Death Magic (23 page)
Authors: Eileen Wilks
“You’ll get a peek at the dagger used on Bixton this afternoon. Will you be able to tell right away if it’s an artifact or a . . . I guess a charm, though that doesn’t sound right when its purpose was death.”
“A charm that kills or wounds is often called a curse, but that’s poor nomenclature. Curses can also be spoken spells. I prefer to call a cursed object a
maluuni
. That’s from Swahili, though the original derivation is Arabic, and it means—”
maluuni
. That’s from Swahili, though the original derivation is Arabic, and it means—”
“Back to my question,” she said firmly, stepping onto the deck.
“One glance will tell me that much. If I don’t see the spell and can’t call it up into my vision, then it’s an artifact.”
“Wait a minute. What does that mean? If you don’t see it—”
“I’ve got a spell that brings up the details of other spells so I can see them.”
“Your magnifying spell, yeah.”
“It doesn’t work on artifacts. At least not the ones I’ve seen. I’ve seen five objects we’d call magical artifacts. With four of them, the details of the spell—the construction of it, the girders and wiring and plumbing—were hidden when it wasn’t being used. The only part that showed was the trigger, the part designed to interact with the user. Adepts didn’t like to give away their tricks, and they knew how to hide what they wanted hidden. And no, I don’t know how they did it.” He brooded on that a moment. “If I ever get that damn elfstone figured out, I’ll be able to tell you more.”
“The gem you snatched off Rethna, you mean? It’s an artifact?” It had made bullets bounce off the elf lord. Or maybe they’d poofed out of existence. She didn’t know how the gem worked, but she knew it worked. She’d shot Rethna several times at close range. Didn’t hit him once.
“Oh, yeah. Tricky bugger. I haven’t figured out how to activate it or get the rest of the spell to show, but the trigger shows, and I can see the power, so I know the charm didn’t evaporate with Rethna’s death.”
“Which makes it an artifact.” She opened the back door. No one in the kitchen, but Rule was upstairs. Maybe the Leidolf Rhej was with him. “And the fifth magical artifact you’ve seen? What about it?”
“With that one, nothing showed but power, even when it was used.” He followed her inside. “Which ought to be impossible, because the trigger has to show. Otherwise there’s nothing for the user to connect with.”
“But you’re sure it was an artifact?”
He slid her a grim smile. “Oh, yeah. But that one wasn’t an adept’s work. That was the staff
she
made.”
she
made.”
ALL
Rhejes were Gifted, but their Gifts varied. Two were healers. The Leidolf Rhej was one of those two, a statuesque woman with skin the color of hot chocolate made with plenty of milk. Her hair was a tight cap of mixed gray and black that showed off a high, round forehead and the pair of huge gold hoops in her ears. Lily didn’t know her name. It was custom to not refer to a Rhej by name unless the Rhej gifted you with her name personally.
Rhejes were Gifted, but their Gifts varied. Two were healers. The Leidolf Rhej was one of those two, a statuesque woman with skin the color of hot chocolate made with plenty of milk. Her hair was a tight cap of mixed gray and black that showed off a high, round forehead and the pair of huge gold hoops in her ears. Lily didn’t know her name. It was custom to not refer to a Rhej by name unless the Rhej gifted you with her name personally.
“No need to cram your lunch down so quick,” she told Lily, leaning comfortably on her forearms, crossed on the round kitchen table. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m supposed to, though.” Lily finished the corned beef sandwich she’d thrown together and reached for her glass of milk. She was usually a Diet Coke girl, but corned beef demanded milk. “Tell me something. Your Gift doesn’t work on me, so why is it you can peek inside my body?”
“Same reason Mr. Gorgeous here can see your magic,” she said promptly. “It’s not vision I use, but it’s a way of sensin’.” She flashed Cullen an amused smile. He looked all twitchy with the need to interrupt . . . but she was a Rhej. Even Cullen managed a modicum of respect with a Rhej. “An’ he’s just dyin’ to argue with me and explain it all real pretty, but you don’t need all that talk. Does the Nokolai Rhej sense where you are, even though she can’t see a thing?”
“Well . . . yes. But she’s a physical empath.”
“But your magic doesn’t keep her from sensing you. The way I see it, physical empathy’s a lot like healing, but a physical empath has all her Gift sittin’ on the sensing side of things. A healer has a bit of that sensing, only we have to lay on hands to do it, and then we can look under the skin, not just on the top. But it’s a sense, not that different from when Cullen here senses the shape of your magic.” She smiled. “You ’bout ready to begin?”
Lily’s stomach jittered unhappily. She didn’t think it was the corned beef. “I guess so. Do I need to do anything?” The only healer who’d worked on Lily before was Nettie. This woman’s methods might be different. Probably were, because she wasn’t a shaman like Nettie was. Same Gift, different practice.
“Just a few questions first. Tell me about these headaches of yours. You’ve had three of them?”
“Yeah. They hurt pretty bad, but didn’t last long. The first was just for seconds. A minute or less the second time. I’m not sure about the third.”
“Just over a minute,” Rule said. “I didn’t time it, but it was probably between one and two minutes.”
“Okay,” the Rhej said. “Where’d it hurt?”
“Here.” Lily rubbed the back of her head. “Um . . . the third time it happened, I was exhausted afterward. I couldn’t stay awake.”
“Any dizziness? Nausea? Weakness in one place more’n another? Any change in vision?”
“You mean like a migraine aura?”
“Any kind of change.”
Lily shook her head. “I felt dizzy after it happened the third time. Exhausted. No nausea, though. I thought it might be some kind of migraine. My aunt has migraines.”
“Let’s find out. Give me your hands.” The older woman stretched her hands across the table to Lily.
The Rhej had warm hands with wide palms and long fingers . . . and lots of magic. Healing magic, yes, and Lily loved to touch a healer’s magic. If air could experience touch, it would feel like this beneath the slow stir of the summer sun, with new-grown grass blades brushing against it like a friendly cat. But there was more. Lily felt that more, banked and waiting and massive—the fur-and-pine prickle of lupi magic.
A Rhej could, at need, draw upon the magic of the entire clan. Lily had no idea how. The Rhej was fully human. She didn’t hold the mantle, couldn’t affect it, wasn’t part of it. But she could use it to do what the Rho could not.
The Rhej’s face smoothed out, her eyes losing focus. She hummed softly . . . “Amazing Grace,” Lily realized. Maybe she did work with spiritual energy like Nettie did. Lily didn’t feel anything. No wave of seeking magic touched her skin. She didn’t get sleepy the way she usually did when Nettie examined her, but Nettie almost always ended up putting her in sleep, so . . .
“Cullen,” the woman said in a low, soft voice, “I want you to look at that passenger of hers. Look real close and careful.”
Rule frowned. “What is it?”
The Rhej shook her head without replying. Cullen slipped out of his chair and knelt on one knee beside Lily. “Push away from the table so I can see.”
“I can’t . . .” But the Rhej let go of Lily’s hands so she could. She scooted her chair back and tried not to fidget while Cullen moved in front of her and stared intently at her abdomen. After a bit he frowned. He started muttering under his breath—it sounded like an unholy mix of Hawaiian and Norwegian—while he sketched signs in the air. He put his palms together as if he were praying, then drew them apart slowly, stopping when they framed about twenty inches of space.
He moved that space slowly up to Lily’s neck, peering at it intently for several moments, then shifted so he could move behind Lily, holding his hands steady. She couldn’t see what he did for several way-too-long moments. Her heart pounded.
Finally he moved back in front of her. His hands were only about ten inches apart now. He dragged those ten inches of empty space back down her trunk, pausing now and then, passing her stomach to study her pelvis. He snapped his fingers, releasing what Lily guessed was a magnifying spell.
Slowly he stood. “That . . . doesn’t make sense.”
“What did you see?” the Rhej asked.
“Roots. That’s what they look like, tiny tendrils finer than a hair, too small to see without magnification. I found seven of them. They go from the mantle into her spinal cord. Four of them seem to stay there. Three of them . . .” He stopped, looked at Lily, then at Rule. “Three extend through the brain stem to the cerebellum and are tangled up in her brain.”
“In my brain?” Lily’s voice came out too high. “The mantle’s doing something to me? It shouldn’t be able to. My Gift wouldn’t let it.”
Rule clasped her hand tightly. “Even without your Gift, it shouldn’t be doing that. Mantles don’t root in their holder. They don’t work that way.” He looked sharply over his shoulder at Cullen. “You’ve never seen that with another mantle.”
Cullen shook his head. He looked from Lily to Rule and back. Not at their faces, but their middles, as if he were comparing Rule’s mantles to the one Lily harbored.
“I’m sorry,” the Rhej said. “I can’t say what’s going on, but the mantle seems to be . . . changin’ things in your body. Not in a way that makes sense to me. Not in a way that’s good for you.”
“Is it trying to make me lupi?” Lily’s voice was still too high. She couldn’t make it sound normal.
The Rhej shook her head slowly, her eyebrows drawn in a hard frown. “I don’t know what it’s doin’. Oh, it’s healing that arm of yours—that’s part of it—but the rest . . . maybe it is tryin’ to turn you lupi and can’t, but I’ve seen plenty of youngsters right close to First Change. There are neurological changes that occur then. But the changes I sense in you aren’t what I sensed then. Maybe it’s tryin’ to heal you in a way your system isn’t set up for. I don’t know.”
She met Lily’s eyes. Her gaze was steady, but Lily saw trouble in those dark eyes. “But whatever the mantle’s doin’, it’s not good for you. You’ve had two mini-strokes in the last few days. The mantle’s healing that damage, but what else it’s doin’ . . . I don’t have the medical words to describe that, but you need to get it out of you and where it belongs. You need to do that real soon.”
“It’s not all one way,” Cullen said.
“What?” Lily craned her head to look up at him. “What do you mean?”
He gestured at her stomach. “The Wythe mantle is still purple, but it’s the wrong shade of purple. It may be doing something to you, but you’re doing something to it, too.”
SIXTEEN
LILY
reached the conference room she and Mullins were using a little after two thirty. Craig drove her, not Cullen. That pissed her off. She didn’t know Craig well and hated the idea of having one of her headache fits in front of him. But Cullen needed to keep his afternoon free to go take a look at the dagger, and that was exactly what she wanted him to do. She had no damn reason to be angry.
reached the conference room she and Mullins were using a little after two thirty. Craig drove her, not Cullen. That pissed her off. She didn’t know Craig well and hated the idea of having one of her headache fits in front of him. But Cullen needed to keep his afternoon free to go take a look at the dagger, and that was exactly what she wanted him to do. She had no damn reason to be angry.
Maybe her anger wasn’t about Cullen.
She shoved the door open. Mullins looked up from a scatter of papers. “About time you got back.”
The air was redolent with hamburger and onions. Lily could see the remains of Mullins’s lunch pushed to one end of the table. She headed for the coffeepot. “You ever get in to see a doctor exactly on time?”
“Guess not. I want to take the secretary first.”
“Nanette Beresford? Sure.” Lily poured a cup of coffee.
The Rhej hadn’t told her to avoid caffeine. She’d said Lily should “avoid exertion.” No running. No late nights. Not that the healer knew for certain those things would hurt Lily. She was just guessing.
Mini-strokes. Dear God.
“The doctor gave you a green light?”
“I’m supposed to avoid strenuous exercise.”
“Guess you’d better not chase me round the table, then. You were going to talk to your expert. Find out anything useful?”
“Parrott must be having his charm renewed every four weeks at the very least. Whether or not it does what he says, it would need renewal at least that often.”
He grunted. “Doesn’t tell us much. You sure you’re okay? You look like crap.”
“Headache. It won’t interfere with the job.” Except that her head didn’t hurt right now, and it would interfere. She was lying and would keep on lying. She couldn’t tell anyone about mantles, and she didn’t see any way of explaining that a healer considered her life in danger without mentioning why. If she tried, she’d be pulled from the investigation and stuck in a hospital and they’d run tests, which wouldn’t help because the doctors couldn’t fix the mantle even if they knew about it.
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