On Wings of Bone and Glass Page 6

  When I turned to see to our own departure, it was to find one uninvited guest.

  “Last,” I said sternly in the Gift. “You are away from your post.”

  “Forgive me, my prince, but you are incorrect. My lord charged me with your safety, and here you find me.”

  “Circumstances have changed—”

  “Indeed. They have grown more dire.”

  I eyed him. “You have asked Kemses if you might remain behind, haven’t you.”

  “As he could not accompany you himself, my prince, he did what he could.”

  I chuckled, remembering a minatory lecture from Kemses on the duty of a liege to accept his vassal’s gifts. “As you will probably follow us if I attempt to command you to stay, I will thank you instead for your faithfulness. Mount now, please.”

  As the others broke camp, I found my brother and clasped his shoulders, searched his face, which he allowed.

  “Can you ride alone?” I asked, soft. “Shall I put you behind me?”

  “I can manage.” He smiled for me. “It is enough to be near you again. I feel more whole.”

  “I do as well, though I hate to see you so afflicted.” I drew him into my arms. How hard it was to feel the hollows near his spine! It reminded me too strongly of how I’d first seen him. Perhaps he felt the tension in my body, for he rested a hand on the back of my head.

  “It is nothing that cannot be fixed,” he promised.

  But by whom, I wondered?

  We had enough horses for everyone, though Kelu and Almond rode with me on the drake. Our party numbered nine: myself and the genets, Chester and Ivy, Eyre and Carrington, Amhric and Last. I feared that even that was too many, for the more horses we brought, the more chances for a slow one to hold back the pace. But there was nothing for it. These would not be parted from me, and in truth I didn’t want to go alone to face Sedetnet and whatever perfidy he planned.

  “We go,” I said, and we did.

  The strangest thing about that first day was that I rode through it mantled in joy. Even knowing the urgency of our errand and the likelihood that we would fail, I... I was happy. My beloved, who would marry me did I but ask, rode at one side. The man I trusted as best friend guarded my brother’s flank, and Amhric rode at my other side. My cherished and respected mentor was behind me warded by a warrior I’d won to my cause, and held fast against me were the genets, who had become dear to me. And the drake, whose constancy had endeared itself to me from our very first meeting, had come back to me, and bore me again as tirelessly as the wind scouring the plains. The sky was broad and endless, the breeze chill but the sun high and clear. No one stopped us, and for a time it felt as if no one could.

  I could have ridden forever that way.

  We stopped for the night in the open, for there was no shelter on the field north of Vigil for miles. The city was visible as a distant silhouette against a cobalt blue sky, and seeing it I wondered how Kemses and Rose had fared. I stared at it until the kindling of the fire behind me washed the scene away, and then I returned and joined my companions. Our meal was reconstituted from a pouch from one of the horses Kemses had packed, and watching it bloom into a fragrant broth I thought of the liegeman who ‘made much of little’ and smiled. Even the pot it had been made in was some clever contrivance that could be folded. No, I could not fear for Kemses’s errand. Between his ingenuity and Rose’s regal obduracy, there could be no doubt of it.

  As Chester ladled the broth into the folding cups, Carrington hesitated, then said, “So… you are a king.”

  “He is,” I said for Amhric. I took my serving from Chester and could not resist adding, amused, “Our king.”

  “Of elves.”

  “Of all those who use magic,” I said. “A fraternity—” Ivy cleared her throat and Chester grinned. “I stand corrected. A brethrenhood, if I can coin a term, that now includes humanity… or at least those who are willing to embrace the possibility.”

  Carrington glanced at Eyre, who nodded. “Yes. Even me. It exists, Mary.”

  “And it’s not demon-spawned,” Ivy added. “No matter what other people have told you. Saint Winifred is responsible for securing for us the capacity, and she did it by petitioning an angel.”

  “Saint Winifred!” Carrington wrinkled her nose. “You mean to bring religion into this. Stories—”

  “The stories were real,” Chester said, and though his words did not perturb his pouring of the broth one could hear the intransigence in it.

  “You could have proof of it if you let Morgan guide you to your own magic. Assuming you have it.” Ivy sipped her broth. “Maybe your ancestors were too good for something common, like religion, and you missed your opportunity to receive the angel’s gift.”

  I was about to chastise Ivy for her unkindness when Amhric said, quietly, “She has it.”

  Carrington looked up, guiltily, met his eyes and froze.

  “That would be the last word on the subject,” Eyre said conversationally. “I wonder how this cup was made? It looks like leather. Or paper? It’s manifestly neither.”

  “It’s magic,” Ivy said, unrepentant, and Carrington scowled.

  Later that night, I said to her, “You shouldn’t bait her.”

  “Why?” Ivy asked. “She invited herself. Chester as much proclaimed that she tortured you—did she? No, you won’t answer that. And now that she’s here, she’s determined to play the skeptic? And about my religion! Which happens to be true! And brought me the second best thing in my life!” She rested her hand on my chest beneath the ring I wore for her. “You’re the first thing, of course.”

  “Ivy.” I laughed softly and drew her into my arms. “Ivy, my love. Did not Winifred counsel forgiveness? And redemption?”

  She sighed and tucked herself against me. “I’m no Winifred, Morgan. I love you, and she annoys me.”

  I grinned against her hair. “I love you also.”

  “And she annoys you too?”

  Prudently I said nothing.

  We resumed our journey, and the joy of it bled away as I concentrated on our destination. I could feel the knot of ugliness and suffering like a weight in my chest, and it drew me like a lodestone… but I knew nothing of how long the journey would take, and even knowing we’d been outfitted by people who knew their business I feared we would run aground on my inexperience and the nebulousness of my route.

  “I feel it too,” Amhric said to me when we broke for necessities. He was astride his mount still, shoulders low with exhaustion, but like me when he looked north his face turned and then stopped facing the exact direction I felt the pull. “The inevitability of it.”

  “Do you think it’s far?” I asked as the drake sidled up to his horse and nudged my brother’s leg. Amhric put down a hand, stroked the creature’s brow.

  “I don’t know. Not far. But how long….” He shook his head. “I follow you, my brother.”

  “I only hope you do so in wisdom, and not to folly.”

  He reached for my hand and took it, curling his small golden fingers in mine. I sighed and squeezed them, smiled. “We will make shift.”

  “Always.”

  It hurt to see him so depleted... and yet despite his obvious weakness, there was never an evening that he did not find someone to sit beside, and inevitably those subject to that patient regard found themselves speaking to him. Was that the secret, I wondered? Was the willingness to give someone time and undivided attention at the heart of love?

  Watching Eyre in conversation with my brother, I wondered, and marveled, and hoped to find the solution to his affliction as I had once hoped to find mine. Perhaps that was love, also: as simple, and as complex, as a person’s ability to express it. The King-Reclusive listened, welcomed, forgave with an open heart. And I? Apparently led us on merry chases across the continent—God save us all.

  4

  It was perhaps inevitable that we would talk, for the horses could not be ridden full-out and even the drake needed to recuperate.
When we reined back to a slower pace, we could hear one another more easily… and if our numbers had been depleted by the delegation of tasks, there were still three students and two professors on this ride, and all of us had more than enough time for thinking.

  “What I don’t understand,” Ivy said on the third day, chafing her thumbs on the reins, “is the shapechanging. You said the sorcerer changed shape, Morgan, but shapechanging is a female magic.”

  “Maybe it’s demon magic,” Chester offered.

  Carrington, looking from one to the other, could not help herself. “I thought you said the elves were not demon-spawn!”

  “They’re not,” I said, before Ivy could say something cutting. “But we have been cursed by demons, and that curse has granted us some of their powers.”

  “That’s true,” Eyre murmured. “You are incapable now of being killed without significant effort, and demons cannot be at all. The draining of energy… that is a demonic ability as well. One the elves did not have previously.”

  “Save the prince,” I agreed. “The prince compels. But in all the annals, and in all I’ve heard—“ I glanced at Last, who nodded, “—he is the only one who can.”

  “Say what you just said again.” Chester was frowning.

  “That the prince compels?” I looked toward him. “That he is the only one—”

  “Not that part. The part before it.”

  “That the elves were cursed with the demonic talent,” I repeated, and his eyes lit. I recalled my epiphany before Roland had put a knife through my throat, though the events since had left me with little time to consider the ramifications. “Do you suspect it? I had seen something in the library that made me think so, but....”

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it? The gift the angel made Winifred, the one that changed her, that isn’t an enchantment, it’s a blessing. Why shouldn’t what demons did to you constitute a curse?”

  “That means elves now have demon blood in them?” Kelu said from behind me. I could hear her wrinkled nose. “Don’t tell me I’m drinking demon blood.”

  “You drink blood.” To her credit, Carrington sounded only a trifle disturbed.

  “I have to,” Kelu replied. “The stupid elves made it impossible for me to stay sane without it.”

  “It must be what the angels put in the blood ladders that we need,” Almond offered, tentative. “I cannot think that the demonic traits would do anything positive.”

  “But what does it signify?” Ivy asked. “Does it matter whether it’s a curse or an enchantment?”

  “It does if it means what we need is not a spell, but the intervention of angels,” Chester said.

  “God Almighty,” I murmured.

  “It worked for Winifred,” Ivy said. “Why shouldn’t it work for us?”

  “You don’t just call down angels to ask for help!” I said. “It’s impertinent.”

  Eyre was laughing. “Impertinent, my student! Really. The only objection you can conjure?”

  “Well, it is. Besides, if the matter had been as simple as ‘summon an angel to heal us’, someone would have done it by now. Yes?” I glanced at Amhric.

  He hesitated.

  “Oh, no,” Ivy said. “Did someone try?”

  “Yes,” Amhric said. “But our blood does not call angels anymore. Even with glass to sanctify the offering.”

  “Maybe it’s because of the adulteration,” Chester mused.

  “Or because it is not capable of being symbolic of sacrifice,” Eyre said. “That was a good notion Miss Miller had in the library.”

  “Human blood does not have demon adulteration,” Chester said. “Humans can die.”

  The silence that followed his statement was filled by the thumping of hooves and the caress of the breeze. I was glad of the genets’ company, for my coat did little to ward off the sudden chill.

  “I hope you’re not suggesting someone die in the hopes of making an angel appear,” Carrington said. “Humans have been doing that for centuries too without success.”

  “She’s right.” Ivy frowned. “But why did it work for Winifred and not for any of the people who came after?”

  “If we could answer that, we would be saved all our labors,” Eyre said.

  “We’ve traveled far afield of our original question,” Ivy said. “Unless we mean to suggest that the sorcerer’s powers are demon-derived. Why can he change shape? It’s unfair that he might have a woman’s powers as well as a man’s.”

  “Has he ever demonstrated a man’s powers?” Chester asked.

  “He floats towers,” I said.

  Carrington interrupted. “Men and women have different powers?”

  “Different but equal,” Ivy said firmly. “Women affect living things. Men affect the natural world.”

  “People not being of the natural world?” Carrington asked, mouth twitching, and I liked her better for her ability to tease even if Ivy obviously found it presumptuous from the narrowing of her gaze.

  “So he has both a man's and a woman’s power,” Eyre said. “Are the rules different for sorcerers, then?” He looked at Amhric. “Sire. Do you know?”

  The title gave Amhric pause, I thought. But as with everything, he answered with gentle grace. “There were no sorcerers before the enchantment that I have heard of. Men and women of great power, certainly, but not anything we would call a sorcerer. Last…?”

  Last shook his head and said in his accented Lit, “I don’t know. But… I do not think so.”

  “Perhaps sorcerers are an abomination made possible by demonic interference, then,” Eyre said. “Does that mean that nature abhors the possibility of equality between the sexes?”

  “I thought the powers were different but equal,” Kelu said dryly.

  Thinking of the elves who could choose to live as one or the other, I said, “Perhaps not.”

  “Nevertheless, we have a problem,” Chester said. “If sorcerers are new to the race, then we know little of their limits, and so how to fight them. My lord, do you know of any other contemporary sorcerers? Or you, Captain Last?”

  Last and Amhric exchanged glances. Last said, “I can’t think of any, my king. Do you…?”

  “Know of any?” Amhric frowned. “No. I have neither heard of any nor can I recall them.”

  “Wait,” Chester said. “Do you mean to tell me there is only the one sorcerer in all the world? And in all the history of the world?”

  “We can’t think of any others,” Amhric said. “That doesn’t mean there are none.”

  Eyre chuckled. “Stray not into logical fallacies, Mr. Chester.”

  “What about you?” I asked Almond and Kelu. “The genets hear much that their masters say in carelessness.”

  “Sedetnet’s the only sorcerer I’ve ever heard of,” Kelu said.

  Almond nodded.

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Ivy said slowly. “There has to be a first for everything. Perhaps this Sedetnet is merely the first sorcerer.”

  “I can’t believe that,” Chester said. “Not with circumstances as they are. There’s something here we aren’t seeing.”

  “What I see,” Kelu said, “is that you’re riding off to find him with absolutely no plan, as usual. And he’s no less capable than he was before, and we’re no more capable than we were. So what’s to stop him from twisting us all into knots again and doing whatever it is he’s planning?”

  “Releasing a demon,” I murmured.

  “Right. That.” Kelu poked my back with a claw-tip. “Are you going to talk him out of it? That didn’t work on the ship when he took the king away.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “It’s going to take divine intervention to keep you from failing,” Kelu said dryly.

  “I know,” I said. “The horses have rested enough. Let’s make haste.”

  The terrain through which we passed remained dead to every sense, in that particular way of the body when it has suffered too much: a numbness, as if scar
red over. It troubled me to be riding over it, to be enfolded by it, for that sensation encompassed the entirety of what I could see save the sickness we rode toward, and that sensation was worse. There would be no trees until we reached the rumpled hills that led up to the northern mountains, and there was no scrub either; very little grew here, and if it was less dead than the fields south of Vigil, it still remembered the army that had trampled it with skeletal feet in its inexorable progress toward the living. Had the horses been able to bear it, I would have urged them faster and not stopped until we’d reached the foothills. As it was, I begrudged every halt and did my best to conceal it, and I fear I was poor company at the fire. When we retired I was glad to sleep and put the effort of polite conversation behind me.

  But I woke abruptly in the middle of the evening, lifted my head. Ivy was sleeping against me, her head at my chest. At my back, though…

  “You’re awake,” I whispered. “Is something wrong?”

  Amhric shook his head. I carefully disentangled myself from Ivy and sat up. “What is it?”

  “I am keeping the vigil,” he replied.

  The vigil—I looked past him, found Chester missing, tensed. “Where is he?”

  “Petitioning angels,” Amhric said, and set a hand on my wrist. “Leave him to it, Morgan. He cannot hurt himself in the asking… and he may even succeed.”

  I subsided, reluctantly. “So long as he doesn’t believe he has to give his life to secure the audience.”

  “Did he do so, he would have no breath left to make his petition.” Amhric smiled, a little. “All the stories say one must speak to the angel that comes, so as to make a decision. He’ll need a voice.”

  I managed a huff of a laugh. “All right. Yes, I suppose that’s so. But… why did he wake you and not me?”