couldn’t I feel my legs?

My spine was severed down near my waist. Damn. I needed mobility,

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and I levitating myself took too much concentration. I couldn’t fight and move

at the same time that way. Alright, I’d have to try to fix it.

Cerise yelped in pain, and the impenetrable blackness around me faded

to something more like a moonless night. Now I could make out vague outlines

moving around me, and an occasional flash of magic.

Was that a faint tingling in my toes, or just my imagination? Damn it,

this was taking too long!

Sounds of combat were springing up all around me now. Screams and

shouts and the ringing of steel against steel. A wolf howled nearby, and the

bellowing roar of a troll echoed it. An impact glanced off my shield, which

still wasn’t back to full strength. Why not?

Oh. Maybe putting defense and healing on the same item wasn’t such a

smart idea. The amulet was mindlessly dumping almost all of its energy into