Mind of the Magic (Arhel Book 3) (14 page)

Beside her, Edrouss Delmuirie came to a dead stop. For one long moment he was silent while his breath made quick, feathery plumes in the darkness. Then he croaked, “Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

The city! The
city
, y’ damned silly girl!” In the open air, his face was a pale blob, with dark shadows for eyes and mouth. Faia couldn’t make out his expression—but he
sounded
like he was near tears. “What happened to the stinking
city?”

“This is it.” Faia didn’t appreciate being called a “damned silly girl.” She clenched her jaws and looked from him to the ruins. “This is all there’s been for hundreds… and… hundreds… of years—since long after you last walked here, I’m sure.”

“No,” he whispered. Then he fainted, pitching forward down the little hill, dragging Faia with him.

As she lay on the snow-covered stone walkway, with the pain twice as horrible as the worst it had been before, Faia had a chance to consider both her words and her actions. And she came to a conclusion.

Maybe I shouldn’t have broken the news to him in
quite
that way, she decided at last.

MEDWIND Song was less than sympathetic. “You did a damn stupid thing, turning your back on a known enemy. You’re lucky Thirk didn’t kill you—and you would have deserved what you got if he did. Tighter, Choufa. Pull them tighter,” she instructed, as Choufa wrapped Faia’s ribs with strips of cloth.

Choufa tugged and Faia wailed.

“Hush,” Medwind told her. “Your daughter will hear you and think we’re killing you.” She poked a finger against Faia’s injured side, and Faia gasped. The pain was bad—but not anywhere near as bad as it had been. The wrapping helped. Medwind faced her and said, “So Thirk got away.”

“Delmuirie ran partway down the main hall to catch him, but then came back to check on me. The whole business was very odd. He told me Thirk stole his sword and a cup he’d found, that Thirk called them relics.”

The Hoos woman nodded. “They might
be
relics—at least the chalice might. He said he found it in the burial grounds, didn’t he? If Delmuirie really did buy the sword at a market, then I don’t think it would have any magical value. But Edrouss Delmuirie knows nothing of magic. Less than nothing—he doesn’t even believe in it.” Medwind crossed her arms and settled herself cautiously against the edge of her worktable. “I’m puzzled. He talked about the First Folk as if they were terrible—called them Klaue and Klogs and smiled every time he realized there aren’t any of them anymore. And he was unshakable when he insisted there was no magic in Arhel in his time. I don’t think I convinced him
we
had magic, but he was willing to act polite.”

“Delmuirie isn’t at all as I thought he’d be,” Faia said.

Medwind agreed with a single sharp nod of her head “There is a certain… well, I don’t suppose I can say an aura about him… but he does make one believe he’s trustworthy. That’s all, though. He’s a nice-looking, likable young man like any of a thousand you could pull out of your back-hills villages. He’s ordinary. I think Thirk realized that, too—and I think he figured out what really happened. Delmuirie somehow triggered a spell attached to the chalice, and unwittingly brought the Delmuirie Barrier into being.”

“Unwittingly—perhaps,” Faia grumbled. “But you forget, I spoke with him in the emeshest. He believed himself to be a god.”

Medwind nodded. “I know. But if he did before, he seems not to now. I can think of several explanations for his confusion—”

“So can I. He’s lying.”

Medwind shrugged “Perhaps. It’s one explanation, but I don’t think it’s the best one. He doesn’t have the feel of the liar about him.” She cocked her head and stared at Faia. “The best liars don’t, of course—but damnall, I find that I want to believe him.”

Medwind sighed. She turned and looked through the doorway and into the other room, where Edrouss Delmuirie slept on a mat near the fire. “I cannot understand why I like him so much. In person, he’s unprepossessing.”

“You flatter him.” Faia didn’t say that she, too, found herself liking Edrouss Delmuirie, in spite of the fact that she had every reason not to.

“Well, you have the hunter to occupy your thoughts. Edrouss Delmuirie could almost be invisible if he stood next to Gyels,” Medwind said. She looked back to Faia and her face brightened. “Your hunter went out after Thirk for us, incidentally. He seemed quite certain he could track Thirk down in spite of the darkness and the powdery snow.” She sighed. “Gyels reminds me of several of my husbands. They were hunters, too—and randy as rutting billy goats.” The old woman stared at her feet and clenched her fists. “I want to be young again,” she said. “I want the pleasure of young men again.”

“I promised,” Faia told her. “You will be young again if I can make it so.” Faia refused to be distracted by Medwind’s speculations, though. “I don’t like the fact that Gyels went after Thirk by himself. If he is the god Hrogner, he won’t have any trouble finding and catching Thirk—but what will happen to us when he gets his hands on the chalice? A thing like that could make him more powerful than he already was.”

“I doubt that he’s Hrogner, Faia. He hasn’t caused any trouble since you brought him here.”

“He didn’t initially cause any trouble in Omwimmee Trade.” Faia frowned. “He made up for that, though.”

The wind seemed to be picking up again. Faia paused, certain she’d heard it howling down from the mountain pass again. Of course, what she thought she heard could have been something else. She put a finger to her lips and held still, not even breathing.

Medwind, watching her, froze too.

The sound came again, somewhat louder. “No-o-o-o-o!” A shout from far away echoed from mountain peak to mountain peak and down into the valley where the First Folk ruins lay. Both women exchanged glances, and Faia mouthed the word, “Thirk?”

Then a blast of power swirled around them like a river undammed—magic, radiant energy, the absent sun briefly returned. Medwind’s skin smoothed, her back grew straighter—and then the wonderful power dried up. As quickly as Faia felt it, it was gone again.

Medwind stared down at her old-again hands, and tears ran into the creases of her cheeks. “The chalice must be the key,” she whispered. “Then truly, there is hope.”

Faia tugged at the tip of her braid. “Perhaps. It depends on who has the chalice now, and who screamed.” Faia slid off of the second worktable and carefully put on her erda, trying at the same time to move her injured side as little as she could.

“Where are you going?”

“To find out if Gyels got the chalice.”

Faia stepped again into the freezing darkness of Arhel’s long night, darker now that the Tide Mother had set. The stars blazed brightly—not winking as they did in Omwimmee Trade, but burning with a steady, harsh light. The air was thin and viciously cold—her eyelashes frosted again from the steam of her breath, and she wrapped a woven cloth around her cheeks and nose to keep her skin from freezing. The powder-snow crunched beneath her boots. She hiked slowly toward higher ground, heading for the ramp of the one unbroken tower that remained in the ruins. She didn’t get far enough to find out if the frost-rimed stone slope was climbable, for a deep voice shouted after her as she trudged across the open spaces; she stopped and looked around.

Gyels slid down an ice-covered stone road from a higher level of the city; his hands were empty, and he was alone.

“What happened?” she asked when he got closer.

Gyels looked away from her, back the way he had come. “The bastard got away. He’s stolen supplies from the stores, and taken off over the High Road. I nearly caught up with him, but when I got close, he did some sort of magic with that cup he stole and nearly flung me off the mountain.”

Faia sucked in her bottom lip. Perhaps the cup
was
the source of magic, and Gyels only the mortal hunter he claimed to be. If he had been able to return with the chalice in hand as the conquering hero, she felt certain he would have. If he were just a man, and not Hrogner masquerading as one, perhaps she could permit herself to get to know him.

She gave Gyels a tiny smile; then full realization hit her and she turned away and swore. “By the Lady’s heart and blood—Thirk has the chalice!”

Thirk—the malicious, obsessed madman. Her mother had told her she was supposed to save all of Arhel. Had she meant Faia was to save it from Thirk?

Faia wished her mother had given her a specific prophecy telling her exactly what she was supposed to do and with whom she was supposed to do it. Instead Faia faced Gyels, a hunter who might be a god; Delmuirie, a man who’d only recently thought he
was
a god; and Thirk, a power-hungry saje who, with the chalice, might become almost a god. And how the three of them related to her and Arhel’s future, she hadn’t the first idea.

Gyels had been studying her. “You’ve some skill at magic, haven’t you?”

“I did have,” she told him, “though I can do nothing now.”

“If you got the chalice, could you make it work?”

Faia pondered that. “Perhaps,” she said at last “I don’t know how to use it—but if I had it in my hands, maybe I could figure that out. Or maybe Medwind or Kirgen could.”

Gyels looked back the way he’d come, up toward the ancient First Folk road he’d called the High Road. “I can track him,” he told her, “if you can handle the magic when we catch up to him. But we’ll have to leave as soon as we can get supplies together. Along the High Road, any sign he leaves will deteriorate quickly.”

Faia’s ribs throbbed and the bitter cold ate into her bones. She faced a trek into the mountains in winter—the false winter of the Month of Ghosts, but no less deadly than the real season. She had to find the magic that would save Medwind; now she had to stop Thirk, too.

Did she trust Gyels enough to head into the mountains with him? Not alone, she decided. She was willing to take a chance on him… but definitely not alone. “I’ll be ready as quickly as I can.”

“HERE’S a bag of bonnechard,” Medwind told Faia, and tossed a gut-wrapped bag full of thick, furry, gummy-looking leaves on the floor beside her. “For the pain in your side,” she added. “Don’t chew the leaves unless you have to—they’ll take the pain away, but they’ll also make you so drowsy you’ll be likely to fall off the side of the mountain.”

Faia studied the contents of the little packet. “How many?”

“One at a time—they’re strong. An old Hoos warrior remedy.” Medwind chuckled. “Besides, you won’t want to chew more than one. They taste like shit.”

“You’ve compared?”

“I’ll make you chew one now if you don’t take that back.”

Faia grinned. “I take it back. Thank you.” She put the packet aside so she could store it on top for easy access. She wasn’t sure she’d even need the drug—the tight wrapping around her chest kept enough pressure on her broken ribs that even when she was kneeling and packing, the pain was merely bad, not intolerable.

Medwind settled onto a hassock and rubbed her arms briskly. “The damned body gets cold so fast now.” She shook her head, annoyed. “Not as cold as
you’re
going to be, I expect. Of course, alone in the mountains with Gyels, huddled together in a single tent for warmth—”

Faia didn’t look up from shoving supplies into the pack she’d borrowed. “I’m not going to be alone with him. I’ve been to see your Bontonard scholars. They’re mildly curious about the chalice, but mostly they want to get back to Bonton, and they think they’ll have a better chance of surviving the trip if they’re with a skilled tracker. Edrouss Delmuirie insisted that he was going to go along, too. I think, after being trapped in the burial grounds with him, Delmuirie wants Thirk’s painted skull to keep on a shelf.”

Medwind blew out a disgusted breath. “Moron.”

“Edrouss Delmuirie isn’t all that bad, and Thirk is worse than a moron. He’s insane.”

“I wasn’t talking about Delmuirie
or
Thirk. You had the perfect chance to be alone with a positively magnificent man—a gorgeous animal—in a situation where you’d almost
have
to get to know each other well. Sajes seven hells, Faia, men like that don’t come along often! And you’re
wasting
him!” Medwind stopped and looked closely at what Faia was shoving into the pack. “You don’t have enough dried meat, and you’ve taken too much grain.”

Faia kept packing. “I’ve done this before,” she said evenly.

“You need more meat if you’re going to be traveling in high altitudes—the thin air and the cold require more than your horse food.”

Faia threw a gut-wrapped pack of dried meat to the floor and glared up at Medwind. “I grew up in high altitudes—I spent most of my life in mountains higher and more dangerous than these. Do you want to do this?”

Medwind snapped back, “I wish to Etyt and Thiena I could! I wish this bedamned body could go over mountains! I wish it could seduce men! I wish it wasn’t going to
die
on me at any minute!”

Faia hung her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” She looked up at her friend. “But, Medwind, I cannot live for you. I cannot do the things you would do because you can no longer do them. I have to live
my
life. I have to decide about Gyels in my own way and my own time—and I didn’t grow up wanting nine husbands at the same time. I need to be more sure of what I want before I act.”

Medwind stood very still for a moment. Then she nodded once, brusquely, and gave Faia a tiny smile. “You’re right. Go. Do what you have to do—bring the magic back for us. I won’t say anything else about you and men.”

Faia laughed. “You won’t have time to.” She shoved the last of the foodstuffs and quicklights into the pack, and buckled the straps down. She turned then, serious, and faced her friend. “Have you thought about the chalice—and what it means to the magic?”

“I have.” The old woman sighed. “I might have been wrong about the taada kaneddu. If Arhel’s magic is tied to the chalice, and Delmuirie’s spell is broken, then there may be no magic in all of Arhel, at least until someone resets the spell.”