Feast of Souls (29 page)

The Magister’s expression darkened. “Afraid?”

She said it simply, with an equally cold expression. “No.”

He reached out for her again. This time when she tried to move away his power wrapped itself around her and held her in place. For one brief moment his hand fell upon her cheek, a mocking caress… then she gathered her own power and broke through the sorcerous bond, stumbling over her train as she backed away yet again. Her heart was pounding so loudly she could hear it. Could he?

“Don’t,” she breathed.

“Do what?” His black eyes glittered in the torchlight. “Touch you as a man might—as Ravi no doubt does? But you are used to that, aren’t you? Whoring and witchery are the same art, after all. One barters one’s soul instead of one’s flesh, but the act itself is no different.”

Her first instinct was to respond indignantly to his words. Her second, more intelligent one, was to say nothing, to keep her expression calm.
Ravi did not know I was a whore
, she told herself,
and the Magisters at the fete who tried to read my past failed to do so. He is but casting out random insults to see which will make me lose control He knows nothing of my past
.

“So…” There was amusement in his eyes, but it was a cold, reptilian thing, wholly divorced from any mortal concept of humor. “Will you best all my sorcery with your witch’s art, if I persist? Or simply run away?”

I know your kind
, she thought.
When you were young you beat anyone who crossed you, and probably assaulted any maiden that took your fancy. Your peers feared you and your parents feared you and probably the authorities as well, and now that you have the ultimate power you expect the whole world to do the same. Only I won’t. I am your rival in power, your equal in fierceness, perhaps even your better… you just do not know it yet
.

“I do not run,” she said quietly.

The hem of his gown suddenly stopped its obscene fluttering. He was drawing the power to him, she realized, readying it for some more significant purpose. A cold chill ran down her spine. Did he think he could toy with her like he would a morati? If so he was in for an unpleasant surprise.

…and a voice whispered in the back of her mind that this was the not way she should be dealing with Magisters… But great waves of rage were roiling to the surface, the frustration of too many hours spent pretending to be something that she was not. She had not come this far in life, at so great a cost, only to have this snake of a Magister treat her like a common whore. Very well, if he wanted to spar with her, let him try. He was in for a bigger surprise than he could imagine.

He struck.

His power was a whirlwind that sucked the breath from her lungs, leaving her stunned and gasping. She grabbed the railing beside her as she tried to defend herself, but the raw power of the assault was like nothing she had ever felt before, and it broke through each spell of defense she invoked. She could feel tendrils of his sorcery winding themselves around her legs, sucking the strength from her muscles, forcing her limbs to fold, and she realized with a rush of fury that he meant to make her kneel to him. Not with some sophisticated spell, like the kind Ethanus had taught her to counter, but with a battering-ram assault, primitive in form, brutal in purpose.

NO!!!

Reaching deep into her own soul—and through it to the consort who fueled her sorcery—she called up all the power within her own reach. Stolen life raged through her veins in a flood tide and she forced it to take the form she desired, she fed it on her fury, she armored it with her determination… and then she let it loose. It was a wild and terrible thing, better suited to her own fiery spirit than the studious habits of her mentor. It burst forth from her in a blaze of sorcerous light that would surely have blinded any morati spectator. Even so it could not could not drive back his sorcery entirely, though it was enough to break the stranglehold he had upon her flesh. Her legs straightened, her muscles regained their accustomed strength, and just in case the meaning of those things was not clear to him, she stiffened her back and raised up her head and met his gaze squarely with her own.

“I also do not kneel,” she said quietly.

He did not seem angered, but rather amused. For a moment she was startled by that and then, with a cold shudder, she realized the truth. The man believed she was a witch. That meant that, as far as he knew, every time she used her power to defend herself from him, she must sacrifice precious moments of her life to do so. That was what this was all about, she realized. He was daring her to waste the essence of her life in self-defense and laughing inwardly, no doubt, as she took the bait and hastened her own death.
You are not my equal
, his actions pronounced,
and if you persist in pretending that you are, your pride will cost you your life
.

It was the ultimate violation of her person. The fact that she was not truly a witch only made it worse. How long would he play with her like this—toying with her as a cat does with a mouse—forcing her to use up more and more of her life essence, seeking that moment in which her prideful soul would expire of exhaustion at his feet? The fact that such moment would never come, and he did not know it yet, only made the game more repulsive in her eyes.

I am no mouse
, she thought.
It ends now
.

Rage was a conflagration within her, and she loosed it in all its heat. Not as she had in the Quarter, blindly and desperately, fearing her own power. This blow was focused and deliberate, and targeted to the seat of his male pride. He wanted to play dominance games with her? Very well, let him learn what
violation
felt like.

Perhaps he did not expect her to strike at him, or else the time between impulse and action was simply so short he had no time to respond. The battering ram of her power broke through his defenses—if there were any—and slammed straight into his gonads. The force of it drove him backward against the far railing, and for a moment he acted like any man would, gasping for breath as he tried to master the pain and do something other than vomit.
You chose the wrong whore to play with
, she thought, as she made the rail shatter behind him. A cascade of stone fragments rained down upon the street below as he struggled for balance, but his weight had been too far committed to the railing for him to save himself now, and—

He fell.

She stepped quickly over to his side of the bridge to watch the fall. Any sorcerer could save himself, of course, but how would he do so? Would he turn himself into a bird, perhaps, or some great cat that could land safely on its feet? Or simply slow his own fall so that he landed safely, still in human flesh? In the end it was all about power, of course, and whether one wished to make modest demands upon one’s consort, or suck a stranger dry for the sake of some dramatic flourish. She had little doubt about what choice this kind of man would make. But would he save himself first and then strike back at her somehow, or combine the two intentions into one smooth action in the hopes that she would not see his attack coming? That was an answer that mattered.

She watched as he fell, and she made ready to defend herself yet again.

And then he struck the ground. The sound of the impact echoed between the towers. It was not unlike the sound a man’s head might make when struck with an iron bar, but ten times louder, and a hundred times more final. It passed through her flesh like a Shockwave and left a cold knot of dread lodged in her gut.

He did not move.

She waited.

He still did not move.

There were voices coming now, approaching from below. Seeking the source of that terrible sound.

Get up
, she thought desperately.
Strike back
!

He did neither of those things.

She leaned over the edge of the railing and expended enough power to magnify her senses in order to study him more closely. It was hard to see him in the shadows of the towers, but she thought that his robes no longer seemed to be that sorcerous black, but rather something more normal. There was no rise and fall of his chest, nor any heartbeat she could detect. And the angle of his neck was wrong, all wrong. Living men did not lie in that position.

Cold, afraid, she backed along the bridge to the nearest wall and leaned against it, trembling. The fall shouldn’t have killed him. No fall could kill a Magister. The only death a Magister need fear was one that came too swiftly for him to react to, and a fall was not that kind. A fall was a long, leisurely end, full of opportunity to reach out with sorcery and save oneself—

Unless his power failed him
, she thought.

Unless he went into Transition.

Unless he could not claim a new consort in time.

There were men down by the body now, shouting things. She heard them as if from a great distance, without understanding, as if they spoke a language she had never learned.

She had killed a Magister.

There is but one Law
, Ethanus had told her,
paramount above all others: no Magister shall ever kill another
.

Someone came out of Tower Savresi, to see what the ruckus was about. She wrapped the shadows of twilight about her closely, that none might see her. Her legs were weak, and without the strength of the wall behind her she might have fallen.

I have broken the Law
.

Any minute now, one of the visiting Magisters would come out and see the twisted body. She did not know what would happen if they looked her way. Probably they would see right through her trembling sorcery to the pale, frightened woman within. She could certainly not return to the fete and try to pretend that nothing was wrong; any sorcerer who looked at her would be able to sense the deception.

J
cannot stay here
.

The thought was horror and despair and failure and fury all bound up together, emotions too hot and terrible for one living soul to contain. It burst forth from her and she screamed, screamed to the skies above and to all the hells below, screamed till her throat was raw and her voice began to fail. Though she bound enough power to keep any other living creature from hearing her, still she could hear herself, and she trembled to have such a bestial and terrible sound issue forth from her own throat.

There were more figures coming from the tower now, and some of them were wearing black. With a final sob she drew enough power from her consort to saturate her flesh with power, preparing it to transform. It was a high order spell, and almost more than her trembling spirit could handle. But she had only seconds to see it to completion before someone would look upward, surely, and that added fear gave her strength.

One of the men did look upward a moment later, seeking the place the Magister had fallen from.

One of the black-robed sorcerers followed his gaze, seeking the kind of clues that morati eyes might miss.

There was nothing for either of them to see. Only a single broad-winged owl circling overhead, that dipped low once as it passed, and then turned its course southward, and soon passed out of sight.

At sunset Andovan thought he could see the towers.

He was high on a hill at the time, with a clear view to the west, and the orange light of the setting sun blazed fiercely along the horizon, as if the earth itself were burning. Against that light, if he peered closely enough, he thought he could see Gansang. Or at least its towers: high enough and clustered together closely enough that the light of the setting sun could not break through their mass; a black spot upon the orange horizon where the sunset fires did not burn, beneath a sky of swollen purple clouds with salmon underbellies.

It was Gansang. It had to be.

There was no telling how far away it was—the landscape was the sort that distorted one’s sense of distance. But surely it could be no more than a day’s ride, or two at the most, from where he stood.

He drew in a deep breath, trembling despite himself. Each night the dreams had been stronger, clearer, the image of the towers etching itself into his brain. Each morning he was more and more certain it was Gansang he had dreamed of. Now he was almost there; it made him dizzy to contemplate it.

And dizzy for other reasons as well.

The Wasting had progressed, just as all the doctors and Magisters had warned him it would. Slowly, inexorably, as if some unseen serpent were slowly squeezing all the life out of him. Sometimes he had to stop at midday and dismount, no longer able to bear a whole day in the saddle as he had once done so easily. In the morning, when the dreams faded, it was harder and harder for him to force himself to rise and dress and begin the rituals of morning. When he made his final camp at night it took everything he had to see to his horse’s needs before he retired, rather than simply collapsing upon the ground in a faint.

Only sheer willpower kept him going. That and the distant siren’s song of hope, that if he found the woman responsible for his illness, if he could figure out how and why she had done this to him, surely he could find a way to save himself. Even if that meant killing her.