CHAPTER
TWENTY-SEVEN

THESE ARE THE ARTIFACTS POLLARD’S TROOPS found with the Arkalas,” Torinth Rostivan said, and a soldier dumped out a bag of objects onto a table in the mages’ workroom. “I want to know what they do, and how we can use them as weapons.”

Carensa looked at the motley collection of items and wondered what had given Rostivan the idea that any of them were magical. From where she stood, near the back of the room, it looked like a pile of junk.

Vigus Quintrel stood near the table, and he eyed the objects, then nodded. “I’ll need a place we can work that won’t damage the building if something goes wrong,” he said. “One of the outbuildings.”

Someplace that won’t matter if we blow it up, Carensa thought.

“I can have the men clear out one of the storage buildings,” Rostivan said. “What else?”

“Where are the mages Pollard’s people captured?” Quintrel asked.

“Sedated, chained, and under watch with talishte guards,” Rostivan replied.

Quintrel nodded. “Bring them to me, once night falls. The guards as well. They’ll help us figure out the use of these items.”

Rostivan raised an eyebrow. “You expect them to cooperate?”

The smile on Quintrel’s face was unpleasant. “They won’t have a choice.”

By dusk, the work space was ready. It was a small stone-walled building with heavy wooden rafters and a slate roof, as fireproof as anything could be built. The building was windowless, and no more than thirty paces by thirty paces, meaning that any magic worked here would be close and personal. Torches hung in sconces around the walls of the room, enough to give light but not heat. Smoke collected up at the peak of the building’s ceiling, and hung heavy in the air below.

Carensa was dressed warmly beneath her cloak, but the damp cold of the outbuilding still seemed to get into her bones. Her fingerless gloves helped, but she still shivered, both from cold and from anger.

Four hapless mages sat bound, blindfolded, and gagged against the wall of the stone room. They were all male, and they looked as if they had fought their capture. Several of the captured mages bore bruises on their faces, split lips, or blackened eyes. Their robes were stained and dirty, bloodied in places. One of the men slumped, defeated. Two of the men seemed resigned to their fate, leaning back against the wall, waiting for whatever befell them. The other mage strained against his bonds and chewed at his gag, still fighting.

Carensa could not look too long at their prisoners without feeling her anger rise at Quintrel, so she studied the talishte guards instead. Before the Cataclysm, she had only rarely glimpsed individual talishte at a distance, usually among the guests at a noble’s party, since they had been unwelcome in King Merrill’s court.

“Remove his blindfold,” Quintrel said, pointing to the angry mage. It was like Vigus to choose the hardest one first, Carensa thought. Quintrel—or the divi who now controlled him—would want to break the rebel, as a lesson to the others. She cast a wary glance toward the specially made brass-bound chest Quintrel had personally carried into the workroom. Its top was open and the front of the chest folded down, revealing the large divi orb on a velvet cushion, like a god seated on a throne.

One of the talishte guards walked over and unwrapped the rag that blindfolded the mage. Now that she could see his face, Carensa saw that he was perhaps a few years older than she was, a tall, lanky man with angular features and dark eyes. He stared at Quintrel balefully, and Carensa guessed that only the magic worked in with his bonds and gag kept him from making a suicide attack on them all. She couldn’t blame him.

“Did you make the warding full strength?” Quintrel asked with a sharp glance to Guran.

“It’ll hold,” Guran said. “I’ve got no desire to go up in flames,” he added. In the center of the workroom, Guran and Gunvar had drawn a warded circle with chalk and charcoal, then reinforced it with a braided mage cord. Candles were set at intervals around the outside of the circle, and between the candles lay bloody pieces of a freshly slaughtered rabbit, torn apart to feed the working. The divi liked blood.

“Put him under compulsion,” Quintrel ordered. “Take away his will.”

The talishte guards regarded Quintrel with a look that told Carensa they were following orders from Pollard, not responding to please Quintrel. She dared not meet their gazes, but it was clear in their expression that they did little to hide their disdain.

One of the talishte guards reached out, his hand moving faster than sight could follow, and grabbed the rebel mage by the chin, forcing the man to meet his gaze. Reflexively, the captive shut his eyes.

“Open your eyes or I’ll cut away your eyelids,” the talishte said quietly.

The captive mage opened his eyes, and the position in which the talishte held his head gave no choice except to meet his gaze. “You will comply with what Mage Quintrel orders you to do,” the talishte said. “You will follow his orders exactly. You will make no move to disobey, either by action or inaction. Do you understand?”

The rebel mage nodded. His body, tight with anger only moments before, had relaxed, and his face, which had been twisted with rage, was slack and vacant.

“He’ll do as you order,” the talishte said, stepping back. Carensa could see a bruise starting where the guard had gripped the man’s chin.

“Cut his bonds and have him walk into the center of the warding, stepping over the circle,” Quintrel said to the same talishte guard.

The talishte regarded Quintrel for a moment, as if to remind the mage that he obeyed by choice, and walked over to the angry prisoner. He grabbed the man by his bound hands and jerked him to his feet, where he swayed for a moment before getting his balance. The divi orb glowed at the neckline of Quintrel’s tunic, and Carensa thought sickly that the spirit was enjoying itself at the captives’ expense.

The prisoner did not move as the talishte unlocked the chains around his hands and feet. His stare was blank, and Carensa wondered if deep inside himself, he knew he was being compelled, or whether all sense of self had been sublimated to the talishte’s will. She doubted the latter. It would have been too merciful.

The talishte gave the mage his orders, and the man walked into the center of the warding, careful not to smudge the protective markings. Quintrel walked over to a table that had been placed near the large divi orb, where the captured artifacts lay. He selected a steel torque. It was a flat semicircle of dull-gray metal, large enough to fit around a man’s neck and lie over the collarbones, half a hand’s-width wide. Quintrel lifted the item with wooden tongs, and in the firelight, Carensa could see etchings of runes and sigils covering its surface. Even at a distance, the collar felt wrong, tainted—and powerful.

“Order him to invoke it,” Quintrel said. The talishte complied. Something flickered behind the captive mage’s eyes, fear that was stronger than compulsion, but against his will, his body moved. The mage’s lips formed words of power, and the runes on the collar glowed with an inner fire.

The collar flared, and the captive mage screamed. His body began to shake, trembling from head to toe. His skin writhed as if it had a life of its own, bubbling and heaving as it wrenched itself free.

“Call a shape to his mind,” Quintrel ordered.

The talishte closed his eyes, and his features grew taut with concentration. Once again, the tortured mage’s skin heaved and quivered, and as Carensa watched in horror, flesh took new form as the bones and muscles remade themselves.

Through it all, the skull had remained intact, enabling the mage to shriek in agony. His cries echoed off the stone walls, deafeningly loud. Guran blanched, and Carensa thought she might pass out. Gunvar, whose magic enhanced the power of others, slumped to the floor, unconscious. Carensa knelt beside him, long enough to assure herself that he was still breathing.

When she stood and looked into the circle once more, a nightmare creature hunched where the doomed mage had stood. It was the same bulk as the man had been, but the body had been remade. The creature sat on thick, powerful haunches with long-fingered forefeet and hind feet that ended in black, curling claws. The overall form was shortened and thickened, as if what had been height had been forcibly remade into muscle. The skull no longer resembled that of a man. Its jaws protruded, overfilled with the sharp teeth of a predator. Yet the eyes remained the same, eyes that met Carensa’s gaze and begged for death.

“It still possesses magic,” Quintrel said. “Force it to embed the collar.”

The talishte’s expression was neutral. Perhaps, Carensa thought, his master had willed him to do worse. Once again, the talishte concentrated, and the mage in the circle screamed. Beneath the collar, the skin tore apart, until the steel rested on blood and muscle. Just as quickly, the skin re-formed, sealing the collar beneath it so that it bulged like a deformity around the creature’s neck.

“Keep him under compulsion, and have him leave the warded space—carefully, don’t smudge the marks,” Quintrel ordered.

Given no choice by the talishte that held him in thrall, the creature limped out of the warding, as if uncertain how to make its newly formed legs work. The muscles looked capable of great power, but at the moment, the beast shuffled awkwardly, trying to adapt to walking on all fours, as if the brain had not changed as fast or as radically as the rest of the body.

One glimpse at the eyes had been enough to assure Carensa that despite the changes worked on the body, the unlucky rebel mage had been left sentient, aware of what he had been and of what was done to him. She shivered, holding herself tightly, willing herself to partition off a cold place in her mind for the hatred that coursed through her, the anger and disgust she felt at the sight of what Quintrel had become. She and Guran avoided looking at each other, or at their fellow mages.

It could just have easily been us he decided to try out his new ‘toys’ on, she thought. It might have been us if the captives hadn’t been convenient. I don’t think there’s any sentiment left in him.

Quintrel stood next to the large divi orb with its withered hand encased in the sphere of glass. In the center of the orb, Carensa caught flashes of light like flying embers, but even unwillingly, at a distance, she could feel the orb’s greed for blood.

At Quintrel’s direction, the talishte forced the creature to squat in front of the divi orb. The orb flared, snaring the transformed mage in a burst of green light that lit up the ruined face, snaring the mage-thing’s gaze. Fresh screams tore from the creature’s throat, hoarse howls of pain unbearable to hear. From where Carensa stood, it looked as if the last resistance drained from the creature’s body, and when the green light faded, nothing of the human it once had been remained in its gaze.

“The mage’s consciousness, and his ability to do magic, have been extinguished,” Quintrel said. “Present your master with a beast of war, my gift to him to use as he sees fit.” He bent down to pick up the chains that had bound the tall mage’s wrists and looped them around the beast’s neck like a leash.

“I’d cage it soon, if I were you,” Quintrel cautioned, holding out the leash to the talishte. “Once the shock wears off, you’ll find it to be as fierce as the gryps, and smarter than the wolves.”

The talishte guard took the chain and gave it a tug, and the beast shambled forward, more agile now that no vestige of humanity struggled with how to move its transformed body. Carensa and the rest of Quintrel’s mages stared at their master in horror, and only now did Carensa realize that her face was stained with tears.

The captive mages had been spared the sight of their comrade’s transmogrification by their blindfolds, but their blindness made the horror even worse with imaginings, and they shrank back against the wall. The smell of urine and shit told Carensa that at least one of the men had soiled himself in fear.

“Well,” Quintrel said calmly, dusting off his hands, “we know what that artifact does.”

Carensa stole a look at Guran. His expression was schooled to be neutral, but she glimpsed fury in his eyes as his color returned. She knelt next to Gunvar, and wondered if Quintrel had used the mage’s power to magnify the magic of the artifact without seeking permission. Gunvar’s breathing was shallow and his skin was pale, as if he had lost blood.

“If you use him again like that, you’ll kill him,” Carensa snapped. “And if he dies here, we won’t have his magic to draw on in battle.” She had no desire to ever go out with the army again, but she bet that Quintrel would be more likely to preserve a valuable fighting asset than to save Gunvar out of sheer compassion.

“As you wish,” Quintrel said with a shrug. “I don’t think I’ll require his help with the next piece.”

“You’re not going to continue, are you?” Guran said, staring at Quintrel in horror.

But Quintrel was already using the wooden tongs to select a new artifact from among the pile. “Of course I am,” he replied as if the question was irrelevant. “Who knows what we might discover?”

That was entirely the point, but Carensa knew it was useless to argue, and she had no desire to draw Quintrel’s ire. Sickened as she was to be a spectator, she forced herself to feel nothing, allowing cold rage to settle into her bones, closing off her heart, deadening her feelings. I must remember, she thought. I must record what happens here, as a witness to these deaths, so that someone knows what took place.

This time, Quintrel removed a steel-and-silver gauntlet and vambrace from the pile. It was a fearsome piece of armor in itself, with a vambrace to encircle the forearm and hinged plates in the gauntlet that covered the individual fingers, ending in short, sharp knives.

“That one,” Quintrel said to another of the talishte, pointing to one of the captives who was huddled, weeping. “Take him.”

Once again, a talishte guard removed the blindfold of his victim, compelled him to rise against his will, and loosed his bonds. “Fit this on his right arm,” Quintrel directed, and the talishte complied, as the mage captive looked on in terror but unable to resist.

When the captive was again within the warded space, Quintrel nodded to the talishte, who ordered the prisoner to speak the artifact into action. For a moment, the mage’s terrified gaze locked onto Carensa’s, and she saw that he knew he was going to die.

The vambrace and gauntlet took on a silver glow, and the mage stiffened, then moaned in pain. As Carensa watched in fascinated horror, the vambrace melded with the man’s arm, encasing the skin in steel, molding itself to the hand, wrist, and fingers. The mage relaxed, and flexed his hand, twisting his wrist and moving his forearm to see just how maneuverable the artifact was. The steel fit like skin itself, and the knife-edged fingertips had grown longer into talons. For a moment, all was well.

Carensa felt the magic around them fluctuate. That was not unusual since the magic had been restored, but imperfectly. It was part of the brittleness that made the ‘new’ magic so unstable and dangerous, something mages like Carensa and her fellow scholars feared. Magic interrupted was often deadly to the mage who cast it.

The vambrace’s silvery glow reddened, and the mage in the warded circle shouted in alarm, trying to tear the vambrace and gauntlet free. It clung to his skin, warming to a dull red, and the mage tore at it, leaving bloody tracks down his upper arm as he tried and failed to get his fingers under the armor to rip it away.

Quintrel made no move to end the test. The smell of roasting flesh was unmistakable as the vambrace burned into the mage’s arm and the man began to scream. Inside the warded circle, the desperate mage cast one spell after another, chanting words of power, all in vain.

A few moments later, the vambrace slid off, leaving behind charred bone, and the mage collapsed, sobbing and trembling. His hand and forearm were blackened like that of a corpse on a pyre, and the wound was cauterized below the elbow. Yet the gauntlet and vambrace still glowed, brighter now than before. Carensa could hear the man’s sobbing pleas for death, even from inside the circle’s wardings.

“If he wishes for death so badly, let him activate the piece once more,” Quintrel said diffidently. “Do it.”

The talishte made a gesture, and the prisoner stared at the cursed artifact as if looking into the maw of Raka itself. Then against his will, the mage began to call the armor to him, and in the middle of the call, Carensa sensed that the mage gave up resisting, realizing that he was about to gain the death he coveted.

Carensa saw understanding dawn on the mage as he stared at the gauntlet and vambrace, realizing that it had gained power by consuming his flesh and that he could command it, but only at the cost of his skin and sinew.

“Come,” he ordered the cursed armor, and the vambrace skittered over to him, using its metallic fingers to move it across the floor. The mage held out his blackened arm. “Fit,” he said, and the armor backed itself onto his arm, adjusting itself to the lack of flesh and muscle, becoming a metal hand and arm.

“How long can the piece remain like that?” Guran asked, curious despite his revulsion. “That level of magic has to take a toll.”

“That would be good to know,” Quintrel mused, as if the question had not already occurred to him. “A warrior might be willing to forfeit an arm for a better replacement. But I wonder how hard a bargain the piece drives?”

Within fifteen minutes, the captive had begun to go gray in the face. Another ten minutes, and his breathing became ragged. Gradually, his face grew gaunt, and as Carensa stared in sickened fascination, she realized that little by little, the mage was growing thinner.

“It’s consuming him,” she murmured.

Guran nodded. “It’s meant for onetime use, I wager. A desperation weapon, when the warrior knows he’ll die one way or the other and just wants to take the enemy down with him.”

“Can he release it? Would that change anything?” Carensa asked, her voice barely above a whisper. The dying mage heard her, locked his gaze with hers, and she saw that he had no desire to release his spell when death and freedom were quite literally within his grasp.

“Probably not,” Guran replied. “Even if he wanted to.”

Carensa had seen bodies charred by flames after the Great Fire. In the tombs and caves where she and Quintrel had hidden as he took her to refuge in Valshoa, she had looked on the mummified corpses of the long dead. The mage in the warded circle reminded her of those corpses as his cheeks hollowed and his skin wrinkled over shrunken limbs. His eyes were sunken, and the flesh of his face pulled tight and thin over bone.

With a final moan, the mage fell back, and the skin withered like leaves in a fire until all that remained was blackened bone, and the gauntlet and vambrace clattered to the stone, empty and sated.

Quintrel released the warding, and used the wooden tongs to remove the deadly armor. “A pity,” he said. “The curse limits its usefulness.” He set the piece to the side. “I’ll inform Rostivan not to waste his best men on it.”

At Quintrel’s nod, the same talishte guard removed the mage’s skeleton, and stepped back with the other undead soldiers. Quintrel returned to the table of artifacts, and returned with an amulet of brass on a braided leather strap. He gestured toward the next mage to become a victim of the artifacts, and once again a talishte guard removed the blindfold, glamoured the mage, and released his bonds.

“I suspect that I know what this artifact does,” Quintrel said. “Just not its limits.” He shook his head as the talishte began to herd the captive toward the warded circle.

“No need for that, not this time. But I would like two of you to hold him, one on each arm,” Quintrel said. He dangled the amulet in front of the lead talishte. “Take this and fasten it around his neck,” he instructed.

He clucked his tongue when the talishte hung back. “You’re undead. This particular amulet has no power over you.” The talishte gave him a skeptical look, then took the piece by its leather straps and fastened it around the prisoner’s neck. Despite the compulsion, the captive mage looked terrified, having heard if not seen what happened to his former companions.

“Hold his arms out,” Quintrel ordered. “And hold him tightly.” The two talishte soldiers each took a wrist and stretched the mage’s arms out, holding him open and vulnerable.

Quintrel looked to the lead guard again. “Run him through.”

The talishte raised an eyebrow, then drew his sword. Carensa gasped as the soldier plunged his blade deep into the mage’s belly, tearing through skin and organs, ripping through to the other side.

“Vigus, no!” Carensa cried out despite herself as the mage sagged in the hold of his captors, blood streaming from the wound.

“Watch,” Quintrel said.

Carensa felt bile rise in her throat as she stared at the mortally wounded mage. The brass amulet glowed amber, and as Carensa watched, the flow of blood stopped and the skin began to knit itself back together.

“Again, in two places this time,” Quintrel ordered, and the soldier sprang forward, driving his sword through the man’s naval and out through his spine, then withdrawing his bloody blade and sliding it cleanly through the ribs and heart.

The mage’s body jerked in spasms. He screamed in pain, his legs useless beneath him, his ragged clothing sodden with blood. Once more, a heartbeat later, the amulet glowed again, stronger now, bathing the man’s body in its amber light. Strength returned to his legs, and as Carensa listened with her magic, beneath the rapidly healing skin, the ravaged heart returned to its steady beat.

“You’ve proven your point, Vigus,” Guran growled.

Quintrel regarded him with disappointment. “It’s not enough to know a weapon’s strengths and capabilities,” he said archly. “One must also know its point of failure.”

“Cleave him shoulder to hip,” Quintrel ordered. Carensa turned to hide her face against Guran’s chest, and Guran wrapped his arms around her, shielding her from having to watch as the talishte brought his sword down with undead strength and the terrified mage screamed in panic. Carensa winced as the cry was cut short, struggling not to launch herself at Quintrel in a futile gesture of fury.

This time, it took the amulet longer. “He’s healing,” Guran murmured. “It’s like it never happened.”

Carensa drew a ragged breath and let it out again, calling on all her limited magic to sustain her and strengthen her. She gently shook off Guran’s protective embrace with a nod of thanks, and turned to see the captive mage begin to breathe again, regaining his footing, still held in the iron grip of the two impassive talishte guards.

“Interesting,” Quintrel mused. “Take off his head.”

The talishte hesitated. “Even we cannot withstand such a blow,” he warned Quintrel.

Quintrel shrugged. “The Dark Gift is just one type of magic. Let’s see what the talisman can do.”

“As you wish.” The talishte strode forward, and the mage attempted to stand to his full height, awaiting and accepting his executioner. With one clean stroke, the talishte swung his sword in a silver blur, and the captive’s head fell backward as his body sagged forward, blood spurting from the severed artery, spraying his blood-soaked captors with gore.

“Quickly,” Quintrel ordered. “Lay him down and put the head back into place.”

The talishte did as they were ordered, arranging the headless body on the floor and laying the severed skull atop the ruined neck. The amulet hung in place, blood-soaked and dull, its amber glow gone. They waited for several minutes, but the amulet appeared to be as dead as the mage himself.

“Well,” Quintrel said with a shrug. “At least we know its limits.”

Carensa glanced toward the table and then to the one remaining mage. As if he guessed her thoughts, Quintrel chuckled. “There’s no need to test the other artifacts,” he said. “Several of them have no magic at all now, whether or not they had power previously. The others hold a trifling amount, not worth the risk of using for what little benefit they might present.”

“What do you mean to do with him?” Guran asked, with a nod toward the last captive mage. The man had curled into a fetal position, sobbing quietly, trembling so hard Carensa could see the shaking from where she stood.

“Don’t worry,” Quintrel assured Guran. “He has a purpose.” At his nod, the talishte soldiers hauled the last mage to his feet.

“Bring him here,” Quintrel instructed them when they had removed the blindfold and glamoured the captive. Under the talishtes’ compulsion, the prisoner walked on his own to where Quintrel stood next to the large divi orb.

“Kneel,” Quintrel ordered, and the man fell to his knees, so that his head was on level with the sphere with its monstrous, withered hand.

“Open your eyes wide,” Quintrel instructed the prisoner. “And behold.”

“What are you doing, Vigus?” Carensa asked, afraid of the answer.

“Giving him his freedom,” Quintrel replied as if the answer were obvious.

The large orb flared, and so did the smaller sphere on its strap at Quintrel’s throat. Carensa saw their light reflected in her master’s eyes, or perhaps, shining through them from inside, where the divi’s rot had taken hold. The kneeling prisoner’s body went rigid, bathed in a foxfire glow, and hoarse screams tore from the man’s throat.

Quintrel stepped back, and Carensa saw that the light shone on the prisoner’s whole form, which had begun to shimmer and waver. The screaming stopped. The captive’s body grew less solid, flattening as if it were a drawing on parchment, stretching and narrowing so that soon it was a pulsating column of light.

The divi orb surrounding the withered hand receded, and the light streamed in, absorbed by the severed bone and withered skin, feeding the divi with the mage’s death. Satisfied, the crystal swelled to encase the hand once more in its solid orb, and the light winked out and the captive mage was gone.

Guran took Carensa’s hand, lending her his strength and support. She could feel the stiffness in his muscles, and knew he reined in the same deadly anger she strained to control.

Not yet, but soon. Carensa was not sure whether the thought was her own or whether Guran was able to send his thoughts to her through their clasped hands, but she nodded her understanding.

Once and for all, Carensa vowed. For these deaths and all the others, no matter the cost, I will find a way to stop Vigus and make him pay.