Death Sworn(4)

Twelve flat black stones thudded onto the rug. Ileni tossed the empty pack onto the bed, dropped into a cross-legged position, and carefully arranged the rocks in an asymmetric pattern around her. She worked fast, half her attention on the door, but took an extra moment to make sure the pattern was exactly right. No point in accidentally blowing up her room on the first day. Later, maybe, if it seemed called for.

If she was still able to.

She pushed that thought away, closed her eyes, and envisioned the words she wanted to say. To her they always appeared in color, glowing slightly from within, looped together in the sinuous musical script in which she had learned them. She retrieved the hair she had plucked from Sorin’s neck and held it with the tips of her fingers.

Stringing the syllables of the spell out between her teeth, she touched the hair quickly to each rock, then stretched it taut between her hands. The words of the spell made no noise, though she spoke them; instead of sound, pure power emerged from her mouth. It shattered the air, and she spat the words out faster and faster to keep them from getting away from her. By the time she reached the climax of the spell, she was shouting, though the room was still silent.

With the last syllable, she let go of the hair. Instead of floating downward, it disappeared, as soundlessly as the rest of the spell.

Ileni lowered her hands, throat raw. A bead of sweat tickled the outside corner of one eye. This was getting harder and harder. That spell, a year ago, would have been a warm-up exercise for her. Back then, she could have done it without the stones. Tellis, thankfully, had refrained from mentioning that when he gave them to her.

She hadn’t allowed herself to dwell on Tellis for days, and the sudden memory hurt like a blow to her stomach. Before she could stop them, the images flooded her mind: Tellis’s lean, rugged face, the blond hair falling over his dark blue eyes. The way those eyes had once made her feel, as if she could barely breathe.

His eyes when she emerged from her second Testing. The expression on his face that told her he already knew what the Elders had said. That he accepted what had to happen now.

That look had driven her to accept the Elders’ mission, to come here to these caves filled with killers, where two of her people had died within the past half year. She had sworn to find out why they died, before she met the same fate, but it was an empty promise. What were the chances that she—a seventeen-year-old with rapidly fading powers—could survive whatever had killed two older, seasoned sorcerers?

But she hadn’t cared how dangerous it was, or how lonely. All she had cared about was putting physical distance between herself and all the people who thought she was worthless. No one here would look at her with pity.

Ileni’s lips quirked upward—not much, but it was the first time since the meeting with the Elders that she had seen any humor in her situation at all. The people here wouldn’t pity her because they would be too busy trying to kill her. At least it would be different.

Now that she was leagues away from that humiliating parting, she could finally be glad that Tellis hadn’t allowed her to refuse the warding stones, his last gift. If Sorin tried to harm her in any way, he would find her better defended than she appeared.

The stones tumbled against each other as she gathered them into the pack. One down, several hundred to go.

She pushed the pack under her bed and waited for the assassin to come for her.





Chapter 2

High in a tiny black room carved from stone, the old man watched the slippery rocks outside the Assassins’ Caves, empty now that the sorceress had picked her way across them. A light snow swirled through the cold gray air, already covering the marks of her passage.

It was the first time the Renegai had sent a woman, and it was also the first time they had sent someone so young. The girl was not particularly striking, at least not from this distance: she was thin and short, and her thrown-back hood had revealed matted brown curls. She hadn’t seemed bothered by the snow whispering across her face, and had approached the entrance carefully but without hesitation.

Her predecessor had been visibly shaking as he walked across the rocks. And his predecessor, grandiose from the start, had levitated several feet above the rocks and sailed coolly to the entrance.

The door opened behind him. The sound didn’t surprise the old man; he knew exactly how long it would take Sorin to escort the sorceress to her room, and he had been sure the girl would ask for some time alone. The only thing he hadn’t been certain of was whether the boy would change his clothes before coming here. He had mused it over for a minute or two and guessed that he would.