Trusting that their plain traveling garb would excite no suspicion, they rode on to Sylara.
Even without his amulet, Arkoniel couldn’t help glancing around nervously as they entered the town. Could these Harriers recognize a wizard merely by his powers? Some of the rumors they’d picked up invested the white-clad wizards with powers beyond the normal range. If so, they’d chosen an odd place to show them off. Sylara was nothing but a rambling, dirty harbor town.
The waterfront was already crowded with spectators. Arkoniel could hear jeers and catcalls echoing across the water as they made their way down the muddy street to the shore.
The crowd was too thick to get through, so Iya paid a taverner to watch from a squalid little upper room that overlooked the waterfront. A broad platform had been set up here, built between two stone jetties. Soldiers wearing dark grey tabards with the outline of a flying hawk stitched in red across the breast stood two deep on the landward side. Arkoniel counted forty in all.
Behind them stood a long gibbet and a knot of wizards by two large wooden frames. These last looked like upended bedframes, but larger.
“White robes,” Iya muttered, looking at the wizards.
“Niryn’s fashion. He had on a white robe the night Tobin was born.”
Six people already dangled from the horizontal pole of the gibbet. The four men hung limp at the end of their halters; one still wore the robes of a priest of Illior. The remaining two, a woman and a boy, were so small that their weight was not enough to break their necks. Bound hand and foot, they bucked and twisted wildly.
Fighting for life, or death? Arkoniel wondered, horrified. They reminded him perversely of a butterfly he’d watched emerge from its winter chrysalis—suspended beneath a branch by a bit of silk, it had twitched and jiggled inside the shiny brown casing. These two looked like that, but their struggle would not end in wings and color.
At last some soldiers grabbed their legs and hauled down to snap their necks. A few cheers went up among the crowd, but most of the onlookers had fallen silent.
Arkoniel clutched the window frame, already nauseated, but there was worse to follow.
The wizards had remained motionless near the wooden frames all this time. As soon as the last of the hanged went still, they spread out in a line across the platform, revealing the two naked, kneeling men they’d been shielding with their circle. One was an old man with white hair; the other was young and dark. Both wore thick iron bands around their necks and wrists.
Arkoniel squinted down at the Harrier wizards and let out a gasp of dismay. He couldn’t make out faces at this distance, but he recognized the forked red beard of the man standing closest to the frames.
“That’s Niryn himself!”
“Yes. I didn’t realize there were so many, but I suppose there would have to be…. Those prisoners are wizards. See those iron bands? Very powerful magic, that. They cloud the mind.”
Soldiers pulled the prisoners to their feet and bound them spread-eagled on the frames with silver cables. Now Arkoniel could see the complex spell patterns that covered each man’s chest. Before he could ask Iya what these signified, she let out a groan and clutched his hand.
When the victims were secured, the wizards flanked them in two rows and began their incantations. The old man fixed his gaze stoically on the sky, but his companion panicked, screaming and imploring the crowd and Illior to save him.
“Can’t we do—” Arkoniel staggered as a blinding ache struck him behind the eyes. “What is it? Do you feel it?”
“It’s a warding,” Iya whispered, pressing a hand to her brow. “And a warning to any of us who might be watching.”
The crowd had gone completely silent now. Arkoniel could hear the chanting growing louder and louder. The blur of words was unintelligible, but the throbbing in his head grew stronger and spread to his chest and arms until his heart felt as if it was being squeezed between heavy stones. He slowly slid down to his knees in front of the window but could not look away.
Both prisoners began to shake violently, then shrieked as white flames sprang from their flesh to engulf them. There was no smoke. The white fire burned with such intensity that within a few moments nothing was left on the frames but shriveled black hands and feet dangling from the silver bonds. Iya was whispering hoarsely beside him, and he joined her in the prayer for the dead.
When it was over, Iya slumped down on the narrow bed and wove a spell of silence around them with shaking fingers. Arkoniel remained where he was under the window, unable to move. For a long time neither could speak.
At last Iya whispered, “There was nothing we could have done. Nothing. I see their power now. They’ve banded together and joined their strength. The rest of us are so scattered—”
“That, and the king’s sanction!” Arkoniel spat out. “He’s his mad mother’s son after all.”
“He’s worse. She was insane, where he is ruthless, and intelligent enough to turn wizards against their own kind.”
Fear kept them in the tiny room until nightfall, when the tavern keeper shooed them out to make way for a whore and her cully.
The taverns were open and there were still many people on the street, but none ventured out onto the platform. Torches had been left burning there. Arkoniel could see the bodies on the gibbet swinging in the night breeze. The frames, however, were gone.
“Should we go see if there’s anything to be learned?”
“No.” Iya drew him hastily away. “It’s too dangerous. They might be watching.”
Slipping out of town by the darkest alleys, they rode back to the grove and gathered their tools. But when Arkoniel reached for the amulets, Iya shook her head. They left them where they lay and rode on without speaking until the town was far behind them.
“Eight wizards could do that, Arkoniel, just eight!” Iya burst out at last, voice shaking with fury. “And there was nothing we could do against them. I begin to see more clearly now. The Third Orëska the Oracle revealed to me in my vision—it was a great confederation of wizards in a shining palace of their own at the heart of a great city. If eight are enough to carry out the evil we witnessed here, what could a hundred accomplish for good? And who could stand against us?”
“Like in the Great War,” said Arkoniel.
Iya shook her head. “That union lasted only as long as the war, and in the face of the most horrible conflict and upheaval. Think what we could do with peace and time enough to work! Imagine—the knowledge you and I have collected in our travels combined with that of a hundred other wizards. And think of Virishan’s poor children. Imagine them saved sooner and brought up in such a place, with dozens of teachers instead of one, and whole libraries of wisdom to draw from.”
“But instead, that same power is being used to divide us against ourselves.”
Iya stared into the distance, her face unreadable in the starlight. “Famine. Disease. Raiders. Now this. Sometimes, Arkoniel, I see Skala like a sacrificial bull at Sakor-tide. But instead of a clean stroke of the sword to kill it, it’s being stuck over and over with little knives until it weakens and falls to its knees.” She turned grimly to Arkoniel. “And there’s Plenimar just across the water, scenting blood like a wolf.”
“It’s almost as if Niryn has had the same vision, but turned it on its head,” Arkoniel murmured. “Why would the Lightbearer do that?”
“You saw the priest on the gibbet, my boy. Do you really think it’s Illior who guides him?”
Chapter 12
Spring turned to summer and the meadow below the keep was thick again with daisies and willow bay. Tobin longed to go riding, but Mynir was ailing and there was no one else left to go out with, so he had to be content with walks with Nari.
He was too old now to be content playing in the kitchen under the women’s watchful eyes, but Nari wouldn’t let him go out to the barracks yard to practice unless one of the servants was free to go with him. Cook was the only one in the house who knew anything of shooting or s
wordplay, and she was too old and fat to do more than advise him.
He still had the parchments and ink his mother had given him, but they brought too many dark memories. He began to spend more time shut up in the third-floor chamber, with only the doll and the demon for company. He sometimes whittled with the sharp little knife Koni had given him, using chunks of soft pine and cedar purloined from the kindling pile. The wood was fragrant under his hands and seemed to hold shapes for his blade to discover. Caught up in puzzling out how to coax out a leg or fin or ear, he forgot for a while how lonely he was.
Often, however, he would sit with the doll on his lap the way his mama had, wondering what to do with it. It wasn’t useful like a sword or bow. Its blank face made him sad. He remembered how his mama used to talk to it, but he couldn’t even do that, for his voice had not come back. Sitting there, squeezing his fingers into the stuffed limbs to find the mysterious lumps and sharp bits inside, he still couldn’t remember why his mama had given him the strange, misshapen toy. All the same, he clung to the solid reality of it and the notion that she had loved him a little after all, at the last.
Someone had replaced the door to the tower with a stout new one and Tobin was glad of this without knowing quite why. Whenever he went upstairs, he always made certain it was tightly locked.
Standing in front of it one day, he suddenly had the oddest sense that his mother was just on the other side, staring at him through the wood. The thought sent a thrill of longing and fear through him, and this fancy grew stronger each day, until he was certain he could hear her inside the tower, walking up and down the stone steps with her skirts swishing behind her, or sliding her hands across the wooden panels of the door in search of the latch. He tried hard to imagine her kind and happy, but more often it seemed to him that she was angry.
This darker vision took root and grew like nightshade in his imagination. One night he dreamt that she reached out under the door and pulled him underneath to her side like a sheet of parchment. The demon was there, too, and they dragged him up the stairs to the open window overlooking the mountains to—
He woke thrashing in Nari’s arms, but couldn’t speak to tell her what the trouble was. But he knew that he didn’t want to go upstairs anymore.
The following afternoon he crept to the third floor one last time, heart hammering in his chest. He didn’t go near the tower door this time. Instead, he snatched the doll from its hiding place and dashed downstairs as fast as he could, certain he could hear his mother’s ghost trying to claw her way under the tower door to catch him.
Never again, he vowed, making certain the door at the bottom of the stairs was shut tight. Running to the toy room, he curled up in the corner beside the wardrobe, cradling the doll in his arms.
Tobin spent the next few days fretting over a new hiding place but couldn’t find anywhere that seemed safe. No matter how safely he thought he’d tucked it away, he couldn’t stop worrying about it.
At last, he decided to share his secret with Nari. She loved him more than anyone now and perhaps, being a woman, wouldn’t think so badly of him.
He decided to show the doll to her when she came up to fetch him for supper. He waited until he heard her step in the corridor, then took the doll from its latest hiding spot beneath the toy room wardrobe and turned to the door.
For an instant he thought he saw someone standing in the open doorway. Then the door slammed shut and the demon went into a frenzy.
Tapestries flew from the walls and leaped at him like living things. Dust choked him as layers of heavy fabric knocked him to his knees and shut out the light. He dropped the doll and managed to struggle out from beneath them just in time to see the wardrobe topple forward with a crash, landing just inches from where he lay. The chest upended, spilling toys and inkpots out over the floor. The seal on one of the larger pots broke and a pool of sticky black fluid spread out across the stone floor.
Like Mama’s hair on the ice—
The thought came and went like a dragonfly skimming the river’s surface.
Then the demon attacked his city.
It tore wooden houses from their places and threw them into the air. People and animals flew at the wall. Tiny ships scattered as if a gale was driving them.
“No! Stop it!” Tobin shrieked, fighting his way free of the fallen tapestries to protect the cherished toy. A flock of clay sheep flew past his head and shattered to bits against the wall. “Stop it! That’s mine!”
Tobin’s vision seemed to narrow to a long, dark tunnel, and all he could see at the end of it was his most cherished possession being torn to pieces. He struck out wildly, flailing with his fists to drive the hateful spirit away. He heard a loud pounding from somewhere nearby and fought harder, blind with fury, until his hand connected with something solid. He heard a startled cry. Strong hands grabbed him and wrestled him down to the floor.
“Tobin! Tobin, stop that!”
Gasping for breath, Tobin looked up at Nari. Tears were streaming down her plump cheeks and blood trickled from her nose.
A red droplet on a grouse’s beak—the same bright red on river ice—
Tobin’s vision went completely black. Pain blossomed like a flower of fire in his chest, pressing a ragged wail from his lungs.
His mother’s birds beating themselves against the tower walls behind him as he looked down on her—
No, don’t think—
—broken body at the river’s edge.
Black hair and red blood on the ice.
The fiery ache disappeared, leaving him cold and empty.
“Oh Tobin, how could you?” Nari wept, still holding him down. “All your pretty things! Why?”
“I didn’t,” he whispered, too tired to move.
“Oh, my poor love—Maker’s mercy, you spoke!” Nari gathered Tobin into her arms. “Oh, my love, you’ve found your voice at last.”
She carried him next door to his bed and tucked him in, but he hardly noticed. He lay limp as the doll, remembering.
He remembered why he’d been in the tower.
He remembered why his mama was dead.
Why he had the doll.
She hadn’t given it to him.
Another swift, sharp stab of pain pierced Tobin’s chest, and he wondered if it was what Nari meant in her bedtime stories when she spoke of someone’s heart breaking.
She lay down beside him and held him close through the covers, stroking his hair the way she always did. It made him drowsy.
“Why?” he managed at last. “Why did Mama hate me?” But if Nari had an answer for this, he fell asleep before he heard it.
Tobin woke with a start in the night, knowing he’d left the doll lying somewhere in the toy room.
He slipped out of bed and hurried next door in his nightshirt, only to find that the room had been put right already. The tapestries were back on the walls. The wardrobe and chest were in their places. The ink was gone, and all the scattered toys. His city lay in ruins in the middle of the floor and he knew he must fix it before his father came home and saw.
But the doll was nowhere to be seen. Leaving the room, he searched the house, room after room, even the barracks and the stables.
There was no one else in the house. This frightened him terribly, for he’d never been so alone. Worse yet, he knew that the only place left to look was upstairs in the tower. He stood in the courtyard, looking up at the shuttered windows above the roofline.
“I can’t,” he said aloud. “I don’t want to go up there.”
As if in answer, the courtyard gate swung open with a creak of hinges, and Tobin caught a glimpse of someone small and dark slipping away across the bridge.
He followed but as soon as he was through the gate he found himself deep in the forest, following a path that ran along the riverbank. Far ahead, half hidden by branches, he caught movement again and knew it was the demon.
He followed it to a clearing but it disappeared. The moon was up now and he could see two does
grazing on the silvery, dew-covered grass. They pricked up their ears at his approach, but didn’t spring away. Tobin went to them and stroked their soft brown muzzles. They bowed their heads under his hand, then sidled away into the dark forest. There was a hole in the ground, like the entrance to a fox’s burrow, where they’d been grazing. It was just big enough for him to crawl into, and he did.
Wiggling through, he found a room below very much like his mother’s tower chamber. The windows were open, but blocked by packed earth and roots. It was bright all the same, though, lit by a cheerful fire on the hearth in the center of the room. A table beside it was set with honey cakes and cups of milk, and next to that was a chair. It was turned away from him, but he could see that someone was sitting there, someone with long black hair.
“Mama?” Tobin asked, caught between joy and terror. The woman started to turn—
And Tobin woke up.
He lay there a moment, blinking back tears as he listened to Nari’s soft snoring beside him. The dream had been so real, and he’d wanted to see his mother again so badly. He wanted her to be smiling and kind. He wanted for them to sit at the table by the fire and eat the honey cakes together, as they never had on any of his name days.
He burrowed deeper beneath the blankets, wondering if he could slip back into the dream. Suddenly a fragment of it brought him fully awake again.
He had left the doll in the toy room.
Slipping out of bed, he took the night lamp from its stand and went into the next room, wondering if it would all be the way it had been in his dream.
But the room was still a shambles. Everything lay where it had fallen. Trying not to look at the broken city, he hauled the heavy tapestries aside, looking for the doll where he must have dropped it.
It wasn’t there.
Crouched miserably with his arms around his knees, he pictured someone—Nari or Mynir perhaps—finding it and shaking their head in disapproval as they carried it away. Would they tell his father? Would they give it back?