Cordimancy (15 page)

This time, it wasn’t just Toril’s lips that reacted to the magic; his entire body felt a jolt of warmth.

“Yes,” said the voice. “That is a good name for you, if you will have it.”

“It’s nothing different from what I chose before,” Toril said, somewhat plaintively. “Is it a name that can do Malena some good? Or have I gained no new thing?”

“You have gained the wanting. That matters. And your name conducts my power. But it will not be an easy name for you to acquire.”

“I claim it,” Toril said. “That is the name I wish.”

“Very well,” said the voice, becoming gentler but somehow even more penetrating. “Now the ordeal begins again.”

15

shadows ~ Malena

The
mist reached the door of Malena’s room, billowed for a few moments, then began to invade the cracks, its whispers swelling in the quiet room. Paka, sitting cross-legged on a mat near the entrance, dropped his sitar and lurched away from the blackness. Shivi jumped out of her chair, eyes wide, a cry of alarm on her lips. But almost at once, both seemed to freeze. Their eyelids fluttered. Paka rolled sideways, his face growing pale and still; only the rhythmic bend of whiskers around his mouth indicated that he was breathing. Shivi slumped back into her chair, face still twisted.

Malena’s skin, sweaty and drained of color, acquired streaks of gray as the mist crawled onto the cushions where she lay unconscious, slithered across her diaphragm and chest, and snaked into her open mouth. Her eyes were closed, but beneath the lids they jerked in response. She was already breathing with great effort; now her expanding rib cage made room for vast quantities of blackness that leapt down her throat.

Her jaw snapped shut. The mist gathered, coalescing into an opaque fluid that shot into her nostrils even as she tossed her head from side to side.

Her back arched. Her mouth opened again, in a silent scream. The remainder of the mist swirled into a dense knot and plunged through her teeth, leaving behind nothing but a sinister shriek.

The
fight for breath, the searing pain in Malena’s chest, the creeping cold, the cotton mouth and weariness and sweat—all vanished as if they’d been snuffed out like a candle in a stiff breeze.

Malena sat up, alert and whole.

Such a nightmare she’d been having. She still felt a lingering terror in the room. Something was wrong. Something in the bed... She stood and stepped away...

An old wisp of a woman slumped on a chair at her bedside, grey hair escaping from the braid draped over her shoulder, hands half-caught in the pocket of her apron. This was her nurse—Shivril, she remembered the woman saying.

The room was dark. She had a vague idea that a fire had been lit in the recent past, but perhaps that had been a hallucination; the hearth gave no evidence that this had ever been the case. Not even a glow. Nonetheless, Malena found that she could see quite clearly. A white-bearded, elderly man slept on a mat near the door. She noticed that the patches on the knees of his trousers were stained with dirt and ash. His hands were calloused, with soil ground into the whorls of his motionless fingertips.

How was she seeing such details in the dark?

She walked toward the window, expecting vertigo or faintness, but discovering balance and energy instead. She wasn’t even hungry, though she knew she’d eaten nothing for days.

The air was burdened with noxious odors, but Malena found to her surprise that she could distinguish other scents as well. A whiff of basil—no, some kind of mint, maybe—came from a small earthen mug on the table. Shivi smelled of dust and grain, but the handkerchief in her lap had been perfumed lightly with
doro
musk. Was that a hint of jasmine coming through the window?

She looked out at the courtyard below. A man passed through the gates and across the shadows and pools of moonlight in the courtyard, staff in hand.

Toril. Although her husband’s eyes were downcast, she recognized his dark, curly hair, the band of leather around one wrist, the carvings on the staff of Kelun.

She called out, compromising between volume and a reluctance to startle either him or the older couple who were asleep. It seemed that she had been too soft; he turned and waved to a companion who hurried after him, and both men continued past the well without looking up. Her voice elicited no reaction from within the room, either.

Well. Her miraculous recovery would capture their attention soon enough. She inhaled deeply, enjoying the free movement of her ribs and the familiar chorus of the crickets.

When the door scraped soon after, the old woman stirred. She blinked in disorientation for a moment, then scanned the room in alarm. Her eyes passed over Malena without a pause; evidently the darkness was more opaque to her eyes than to Malena’s.

Finally she shuffled forward to unbar the door. Toril was accompanied by the priest, who carried a lantern. They stepped into the room.

Shivi’s husband sat up, scratching his beard and squinting at the light. “Had the most awful dream,” he mumbled.

“I don’t remember falling asleep,” Shivi said slowly. “But I have a sense of dread...” Then a thought seemed to seize her attention. She touched Toril’s arm. “What happened with your ordeal?”

Toril looked drawn and worried, but he smiled.

“I have found a name,” he said. “Let’s see if I can put it to good use.” He gestured at the bed.

Malena’s eyes followed his outstretched hand to the blankets, and saw with a shock that a motionless body compressed the pillows.

Her body.

“
She’s
not breathing,” Shivi said, straightening up. “You’re too late.” Paka was shaking his head, muttering about the mist he’d dreamed.

“I’m here!” Malena shouted, in a vain bid for attention.

“No!” said Toril, falling to his knees at the side of the bed and allowing the staff to clatter to the floor. He reached out for his wife’s limp hand, lifted it to his lips, and squeezed tightly. Malena watched the muscles along his jaw ripple. He closed his eyes and whispered urgently.

After a moment, he opened his eyes again, then cleared his throat and uttered a phrase in a foreign tongue. “
Buómævi ñumai’irozh, munjúviliz e vo!
”

As he spoke, Malena saw an unearthly bluish luminance gather about her husband. It pulsed and flickered, almost like fire, and was bright enough to make her squint, though nobody else appeared to see it. Tendrils of power coalesced from his extremities, swirled through his chest, and then streamed upward, leaping out of his mouth and into the body on the bed.

A dark shadow detached itself from her inert arms and legs, writhed as it clung to her torso, and then convulsed into nothing like droplets on a hot skillet. Outside the window, looming storm clouds suddenly relaxed and began to dissipate.

A strange heaviness overtook her. Her vision dimmed. The air grew pregnant, like sky before lightning.

The invocation hung in the air for several heartbeats.

Then Malena felt a rushing, folding, turning inside-out sensation, and suddenly she was back on the bed. She drew a deep breath and sat up, re-experiencing the vigor she’d woken to earlier. As a heart, she had no ability to work magic herself, and seldom felt it from others—but the jolt of energy flowing through her limbs and into her fingers and toes, her eyebrows and ears and cheeks was unmistakable, irresistible, and delicious.

Shivi leaned forward, inhaling through her teeth in wonder. The priest was smiling widely. Paka let out a whoop.

Then Toril began to tremble. His elbows buckled, his knees sagged, and he slumped to the floor.

“
As
seeker-of-the-helpless, you might discover the power to heal Malena’s body,” said Gitám. “However, you must obey the law connected with its wielding. No ordeal will alter it.”

“What law is that?” said Toril.

“Magic is entwined with the life force. A satarisu lives many generations by renouncing magic completely, but he loses the ability to propagate life himself. Food is less tasteful; colors fade. An osipi gains exquisite experience by allowing magic full sway in her body; her measure of years is less.

“You walked the middle path. A portion of your magical endowment sank into the bones, where it quickens your loins and senses. The unbound remainder you have called upon freely. It has been our gift to you. Few receive greater.”

“I am grateful,” Toril said nervously, anticipating a rebuke. “When I said on the scroll that I would yield my magic to perform the ordeal, I meant no ingratitude. My father lost his gift to pass me the staff. I am prepared to give mine to heal my wife, though it will cost me dearly. If I never kindle again, but she is restored, it will be worth the sacrifice.”

“Well spoken, Toril; you need not fear my disapproval. However, you are trying to buy twice with a single coin. What you write on the scroll gains you access to the ordeal; you cannot now tender the same treasure for some additional advantage. Your magic is already gone.”

Toril felt like a blow to the gut had robbed him of breath. If he had already lost the ability to kindle, then Malena was beyond his power to save. He opened his mouth to protest, but no words came out. He had been warned not to trifle with this ordeal, not to underestimate the risks or difficulty. Now his foolishness tasted bitter.

He also buzzed with anger. He felt tricked, manipulated. Was the whole purpose of this experience to keep humanity in its place, to stroke immortal egos?

“We are not capricious, child,” Gitám said gently. “When we Speakers decreed the conditions of the ordeal in the dawn of the world, we set the law for ourselves as well as mankind. We cannot change it now. Remember that I said power runs on deeper law than simple gifting.”

A lengthy stretch of silence followed.

“Will you hold your name—be who you’ve chosen—even when all hope is lost?” Gitám asked. “This is only the first truth you must confront to make the name your own.”

Toril raised his head. “I am still here,” he croaked, “but I don’t know what to do.”

He waited, expecting an answer. When none came, he closed his eyes, absorbed in an inner battle with recrimination and despair. Eventually a corner of his brain drew a parallel between Gitám’s recent wait for a step in the dark, and the lack of communication now.

“Help me,” he said forlornly. “I’m blind to a way forward, but I’ll move in whatever direction you point me.”

Gitám’s response was quiet. “You seek, but are blind. Do you not hear another name in that, child?”

Once again, the image of splayed rocks on sand flashed across Toril’s mind.

“I am ‘helpless seeker,’ too,” Toril said, feeling diminished and weak. But even as he said it, his body flooded with a second jolt of power. This one was even stronger than the first.

“Yes,” came the gentle answer. “You are not so different from someone you seek to help. Remember that. Now, hearken and learn why one of
my
names is Help-of-the-helpless.

“Tasks performed with unbound magic have little effect on a kindler’s reservoir of power; a flame is not spent when it kindles another. But experience has taught you that healing magic is a different matter. This is because it goes into the heart and nerve and sinews of another, and it must come from the same place.

“Though the free magic you wielded has been taken, the portion that I wove into your body remains. Would you covenant now to unweave it, that you may accomplish your purpose?”

Toril felt a thrill of hope, plus a corresponding pang of fear. He remembered the weakness that always followed attempts to help his father breathe more easily. Malena needed far profounder intervention; what would it cost him to supply that much power?

Attributing
the healing power to kavro shilmar, and knowing the danger of the ordeal, everyone except Malena guessed at first that Toril’s collapse was fatal. Had he somehow exchanged his life for Malena’s? What had transpired in the paoro?

Malena knew nothing of Toril’s desperate gamble; at first she inferred simple exhaustion. As Shivi explained, though, she’d grown pale all over again. Her renewed health was striking, but she knew the legends as well as anyone; imagination conjured a dozen prices that her husband might have paid, and flinched at all of them.

However, the worst of their fears began to fade as Toril’s breathing deepened, his pulse steadied, and he showed no signs of pain.

“Maybe he just needs to sleep it off,” Paka said at last. “It’s too late for us to make for Sotalio tonight. Let’s lock the door and catch a few winks, and see how things look in the morning.”

The priest rummaged for bedding. Shivi yawned as she brought Malena up to date on clan politics and the work of burying the dead. Paka began to snore.

However, Malena had never felt more physically healthy, or more awake. Her lower back and hips no longer ached; she wasn’t stiff or sore, and she was flush with energy. As soon as the others drifted off, she slipped out and headed down to the well, past still-smoldering pyres, where she washed away the sweat and poultices, and peeled back the bandage on her chest to confirm what she suspected—the stab wound had vanished without a trace. The magnitude and reach of the change in her body was stunning.

Unfortunately, no emotional relief paralleled her physical transformation. She was astonished at her boldness going to the well—to be alone in an unprotected, morbid location in the middle of night, so soon after her attack, should have filled her with panic. And yet the terror was outweighed by an even deeper compulsion to purge her body of all evidence of the violence she’d suffered.

Shivi—or Toril—must have wiped away blood, and worse. But with bruises erased, Malena could tell that smudges of filth on her body were not her own, and the thought made her skin crawl.