Cordimancy (40 page)

Gorumim had been pacing again; now he strode to the far corner, and Malena saw him push the end of the staff into the fire. He laid the other end on the stone floor, then crossed back to the table.

When he spoke again, it was in a very different tone. “It doesn’t have to be this way, you know. Have you realized that in an hour this will be my realm? My favorites to reward, my gifts to lavish… Forget the brats. Forget that backwater wench; I saw her in a scrying pool, and she’s nothing to look at. She wasn’t even wearing your heartstone; is she even yours? Tell me what I want, and I could give you harlots juicy enough to make your mouth water, set you up in style. I wouldn’t trust you, of course—but I could send you away, with plenty of spies to keep you honest and out of my hair…”

Gorumim waited for a long time.

Toril said nothing.

At last the general stood. He gestured toward Toril’s waist with the hand holding the blade.

“Tell me how you worked that magic!” he hissed. “I can think of places with more nerves than fingers, ur Hasha. I can think of work this knife might do, things I might nail to the royal gates to teach my enemies a lesson. Should I parade you through the streets with your breeches bloody, and send you home as Toril the Stoneless Kelun, last of his line?”

The knife dipped.

“The clan would hate you for the way you dishonored them,” Gorumim continued. “You’d be the laughingstock of the entire nation, and every time they told your tale or spoke your name, they’d fear me better. That might be a stiffer punishment than quick death.”

Toril began to chuckle. It was a queer, broken, wet sort of chuckle, full of pain, and it was interrupted by wheezing—but it was unmistakably laughter. After a moment the sound tapered off, and he seemed to gather breath.

“The clan already… hates me,” he whispered. “And I’m already stoneless, near enough.” He degenerated into a cough, then sucked in air and continued. “You tell the world you chose the path of ice, that you’re… Karkita’s son. I tried that path once, but ended as a lip, and everybody knows it. So. Two lips. Two liars. You lick your way to power; I didn’t want… power at first; then, when I had it, I traded it… away. Kavro shilmar.”

Gorumim made a flinging motion with his hand; Malena heard a thwack against the far wall. She saw him stride over to the fire, grab the staff and lift its smoking tip, lean over her husband.

“You fought the reaper curse with the Ordeal of Names?” he asked. “You traded your lip for that
woman
? You’re stupider than I thought.”

Toril grunted. “Traded my lip to
start
the… ordeal,” he wheezed. “Then had no magic left to save her.”

Gorumim’s shoulders twitched in surprise. “Then, what? How?”

“Unwound magic from my… own bones. Sata fork, after all.”

Malena blinked. What? When Toril had confessed his trading away of magic, he’d said nothing about
this
bargain. She’d been furious about his choice, but had she really understood its cost? Not just a talent, but his very
humanness
? She thought about how haggard and pale he’d looked, how fast she’d mended…

Wait. What did Toril mean, “already stoneless”? Sata became sterile…

“You can’t unchoose the path from your naming day!” Gorumim was protesting. “We only face the fork once.”

Toril coughed. His voice, when he spoke again, was weak; Malena could barely hear him.

“…always face the fork… Do it again for her…” Toril paused and drew a deep breath. “Stoneless
now
! Was before she threw away my heartstone. Doesn’t matter. I’ll still father those kids, unmake… your orphans. Can’t stop me.”

Gorumim gave a great cry of rage. The staff lifted out of view, and he leaned forward. “I’ll give you something to kiss with those lips of yours!
Shatashík moku’opi sana ar!
”

Malena saw his toes dig at the floor as he shifted his weight. She heard her husband scream, but the sound muffled and became sizzle. Gorumim held his posture for a moment, then leaned back and tossed the staff to the floor. It clattered on stone. He stood, shoulders heaving. She watched his posture relax, his breathing slow.

At last he turned away from the table and kicked the weapon toward the fire again. His voice was cold and dead once more. “I think I’ve had enough entertainment for now. It’s time to show the world what a
real
lip can do. I’ll decide about you later.”

Malena rolled away from the door, heart exploding. But instead of the door opening to expose her, she heard a creak and clump, the sound of footsteps echoing from an enclosed space, and silence.

55

confrontation ~ Toril

Toril
didn’t understand.

There had been pain—so much pain, everywhere, but especially his tongue, his throat, his jaws, his lips… The smoking brass had been all he could see, jammed between screaming teeth by a face alight with hate. He hadn’t been able to breathe, to think, to move.

And then the face was gone, the staff was gone, and Malena’s face hovered over him. She was weeping.

She said something that he didn’t catch. Hands tugged at the ropes across his chest and neck. Then she disappeared for a moment, but he heard her sob somewhere off to his right.

A rope burst. He saw a knife flash, felt more ropes go slack, felt fingers brush across his ankle.

A wrist slipped beneath his neck.

“Can you sit up?” Malena whispered. She pushed a shoulder across her cheek.

One of Toril’s eyes was swollen almost shut, and his lips and throat were too burned for speech. His ribs screamed in protest, and both hands throbbed, but he found that he could breathe through his nose, and his head was clearing. The unnatural toughness of sata physiology was having its effect. He blinked an affirmative and felt the palm at the base of his skull lift, along with another hand beneath his shoulders.

He fought dizziness once he was up. It took a long time to catch his breath.

“Can you drink something?” Malena asked. She offered a cup, perhaps fetched from Gorumim’s desk.

Water dampened the pain a little. He choked on it for a moment, but he was grateful for the relief.

Malena pulled his knees off the table, twisted his feet down to the floor, and knelt in front of him.

“I’ve got to go after him,” she said, wiping her cheek again. She gestured at the open door at the back of the room, and the dark steps leading down. “I think it’s a tunnel that runs under the road to the raja’s gardens. The children have to be close.”

Toril nodded. He blinked again, tried to work his jaw, found that it was not cooperating. He felt blood or seepage from the charred insides of his cheeks and the roof of his mouth.

“I’ll be back if I can,” she said. “In the meantime, hide. Can you crawl, maybe?”

She waited for a moment as he rocked forward, testing his feet. It was too much; he had to sit again. She put a hand on his shoulder, then looked to the stairway, back at him, then at the stairway again.

He blinked and nodded.

Tenderly, she laid hands against his temples, leaned forward, and kissed his forehead. Then she sniffed, smiled, and turned to the tunnel. When she disappeared, she had the knife clenched in one white fist, the staff in the other.

He
stood.

It took him a while, and he felt none too steady on his feet, but most of the damage was above his waist; his legs still worked.

He staggered, caught himself with an elbow and forearm on the desk, breathed. He was in no shape to fight, and he could not move quickly—but he had come this far. Was he going to be a seeker-of-the-helpless, or not? Perhaps he could see something, or distract someone, or use his body to shield Malena or children…

The tunnel walls were dank. It smelled like clay, and something—tree roots?—brushed his shoulder as he tottered along in near total darkness. Air blew, though; the flow kept him headed straight. Breeze plus cool stone on his heels cut through his pain, letting thoughts focus elsewhere. Aside from his own footfalls and sniffling, noises were absent; for now, he was alone.

After a time, the faintest gleam suggested openness ahead. He noted with surprise that he was carrying something, clutching it to his chest with the four good fingers on his right hand.

Gorumim’s journal of notes. Maybe he’d picked it up out of some instinctive need for a shield, when he’d fallen against the desk…

Now he could hear distant strains of music; light from lanterns and moon gave a dim sheen to patches on the tunnel walls. Iron grating, ajar, cast a grid of shadow.

He emerged among the prop roots of a massive banyan; this end of the tunnel, like the other, had been camouflaged with care. Uneven ground made him stumble. The book dug into hip and armpit, propping almost like a splint. Even so, his shoulder stabbed, and he inhaled sharply.

Stepping around a pair of trunks, he gazed out across shrubs, flowers, and close-cropped grass, to where crowds spread across the gardens. He caught a few syllables of conversation, a low murmur of laughter. The palace was ablaze with numerous torches, both at the ground level and the sweeping overlook higher up. Balls of light—rice paper lanterns, floating free—colored the night sky. At least, he surmised the hue; sata color blindness was taking its toll.

He lurched ahead, eyes scanning. Within a few strides, the pinch at his ribs gave way to a grinding saw-like sensation that pained in ominous spikes. He kept moving as fast as he could bear, as fast as he could breathe.

Trumpets sounded. Faces turned toward the terrace, where a shape stood with an outstretched arm.

The raja?

Was that another figure weaving among clumps of people, moving fast? A woman?

A polite wave of applause rippled across the lawn as the speaker paused.

Toril neared the outskirts of people.

He saw small forms—little, child forms. There were dozens, holding hands, on the patio beneath the terrace. They stood inside a circle of diminutive, golden warriors in shackles. Was that a stooped old woman in their midst? Gorumim stood slightly apart, tall and pale, gripping the shoulder of one of the girls.

His first victim of the night.

Toril cursed internally at the swelling that had stolen his voice and limited his breathing. He could not shout. He cast aside the book and increased his pace beyond what he’d imagined was possible.

The general raised his hand, fingers outstretched. Static arced down his arm; a glow lit his face.

“It is time!” he said, and some unseen power amplified what came out of his throat. The words drowned out the speaker above him, quelled the crowd, brought rapid silence.

Toril shoved into elegantly clad elite, swimming through a sea of silk and gold and brocade. He heard a few curses, half expected someone to raise a cry at his rough appearance and reckless charge—but attention was riveted forward.

“You came to celebrate with your raja,” Gorumim said, still speaking with unnatural volume. “But it is time for us to depose this usurping tyrant and put a better man on the throne. Celebrate with your new raja instead.”

A voice called out from above. These words had no magical boost, so they were hard to hear, but the tone was haughty. A stir began as guards came bounding down steps on either side of the terrace, swords drawn.

Gorumim laughed. Then, very deliberately, he made a sort of half bow, and swept his free arm forward in a gesture of invitation to the ahu.

Instantly, chaos reigned. Chains rattled on the brick of the plaza as shackles fell. The men they had bound were already gone, slipping toward descending soldiers like golden predators.

A woman’s scream rent the air. Several people shouted. The crowd surged away from the violence.

Toril moaned. His good eye was blurred with frustration and hurt; the grind at his ribs spiked as tight-packed throngs pressed. He yanked at a shoulder with his bad hand and came close to blacking out as broken fingers and bruised tendons protested. Advance was impossible. He was just thirty or forty paces from the open space around the children and Gorumim, and the handful of men who remained to guard them—but he might as well have been a world away. There was no way to get there fast enough.

Fighters were pitching from the stairs, thudding to the ground and failing to move. Toril saw one golden body, maybe two—but the rest were normal humans. The raja’s protective detail was dying.

A gap opened for a moment, and he sprang ahead, digging elbows with abandon.

Now he heard a yell with a different tone—fury and defiance instead of fear. He caught a gleam of brass amid flailing limbs. Someone burst through a wall of bodies at the edge of the fountain and splashed into water, surging toward the children.

Malena.

She screamed Gorumim’s name again, demanding his attention, challenging even as her knees churned.

With room to maneuver, she swung the staff wildly at the row of partygoers that remained on the far side of fountain, forcing a path. The press parted, and she stumbled out of the water into open space.

She slowed long enough to throw her knife.

It spun through the air toward her enemy, then lost momentum, sparked, and dropped into smoking slag at the man’s feet.

Toril had discovered his own path forward now; the crowd thinned where it skirted a line of rose bushes, and if he ducked and ignored the tear of thorns, he could move against foot traffic. Crouching, the compression on his ribs was even worse than while he loped. Breathing was harder. However, his need to reach Malena and the children overrode all.

He heard the boom of Gorumim’s voice again, but couldn’t make out words over the pounding in his own ears.

The bushes petered out. People thinned.

He straightened in time to see Malena clash with an osipi who had interposed between her and the general. He recognized the face of the aiki ahu from the war council. Luim. Arms flashed; the staff that Malena had thrust jerked out of her hands and hurtled across the brick in Toril’s general direction.

“So this is the woman,” Luim said. He reached down and drew a dagger from his boot. “I’m so glad you came so we can tie up loose ends.”

Toril launched himself for the staff, but it was still a dozen steps away. He would be too late.

The aiki’s gaze had flicked toward him, but now it moved away again.

Out of the corner of his good eye, Toril detected a golden streak. It leapt from shadow, moving almost too fast for the eye to follow, arced around the far side of the children, and coalesced into a form that crouched, blade in hand, back to Malena, confronting the aiki.

Three of the osipi who’d been guarding the children, standing along the trajectory of the golden streak, dropped without a sound.

“Oathizhi!” growled the older warrior. He cursed, then added something in the rapid sing-song of his race. “Out of my way. I have business with this woman.”

Oji remained silent, waiting.

In a blink, there were two golden streaks, twisting and weaving, flickering back and forth across the plaza, feinting and lunging so rapidly that it was impossible to see more than blur.

“Enough!” boomed Gorumim’s voice. Toril was skidding to a stop, down on one knee to grab the staff, but his eyes sought the general. He saw a knife dripping with blood, and a girl’s form crumbling silently. Time seemed to slow. Her knees bent. Against a backdrop of convulsing gold, her neck bent unnaturally, and her head sagged at Gorumim’s boot.

The general raised fingers to his lips, and thunder rolled across the sky, basso profundo so deep that the ground shook. Toril saw golden ahu encircle the raja on the overlook above.

Malena had darted forward the instant the two aiki met. There seemed to be no more guards in her way—had Oji killed them all, or had the remainder joined the tornado of gold? Now she was urging children to gather around her. Her arms were open. The old woman that Toril had seen before—it was too dark to be sure, but he hoped it was Shivi—wasn’t helping; she seemed immobilized with terror. In fact, all of the children were slow to respond; they looked dazed.

Toril’s hands weren’t working; gripping the staff brought pain even worse than the fire at his side, and his hold was none too firm. He jammed an end against his hip and used both forearms to steady it as he staggered to his feet.

Still holding the knife, Gorumim was lifting his fist as if pulling down power out of the sky. The glow of static on his body doubled, tripled. Fire ran across his shoulders, down his spine, along his calves and heels, outlined his triumphant face. His hand became brighter still.

Toril squinted as he ran the last few steps, trying to cope with light. Despite his vanishing ability to distinguish color, he could make out brilliant greens and violets. Thunder broke again, this time more abrupt and harsh.

Gorumim was extending his hand toward Malena.

Plasma arced.

Toril’s upraised staff met the bolt. Light seemed to explode all around him. His vision was overwhelmed. He sensed a jolt of heat, and his whole body vibrated from a thunderclap.

He flew backward, impelled by the force of the explosion, clipped the head of fleeing partygoers with his heels, crashed into shrubs and somersaulted once before landing in a broken, face-down heap. The staff clattered down nearby.

It took a few moments for his mind to clear and for wind to flood back into his lungs. When he raised his head, ears ringing, he saw that Gorumim was shouting at the raja. The general was lifting his hand repeatedly, using the same gesture that had conjured searing flame before—but he seemed to be having trouble with the magic now. Lightning still flowed down from roiling clouds at his command; it just wouldn’t go farther. Toril saw one weak bolt leap out and lick for a moment at an invisible shell protecting the raja; the next fizzled almost as soon as it left his hand.