Despite what I’d told Crow, sleep wasn’t calling to me yet. I curled myself around the fire and examined my nails while I chewed a leftover hoof. From the top, the nail simply looked as if I had a penchant for filing my nails, but underneath was a different matter entirely. Unlike human nails, which are thin and flat, mine were nearly as thick as they were long, my fingertips having split in the centre to accommodate the growth. At this rate they would soon begin to curve downwards until they were as long and sharp as those of an eagle. I would need to visit a carpenter or blacksmith to trim them if I wanted to continue walking amongst men in peace.
‘Why now?’ I whispered, tapping one of them against a rock. I had transmogrified myself into a human form, but what I hadn’t appreciated when I was doing it was how many layers of enchantments and old curses still hung upon my draconic body. Talgoth, the archmage who Aethbert Henkman had been in thrall to, had not wasted the opportunity to experiment on a beast as famous as me, and the cage he had trapped me in had itself been heavily enchanted, both to keep me constrained to less than half my normal size and to cut me off from the Songlines.
Such a long exposure to his aggressive magics had influenced my own works, especially when taken with my inability to bolster my own enchantments, much less resist his. Any enchantment, whether physical or bound to an inanimate object, would deteriorate over time if it wasn’t refreshed. Sometimes they would simply weaken and fade away, like a mountainside eroded by a river, but other times they would collapse on themselves and become an unpredictable, and potentially catastrophic mess.
I suspected the latter was happening to my enchantment as a result of the years of neglect and corrupted dregs of the spells cast by generations of mediocre wizards. I had been stripped of my sorcery for centuries, leaving me with no way to plumb the intention and lingering effects of the countless spells cast on me over the years.
I swallowed the last of the hoof and laid my head upon my arm, slowing my breathing until I felt my mind settle. Closing my eyes, I drew my sorcery to me and turned it inward, letting it filter through my veins and sinews, attuning it to the embedded remnants of my original enchantment. The core of it was still there, ghostly filaments wrapped around the shrunken fibres of my being, inconsequential by themselves but together forming the imprint and mould that this body had been poured into. To break those chains in the wrong place would cause the enchantment to fold in upon itself in an unpredictable manner, potentially releasing an uncontrolled, violent and undoubtedly fatal blast of raw energy inside my very flesh.
Time had faded the memory of how I had compiled the initial enchantment, and the countless spells from the curious and the cruel that I had weathered over the years had left their mark too, twisting parts of it, corrupting its purpose and the ways it interacted with my flesh to such an extent that I no longer knew where my work ended and theirs began.
The thought of stray magic touched something in me, and I fumbled the medallion from its hiding place inside my tattered clothing by touch alone, tracing my fingers across the tight engravings and smooth blue stone until I felt the gentle spark of the power contained within it kiss my fingertip as it woke. Before I had recovered my mind, the part of me I had called the Beast had taken its strength from the magic I had been exposed to, an ability that the medallion had certainly affected. I knew it was powerful, but precious little else about it. Could it draw some of the corruption left by the wizards’ spell from me, like a poultice draws foulness from a septic wound? And if it could, how would that affect the rest of the enchantment, warped as it was? Was the medallion the cause of my steadily growing claws, or was it helping to stabilise the enchantment?
I set it down on my chest and looked up at the night sky, trying to recognise the constellations above from the fleeting glimpses the broken clouds offered. Something was happening to me, but I had yet to fathom why. Was it the result of the exposure to so much dark magic in the necromancer’s camp, the insidious influence of the medallion or simply entropy? Or even all of them together?
I would have liked to find the time and a place of safety to discover the truth of it, but time was something I did not really have the luxury of. I’d let myself be drawn into Lucien’s stupid little war and was now bound to it by virtue of having given my word to end Navar Louw, the source of the hate that burned inside me as steadily as the stars above. On top of all that I had also promised to help Tatyana find Lucien before the paladins corrupted him and, quite possibly, filled his head with worms.
The Master’s instructions left no room for argument; the Lance had to be ready before he arrived.
The dead necromancer’s memory rose in my mind, at first a reminder that time was not something I had, but then I realised that it was also a reminder that I now knew where Navar Louw was going to be. At some point soon he would be coming to Falkenburg, and since he apparently didn’t care to lend his strength to the siege, I surmised that it would be to oversee whatever they intended to do once the city fell. Something that had to do with the Lance that the necromancers were working so hard to enchant. The Lance. I could see it in my mind, but the meanings of the runes were lost on me and not for the first time I felt a stab of envy at Fronsac’s ability to read and understand them.
I sat up as an idea bloomed in my mind. Fronsac had shown a firm grip on rune-craft in the wards that covered his body and protected the palace. If anyone could decipher the writings upon the Lance, it would surely be him. Returning to the city now was not a viable option, so I would need him to come to me. When I had showed him my battles with the Cardinal I had let him into my mind as a demonstration of mutual trust, which wasn’t something I did very often, but as a result of that connection I could still feel the impression of his mind and thoughts. And more than that, I could still recall the sound and feel of his magic.
I took all of these memories and impressions of him and carefully wove them together, infusing them with the sound of his name and his magic, slowly shaping it until I could hear and feel the essence of him within it. I held this essence in mind as I summoned a pulse of energy and carefully melded the two. Once I was satisfied that it would hold, I fed more power into it until it materialised between my hands as a ball of shimmering blue energy and the thought and sound of him had driven all other thoughts from my mind.
‘Fronsac,’ I said, my voice as close to his as I could manage. I released the energy and watched it arc towards the city like a comet. I couldn’t imagine that he or his apprentices wouldn’t be watching over the enemy camp, and such a brazen call would surely be impossible to miss.
‘Fronsac,’ I repeated, binding the sound of his magic into the spoken word. ‘Fronsac.’
With my sorcery woken and alert for any reply I felt the brush of another mind against mine. It wasn’t him, but I heard an echo of his magic within the projection. An apprentice then, most likely using some device to scry. I’d hoped for Fronsac himself, since his apprentices may have been swayed by the lies Prince Jean had told to hide the purpose of our quest.
‘Hurry,’ I whispered as I drew a circle around myself. Unlike wizards, I didn’t need props and tools, but I understood the basic symbolism of their craft. If Fronsac responded, it would make it easier for him to visualise a protective barrier around his sending, foiling any surprise attacks or wizardly eavesdropping while he was exposed. That was a risk as, aside from the necromancers, the Penullin army also had a contingent of ‘normal’ wizards in their midst, and if they had any real ability it was quite possible that they would also have seen my call to him shining like a beacon amidst the otherwise bleak emptiness of the bogs.
I felt a new and more powerful presence gather around me, bringing with it a clear impression of hard, sharp geometries. It was an impressive sending, and had I not felt the echo of Fronsac’s magic within it I may well have felt a momentary twinge of fear. A moment later some of that energy poured into the circle I’d prepared, cutting off all traces of the outside world as surely as if someone had dropped a glass dome over me.
I opened my own defences just as cautiously until I recognised the touch of his will.
‘Stratus?’
‘Fronsac. We haven’t much time. The enemy is preparing a powerful artefact, but I need you to read the runes upon it.’
‘Show it to me, like you did the dungeons.’
I strengthened the flow of my sorcery, then invited him into the memories I had taken from the necromancer. I felt a momentary stutter in the flow of his magic as he separated himself from his sending spell, itself a feat of no little skill. I pulled him in and felt his reaction evolve from curiosity to horror, and then dread as I showed him what I had seen and felt. The connection between us shivered as his emotions distorted the otherwise predictable harmony of his magic.
‘Stratus, I need to look at this more closely but, by the stars, if what I suspect is true then the doom of everything may well be at hand.’ Connected as we were, I could hear and feel the fear that coloured his magic.
‘Tell me.’ I didn’t need to project a sense of urgency into my words.
‘Do you know what a spirit well is?’ He sensed my confusion and sent the rest of his message in a burst of light and sound, leaving me reeling. I had underestimated his skills once again.
‘I will find you once I know more.’
With that, he withdrew his magic and I felt powerful wards flare back into life as he vanished from my mind. I sat down, closing my eyes as I absorbed the information he’d passed to me in the light. I sat quietly and concentrated on my breathing until my thoughts calmed enough for me to reach out for the Songlines, sighing as their familiar harmony soothed the frayed edges of my will. I sent a pulse of it rippling outwards, seeking any trace of foreign magic or human minds. I felt it pass across the quiet waters, softly touching the creatures that lived and died amongst the pools and reeds, but finding little else. Part of me was relieved that no pursuit was underway, while the other worried as to whether their plans were too subtle, too human, for me to comprehend.
Either way, there was no one out there, so worrying won me nothing. I laid back so that my feet were warmed by the coals and I could once more look up at the stars, something I had always found comforting. I had thought that the import of Fronsac’s revelation would have kept me from sleep, but I had barely begun to mull over the doom that hung over us all before sleep claimed me.