The Traitor Queen (20 page)

“You know how it is used,” he corrected. “Aside from your single experiment, you have not consciously and deliberately used
it, and you’ve never needed to store power. There are also other tasks that black magicians are required to perform that do
not involve the acquisition of magic.”

“Like?”

“Reading minds. Making blood rings.”

Lilia’s heartbeat quickened. She had assumed she wouldn’t be taught either skill until she had graduated and taken up the
official role of black magician.

“Why now?”

Kallen’s brows lowered still further. “While Sonea is absent, many would rather that you were taught to use black magic than
we have only one fully trained black magician in Imardin.”

No wonder he’s grumpy. The implication of that is that he needs watching. That he can’t be trusted
. She felt a small surge of
triumph that he experienced the same suspicion and distrust that she did.
Though people distrust me because I broke a rule when I learned black magic, even though I thought I couldn’t succeed. But
I suppose they distrust Kallen because he’s a roet addict
. She felt triumph fade. It was replaced with sympathy.
And he probably didn’t think that could happen, either
.

She nodded. “So … what first?”

He straightened and took something from within his robe. Light reflected from the polished surface of a small, slim knife.
Kallen lifted his other hand so that the sleeve fell back, then placed his arm on the table. He looked at her.

“I will cut myself. Place your hand over the wound and try to recall what you did to … Take enough that you can sense your
own strength has increased.”

To Naki
, Lilia finished. She pushed away a memory of a library, and the words that had seduced her into learning what was forbidden.
“
I’d do anything for you
.” Kallen ran the blade across the back of his arm. She obediently placed her palm over the shallow cut, and closed her eyes.

The trick was to see that my own magic is contained within my skin
, she remembered. The awareness came back to her slowly, but once her mind recalled it the sense of magic within her body
was suddenly clear. She paused to marvel a little at it, but the call of an
otherness
nearby drew her attention. Shifting her focus to her hand, she detected Kallen’s presence and saw the gap in his defences.

She hesitated. To draw magic from Kallen, whom she had half feared most of her life and who was one of the Higher Magicians,
seemed presumptuous. But he’d told her to, so she gathered her will and
drew
.

Magic flooded into her body. Immediately she slowed the
pull. He would be able to sense it, she guessed, and know if she was overdoing it. He’d said to take magic until she could
feel it had added to her own strength. Concentrating, she realised that she was already aware of being stronger. Halting the
draw of power, she opened her eyes and withdrew her hand.

Kallen stared at her intently. “Take more.”

This time she was immediately aware of the break in his barrier, and she found that she didn’t need to sense the containment
of her own power to do so. She forgot to close her eyes and realised she didn’t need to. Kallen’s face had gone strangely
slack, she noted. He looked sad and tired.

When she stopped, expression returned to his face. He looked at her again, and this time he nodded.

“Good. I can sense that you are storing power now.” His lips thinned in grim approval. “Whenever we hold more power than we
naturally possess, a little of it escapes our barrier. Focus on the natural containment at your skin until you sense this
leakage, then send a little magic to reinforce your barrier.”

This time she did close her eyes. Drawing her attention within, she noted that she could feel that her power was enhanced.
She concentrated on the barrier at her skin, which was the border of her control. Sure enough, magic was seeping through it,
more in some places than others.

Exerting her will, she tapped a little of her magic and sent a steady trickle of it to thicken and harden the barrier. At
once the leakage stopped.

Kallen nodded when she opened her eyes.

“I can’t sense it any more.” He almost smiled. “Now, it is also possible for another magician to sense the taking of magic.
This is a similar problem of leakage, but it happens at the site
of the wound. You need to extend your barrier a little to overlap that of the, ah, donor of magic.”

Following his instructions, Lilia managed to succeed in this lesson after a few attempts. After that, Kallen had her attempt
to take magic so slowly that he barely noticed, then as quickly as she could. He was able, haltingly, to speak to her during
the first, but obviously had trouble staying upright during the second.

“You should experience the weakening effect of being drained,” he told her. “Black Magician Sonea was not careful enough to
avoid being cut during one fight with the Ichani because she hadn’t appreciated how disabling it was to be subjected to black
magic. It is something you certainly don’t want to experience again, once you’ve felt it.” He waved a hand. “But it can wait
until another lesson.”

“I remember something like that, from when Naki tried it on me,” Lilia told him. “She said it didn’t work, but I think she
was lying.”

Kallen’s expression darkened, but then his lips thinned in sympathy. “In descriptions of the higher-magic rite between magicians
and apprentices of old, the apprentices would kneel before their masters. They must have been able to remain upright. Perhaps
the apprentices grew immune to the weakening effect.”

“Or the masters knew how to draw power without it affecting them.”

He nodded. “We could experiment, if you are willing. There is much about black magic we don’t understand, and I fear that
our counterparts in Sachaka could use that against us.”

Lilia smothered a shudder of reluctance. Though experimenting with black magic with Kallen didn’t sound like much
fun, she had to agree that the Guild couldn’t allow any holes in its knowledge of magic to remain unexplored.

Kallen ran a hand over the cut, which had now closed to a pink line. “Of course, you’ll only have to acquire magic this way
from non-magicians or an enemy magician. Normal transferral of power can be done without cutting the skin. The weakening effect
is also an advantage in battle. I can’t see many situations where taking power forcibly while avoiding the weakening effect
will be of much use.”

“Perhaps … if you have to take power from an old magician who is dying but for some reason – perhaps they’re unconscious or
senile – they can’t will their power to you.”

Kallen grimaced. “Yes. It would be kinder if they didn’t have to experience the weakening.”

She looked at the knife. “What do you do if you don’t have a knife? Could you use magic to make the cut?”

He shook his head. “Even if a magician is too weak to shield, so long as they are alive they still contain some energy and
a barrier at their skin. At its most basic, that barrier is a shield against another’s will and must be broken.”

“But if you shaped magic into a sliver of force and send it out from yourself like a strike, overcoming the barrier, would
it work?”

His eyebrows rose. “Perhaps. I guess if a strike is strong enough …” He frowned. “It would be difficult to test. The subject
would have to be willing to be harmed, perhaps quite badly … though if you first gained some skill in forming a small, stabbing
strike that only penetrated a tiny distance it would be no worse than a small cut.” His eyes narrowed in thought, then he
looked at her appraisingly. “It is an interesting idea. We should explore it.”

She nodded, before the idea of letting him stab her could overcome her satisfaction at thinking of something that hadn’t occurred
to him before.

“Well … that will do for today,” he said. “Tomorrow I will begin your training in mind-reading. We will need a volunteer for
you to practise on. Once you have satisfactorily achieved that skill, I’ll teach you how to make a blood gem.”

A blood gem!
Lilia resisted a smile, not wanting to seem too eager to learn more about what had once been forbidden magic. She rose as
Kallen stood up and followed him to the door.

“Should I meet you here?” she asked.

He nodded, then gestured to the corridor. “Yes. Until tomorrow, then.”

She bowed and set off toward the outer rooms of the University, and her next class, unable to help feeling a thrill of excitement.

For the first time, knowing black magic doesn’t feel like a … a punishment – or a disease. The Guild
wants
me to learn it. And it’s actually
interesting.

As the morning sun rose higher and brighter, the colours of the wasteland began to bleach away. Sonea clasped her hands together
around her knees, wistfully remembering how she had once been able to hug her knees to her chest. It had been a long time
since she’d been that flexible. Life as a magician – and wearing full robes – tended to demand more dignified sitting. It
was little losses like these that told her she was getting older.

Regin rose and moved to their packs, which were looking somewhat emptier than they’d been two evening ago when they’d arrived
at the Traitors’ meeting place.

I followed the instructions strictly
, she told herself.
They’d made perfect sense. Regin agrees with me. We must be where we’re supposed to be
.

And yet, no Traitors had appeared.

She looked to the right, where the mountains curved away to the south-east. When she and Akkarin had entered Sachaka twenty
years before, they’d travelled that way. Across the slopes of the mountains with no supplies, no home and with Ichani hunting
them. This time she and Regin had travelled northwest, still across the harsh mountainside, but with plenty of food, no Ichani
to worry about and a Guild waiting to welcome them home.

Amazing the difference some basic necessities and not fearing for your life can make
.

Still, the wasteland was a harsh place. Below, the rocky slopes plunged into dunes stretching off toward the horizon. The
first day they’d waited here, they’d watched a sandstorm move across the land to the north, obscuring all in its path. They’d
been worried that they would have to endure the storm, but it died out when it hit the northern mountains. Turning to the
left, Sonea considered the peaks extending into the distance, each crouching behind the other, growing paler the further away
they were.

Somewhere beyond them lies Sanctuary, the Traitors’ home. From what Lorkin says, they were much kinder captors than King Amakira
.

Not that anybody had described what Lorkin’s imprisonment in the palace had been like. She was almost glad that she had not
been able to read his mind through her blood gem. She swung from wanting to know to thinking perhaps it would be better if
she never did. If he’d suffered, she was not sure
what she would feel or want to do, but she was sure neither would be good.

He’s free now. Free and alive. I must take care that nothing I do changes that
.

“Sonea.”

She dragged her eyes away from the view and turned to regard Regin. “Yes?”

He gestured to the bags. “Should we keep rationing?”

She nodded. He was asking more than that, she knew. He was asking if they would stay here or give up and return to the Fort
soon.
We could hunt for food, like Akkarin and I did
. Memories rose of a meal gathered, cooked and eaten in a little hidden valley. She smiled as she remembered what else had
happened in that place.

“At least we have plenty of water,” Regin said, turning to look at the spring. “And it’s clean now.”

She followed his gaze. The trickle of water seeped through a crack in the rocky ground and gathered in a small, smooth pool
before brimming over into a tiny stream. The water had obviously been attracting animals. When they’d arrived they’d had to
wash away accumulated bird droppings. The stream did not continue for long, swallowed up by a crevasse in the rocky ground.

If we hide, maybe birds will come to drink. We can catch and eat them
.

Standing up, she walked to the pool and regarded it. Clearly the wasteland had some water, but even here, right by the spring,
there was no life. She crouched beside it and dipped her hand in the pool. Concentrating, she sought the scattered sense of
energy within water that came from ever-present tiny life forms in it.

Nothing.

She frowned. When they’d arrived she’d checked if the water was safe to drink. Despite the bird droppings, the water had been
pure. Which was … odd.

Perhaps a Traitor came by just before we arrived and drew all the energy out
. The smaller and less sophisticated a living thing was, the weaker the natural barrier against magical interference. Even
trees could be drained of magic without their bark being cut, though the magic came slowly and there was never as much as
in an animal or person.

Killing the little life forms makes the existing water safe to drink, but the fresh water should quickly add more tiny life
forms
. She reached up to the trickle that fed the pool. Cupping her hand to collect some water, she concentrated again.

There. Like tiny pinpoints of light
.

She let the gathered water drop into the pool. There could be only one explanation. Something was killing off all life once
it entered the pool.

Her stomach clenched in sudden apprehension. Was the pool poisoned? They had been drinking from it for a few days. What could
kill off small life forms instantly but not affect people?

The bowl was smooth. It could have been shaped by time or man or magic. Reaching into the water again, she ran her hand slowly
over the surface of the stone. She did not expect to sense anything. Detecting a poison within a body was more a matter of
detecting its effect. Her fingers encountered a bump in the surface. She explored it with her fingertips, then sent her mind
out.