Arkoniel returned to the keep the next morning, expecting to find lathered horses in the courtyard. But Iya did not come that day, or the next. Puzzled, he rode up the mountain track in search of Lhel, but the witch did not show herself.
Most of a week passed before her vision proved true. He was at work on a transmutation spell when he heard the sound of sleigh bells on the river road. Recognizing the high-pitched tinkling, he went on with his work. It was only the miller’s girl, making the monthly delivery to the kitchen.
He was still engrossed in the complexities of transforming a chestnut into a letter knife when the rattle of the door latch startled him. No one disturbed him here this time of the day.
“You’d better come down, Arkoniel,” said Nari. Her normally placid face was troubled and her hands were balled in her apron. “Mistress Iya is here.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked, hurrying to follow her downstairs. “Is she hurt?”
“Oh, no, she’s well enough. I’m not so sure about the woman she brought with her, though.”
Iya was sitting on the hearth bench in the hall, supporting a hunched, bundled figure. The stranger was closely wrapped but he could see the edge of a dark veil visible just below the deep hood.
“Who’s this?” he asked.
“I think you remember our guest,” Iya said quietly.
The other woman lifted her veil with a gloved hand and Nari let out a faint gasp.
“Mistress Ranai?” It was an effort not to recoil. “You’re—you’re a long way from home.”
He’d met the elderly wizard only once before, but hers was a face not easily forgotten. The ruined half was turned toward him, the scarred flesh standing out in waxy ridges. She shifted to see him with her remaining eye and smiled. The undamaged side of her face was soft and kind as a grandmother’s.
“I am glad to meet you again, though I regret the circumstance that brings me to you,” she replied in a hoarse, whispery voice. Her gnarled hands trembled as she laid her veil aside.
Centuries ago, during the Great War, this woman had fought beside Iya’s master, Agazhar. A necromancer’s demon had raked her face into this lopsided mask and crippled her left leg. She was much frailer than he recalled, and he could see the reddened weal of a recent burn on her right cheek.
The first time they’d met, he’d felt her power like a cloud of lightning so strong it raised the hair on the back of his arms. Now he could scarcely feel it.
“What’s happened to you, Mistress?” Remembering his manners he took her hand and silently offered her his own strength. He felt a slight flutter in his stomach as she accepted the gift.
“They burned me out,” she wheezed. “My own neighbors!”
“They got wind of a Harrier patrol on the way to Ylani and went mad,” Iya explained. “Word’s been put round that any town that shelters a dissenting wizard will be put to the torch.”
“Two centuries I lived among them!” Ranai gripped Arkoniel’s hand harder. “I healed their children, sweetened their wells, brought them rain. If Iya hadn’t been with me that night—” A coughing fit choked off her words.
Iya gently patted her back. “I’d just reached Ylani and saw the Harrier banner in the harbor. I guessed what that meant in time, but even so, I was nearly too late. The cottage was burning down around her and she was caught under a beam.”
“Harrier wizards stood outside and held the doors shut!” Ranai croaked. “I must be old indeed if a pack of young scoundrels like that can best me! But oh, how their spells hurt. It felt like they were driving spikes into my eyes. I was blind—” She trailed off querulously and seemed to shrink even smaller as Arkoniel watched.
“Thank the Light she was strong enough to hold off the worst of the flames, but as you can see, the ordeal took its toll. We’ve been nearly two weeks getting here. We rode the last bit in a miller’s sledge.”
He brushed at a streak of flour on Iya’s skirt. “So I see.”
Nari had disappeared at some point, but she and Cook returned with hot tea and food for the travelers.
Ranai accepted a mug with a murmur of thanks, but was too weak to lift it. Iya helped the old woman raise it to her lips. Ranai. managed a slurping sip before another rattling cough took her. Iya held her as the spasm shook her wizened frame.
“Fetch a firepot,” Nari said to Cook. “I’ll make up the duke’s room for her.”
Iya helped the old woman take another sip. “She’s not the only one driven out. You remember Virishan?”
“That hedge wizard who takes in wizard-born orphans?”
“Yes. Do you recall the young mind clouder she had with her?”
“Eyoli?”
“Yes. I met him on the road a few months back and he told me she and her brood had fled into the mountains north of Hear.”
“It’s that monster’s doing,” Ranai whispered vehemently. “That viper in white!”
“Lord Niryn.”
“Lord?” The old woman mustered the strength to spit into the fire. The flames flared a livid blue. “The son of a tanner, he was, and a middling mage at best, last I knew. But the whelp knows how to drip poison in the royal ear. He’s turned the whole country on us, his own kind!”
“Is it so bad already?” asked Arkoniel.
“It’s still just in pockets in the outlying towns, but the madness is spreading,” said Iya.
“The visions—” Ranai began.
“Not here,” Iya whispered. “Arkoniel, help Nari get her to bed.”
Ranai was too weak to climb the stairs, so Arkoniel carried her. She was as light and brittle in his arms as a bundle of dry sticks. Nari and Cook had made the musty, long-empty room as comfortable as they could. Two fire-pots stood beside the bed and someone had laid life’s breath leaves on the coals to ease Ranai’s cough. The pungent smell filled the room.
As the women undressed Ranai to her ragged shift and tucked her into bed, Arkoniel caught a glimpse of the old scars and new burns that covered her withered arms and shoulders. Bad as they were, he found them less worrisome than the strange ebb in her power.
When Ranai was settled, Iya sent the others out and pulled a chair close to the bed. “Are you comfortable now?” Ranai whispered something Arkoniel could not catch. Iya frowned, then nodded. “Very well. Arkoniel, fetch the bag, please.”
“It’s there beside you.” Iya’s traveling pack lay in plain sight by his mistress’s chair.
“No, the bag I left with you.”
Arkoniel blinked, realizing which one she meant.
“Fetch it, Arkoniel. Ranai told me something quite surprising the other day.” She looked down at the dozing wizard, then snapped, “Quickly now!” as if he were still a clumsy young apprentice.
Arkoniel took the stairs two at a time and pulled the dusty bag from under the workroom table. Inside, shrouded in spells and mystery lay the clay bowl she had charged him never to show to anyone except his own successor. It had been Iya’s burden for as long as he’d known her, a trust passed with the darkest oaths from wizard to wizard since the days of the Great War.
The war! he thought, seeing the first inkling of a connection.
Iya saw Ranai’s eyes widen when Arkoniel returned with the battered old leather bag.
“Shroud the room, Iya,” she murmured.
Iya cast a spell, sealing the room from prying eyes and ears, then took the bag from Arkoniel. Undoing the knotted thongs, she eased out the mass of silk wrappings and slowly undid them. Wards and incantations winked and crackled in the lamplight.
As the last of the silk fell away Iya caught her breath. No matter how often she held this plain, crude thing, the malevolent emanations always rocked her. To one not wizard-born, this was nothing but a crude beggar’s bowl, unglazed and poorly fired. But her master Agazhar had felt nausea when he touched it. Arkoniel suffered a searing headache and feverish pain through his body in its presence. Iya experienced it as a miasma like fumes from a rotting, ruptured corpse.