The Elements of Sorcery (22 page)

First thing, once I'd reached certainty that the villagers were safely out of sight, I reconstructed the hasty enchantment that hid the strange glow in my eyes and returned my irises to their normal hazy blue color. If I had become sick of one thing, it was instantly being taken for an Arbiter by every person I came across. I jotted down some mental notes as I plodded on, working on ways to automatically dispel and renew the enchantment so that it would not fester.

With no other direction to take, I followed the road as the bald villager had indicated. There was likely little I could do to help the folk of whatever city lay ahead, but at least it was civilization. Robbed of my chance at peace, I resolved instead to get back to my work as soon as possible. Somewhere out there was a city which wouldn’t bother me as I spent my time hunting for the secrets of my art, and I was going to find it. In the city down the road, I could at least perhaps find transportation to a more civilized part of the world, and undertake my search.

The road was long and winding, and sloped gradually uphill as I went. The sparse forest gave way to rolling lowlands, all emerald green and bespeckled with white and yellow flowers. The countryside was really quite lovely, the sun warm and the breeze taking the edge off. White clouds drifted lazily by overhead, and insects buzzed around me without bothering to settle in. It was almost as if the bugs could sense something about me that they didn’t like, and kept their distance, for which I had no complaint. Birds sang songs in the sky and distant trees. It was utter serenity, and in truth, it kept distracting me. I continually wanted to take my eyes off the road and gaze into the distance, which led to my wandering off the path more than once in my curiosity.

The day went on, and I walked. Morning turned to afternoon, and eventually my shadow elongated as the sun headed toward the sea behind me. It was a pleasant enough summer, one that had started its ascendancy more than two years ago when I’d been on the road with Mendoz, and I wondered how long it would last before winter set in again. Down here in the southern lowlands, it was possible that winter simply meant more rain; I wondered if those villagers even knew what snow looked like.

When the sun had nearly disappeared, leaving me in dim twilight, and I turned a bend around one hill, a few steep mountains came into view in the distance. I squinted against the dying light, trying to resolve any signs that there might be civilization ahead, but it was too far and too dark to see clearly. A faint rumbling echoed in the distance, enough that I glanced skyward to look for signs of rain, but the pleasant deep violet-blue above gave no hint of ceding its dominance to gray thunderclouds.

For a moment, I stopped in the twilight. Hadn't the villagers said something about a city in this direction? Just how far from civilization was I, anyway? It slowly dawned on me that I had been walking all day without passing a single other soul. If this road went to a city in the direction I was going, then where did the other end lead?

With a frown, I resolved to locate a map as quickly as possible once I reached some sign of civilized existence, but with little else I could do, I carried on.

Traveling at night was dangerous at any time, but with shelter both too far behind and too far ahead of me, I had little choice but to press on. My endurance hadn’t flagged even a little; it felt like I could go on forever.

The rumbling grew louder. I looked up, and in the distance ahead of me, I could just make out a flickering light that seemed to be growing in intensity. Eerie blue, not scarlet—for which I was only mildly thankful. The last thing I needed was some sort of fel beast that could make the ground rumble, but the light itself made me... disconcerted.

Concerned, I stopped and stepped just off the road. As the light grew larger, I could only surmise that it was attached to some kind of carriage. The rumbling sound was the pounding of horse hooves and the cart’s wheels grinding on the dirt. It moved fast; I wondered where they could be heading, as I’d seen neither other signs of civilization, nor any branches off the road since leaving the fishermen behind that morning.

It disappeared into a shallow depression, but the echoes of a cracking whip reached my ears even at a distance. When it reappeared again, much closer, the rumbling now a roar filling the air, my heart nearly stopped in terror.

Both the cart and the horses driving it were jet black. The pale blue light cast the driver in a strange, stark relief, making him look almost spectral. There was an old legend, back in my home, of the ghostly driver of the death cart, who rode the countryside at night searching for unguarded souls, and for a moment, the image approaching me looked like it could be that old tale come to life.

A moment later, my rational mind overtook my terror when it reminded me that in all my years as a sorcerer, exploring the mysteries of the world, I had never come across an actual spirit. My mouth was still dry, though, and I dared not look at my hand; I didn’t want to know how badly it was shaking.

I saw the driver raise the whip again, but then his head turned toward me—my silhouette must have been visible against the last vestiges of sunset. Instead of the whip’s crack, he let out a sharp whistle. It was only then that I realized it might have been smarter to hide, rather than stand in the open, but by that point I was frozen, unable even to breathe.

Instead of thundering past, the cart screeched to a halt as the driver hauled on the reins. The horses let out whinnies of protest, but it eventually came to a stop only a few dozen yards ahead of me in a cloud of dust.

The driver reached down beside him, lifted something out, and then pointed at me. He was just too far away for me to make out what he was doing in that strange blue light, but the
twang
of a crossbow made it perfectly clear. I let out a squawking yelp and flinched; the bolt came within inches of skewering my ribs, but instead merely pinned my cloak to the ground behind me. The twine that served as a clasp suddenly wrapped tightly around my neck, biting into the flesh and choking off my airway.

“Friend!” I wheezed in Low Valisian, hoping that the driver would recognize the word, at least. I dropped to one knee and reached behind me, yanking the crossbow bolt out of dirt and my cloak. Once I was free, I pulled the twine away and coughed again, “Friend!”

The only reply was the sound of the crossbow being reloaded, and I swallowed hard, preparing to turn and flee.

“What the devil is going on out there?” a voice demanded loudly in Valisian from inside the carriage.

The relief that flooded through me as I actually recognized a language for the first time since awakening on the shore—Valisian! A traveler who spoke a language I was actually familiar with,, what luck!—was cut short as the crossbow
twanged
again and another bolt whizzed through the air a few inches from my skull. This time I dove aside as the bolt missed, tumbling into the cool grass and rolling for a few feet before coming to a stop. “Please stop shooting at me!” I shouted, as loud as I could, hoping that the person inside the carriage would stop his mad driver from putting a bolt or two through my limbs or chest. I was shaking violently all over with the adrenaline that pounded through my veins... at least, that’s what I told myself.

There came some low murmuring from up ahead, but I stayed down, hiding myself in the grass as best I could. I was not about to raise my head only to get it skewered. They probably thought that I was some kind of honeytrap bandit ruse, out alone to distract them long enough so that my comrades could spring upon them and take their valuables. This was, unfortunately, not an impression that I could do much to dispel on my own.

“Are you out here alone?” the voice called out, a warm baritone.

“Yes,” I called back, hoping that the grass would reflect my voice well enough so as not to give away my position before I was ready. “Of course, if I was a bandit, that’s what I would say, isn’t it?”

To my surprise, a deep, genuine laugh floated back to me. “I suppose that’s true.”

My heart’s frantic pounding finally slowed. That didn’t sound like the kind of voice that was likely to want to kill me. Still, something bothered me, but I couldn’t quite place it...

“If you keep your hands visible,” the voice called out, “You’re more than welcome to extricate yourself from the grass. I promise that Gart here won’t shoot you without my direct order.”

“How very reassuring,” I muttered dryly. Still, a single crossbow bolt wasn’t likely to kill me, given that the sea had been given weeks and still hadn’t managed it. Gritting my teeth and cursing myself for an idiot, I slowly rose to my feet.

Something still bothered me. What was it...?

Even in the single, pale blue light on the carriage, I could see that the man standing beside it possessed a powerful physique. He had broad shoulders, his head as bald as an egg, and a thick beard encircled his mouth and covered his chin.

“We’re not going to hurt you, lad.”

Only as I stepped toward them did I realize what my brain was trying to tell me.

If I was in Grysalta, as I surmised, what were the chances that any given person who lived five hundred leagues or more from the closest Valisian border so fluently spoke a foreign tongue? Building on that, what did those chances become that I would encounter that single person alone on a winding country road?

As I approached, my heart sank deep, deep into my borrowed boots. The pale blue light from the front of the carriage wasn’t just reflected in the man’s eyes.

It shone from them, too.

“Well,” he said, a broad grin flashing in the dark beard.  “Edar Moncrief, I presume?”

I tried to speak, but found that my mouth had gone entirely dry.

My mind flicked back to the thought I’d had the previous night. I’d thought that there could be no fate worse than the vagaries of the tides returning me back to my home, to my place of birth, the place I’d abandoned with all due haste the moment I’d been able.

I’d been wrong. There
was
something worse, and I was now staring at it, slack-jawed, glassy-eyed.

Somehow, the cruel sea had delivered me up to an Arbiter.

He just stood there, watching me impassively, his arms folded and an inquisitive spark in his eyes. I’d swear that an amused glitter danced in there somewhere, which only served to frighten me more. The only Arbiter I’d ever met had been a humorless, single-minded zealot, and he’d been terrifying. It frightened me beyond reason to apply a sense of humor to that veneer.

“If you’re looking for hospitality,” I rasped after a long moment, “I know this place with the most amazing tents.”

He laughed again, and even though the sound was warm it sent another chill through me.

This was it.

I’d reached the bottom of the sea, as low as I could get..

There was really no way for this to end well for me. Not only had I stolen the heartblade from D’Arden Tal all those years ago, I’d subsequently used it to save my own life, and then spent three years masquerading as an Arbiter in plain sight. There were so few of them now, I thought that they would never have the manpower to hunt down a small-time sorcerer like me... but then, I'd become something more than small-time, hadn't I?

“I imagine I have you at something of a disadvantage,” the Arbiter said, and as he shifted his stance slightly I became painfully aware of the black leather-wrapped hilt that protruded over his right shoulder. “I have, after all, spent the better part of two years trying to track you down, whereas you don’t know me from a fel beast.”

“Well,” I allowed through a constricted, dry throat. “One’s at least as dangerous as the other.”

He chuckled again. “You’ve got quite the wit, lad.”

“It’s...” Another flippant remark died in my throat. After everything I’d said and done over the years—if this Arbiter knew half of it, I was as good as dead. Politeness might have been the only chance I had left to save my skin. “...gotten me into trouble,” I finished lamely.

“I imagine it has, at that. Forgive me my rudeness, Master Moncrief. I am one of the nine Masters of the Arbiter’s Tower. My name is Havox Khaine.”

I tilted my head at him. People about to kill you rarely introduced themselves, in my experience. “And how do you know me, Master Khaine?”

He regarded me with that same faintly amused look, but I also saw a bit of the predator in his eyes, making me feel uncomfortably like a deer being watched by a hungry wolf. “Something over two years ago, one of my pupils returned to the Tower from a sojourn in the Old Kingdoms. He told me about the death of our brother, Gaerton Daen, and gave me a rather thorough report on you.”

“Ah.” I licked my lips nervously. “I’m sure he did.”

“D’Arden spent a not inconsiderable amount of time searching for you, but it seemed that you had simply vanished. Perhaps died in the fire that engulfed your laboratory, the night that he left. In any case, he was able to find no trace of your whereabouts, so he returned to the Tower. You see, a certain sorcerer that he had encountered had given him significant cause for embarrassment.”

I tamped down a flash of vicious triumph, but said nothing.

“D’Arden was sent on to more important things, but you see, Master Moncrief—the heartblades are something of a rare treasure. Artifacts, if you will. Each one is unique, and when an Arbiter falls, it is up to his brothers to retrieve the heartblade and return it to the collection. It fell to me, as one of the Masters of the Tower, to retrieve the one left behind.

“I spent quite some time searching for you in Valisia, and when I’d finally gotten a strong indication that you had spent time in Selvaria, I went there first to find the entire city in an uproar. The Brauch family had been wiped out to a man, and the city had been taken over by a group calling themselves the Circle of Thorns. It seems that the Brauches had been keeping some sort of horrible creature—”

“It was a shrike,” I muttered.

“—beneath the city, and the Circle of Thorns had discovered the plot and made a pre-emptive attack.” Something must have shown on my face, because he stopped and flashed a grin at me in his dark beard. “I take it that is not what happened?”

“A monster slayer named Mendoz killed the shrike. I helped.”

“Given that none of the members of the Circle of Thorns were able to describe the ‘monster’ with any certainty, I surmised that someone else must have done the actual killing,” Khaine said with a nod.

“It was hideous,” I said, with a shudder of memory. “Almost a dozen glowing red eyes, claws like curved swords, and inky, oily black flesh.”

“Yes, that’s a shrike,” Khaine agreed. “So, it was you.”

I nodded. “And Mendoz.”

“Well done. A shrike is a creature of fear and death. It is not for the faint of heart.”

“Uh... thank you?”

He smiled again. His demeanor was so different from that of D’Arden Tal that I almost had trouble believing that I was standing in the presence of another Arbiter. All my life I’d heard stories about the Arbiters, and they had all described wild-eyed zealots like the one I’d encountered. This Khaine was different: warmth where I’d expected chill disdain, charm where I’d expected intimidation, and almost fatherly in his gentle but respectful speech.

“Once I straightened out the situation in Selvaria—” I saw a flash of the predator in his eyes again for a moment, but it vanished below the surface almost as quickly as it had come “—I discovered, much to my surprise, that there was reported to be an Arbiter assisting the Kalais offensive in Lannth. Since, to my knowledge, such political battles are strictly off limits for brothers of the Tower, I thought that I would discover for myself just what had happened. Unfortunately, I was then... delayed in Kalais for some time, and arrived in Sevenstone only to find that the Arbiter had vanished. Many surmised that he boarded a ship after the battle, but none could name any ships that had sailed from Sevenstone harbor that day.”

“That’s because it’s not what happened,” I said.

“As I surmised. Imagine my surprise when, not two days after I arrived, the new Lannthan Queen Martine was killed rather horribly at her crowning ceremony, almost like she had been undone from the inside out. There was a significant amount of chaos that day.”

“I bet that shook them up,” I said, unable to keep the snarl out of my voice.

“You’ve been quite busy, Master Moncrief.” He gave me an oblique look. “Somewhat at odds with the description that D’Arden gave me upon his return to the Tower. He didn’t exactly use the words ‘sniveling coward,’ but...”

My jaw tightened. “So how did you find me here?”

“Well, with the standard methods exhausted, I had to turn to something a bit more... exotic. You see, there was once a method used by the ancient Masters of the Tower to track the power possessed by each individual heartblade. It is not something we use lightly, as the cost is rather severe.” He gestured at the blue light, shining from the carriage beside him. “In the days when we were many, the loss of one was perhaps not such a great blow to us, but in these trying times even a small cost is felt all the more.”

I didn’t understand what he meant, but the import of the rest was clear enough. He’d made a major sacrifice of... something, in order to find me.

“The spell wound me down the coastline, and since I could only imagine that you were somewhere aboard a ship, all I could do was to wait until it put into port. I spent a fair amount of time at Tarian, the city not far from here, waiting for that very event. Then, when at last it seemed that you had come ashore again, I set out from the city to find you... and here you are.” Khaine at last stopped speaking, and shifted his weight back onto his heels.

I considered screaming a litany of curses to the sky, but there weren't enough of them in any language that had ever existed to properly express the combination of incoherent rage and desperate fear that gripped my heart in that moment. I’d thought that I’d avoided the Arbiters entirely, but instead, one had been on my tail the whole time I was traveling with Mendoz. A lump in my throat kept me from swallowing, and I coughed. Fear tightened in my chest.

“So, you’re here for the heartblade.” My lips felt numb, and my hands tingled as panic reigned.

“I’m afraid that I must ask you to return it, yes.”

“I don’t have it.”
Here it comes...

“You don’t...?” He trailed off, looking me up and down. Khaine’s expression didn’t falter, but his eyes shifted to disappointment.

Silence reigned for a long moment, there in the fading sunlight.

Finally, he spoke again. “How long ago did you use the heartblade on yourself?”