Nor Iron Bars A Cage (31 page)

I closed my eyes, although my brain was still racing. “I’m going to sleep until the sorcerers come up here.”

Whenever that might be. We’d arrived back at the tower to discover that Firstmage was dead. He’d simply fallen over onto the working, halfway through the morning. Which explained why the thing failed. His colleagues were busily trying to figure out if the working killed him, or just strain and old age. And if it was in fact the sorcery, then what went wrong and how to fix it. Until they thought they had some answers, I was “resting”, which technically meant confined to our room under guard. That was fine with me. I kept discovering whole new levels of exhaustion. Maybe I’d write a treatise on the topic someday.

At some point, my lie became truth and I slept. I woke with a start, thinking I’d heard thunder, and laughter. But the only real sound was someone knocking on the door. Tobin rolled away from my side, where he’d apparently been lying, and went to answer it. I’d expected the King’s Mages, but instead it was the king himself.

“Can I come in?”

“Of course, sir.”

Behind him the captain said, “I don’t think this is wise until your sorcerers examine him.”

King Faro said over his shoulder, “I’ll take that under advisement.” He stepped into the room and closed the door on the captain.

Tobin said mildly, “He’s only looking out for your safety, sir. It’s his job.”

“I’m aware of that. Sometimes he needs to have a little faith though.”

Tobin’s lip quirked. “In you or in me?”

“All three of us.” He pulled up a chair at my bedside, and waved Tobin back onto the bed. “Hello, Lyon, how’s the hand?”

I cleared my throat and sat up against the headboard. “Fine, Sire. I mean, it’s broken, but nothing that won’t heal.”

“That’s good.”

There was an awkward silence. King Faro added, “The Crown is well aware of the debt We owe you, Sorcerer Lyon.”

Tobin muttered something very softly about, “…stick up your butt.”

I was apprehensive, but King Faro laughed. “I miss you when you’re not around, Tobin. I really do. But I was trying to offer Lyon the protection and gratitude of his king.”

“Then you could try saying thank you.”

King Faro smacked Tobin’s shoulder, but gave me a warmer smile. “Thank you, Lyon. Is there anything that I can do for you?”

I tried to imagine it. Fix my head? He was no sorcerer. Make Tobin resign from the Voices, or post him to my remote farming village? Where he would no doubt go crazy in a week? Anyway, as long as Xan was in my mind that was irrelevant. “I can’t think of anything, Sire.”

“How refreshing.” He shrugged. “Maybe it will come to you. Secondmage and Thirdmage are still down in the workroom, muttering and pacing about. But they said to tell you, either way, they want you down there before sunrise.”

“All right.” I’d lost track. “How long?”

“Two hours now.”

That soon? More of the night had passed than I’d realized. “Have they said what might happen then?”

“Not in detail. I know they intend to do something to end the transference.”

Tobin said, “Without killing Lyon in the process.”

“Of course. I gather an enchantment that keeps working after it’s broken is a big puzzle. No doubt, Sorcerer Lyon, you’d understand them better than I.”

“If they were even talking to me about it.”

“Ah.” King Faro looked brighter. “That I can do. Order them to include you in the work. Would you prefer that?”

My first impulse was to shout yes. The thought that two other people were going to determine my fate in arcane ways without consulting me made me want to scream. At the same time, I had no illusions about our relative talents and experience. Having to explain everything to me might slow them down. I let my good sense prevail. It helped that what I wanted most was to spend the next two hours with Tobin. “If you could just tell them that once they decide, I want the whole final working explained to me, in every detail, before they perform it.”

“I’ll do that.”

Tobin said, “Any new word from the coast?”

“Oh, yes. Got another bird. There’s serious fighting. General Estray is doing well, though. If we’d split the forces evenly, or had not had warning, it might be different. But the extra archers give him enough strength to keep the R’gin pinned on and near the beaches. He expects they’ll eventually give up and retreat.”

“Especially since their second front has failed.”

“Yes. Although they probably don’t know that yet. Communication is all.” He reached out and tapped Tobin’s badge of office. “Back when mages could do that kind of work, a man’s words could be heard across the country. It must have been nice. Instead of relying on riders and carrier-birds.”

“If uncanny,” Tobin said, and it made me laugh.

The king glanced at me, and then as if deliberately distracting me, mused, “I’ve always wondered why so much has been lost.” I could have told him it was the subject of fruitless debate whenever two sorcerers got together. Why the physical magics had vanished from the world, leaving only the command of the dead behind. He said, “Talking with Xan reminded me of how devastating the Plague was. I wondered if that perhaps made the NaR’gin deliberately close and hide the tunnel— perhaps they covered it up and hid it on the R’gin end so men here couldn’t bring the really lethal version of the sickness back home?”

Tobin said, “Maybe. It might have been deliberate for that reason. A sick man wouldn’t survive the long voyage by ship, or weeks through the mountain passes, to bring the Plague with him. Maybe they thought to bottle it up here. Or even thought that the tunnel caused it.”

“There’s a small chance it might have,” I pointed out. “We don’t yet know if that tunnel was made and maintained by magic. Or why the Summer Sickness suddenly became the Plague. Maybe the tunnel magic acted on the illness in the soldiers passing through, strengthened it somehow.”

“Gods.” The king looked stricken. “I hope it wasn’t that. We just had eighty men come through there. What are the chances none of them was sick with anything?”

I shook my head, and gave an unfortunate snicker. “Another nice conundrum to set to your sorcerers.”

“Not funny,” the king protested.

“No. But we can hope it’s not true.” Unlike the millennium old ghost inside me. I said,
-Xan, was there true magic in the world, when you were alive?

Any hope he wasn’t still around disappeared when he said immediately,
-Yes. Spells for finding and keeping things, spells to warn of enemies approaching. But our witchmen said it was nothing compared to what had been possible generations before. They said the magic was fading from the land.

-Did you ever actually see anyone work a spell?

-I knew a man who could find water with a forked stick. I don’t know if it was true magic, but it seemed so. Our witchmen used spells to keep the herds safe. But we still lost a kid to predators now and then. They said nothing was perfect. Mostly, the witchborn spoke with our ancestors, for wisdom and help.

I refocused my eyes to see the king watching me. “Xan says the magic was fading even in his time. So it wasn’t all due to the plague.”

He nodded. “It must be interesting, to talk to someone so old. To hear about those times first-hand.”

“Yes.”

“I have an itch to set a real historian on you, to ask questions until morning comes.”

I recognized the impulse, but said, “I’d rather you didn’t.” If my last hours were coming, it should have been gratifying to spend them adding to human knowledge. But I had other wishes.

He shrugged. “I don’t have one handy anyway. And most of the burning questions the palace historian spoke of in my lessons were about the settled lands, and not the mountains.”

Tobin said, “Sire?”

The king turned, startled by the formality. “Yes?”

“Would you tell your sorcerers that if this process will harm Lyon, in any way, I’d rather have the ghost around forever. Much rather.”

“I’m not sure that’s a choice.” The king turned to me. “What about you, Lyon? Could you live like this forever?”

I hesitated, and asked Xan,
-Did I bind myself to giving you a place forever in my body, when I was desperate there on the cliff?

-You offered. I didn’t accept it. I’m not sure I could. I feel very stretched and thin.

-You let me save Tobin. Helped me.

-Not because of your offer. Only because you love him, and I would not see that end. The hate was finally burned out of me, and I let it go.

-Thank you.

-Each moment of love in the world lifts us all up. Any kind of love. I miss my Tia. Very much now.

-Perhaps you’ll see her again when you go.

-That would be a true blessing of the Skygod.

I reached out and put my palm on Tobin’s cheek. His stubble rasped my skin. I felt Xan notice the texture of it, with a little hitch of surprise from a man used to a woman’s smooth face. He was a good man, but… I couldn’t bear it. I said, “I want the ghost gone from my head. One way or the other.” I didn’t move my hand from where it lay.

The king said, “I’ll leave you for now. Someone will fetch you early enough for a full explanation, before the working of the new enchantment begins.”

I didn’t even hear him open the door, because Tobin turned his head, and pressed a kiss to my palm. “What now?”

“Let me hold you,” I said. “I can’t do much more, or won’t, not with him in my head. But let me put my arms around you.”

“Gladly.”

We lay down again, fully clothed, and Tobin came into my arms. I found a way to hold him that kept my bandaged, throbbing hand clear. Not that the pain really mattered now, but it was a distraction. Fortunately one I had years of practice at ignoring. I laid my cheek on the pillow, facing him. He kissed me slowly, and looked into my eyes. “We’ll have lots of time, after today. We’ll go slowly, get to know each other as grown men without a crisis blowing down our necks.”

“Yes.” I explored his mouth. Xan was silent and still. The bad hand was nothing. I could focus only on Tobin, on the soft slide of his tongue, the little gap in his teeth, the sweet stretch of his lip, taken in a gentle bite.

He said, “Come back to Riverrun. I’ll show you the palace and the grounds. The libraries. There are three of them. You’ll enjoy the libraries.”

I licked his neck and the angle of his jaw, loving the drag of his unshaven skin over my tongue. “I can’t live there though. Not yet. I’m better, gods and goddess, miles better than I thought I would ever be. But it’s still too many people.”

“I know. We can explore it at night, when all the world’s asleep. And then I’ll take you home.”

It made such a nice fantasy. For right now I’d go along with it. We had two hours. “You’ll come visit me in my house. I’ll learn to bake you cakes.”

Tobin laughed. “Don’t strain yourself.”

I said in a hurt tone, “You think it’ll be hard for me? I’ll have you know I’m a decent cook.”

Tobin nuzzled against my neck. “I won’t be visiting you for your cakes. I’ll bring some from town.”

“Five days stale,” I teased. But immediately my heart ached at the reminder. Five days out and five days back. How often would he come?

“You could move closer,” he said. “We can look for a place.”

“Yes.” I could do that. Surely I could. My stone walls had saved my sanity, but there were other solid houses out there. “Something similar. Something safe.”

“Ah, Lyon.” He kissed me, feverishly and then gently. “I hate that you still need a place to feel safe.”

“I’m just glad if I can find one,” I said softly. “For a long time, nothing felt safe. Not for a moment.”

He wriggled carefully out of my arms, to take me in his. “Let me…” He pulled me in tighter, throwing a leg around my hips too, as if to engulf me. “Does it feel worse again now, with Xan in there?”

“Well, it’s not better. It’s different. It’s, it’s not the same.” Xan had not compelled me to do anything. Xan didn’t fell hungry for my life. But he was alien and in my head and I couldn’t get him out. I COULDN’T GET HIM OUT.

At first, I didn’t realize I was fighting Tobin, until a guard shouting, “What’s wrong?” startled me from my blind panic. I was still on the bed, still wrapped in Tobin’s grip, with my eyes squeezed shut. Tobin said fiercely over my shoulder, “Just a nightmare. Close the door.”

I froze, still as a rabbit under the hawk’s hunt, until the door clicked shut. Then I slumped, all of a heap. Tobin rocked me against him. “Did I hurt you?” He reached for my right wrist to rub it with his thumb. “Sorry, so sorry, I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have mentioned it.”

I shook my head against his shoulder. When I could speak past my gasping breaths I said, “S’all right. Not your fault.”

“Another hour, beloved. Another hour and he’ll be gone. I swear. I’ll
make
them do it.”

I imagined Tobin with drawn sword, compelling the King’s Mages to fix me, and chuckled weakly. Although… “What did you call me?”

He kissed my eyelids, and when I opened my eyes he was gazing into them from inches away. “Too soon, I know. But someday, when we’re free of ghosts and armies and invasions and magic tunnels, I’ll call you that again.”

I kissed him to silence him. An hour was already too far to look ahead. I took two more slow, steadying breaths, and gave every scrap of my attention to kissing Tobin. Kissing was pure and simple, untainted, warmth and need. The wraith, for all its foul desires, had never… I looked deep in his eyes, and kissed him some more.

****

The workroom was well lit, and no doubt was actually warm enough. The king sat in his chair in his shirtsleeves looking comfortable. It was only in my mind that frigid air pooled around my feet on the threshold, sucking the heat from my flesh. It was only imagination to hear whispers, and see shadows dancing in the corners.

Tobin entered slightly ahead of me, and looked around before stepping aside to let me in. The two remaining King’s Mages stood in front of a new working sketched out on the floor. This one had been scaled back down, not just from star to square but to a triangle with inscribed circle, meaning just two working points for sorcerers. I frowned. It wasn’t that I wanted to be part of another working, pretty much ever. But at the same time, I hated the thought of being a passenger in one of theirs.