* * *
5th Yearsend, 998 NE
“I don’t know if I can keep doin’ this,” Bor muttered.
“Doing vot?” she asked. “It’s just a game.”
They were sitting outside Irimar’s back door, in chairs dried by wizardry. Emrelet was controlling the snow, causing it to swirl in patterns around the garden, and he was matching the shapes and consistency down to the last snowflake with his illusions. Where she made a lunging bear, his lunged back – when the snow fell like a waterfall crashing down into boulders, there were suddenly two, the ripples of their rivers converging and rebounding.
“I don’t mean this.” He nodded his head, letting his latest glamour drop away – she looked across at him in concern, allowing the snow a mind of its own again.
“Vot do you mean? You can’t mean, after all zis – Kastyr?”
He shrugged, then took a long draught of his beer.
“Bor?”
He passed his hand over his face. “I’m still thinking about her, all the time. T-Tanra. I thought – it would just go away. I thought I could… I thought, maybe we could – me and you – but I can’t. I don’t want to. I just – it’s driving me mad!”
He threw his pint-glass at a nearby statue and Emrelet caught it by the handle with a trail of wind before it could smash, before it could even spill – he turned to stare at her, open-mouthed.
She smiled. “It’s only been a couple of days. Vot did you expect? You vill get over her.” She turned back to stare at the beautiful black sky, extending her arms over her head and using them as a pillow. “I don’t think of you zat vay, Borasir. But… who knows?”
She had to admit to herself that the enchanter was attractive, though this pitiful moaning wasn’t exactly working wonders for him. She didn’t think there was ever going to be anything between the two of them beyond the professional relationship they’d developed, but surely it wouldn’t hurt to keep the notion sitting there at the back of his mind?
“No, it wouldn’t hurt,” he growled.
She hissed, half-rising.
“Never mind.” He stood up himself and plucked his beer out of the coiled air currents. “I know what you did, Emrelet. I know what you did to Copperbrow.” He sighed, passing his hand over his face again.
She lowered her voice, closed her eyes. “And vot are you going to do viz zis information? Vot have you already done?”
“Nothin’. Ain’t stupid.”
He turned away from her, finished his beer, and then threw it back into her wind-coil – she opened a gap and let the glass shatter on the stone, making him jump.
“Nothing. You really expect me believe zat.”
He groaned. “Come on, Em.”
She opened her eyes again. “Don’t call me zat.”
“You have no idea, how much of a hero I am,” he grated, stepping closer to her and thrusting out his jaw. “How easy it would be to just own you, own all of you…”
“You think zat makes you a hero?” she sneered. “Not stealing avay everyone’s vill and identity – zis makes you a good man, does it? How low of a bar do you vont to set? Is ze man who doesn’t slit his vife’s throat vhile she sleeps now vorthy of praise? You disgust me.”
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
“If she was a shrill harpy of a wife, and he could slit her throat and she didn’t die, in fact didn’t even get hurt… in fact she got better, happier… without anyone ever knowin’ what he did…”
“But zat’s just it, isn’t it?” Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. “You know who my friends are. You know you’d be caught, sooner or later, and it’d be your mind on ze line… It’s fear, not heroism, zat you’re talking about. Just fear. Cowardice.”
“It’d be easy to be brave, I reckon, with the Magisterium backin’ your play. Does it feel good?”
He glowered down at her; she was still sitting demurely in her chair.
“Eh, does it?” he pressed. “Why’d you think I won’t say anythin’? Damn right, I’m scared. I’m scared of you, Emrelet, Stormsword, whoever you droppin’ are! Even if I accused you, even if they proved me right, nothin’ would happen. They’d make their excuses for you, and then I’d be out. Hated by the Magisterium, hated by the champions –”
“I am no longer a champion. No longer Stormsword.”
“What!”
“Stormsword voz in love viz Kastyr Mortenn. I no longer vont to be her. Ze champion… she died viz… viz ze gnome.”
She stared at the broken glass, twinkling in the grass beneath the statue. Something in her words or tone had calmed Bor – he sat down in his seat, looking at her intently.
Copperbrow…
She still thought of him as the last victim of the heretic Feychilde – last, but not first. She counted the others who’d died from his treachery: Haspophel and Ilitar and the others – who knew exactly why they’d died? The magisters Everseer killed at the library – one of them was Sapha, who’d lent her a spare quill on her first day in class. She hadn’t grieved, not for a moment…
Until she realised her ex-lover was a heretic. Until she realised he was responsible.
“Come on… Emrelet… let’s go in. It’ll be midnight in a few minutes – the big triple-nine and all… and, no offence, it’s gettin’ cold, don’t you think?”
“Do you think zey have already taken him into Zyger?”
“Why’re you askin’ me that? Not plannin’ to break him out, are you?”
She gave him a critical look, but Spiritwhisper’s face was contorted with conflicting emotions.
“No… no, course you ain’t… You just want to be there, don’t ya? Twist the knife. Man…”
She shrugged. “I put ze steel in him. It vould only be fair to let me be ze one to… yank it free. And if ze blade is caught, and must be tvisted a little to get it loose…”
“Just let them do their jobs, for gods’ sakes. Where is your compassion, Emrelet? He was my friend – but he was your soulmate! You are different, aren’t you? Why’s your heart so…” His voice dropped to a whisper: “Did you take off my amulet? Even for a sec-“
“You vill have to get used to ze new me.” She cast him a beatific smile. “Or not. It’s up to you.”
“Hmph.” He hugged his arms across his chest. “So you know what happened to you? I can see a significant smear, a recent one –“
“I know vot has been done to me.”
Tyr Kayn!
She thought the name like it was a curse-word, spitting it inside her mind.
He was looking down at his feet. “I guess I’ll try, then,” he said heavily. “We’ve all been through too much… and there’s so few… so few of…”
The way he was regarding her – the strangled expression on his face… It took her a few seconds to realise he wasn’t building to something.
“Bor?”
His throat made a strange choking sound, gurgling.
“Bor!” The breeze slid her to her feet and she took him by the neck of the robe, shaking him.
She drew in a breath, entering the instinctive mindset that would capture her words within her exhalation, bear and deliver the message, winging its way to Irimar’s ear on the far side of the house –
But it wasn’t necessary. Bor seemed to relax.
And every ear in Mund heard what came next.
There was only one explanation. They’d opened a hole in the wards maintained by the Magisterium’s enchanters. Maintained in part, perhaps, by Spiritwhisper too.
They were able to project, the message amplified by their own arch-enchanters, over the Magisterium’s ley-lines. That meant they’d obtained access to the Invocatrix. The auditory illusion blared out in every pocket of the city, from bedrooms and bathrooms to public squares and shopping centres, from Rivertown to Hightown, from secluded forest glades with none to hear the message except birds and bugs, to the packed tenements with little-enough space for the humans to breathe. She heard it coming from all directions.
The voice was level and calm – not throbbing with lunatic emotion, but not dispassionate either. Invested, just shy of intense. A middle-class accent, originating somewhere in Oldtown, or Hilltown, maybe; well-spoken but not overly-so.
Emrelet didn’t recognise her, but she knew who it was all the same. When the confirmation swiftly arrived she didn’t reel in shock. Her eyes narrowed in hate.
It was the enemy.
* * *