The Lost War by Karl Gallagher (novel24 .txt) 📗

his mouth. “People are attached to their tongues.”

“But she’s still able to work.”

“We need all the hands we have to survive.”

“Stitches is terrified you’ll carry out the sentence.”

He shrugged.

“It seems you only failed in one goal you were trying to achieve.”

He stiffened. “Oh?”

Cinnamon leaned in with a smile. “You didn’t get the King to fire your ass.”

“I will not shirk my duties.” He started an angry shout, but muffled the rest lest someone outside hear him.

“We know. Otherwise you would have found another way out.” She grabbed his hand and turned it, pushing up his sleeve to show healing cuts leading up from the wrist. Some freshly scabbed over, others nearly invisible now.

He shoved her away. “Let go!”

She landed on the bed, smoothly as if she’d intended him to push her onto it. “Your duties are crushing you.”

He turned away and leaned on his desk. “I have to keep working. We can’t afford to tie up everyone in leadership arguments again, we’ve lost enough time to such already.”

“Then let me help you.”

That drew a bitter laugh. “You want the job? Fine.”

“No . . .” She stood and came up behind him, breasts brushing his back. “Help you personally.”

He twisted away. “My Lady, I am married!”

Cinnamon locked eyes with him. “You were married. Now you’re alone. However we wound up here, we’re not going back. You won’t see her again.”

Sharpquill turned to look at the empty beds. “I think of her every day. Her and our boys.”

“I’m sure she thinks of you. But she’s had a funeral for you already. We’re here now, and we have to take care of each other.”

“I miss her,” he whispered.

She wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down with her to sit on the bed. He buried his face in her shoulder as the tears came. She rocked him and stroked his hair, saying nothing.

***

“Enough,” said the sorcerer.

Ithuil pressed on the cut to stop the blood flow.

“Sit.”

The apprentice tilted his body up, kneeling on the dirt floor inside the hollow tree. He studied his master’s gestures as the sorcerer transformed the blood into a broad puddle, and then a window to the forest.

The sorcerer exclaimed over the latest developments by his pets with all the excitement of an elfling watching birds build a nest.

Ithuil wasn’t close enough to the scrying pool to see what his master was exclaiming about. His attention drifted to the walls.

The inner surface of the trunk was pocked with shelves and cubbyholes carved into the wood, the work of prior generations of apprentices. All of them were full. There were jars and bundles of wild herbs, some collected by Ithuil. Stoppered bottles of potions with cryptic labels no one but the sorcerer understood. Book after book with the sorcerer’s records of his experiments. Scrolls with the perfected spells.

“They’re ranging widely now. Outside the circle of my protection. Ah, yes. There. Five deaths, oh, a hand of days ago. Eaten, I’d wager. They’d tried to claim land outside their fence. Good. If they’re being that bold they’ll be effective at exterminating the vermin.”

The apprentice flinched at the venom in his master’s voice. Attempts to wipe out the menace directly had been . . . costly. Now these strangers from another world would do it.

The sorcerer stepped back from the scrying pool. After a moment’s thought he said, “Yes, it’s time. They no longer need my protection.”

He turned to Ithuil, who flinched and picked up his blade again.

“No, no, this won’t need more blood. You will take down the protection spell. It’s made from your blood. You should have no difficulty.”

A scroll in the middle of a pile wiggled loose and soared into the master’s hand. He offered it to Ithuil.

The apprentice forced his hands to not shake as he took it. Other apprentices shared rumors of a scroll that left the caster as dust, a trap set for thieves and nosy apprentices. Another rumor said all the scrolls would dust their readers.

Even if that was true it would be a better end than the punishment he would suffer for defying his master’s will.

He read through the whole scroll. It should “Unmake a distant enchantment” as the title claimed, based on the thaumatological theory he’d been taught. The leather of the scroll was still supple. It had been made less than a decade ago.

Staying on his knees he shuffled to the edge of the scrying pool. His right hand hovered just above the surface, as flat as he could hold it.

Scrying wasn’t just for sight. Ithuil could hear the murmur of the river. He felt with his magical senses and found the protection spell. It was a sphere centered around the stockade on the bluff. Touching the currents of power in it he confirmed that it was only meant to exclude the green vermin from the protected volume.

He looked back at the scroll. The symbols burned into the leather specified the sounds and gestures needed to unravel the spell. He began the chant. His fingers moved in synchronicity, interlacing then pulling apart, interlacing then pulling apart.

A current pulled loose from the sphere and came to him through the scrying pool. He changed his hands to pulling and guiding. A glance at the scroll verified he was doing it right. As the sphere weakened its power flowed back to him faster. At the end the remaining power rushed into him with such force Ithuil fell onto his side.

“How do you feel?” asked the sorcerer.

From a stew of possibilities he chose, “Warm.”

“Yes. That’s the magic of your own blood come back to you. A pleasant feeling.”

The apprentice rolled onto his back. He saw his master’s face above him wearing an unfamiliar expression. Amusement? Happiness? Surely not the latter.