Ink Mage (40 page)

“How many do you have?” He asked. “Speak up. How many?”

She shook her head. “Not as many as you.”

Rina ran in quickly, feeling the lightning bolts on her ankles hum with energy, and was in front of him within an eye blink. He still managed to evade the one-handed sword thrust, but she put all of the bull strength into her other fist and caught him with an uppercut just under his chin. His head snapped back and he grunted in pain and surprise.

And then he backhanded her across the face, and she flew twenty yards, landing roughly on the stone. Something had cracked in her jaw. Already she felt the healing begin.

Rina stood, panting, and brought the sword up.

“You get up?” he said. “The little girl is made of stern stuff. Good, I like a challenge.”

She worked the jaw. It was already better.

“I am Ankar,” he said. “Some want to know the name of their demise when they meet it”

“I’m not telling you my name,” she said. “So you can die curious.”

Ankar laughed. He held his right hand up and flexed it. It turned gray and rough.

Rina launched, swung the two-handed blade. He caught it with the gray hand and the blade
clanked
in his palm.

Stone! He’s turned his arm to stone
.

Ankar squeezed, and the blade shattered. He swiveled and kicked her in the ribs, and she stumbled back, wincing in pain. At least two of her ribs were cracked. She backed away slowly to give the ribs time to heal. Her sword was gone. She considered the rapier at her side.

No. A sword won’t do it. Not with this one
.

She looked down at the palm of her hand, the outline of the skeletal fingers. The Hand of Death. Krell had told her only one of them could have it. Only one.

And Rina Veraiin was that one.

She ran at Ankar as fast as the lightning bolts would let her.

Halfway to him, the Ink Mage grinned, and everything slowed down.

It’s him. He’s slowing down time
.

She strained to go faster, drawing nearer, reaching out. If she could just lay her hand on the man … if she could just reach …

Ankar opened his mouth. His long, wet tongue flopped out.

There was a tattoo on it.

Of a dragon.

Rina’s eyes went wide.

Oh no
.

Fire roared from Ankar’s gaping maw, and the wave of flames swatted Rina out of the air, engulfed her. The inferno reduced her world to an ongoing, searing pain, hair and clothing singing, skin going crisp and black.

She faded, maybe just for a second, and when she came to again, she lay face down in the middle of the stone bridge. Her entire body was cracked and black; the flesh beneath the outer crust of baked skin oozed like molten liquid. The skin of her face had melted over one eye. With the other eye she saw Ankar laughing and walking slowly toward her.

A tattoo on a tongue. A dragon. Talbun would be amused.

“You should see yourself,” taunted Ankar. “Just a disgusting scorched blob. After I finish you, I’ll knock down those gates, and we’ll be back where we started.”

He walked toward her as he boasted. Rina’s hand trembled badly, but she was still able to reach into the singed satchel at her side. Her hand closed around something, came out with it.

She tried to fling it at Ankar, but her hand barely flopped forward, the little glass ball rolling and bumping along the bridge and finally coming to a stop ten yards away in a crack between the bridge stones.

Ankar didn’t even see it. He was full of his own voice. “It’s a shame, really.”

He kept striding forward …

“I was especially curious about the ones around your eyes. Gave you an interesting tribal look, too.”

… and stepped on the last of the three glass fire balls that Talbun had given to Rina.

The explosion lifted Ankar twenty feet into the air. His right foot separated from his right leg which had been blown from his body, leg and foot flying in two different directions in a spray of blood and smoke and dust. He came down again and kept right on falling into the deep chasm along with the rocky debris of the bridge.

When the dust cleared, Rina saw there was now a two-hundred-foot gap in the bridge. The Perranese army had bunched up on the other side, looking across the empty space at her with disbelief. She lay with one arm dangling over the edge.

With the last of her strength she rolled over, facing back toward the gates. They were open now, and a small group of people ran toward her.

Alem was in the lead.

He knelt next to her, saying something, but Rina’s hearing had given over to a fierce ringing. Alem’s strained smile was so obviously meant to comfort her that she wanted to cry.

But instead she let the darkness take her, and that was some comfort too.

EPILOGUE

The tiniest pinprick of light in a vast implacable darkness.

She swam toward it for a long time, but it never got closer, or at least it didn’t seem to. She became more aware of things. Realized she was hanging on to the thinnest most fragile thread of the spirit possible. She pulled herself along by it, pulled herself toward the light. But she had to be patient. Pull too hard or too fast and it would snap.

But eventually the light grew brighter, and she reached for it, grabbing the edges like some hole in the night. She pulled herself up … and through.

Rina’s eyes flickered open. She looked up at Brasley’s smirking face.

“I like your new hairstyle,” he said.

Her hand went to her head. A thin layer of fuzz. She remembered. She was burned all over and—

“I need a mirror.”

Brasley laughed and brought her a small hand mirror. She sat up in bed, anxiously examined her reflection. Her skin was perfectly smooth and healthy. Her hair, on the other hand, was only an inch of fresh growth. She was hideous.

“You like very nice,” Brasley said. “And anyway, it’ll grow back.”

She looked around. She was in her father’s old bedroom. The bedroom of a duke.

Of a duchess.

“Have you been here the whole time?” she asked.

“Me? No. I only arrived two days ago.”

“Two days? How long …?”

“You were out for nine days,” Brasley said. “At first there was a lot of talk of burials and somber ceremonies, but evidently duchesses don’t die like they’re supposed to when massively burned over their entire body.”

Her head drooped and she rubbed her eyes. She felt whole but fatigued. For nine days Rina had clung to a thread of the spirit while the healing rune had done its job.

“Anyway,” Brasley said. “It’s Alem who’s been by your bedside almost every hour.”

Rina looked up. “Where is he?”

Brasley smiled. “Let me step out a moment while you get dressed. Then I think I might know where he is.”

* * *

She wore a simple dress and shoes. Someone had laundered Kork’s cloak. She wrapped it around herself. She wore thin gloves. Rina thought about the skeletal tattoo on her palm and thought she might always wear gloves from now on.

Brasley was patient enough to answer her questions on the carriage ride to the front gates.

Giffen was nowhere to be found, but they’d discovered a dead woman in his room and a vast quantity of blood on the floor and bedding.

The Perranese had retreated to the coast, where they were presumably waiting for their fleet to pick them up, at which time they would flee back across the sea to lick their wounds.

The gypsies had left and had carried their dead away with them.

They arrived at the front gates, which had been left open. Brasley and Rina passed through them and walked to the edge of the ruined bridge where a man sat with his legs dangling over the side, drinking from a fat, earthen jug.

As they approached, Rina saw it wasn’t Alem but one of the men who’d been with him in the dungeon.

He turned and saw her and made as if to rise. “Duchess.”

“Please don’t,” she said. “I’m not in the mood to be duchess just yet. Let me join you.”

She sat and let her legs dangle next to his.

Brasley sighed. “I’m sure it would be terribly comic to somebody somewhere for the three of us to come through so many adventures only to be blown into a chasm by a stiff gust of wind. Well, why not?” He sat alongside the other two.

“I’m sorry,” Rina said. “I don’t know your name.”

“Tosh.”

“Thank you, Tosh. For all you did.”

“How’s the little girl?” Brasley asked. “Emmon, is it?”

“She’s with her Auntie Prinn. She’s …” Tosh sniffed, wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “She’s made of stern stuff. She’ll be fine.”

Rina wanted to ask but didn’t know how.

“Well, it looks like the gang is back together again,” came a voice behind them.

Rina turned, her face breaking into a huge smile at the sight of Alem walking toward them. Inexplicably, he carried a lit oil lantern in the broad daylight. She didn’t care.

“It’s good to see you awake,” he said.

“Don’t look at me.” She ran a hand over her head.

“It’ll probably start a whole new fashion.” Alem sat next to her.

The four of them kicked their legs. The wind blew cold. Tosh passed the jug to Rina, who drank and passed it down the line.

“Gentlemen, I’m going to have to be a duchess soon, and I don’t know how.”

“I’ll help if I’m able, milady,” Tosh said.

“You’re a duchess in your own duchy,” Brasley said. “Whatever you say or do is by definition the correct thing.”

“Here,” Alem said. “Maybe this will help. I brought you a present.” He handed her a chuma stick.

Rina laughed and took it. Stuck it in her mouth. She understood why he had the lantern now. She leaned in to light it, puffed the stick to life. Her eyes went up to his face. She didn’t know what would happen between them. Rina was a duchess, and Alem was a stable boy—
head
stable boy—and she couldn’t imagine what anyone might think about such a pairing. Maybe nobody would care at all.

One thing she knew for sure was that she wouldn’t worry about it today. Or tomorrow. Not until she had to.

Brasley drank from the jug and looked at the other side of the broken bridge. “I can’t imagine how we’re going to fix that thing.”

Rina smiled, remembered what Kork had always said when it came to the Long Bridge. “Magic.”

They sat like that for a long time, passing the jug, Rina puffing on the chuma stick, legs dangling free over the edge of the world.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Victor Gischler was born in Sanford, Florida. He is a world traveler and earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Southern Mississippi. He received Italy’s Corsair Award for adventure literature and was nominated for both an Anthony Award and an Edgar Award for his mystery writing.

He currently lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and would grill every meal if his wife would let him.

This book was originally released in Episodes as a Kindle Serial. Kindle Serials launched in 2012 as a new way to experience serialized books. Kindle Serials allow readers to enjoy the story as the author creates it, purchasing once and receiving all existing Episodes immediately, followed by future Episodes as they are published. To find out more about Kindle Serials and to see the current selection of Serials titles, visit
www.amazon.com/kindleserials
.