The White Mists of Power (16 page)

“All right.” Seymour closed his eyes. Afeno ran past the sword, down the stairs, and into the street. The silence was eerie. He could see no one. He hurried through the side streets until he found a sign for an herb witch. He pounded on the door, but heard no answer.

His breath was coming rapidly. Seymour would die without help, and so would Byron. Afeno couldn’t spend the entire night looking for an herb witch. He pounded again, louder, and this time the door opened.

The woman was small, elderly, and very sleepy. “I’ll pay you two gold pieces,” Afeno said. “I have a burned man back at the inn.”

The woman smoothed her hair, turned, and grabbed a pouch. “Take me there,” she said.

Afeno led her back on the path he had come. She moved too slowly for him; he wanted to pick her up and carry her. Once he reached the inn, he took her upstairs, sneezing at the smell. She knelt beside Seymour and took one of his hands. “This is bad. Very bad.”

“Can you help him?”

“I can ease his pain. It’ll take one with more talent than I to help him.”

“Do what you can,” Afeno said. He couldn’t stay in the room. He had to find Byron. Afeno ran down the stairs and into the street. He had originally come from the north and seen nothing, and had found the herb witch to the west and seen nothing. If the crowd had taken him, they had taken him south because east would have meant going around the inn and into a residential district. South led out of town the quickest.

Afeno darted down the nearest side street and saw torches flickering in front of taverns. The taverns were empty, though, and he saw no one else. A half mile down the road, his foot slipped. He looked down and saw a pool of blood the size of the one Dakin’s retainer had left in Nadaluci. He swallowed and kept moving. Farther on, he saw a bloody handprint beneath one of the torches on the side of a tavern, and another smudge on a wood post. Then, at the end of the street near the city wall, he saw his own sword resting upright in the dirt.

He walked to the sword slowly. The hilt and the blade were covered with blood. A bloodstained white shirt rested under the sword point. Byron’s shirt. Afeno tossed the sword aside and picked up the shirt. The blood was sticky, half dry. He had probably been dead for a couple of hours.

Afeno swallowed, feeling his stomach twist. Byron was probably dead, but Afeno had to find out for sure. He walked through the city gate, into the darkness.

v

Nica shielded her eyes from the flames’ glare. She took a step backwards, squinted, and saw Byron run out of the burning building, followed by a boy. They faced the crowd for a moment, then the crowd surged forward. She had to do something. She breathed into her luck web, felt its strength.

“Then share yours with me,” she said. She raised her hands, drawing the luck into her fingers. Her power grew stronger, stronger, until it radiated out her hands. She felt another presence, a luck web even stronger, more radiant than her own. She chanted a spell she had only read, then opened her eyes in time to see Byron and the boy disappear.

The crowd lurched forward, not believing the two disappeared. “This,” Xell said, and held his staff aloft. Nica grasped the end of the staff, and knew there was another step to the spell. Power jutted forward on a half-lit arc, stopping in the center of the crowd and forming into the Byron who had just vanished. Ropes hung loosely from his wrists and his shirt was torn and bloody.

Someone screamed and the crowd surged forward. The illusion ran, and someone grabbed his white shirt, yanking him backward. A heavyset man stuck a dagger in the fake bard’s back.

“Stop that!” a woman yelled. “You’re to kill him outside the city!”

The bard stumbled forward, blood trailing from his back. The crowd followed. Nica watched until they disappeared down a side street. She relaxed her grip on the staff and Xell lowered it, slowly. She cast about in her mind until she found the warmth of Byron and the boy. She raised her arms before her face, chanted for her luck web, to make it stronger, but her reserves were gone. With a soft whisper she revered the invisibility spell, but when she blinked her eyes, she saw nothing.

“I can’t reverse it,” she said to Xell.

“It’ll fade in a few hours,” he said. “Come on, let’s go home.”

“I want to see if he’s all right.” She ran to the warm place, the place her mind told her housed the bard and the boy. They were a few yards from the inn. She stopped before them, found Byron’s shoulder, traced his arm down to his hand, and untied his wrists. Then she stepped away, suddenly afraid to talk to him.

“The–the invisibility will last another half day. I’m sorry Byron, but my luck has left me.” She wished that she could see his face.

“You did this?”

“I’m in training. I’m not supposed to see anyone. Please. I should go.” She tried to pull her hand away from him, but he held tightly.

“When I’m done training, Byron, I’ll find you.” She backed away, then ran down the road. Her body didn’t hurt, but she felt pain. He had hurt her, hurt her magic somehow. And Xell had said that seeing someone could destroy her magic forever.

She ran all the way to the guild shop, afraid that the door would not open for her now that her luck web was gone. Xell was waiting outside, holding his staff beside him like a shepherd. He opened the door for her and she went inside.

He had lit candles on all the shelves, just as he done the night she first arrived. The light reflecting off the crystals blinded her, and she fell to the floor.

“You did very well,” Xell said. “Your magic will be strong and forceful someday.”

“My web snapped.”

He crouched down beside her and lifted her against him. His touch felt soft, soothing. She closed her eyes and felt him take each strand of her luck web, stitch it together with his own threads, and replace it around her. She leaned against him and he stroked her hair. “You can’t go out again,” he said. “I can only repair your luck web once.”

She moved away. The web was there, weaker than it had been before but there. She wanted to touch it, to make it stronger, but she knew she dared not.

“Make it disappear,” Xell said, “and when it returns, it will be stronger.”

Nica wrapped her arms around herself and chanted the web away. But she didn’t move after it disappeared. Instead she replayed the pleasure in Byron’s voice before she stored the memory in her heart.

Milord:

This bard is more than your portrayed him to be. A great wizard or an Enos or perhaps even an Old One watches over him. Never in my travels have I had such a night as this.

I joined Lafa’s bounty hunters on a raid against the bard. After dark, we burst into his room in the inn. He was there, with the magician and one of the boys. Armed with only a sword–no shield or other protection–he held six of us off. His young friend fought and wounded another of the group. Finally, I managed to break past the bard’s sword and pinned him against the wall. The entire room exploded. The bard and the boy broke free. The magician was wounded, near dead, but he managed to make them leave. They ran down the stairs and out the door. We followed.

A large crowd waited outside. They captured the bard and boy and held them. They began to take him from the city in accord with Lafa’s orders. Somehow–and I and no one else seem to know how–he escaped. I grabbed him for a moment, long enough to run my knife into him, but he kept moving, trailing blood. The boy had disappeared. Then, near the city’s edge, I caught him. As I tried to kill him, he vanished as if he had never existed. But my hands were stained with blood.

A great magician has aided him, milord, and that magician is not his own. I have since searched for that magician and the bard and can find neither. But I shall continue my hunt. And when I find him, I will be prepared. No one,
no one,
makes a fool of Corvo and lives.

When you next hear from me, the bard will be dead.

Corvo

Chapter 12

Adric’s face dug into the pillow. He was lying on his stomach in a room that smelled of hay and horses. A voice in the back of his head warned him not to move, not to wake up all the way, not to breathe.

“Have you tried to wake him?” Cassie’s voice sounded faraway, although he could feel the heat of her body on his arm.

“No, not yet. I was waiting for you.” There was something in Milo’s tone that Adric had never heard before. Panic? Fear?

Metal jingled above him, and he felt himself hovering on the edge of wakefulness. An ache started in his back, and he tried to slide back into sleep, but the effort woke him further.

He felt Cassie move. The warmth of her body slid down, closer to his stomach. “I got him as drunk as I could,” she said. “He passed out a few minutes ago.”

“I thought you were going to use a sleeping potion.”

“I couldn’t get out to buy one. He was watching me. I think he suspected something. It was all I could do to get him to drink. I’m a little woozy myself.”

His back felt encased in armor, a crusty shell that held him in place. The throbbing had taken a strange pattern. He blinked once and the throbbing became a burning. Someone was using a hot coat to draw a map on his flesh. He had to sit up, to stop the mapmaking, but sitting up seemed like too much work.

The mapmaker set sticks across Adric’s back and lit them on fire. The pain shuddered through him, into his stomach, into his legs. Adric gasped and tried to roll over, to put out the fire. Cool hands gripped his arms, forcing him back down.

“Don’t move so fast,” Cassie said. “You break the scabs open.”

Her breath smelled of ale, and the ends of her words sounded mushy. Adric opened his eyes, saw Cassie’s faded gray dress and, beyond it, the rough wood wall of the stable.

Her hand stayed on his arm. “I brought a clean shirt and extra ointment. Make sure that you put the ointment on. He’ll heal quicker.”

“Okay.”

Adric blinked and turned his head so that he could see Cassie’s face. She seemed older than she had before, tired, as if she were about to lose everything. She was looking across him, probably at Milo.

“If the scabs fill with pus and fall off, find an herb witch right away. Pus means that the ointment has failed.”

“But pus is good.”

“Sometimes. Not with this treatment.” Cassie dipped her hand in a jar, then rubbed her hands together. She rose on her knees and caressed his back. Her hands cooled the fire, put out the flame. Tears tickled the edges of Adric’s eyes.

“Water?” he whispered.

Cassie looked at him then. Her smiled was tender, but a frown still creased her brow. Something sloshed beside him and then Milo came into view, holding a cup. Water dripped off its sides.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” Milo said. He crouched beside Adric and put his hands behind Adric’s head to help him up.

“Wait until I’m finished,” Cassie said. Her hands touched the base of his spine. The map still burned beneath the coolness, but the feeling seemed faraway. “All right. Let’s help him up first.”

Milo set the cup down and moved out of Adric’s range of vision. Adric saw the wall, the choppy splinters in the wood, the rusty nail falling from its peg. Slowly he slid his hands under his shoulders to help himself. Fire threatened his shoulder blades. He waited until the heat faded, then pushed. Milo and Cassie supported him and kept his back straight as he sat up. A sudden dizziness gripped him, and Adric clutched Cassie’s arm. The dizziness passed, and he let go, leaving red fingerprints in her skin.

Milo handed Adric the cup. The tin was cool against his fingers. He raised it slowly, almost as if he had forgotten how. His arm shook, and water dripped onto his legs. The cup touched the edge of his lips and he drank, letting the liquid soothe the dryness in the back of his throat.

Cassie glanced at the door. “You have to get him out of here, Milo,” she said. “Rogren will wake up in a few hours. He always does.”

Milo nodded. He grabbed a linen shirt that rested on top of a full sack. “Put this on,” he said to Adric. “We’re leaving.”