She stared at him in horror. “How?” Even as she asked, a shiver of guilt ran down her spine. We tried to teach ourselves black magic last night? What were we thinking? “Where’s Naki?”
“HOW COULD YOU DO IT?” The voice was a shriek, but it was still recognisably Naki’s. Lilia winced. Her friend might have wished her father dead but she hadn’t … Someone pushed past the magicians and was grabbed by the Healer. Naki struggled to throw them off, while glaring at Lilia.
“You!” Naki growled.
“Me?” Lilia stared at her friend.
“You killed him!” Naki shouted. “My father!”
“I didn’t.” Lilia shook her head. “I fell asleep. Didn’t wake up.”
Naki shook her head in disbelief. “Who else could have? I shouldn’t have let you read that book. I just wanted to impress you.”
A chill ran down Lilia’s spine. Suddenly she was too conscious of Kallen’s gaze boring into her. “How did he die?” she asked weakly.
“Black magic,” Naki spat. Her gaze dropped. “What’s that? What’s on your hands?”
Lilia looked down at the dark stains. “I don’t know.”
“It’s blood, isn’t it?” Naki’s eyes widened in horror. “My father’s …” Then her eyes filled with tears, she spun about and ran from the room.
Lilia stared after her. She thinks I killed her father. She hates me. I’ve lost her. But … I didn’t kill her father. Or did I? Her memories of the night before were vague in places. That always happened when she drank too much wine or had too much roet. Her dreams – had they been dreams? – had included a fantasy where she’d got rid of Naki’s father, though they hadn’t dwelled on how.
“Did you kill Lord Leiden?” Black Magician Kallen asked.
She forced herself to look up at him. “No. I don’t think so.”
“Have you learned or attempted to learn black magic?”
How to answer that? She found she could not find the words. Her head was pounding so hard she thought it would split open at any moment.
“Lady Naki has confessed to an attempt to learn black magic from a book,” the Healer said. “She says that Lilia did as well.”
Lilia felt a traitorous relief. She nodded. “She has a book. Well, it is – was – her father’s. He keeps it in the library in a glass-topped table. She took it out and we read it – but it’s not supposed to be possible to learn black magic from a book.”
Kallen’s gaze was unwavering. “Yet it is still forbidden to try.”
She looked down. “I didn’t kill her father.” Again, doubt stirred and wound itself into her thoughts.
“Is this the accused?” a new voice said.
The magicians turned to look toward the door, allowing Lilia to see past them. She felt her stomach sink as she saw Black Magician Sonea approaching. Not that another black magician arriving made her situation any worse. She had always admired Sonea, though the thought of what she had done in her life made her very intimidating in person.
“Yes,” Kallen said, moving away from the bed. “I am going to the library to look for a book containing instructions on using black magic. They have both confessed to reading it. Could you read their minds?”
Sonea’s eyebrows rose, but she nodded. As Kallen left the room she turned to the other magicians.
“We should at least allow her to get dressed,” she said. “I’ll stay.”
“Find out what’s on her hands before she washes it off,” the Healer advised.
Lilia watched them go, then when the door was closed she slipped out of the bed.
“Let me see your hands,” Sonea said. She took them in her own hands, which seemed strangely small for a magician so powerful. Not that magic makes your hands get bigger, Lilia thought. Now that would be unpleasant. Lifting one of Lilia’s hands, Sonea sniffed, then drew Lilia over to the wash basin and poured some water in.
“Wash,” she ordered.
Lilia obeyed with some relief. The stain took some rubbing to come off, and coloured the water in swirls.
“We need more light,” Sonea muttered. She looked over to the screens covering the windows, which began to slide open. The room filled with morning light. Looking down, Lilia caught her breath.
The swirls of colour were red.
“But how …? I don’t remember …” she gasped.
Sonea was watching her thoughtfully. She stepped back. “Get changed,” she said, her tone somewhere between an order and a suggestion. “Then we’ll see what you remember.”
Lilia obeyed, changing into her novice’s robes as quickly as she could manage. When she’d finished tying the sash, she walked over to Sonea. The black magician reached out to touch the sides of Lilia’s head.
Lilia had never had her mind read by a black magician before. She’d never had it read by an ordinary magician either. Her lessons in the University had occasionally required a teacher to enter her mind, but novices were always taught to hide their thoughts behind imagined doors. In a cooperative mind-read, the subject was supposed to bring out the memories hidden behind the doors for the reader to see.
This was very different. At once Lilia was aware of the older woman’s presence in her mind. It was a distant thing, like hearing voices through a wall. Then she felt something influencing her thoughts. She could not sense the will behind it, so her instinctive effort to resist had no impact. Forcing herself to yield, she watched as memories of the night began to return.
Embarrassment and fear rose as she recalled Naki’s kiss, but she could detect no disapproval from Sonea. Her memories were a little less vague now that someone else was examining them, but with stretches of time that were indistinct.
One of those stretches was the time after Lilia had lain down next to Naki, after drinking the wine. Her thoughts had been murderous, she recalled with shame. But she did not remember actually murdering anybody. Except in her dreams. But were they dreams?
What if she had murdered Naki’s father while caught up in a wine- and roet-induced walking dream?
What if their experiment had worked, and she had learned black magic from a book?
—Oh, you most certainly did, Sonea’s voice spoke into her mind. It’s not supposed to be possible. Not even Akkarin believed it was. But there has been at least one other novice in history who learned it without the help of another magician, and the magicians of that time must have had reason to be so determined to destroy anything written about it. Unfortunately, being the one to prove we were wrong is not an achievement anybody is going to look favourably on. Why did you attempt it when you knew it was forbidden?
—I don’t know. I just went along with Naki. She told me … She’d told Lilia she trusted her. Would she ever again? I love her and she hates me!
Suddenly the loss and shock welled up and she burst into tears. Sonea’s touch disappeared from her head and moved to her shoulders, rubbing them gently but firmly as Lilia struggled to regain control of herself.
“I won’t tell you everything will be fine,” Sonea said, sighing. “But I think I can persuade them that it wasn’t exactly deliberate, and to choose a more lenient punishment. That will depend on what Naki remembers, though.”
A more lenient punishment? Lilia shivered as she remembered what she had been taught in history classes. Akkarin was exiled only because the Guild didn’t know if it could defeat him. They would have executed him otherwise. But then, he had killed people with black magic. I haven’t … I hope.