The Wizard Hunters (2 page)

Gerard watched her gravely. “I handled this one when Arisilde first charged it, but that was years ago. Is it easy to work with?”

She shrugged. “I never had any trouble with it. But then I never used it for spells. Not real ones.” You didn’t have to be a sorcerer to make the sphere work, but you did need to have some latent magical talent. Tremaine’s great-grandmother had been a powerful witch, and all her mother’s family had had talent to one extent or another, though her mother had been an actress rather than a sorceress. As a child, Tremaine had had enough magic to make the sphere find lost toys and produce small illusions and colored light shows, but even that ability had faded with lack of practice. She supposed she would never see the device again. “Any progress?” she asked, not expecting an optimistic answer. “Besides Riardin blowing himself up. Not that that was progress but—”

Gerard knew her too well to take offense. “I think we’re close. The experiment Riardin was conducting— He was approaching the spell from an entirely new angle.” He shook his head, pulling his spectacles off to rub his eyes. “We’re very close to deciphering Arisilde’s architecture.”

“So you’ll know exactly what killed Uncle Ari and my father.” Tremaine turned the sphere, watching the sparks travel deeper into its depths. It was active tonight, more so than she had ever seen it before. Perhaps because she hadn’t had it out since last year.
Last year? Maybe it’s been longer than that
.

“They wanted to save us from this, Tremaine,” Gerard said quietly. He gestured at the blackout curtains tightly covering the library’s narrow windows. “From this war.”

“I know.” Nicholas Valiarde and Arisilde Damal had been the first to discover the early traces of the Gardier, that faceless enemy that appeared out of nowhere, that attacked without reason with power that destroyed conventional weapons and magic alike. That had been years before the devastating attack on the city of Lodun, before the small country of Adera had been overrun and forced to serve as a Gardier staging area for attacks on Ile-Rien.

Tremaine didn’t blame Nicholas and Arisilde for what had happened afterward. It had been an accident, a series of miscalculations on the part of two men who had been treading a fine line between life and death all their lives. With a sigh, Tremaine held the sphere out to Gerard. “Uncle Ari never wanted to make weapons.”

He took the sphere from her, handling it carefully. “It may sound overdramatic, but this could be the salvation of—” He stared into the sphere with consternation. “It’s gone dead.”

“No.” Frowning, she took it back. She shook it a little, making Gerard wince, but then he was used to the more delicate and temperamental instruments constructed by Riardin and the others who were trying to duplicate Arisilde’s work. “It’s fine.” She held it out, showing him the lights moving deep within the device.

Gerard took the sphere again and Tremaine leaned over it, frowning as the life faded out of it. She shook her head in annoyance, taking it back from him. “It worked for you before, didn’t it?”

She shook the sphere again and he hurriedly stopped her. He said, “Perhaps ... I haven’t worked with it in more than ten years.” He blinked, struck by the enormity of the possible disaster. “If that’s the case... We have working spheres to continue the experiment.”

“You mean it’s forgotten you?” Brows drawn together, Tremaine held it out to him again. “Try to use it while I’m holding it. Something simple.”

Gerard rested his fingers lightly on the sphere, frowning in concentration. For a moment Tremaine thought nothing would happen. Then a swirl of illusory light drifted across the fine old carpet near the hearth, sparkling like fayre dust, making both the fire in the grate and the electric bulb in the lamp dim and shiver.

Gerard let out his breath and released the sphere. The light vanished. “It still knows me but it apparently wants contact with you also.” He met her eyes, his face serious. “Tremaine, I hate to ask you this, but. . . it’s vital for the continuation of the experiment. We’re so close to success—”

Tremaine looked around at the library, gesturing vaguely. She couldn’t afford to get involved in anything right now. “I’m sort of in the middle of something—”

“—I know it’s dangerous, but if you could—”

Dangerous
. Tremaine stared at him.
That’s perfect
. She nodded. “Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

F
  Chapter 2  
F

Isle of Storms, off the Southern Coast of the Symai

“
W
e’ll see you at the moonrise,” Ilias said, and thought,
I hope
.

In the water below, Halian was balanced carefully on the bench of the dinghy, bobbing in the ripples that washed against the rocky wall of the sea cave. He was a big man, weathered by sun and sea, his long graying hair tied back in a simple knot; Ilias had never thought of him as old, but right now worry made Halian show his years. “Are you two sure you know what you’re doing?” he asked, handing up the coil of rope.

Ilias chuckled, reaching down out of the crevice for it. “I’m never sure we know what we’re doing.” The jagged hole of the cave entrance lay only twenty paces or so beyond the bow of Halian’s little boat, allowing in wan morning light and the dense fog that lay like a wool blanket over the blue-gray water. The rock arched high enough to allow entrance to their ship the
Swift
, but the bottom was dangerous with submerged wrecks.

Longer ago than Ilias or anybody else alive could remember, the back of the cave had been a harbor, part of an old empty city that wove through the caves, much of it underwater. But now the stone docks and breakwaters were obstructed with the wooden skeletons of wrecked ships, all jammed together in one rotting mass. The stink of decay hung in the cool dank air, concentrated in the fog that some wizard from ages ago had caused to form around the island. The sudden gales and bad currents that frequently trapped ships and drew them in to their deaths gave it the name the Isle of Storms.

Halian didn’t appreciate the attempt to lighten the mood. “You know how I feel,” he said seriously, sitting down again in the boat as it rocked gently in the low waves.

“It’ll be all right,” Ilias told him, exasperated. When Halian had brought this up to Giliead last night, it had caused one of those long polite arguments between them where both parties are actually on the same side and there is no hope of resolution. Ilias had no idea how it had worked itself out; he had gotten fed up and gone to sit out on the wall of the goat pen with the herdsmen.

From the crevice above Ilias’s head, Giliead’s voice demanded, “What did he say?”

Ilias stretched back to hand the rope up to him through the narrow passage. “He said we’re suicidal idiots.”

“Tell him thanks for his support,” Giliead said, but the words didn’t have any sting to them. “And love to Mother.”

Ilias leaned out again to relay this, but Halian rolled his eyes, saying, “I heard him, I heard him.” He took up the oars as Ilias freed the mooring line. His expression turning rueful, he added, “Just take care.”

Ilias smiled. Halian had faith in them; he was just tired of funeral pyres. “We will.”

Without looking back, Halian took two quick strokes toward the cave entrance, the little boat already starting to vanish into the fog. Ilias braced his feet on the slick rock and pushed himself up through the opening into the cramped passage above, finding handholds in the mossy chinks in the stones. Giliead was waiting there, sitting on his heels and digging through the supplies in their pack. The crevice stretched up into the rocky mass over their heads, disappearing into shadow when the dim gray light from the opening below gave out. “Ready?” Giliead asked, shaking his braids back and awkwardly maneuvering the pack’s strap over his head and shoulder. He was nearly a head taller than Ilias and the confined space was almost too small for him.

“No,” Ilias told him brightly. The crevice was not only too small for Giliead, it was too small for the distance weapons they would have preferred to bring; bows and hunting spears would never fit through here. They both had their swords strapped to their backs, but drawing them in the confined space was impossible.

Giliead’s warm smile flickered, then straight-faced he nodded firmly. “Me neither.”

“Then let’s go.”

The climb went faster than Ilias remembered, maybe because this time he knew it would end. Searching for a way out of the caverns last year, they had discovered this passage by accident, not knowing if it led to a way out or a dead end somewhere deep in the mountain’s heart. It was pitch-dark and the stone was slick with foul water that dripped continuously from above. After a time the sound of the waves washing against the cave walls below faded and the only noise was their breathing, the scrape of their boots against stone, and an occasional muttered curse due to a bumped head or abraded skin. It was hot too and nearly airless, and Ilias felt sweat plastering his shirt to his chest and back. Bad as it was, it was still easier going up than it had been last year going down.

Giliead called a halt at what they judged was halfway up and Ilias wedged himself onto a shelf of rock invisible in the dark, bracing his feet against the opposite side of the crevice. Shoving the sticky hair off his forehead, he realized his queue was coming undone and he took a moment to tighten it and pull the rest of his hair back. After some struggling, he managed to unsling the waterskin and take a drink. He handed it up to where Giliead was shifting around, still trying to fold his larger body into a comfortable position, and slapped it against the other man’s leg to let him know it was there. When Giliead handed it back down, Ilias asked, “What did you and Halian finally
decide
last night?”

“That I’m bullheaded and he’s worse.” There was rueful amusement in his voice. Since Halian had married Giliead’s mother five years ago, becoming his stepfather and the male head of the household, things between him and Giliead had occasionally been tense. There wouldn’t have been a problem if Giliead had still had his own household with his sister Irisa, but living under what was now Halian’s roof had caused some friction.

“Bullheaded? I would have picked the other end.” Ilias was only a ward of the family, Giliead’s brother by courtesy rather than blood, and therefore able to remain stubbornly neutral. He had come to Gil’s house of Andrien as a child; his own house had been a poor one with far too many children to support, especially boys. He and Gil didn’t look much like blood brothers either, since Ilias’s ancestors had come from further inland, where people were smaller with lighter hair and skin, and Gil’s people came from the bigger, darker strain that had been planted here on the coast since before the first boat was built.

Giliead snorted. Ilias could hear him shifting around uncomfortably again. Finally Giliead added, “He understands that I just want to be sure.”

Ilias finished the unspoken thought hanging over both their heads. “That Ixion’s not back.” It was the first time either one of them had said it aloud, though Ilias knew they had both been thinking it since earlier this season when the rumors had started. Stories of smoke from the island again, of the bodies of curselings like those Ixion had bred washing up on isolated beaches. It wasn’t just talk, either; in the past few months fishing boats had gone missing far more often than they should, with no survivors and no signs of wreckage in any of the places where small boats usually came to grief. Then a trading fleet of six ships from Argot had failed to arrive and two small coastal villages of gleaners had been found deserted, the huts burned and the boats broken into kindling. Nicanor, lawgiver of Cineth, and his wife, Visolela, had asked Giliead to return to the island to see if another wizard had taken Ixion’s place here.

“He can’t be back,” Giliead pointed out reasonably. “I cut his head off. Nobody comes back from that.”

Ilias remembered that part, in a hazy way. Lying across Giliead’s lap in the sinking gig, the water in the bottom red with blood, he had a clear picture of Ixion’s head under the rowing bench. They had never talked about that, either. “Dyani told me you threw it to the pigs.”

“The pigs we eat?” Giliead sounded dubious.

Ilias didn’t take the bait and after a moment his friend said quietly, “Three days after we got back I took it to the cave and the god told me to bury it at the place where the coast road met the road to Estri. That’s when you started to get better.”

“Oh.” Ilias scratched the curse mark on his cheek. He remembered Giliead being gone then and everyone refusing to tell him why. Even after all this time, the memory of Ixion’s malice and power gave him a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. That the man could be dead and in at least two pieces and still be trying to hate him to death.

As soon as Ilias’s fever had abated enough for him to get up, he had walked to Cineth to turn himself in and get the curse mark, the silver finger-width brand given to anyone who had been cursed by a wizard. Giliead had caught up with him halfway there and tried to stop him, but Ilias had refused to listen. He hadn’t meant to make himself a walking symbol of their failure but maybe it had turned out that way; it still seemed like something he had had to do, though Ilias couldn’t say why even to himself.

He shook his head, trying to drive off the uncomfortable reflections. At least the curse mark had stopped Visolela from trying to convince the family to sell him off into marriage somewhere inland. “Crossroads, huh,” he said thoughtfully, keeping his tone light. “I guess the god figured the bastard’s shade would get confused and wander around in circles.”

“Shades can’t cross running water anyway.”

Ilias heard Giliead’s boots grate on the stone as he shifted, ready to start the climb again. Giliead hadn’t meant for Ilias to come with him this time. He had, in fact, invented a story about a dull trip along the coast to Ancyra, which would have been more convincing if Giliead wasn’t such a lousy liar. Cornered and forced to admit the truth, Giliead had still maintained adamantly that Ilias shouldn’t come with him. Ilias had spent the last few days countering arguments, calling bluffs, topping dire threats with even more dire threats, ignoring pleas, and foiling a last-ditch attempt at physical restraint by battering the bolt off the stillroom door. Everybody else had refused to take sides, fearing retribution once Giliead wasn’t around to protect them. Halian and Karima, Giliead’s mother, hadn’t interfered either, both knowing that the only thing more dangerous than going to the Isle of Storms was going to the Isle of Storms alone.