Prodigal Steelwielder (Seals of the Duelists Book 3) (23 page)

Kiwani returned her gaze to Bayan’s still form. Something moved under his shirt. For a split second, she hoped that it was his heart beating within his chest, but then a small, viny tendril swirled its way past the bright trim at the collar of his vest. Its tiny, kinked shoots grew swiftly, curling their way along his neck, then vanished beneath the dark sprawl of his hair. Kiwani stared in fascinated horror. “What is that?”

A moment later, Tarin gasped and jerked her hand back from Bayan’s leg. Water rippled out of his right shoe. Small, brightly patterned butterflies perched on his lower lip and took wing, their wide golden wings seeming to glow in the sunset light from the open door. Kiwani lifted her hands from Bayan’s form in slow horror. His hair puffed out like a dandelion, stiff and vibrant with static electricity, and a red-and-white–banded snake wriggled from beneath it. Vines and saplings sprouted from his skin. Several metallic green beetles scrambled out of one of his pockets, followed by a diminutive, hungry blue finch. The soles of his shoes caught fire, and smooth streams of lava exuded from his ankles.

Tarin leapt to her feet and skittered backward, shoving several duelists behind her. “What in all the sints is going on?”

Eward took Kiwani’s hand and pulled her back as well, though she couldn’t look away from Bayan’s disintegrating form. As he squeezed her hand, she murmured, “It’s his magic. All his magic, it’s leaking out. See? Elements and anima, both. He’s turning into magic.”

The room went dead silent. Kiwani knew how anima magic remained anathema within the borders of the empire. Yet at their feet was incontrovertible evidence that Bayan possessed—had possessed?—both magics equally.

Where has he gone? Or is he still here?
She couldn’t sense him in any way. Rejecting death as an option despite the bizarre evidence before her, Kiwani refused to engage in frantic speculation.
He will return. Or he won’t, and I’ll find a way to follow him. Perhaps death is the doorway he used.

The emperor looked around the room, then snapped an arm toward the entrance, where Taban was just returning with Doc Theo. “Everyone outside. Seal these doors. Then burn the building.”

Calder stood in shock before the conflagration that consumed the entire archive. He welcomed the heat that threatened to crisp the skin on his left cheek. His right had been impervious to heat for years. When he blinked, his fire-dried eyes watered, but his tears quickly evaporated. Tala and his hexmates flanked him, silent before the flames in the twilight. “I canna believe he would go before seeing me. Sure an’ I’m his best friend.”

Tala touched his arm. “Kiwani told me he was already gone by the time she reached him. No one knows what happened. I’m so sorry.”

The tension of lost time stretched through Calder, trying to pull him down through his boots. “I’ll just have to catch him later, then.”

Taban clapped a hand on his shoulder and turned him away from the fire. “There’ll be none of that talk of suicide, now, my wee hexmate. We still need you. We’re not letting you off that easy, not after you thrashed an entire steelwielder army with the wet corpse of the Godsmaw. Or is that just the Dunfarroghan version of events?”

Calder rested his tired, hot eyes on Taban’s sharp features. “I havena had time to make up the Dunfarroghan version yet.”

Taban tsked. “Aye, well, I’ll just have to live long enough to outdo you.”

“And I dinna mean suicide, you great stupid prat. Bayan isna dead. He canna be.”

Aleida and Tarin exchanged glances behind Kiwani, then Tarin said, “Calder, the Corona is attacking. We have to let him go, just for now, and focus on our jobs. The emperor’s already making battle plans.”

“Nae!” The forum flagstones beneath Calder’s feet cracked with the impact of his focus, and his hexmates took a cautious step away from him. “Canna you see? I doubted him once before. I doubted him when he told me the truth straight to my face, and it cost me everything I was. I tried to kill Iulan of the Treinfhir because I believed Ignaas witten Oost’s lies over Bayan’s truth. I doubted my best friend, and I nearly lost him. I willna doubt him again.
Ever
. He’ll be back, somehow. And me, I’ll be waiting.”

Silence reigned over the small group. Kiwani slipped her arms around Calder and kissed his scar.

Eward held out a small object. “What’s that?” Calder took it: a small steel jar with a leather thong around its neck.

“It’s one of the Corona casters’ potion flasks. I don’t know what they put in it, but when they spit it out, it makes powerful elemental magic. They wear a couple dozen at least. The steel was to keep duelists at bay and protect the potions inside, though we managed to crack some during the battle.” He looked around the relatively abandoned forum. “I’d like to see if Odjin can learn something from the dregs inside it. Before the emperor storms back out here and assigns us all battle duties, Tala, can you take me back to the Academy campus? Doc said Odjin was there when he left.”

Tala nodded, but Calder grabbed her hand. “I’m not letting you out of my sight, woman. You may have need of my giant crystals at a moment’s notice.”

His hexmates rolled their eyes or groaned at his coarse sexual reference, but Tala merely gave him a tolerant look as she fished out her black crystals. “I won’t tell if any of the rest of you want to escape the emperor for a while by popping back to campus. They’ve been readying for battle ever since the First Singer informed Headmaster Langlaren that the Temple had moved to Balanganam. No one there will mind, and singers delivering imperial orders will find you no matter your location.”

The others decided to remain, so Tala sang a portal for herself, Calder and Eward, who followed her through. When the ring of light sprang open, Calder leaned in from the side for a better view, and his jaw sagged at the complete destruction on the other side.

Odjin stood a couple of strides away from Tala with his back to her. Sivutma and a potioneer with a metallic arm set down a limp body at one end of a long row of unmoving forms. In the distance, a familiar village smoked, partially destroyed.

The portal slammed shut. Calder looked at Tala, who clasped her crystals as if she herself had been injured. Her face bore stunned shock and pain. Calder hugged her shoulders.

Eward said what Calder was thinking. “We have to take Aleida home.” Two quick portals later, Eward, Calder, Aleida, and Tala stepped into the middle of a ruined field occupied by Odjin, his friend Bas, and Sivutma. Kipri had arrived since Tala’s last portal opened. The eunuch stood with his arms around a shaken man and woman, his purple wig askew. Others stood behind him, bowing their heads for their defenders’ losses. Crops and clusters of trees lay shredded and scattered in all directions. Calder shifted to stand next to Aleida, who slowly raised one hand to her mouth and silently stared.

The nonmagic folk gathered respectfully as Odjin and Bas laid out the last two bodies. Several villagers wept quietly. Calder cleared his throat, and Odjin turned. The look on the potioneer’s face was intense but filled with neither joy nor grief. Calder figured he’d worn a similar expression after he finished crushing the steelwielder raiding force.

Odjin nodded to Bas and Sivutma, then embraced Aleida. He took a deep breath. “Iulan said they struck just after you left, and they took the duel den first. If it hadn’t been for Iulan and Kah, they would have destroyed the entire town. We think it was a diversion strike to pull defenders from the Kheerzaal.”

But Aleida seemed to have stopped listening. “The duel den? Iulan and Murchadh were there when I left. Are they all right?”

Odjin looked down. “Iulan fought well with us before he—He saved—” He blinked quickly then heaved a quick sigh. “I’m sorry, Aleida. Murchadh, he—He didn’t…”

Aleida’s voice was faint. “Where is he? Is he here?” She tilted her head past Odjin’s shoulder, searching the bodies behind him.

Odjin shook his head. “The fire at the duel den… even the walls are slag and ash. I’m sorry.”

Aleida’s hands clutched at the small bump in her abdomen, and her mouth hung open in ragged pain. “Where is Iulan? He must need me to be with him right now.”

To Calder’s surprise, Odjin lifted his eyes to the sky, as if seeking answers there. “I don’t really know how to say this either. When Iulan saved Kah, he… he gave himself to the sint somehow. He’s gone too.”

Alarmed, Calder blurted, “Sint? What sint? There was a sint here?”

Odjin slapped his hands over his face and moaned for a moment. “It’s a very confusing story. Not a long one, just a confusing one. Kah is an anima sint. He lived in that entire mystery of hexbirds on campus—he
made
them hexbirds when they were just crows. Between the sint-portal that brought us here and the battle”—he waved a hand at the bodies behind him, and Calder belatedly noticed most were missing various limbs—
Potioneers Savant
—“all but the bird we called Kah perished, and the sint inside was dying. Iulan gave his own body to somehow create more birds to sustain Kah’s existence. He’s up there, I suppose, with Sint Kah right now.” He gave Aleida a helpless look. “I’m so very sorry. I didn’t think any of us would survive. I don’t know if there’s anything left of Iulan—”

Aleida sank to her knees, keening and clutching her abdomen. Foggy tendrils of magic in all shades of pinks and purples wafted out from the beads of her necklace and obscured her head and torso.

Calder took a sudden step back in alarm.
She’s leaking magic. Oh, sints, it’s leaking everywhere. Like Bayan, except she’s still alive. For now.
He dropped to his knees beside her and clasped her shoulders through the magic fog, giving her a shake. “Aleida, stay with us. Don’t go. Not you, too. What do you need? How can I help you?”

Sivutma edged closer. Her eyes raked the new arrivals. “What’s happened?”

As Tala drew her aside to explain in her ear, Aleida shuddered under Calder’s hands, then went unnaturally still, possessed by the deepest of voids. “I had plans. They were beautiful, full of love and promise and a content future. You know why I dared to dream those plans, Calder? Savantism. I thought I could guide the world into fulfilling those plans. But then Murchadh died, and Iulan—the only anima caster in all the empire—turned himself into birds. He was my backup plan in case anything happened to my husband, and now that’s gone. But I have a new plan now.”

Calder barely dared to breathe. “And what’s that, then?”

“If I can’t guide the world, I’ll force it. Savantism taught me that. I need my husband back. I need that future. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Her voice, so soft and velvety, made Calder’s skin crawl. Wide-eyed, he nodded back at her. “Of course. I understand.”

The magic fog grew so thick he could barely discern her features. Her voice floated on the mist. “No, I don’t think you do. When Bayan went, his body was full of magic. That means mine is, too. I will spend every last tinge of it if I must. And you’re going to help me do it.” She clasped Calder’s hand in a painful grip, then took hold of Odjin. She stood and looked around. “Three more. I need a full hex.”

Despite their baffled, wary looks, Eward, Sivutma, and Bas joined the circle. Aleida lifted her head. “Kah, I need you. Get your feathered arse down here, and bring whatever is left of Iulan with you.”

Though she didn’t raise her voice, and the mystery of hexbirds was nowhere to be seen, it didn’t take long for a small flock of birds, dark and raucous, to veer out of the distant river ravine and arrow their way straight for the hex circle. Without another word from anyone, the small mystery landed in the circle and fell perfectly silent. The birds formed a set of five concentric circles, all facing outward as the casters faced inward.

Eward shot Calder a hooded look. Calder’s return glance told him he should have thought twice before joining the circle if he didn’t know what he was getting into.

“Bond with me.”

At Aleida’s calm order, Calder and the others willed their magic under her control.
May all the right sints preserve us.
He hoped Kah was nothing like the Godsmaw. He shot what he hoped was a reassuring glance over his shoulder to where Tala waited, her clasped hands bloodless with tension.

Aleida let out a long, slow breath, then inhaled violently and ripped everyone’s magic wide open. Calder shook with the strain. Earth, Water, Flame, Shock, Wood, Wind. The six elements built in his mind’s eye, forming shapes that vaguely resembled parts of a human body. Anima twisted its way around the other magics, filling them with life and purpose, mortality and spark. Aleida’s grip on Calder’s magic began to hurt. He’d never bonded with anyone who had drawn so much of his power before.
And she’s doing it to the others. How is she holding it all?

Eward’s hand spasmed. His nails dug into the flesh on the back of Calder’s hand. His own back arched, cramping, and he couldn’t straighten his spine. The very tissue of his mortal form felt stripped away along with his magic. Sudden fear shot through Calder, nearly unbalancing his magical focus.
Is she stealing the physical basis of our anima to rebuild her husband?

The hexbirds cawed in unison, a loud, impossibly long noise that seemed to echo a thousand times within the ring of bonded magic.

Something cracked in Calder’s ankles, and he fell to his knees, dragging Eward with him. His stomach wanted to empty its contents, but Calder’s lungs fought it for dominance of his throat.

Then everything stopped. The magic, the pain, even the wind. Eternity stretched in all directions, embracing Calder in silent warmth. His eyes managed to focus on a figure in the middle of the hexbirds.

The man blinked and smiled uncertainly. “Aleida?”

Aleida let Calder’s hand drop from her grip. “Murchadh.”

“What am I doing here? Where’s my father? What’s happened?” He looked around, alarmed at the vast destruction and the row of bodies.

“All is well. I’ve brought you back. Now we can be a family.”

Something in Aleida’s tone sounded very wrong. Tala’s expression mirrored Calder's concern. Eward backed away, muttering, “This isn’t hexmagic. This is very past hexmagic.”

Calder swung his gaze back to Aleida, who let her husband embrace her. She met Calder's eyes over Murchadh’s shoulder. Though her eyes were the same sparkling brown as always, Calder couldn’t shake the feeling that the eyes of her soul were full of nothing but darkness and stars.