The Conjurer (The Vine Witch #3)(35)
“The birds,” she said, her eyes glancing up to the sky where the creatures reigned. “Their vision is better than any human’s. They keep track of the island so they have a place to land when migrating. The terns revealed its beaches to Hariq and me as a belated wedding present. A place where we could be alone and hide from our feuding families undisturbed, if only for a little while. Hariq was the one who discovered the dagger.”
“Where’d it come from?” Yvette asked.
“There were no other people on the island, but there were bones,” Sidra said. “We found a skeleton above the beach. Sun-bleached and scattered by scavengers.”
The girl gawked. “You found a body?”
“The bones of a magus. A priest. At least that’s what Hariq believed. There were rings and amulets among the skeleton as well as the dagger. Either he had been shipwrecked by chance or magicked there and never returned.”
“Or banished,” Elena added in a warning tone. The witch’s mind was clearly evaluating what she’d heard against what she’d been taught. At last she shook her head. “I can recall a few childhood stories about magical knives and swords, but I’m not familiar with one about a knife empowered by a sigil. What does it do?”
“Tell your grimoire to open again and I’ll try to explain.”
The vine witch looked doubtful. She stood and approached the book on the counter, speaking to it as if it were a stubborn child refusing to eat. Rebuffed, she carried it back to the soft pillows and poufs and set it on the ottoman in the center. At last she coaxed the spell book to open again by promising it could sleep with its pages spread out and free to flutter for the night under the draping silk ceiling. Sidra resisted the urge to roll her eyes to the heavens. Finally, the book cooperated.
“You will allow?” Sidra asked. After Elena gave a stern warning to the book, the jinni turned it toward her and thumbed through the pages until she came to the inevitable section on sigils. Some were familiar to her, others complete nonsense. She scanned her finger over the various symbols until she landed on a shape that looked similar to the one on the dagger Hariq had found, though the design in the book was not nearly as elaborate. “Sigils like these can be used to harness great power,” she explained. “Though often the power imbued in the symbol is incumbent on the skill of the sorcerer who created it. Or who controls it.”
“What kind of power?” Yvette asked softly.
“This one can control weather in the hands of a master sorcerer.” Sidra pointed to another. “This one, if only slightly altered with a line or two and paired with one’s malicious intent, can bring on famine and pestilence.”
“I’m guessing the dagger’s sigil aligns more with the destructive side of things,” Elena said.
“It’s a mark that carries a terrible curse.”
“What kind of curse?” Yvette asked. The girl glanced at Elena before popping a date in her mouth.
“Chaos,” Sidra said. “The kind that could set the world spinning into despair if the dagger were to fall into the wrong hands.”
“Jamra,” Elena whispered. “But what could he do with it?”
Sidra balled up her fist as if gripping the handle of the dagger. “The balance between order and chaos is held together by the tension between opposing forces. They serve as counterweights to each other, creating stability. But it’s a delicate line, as if always resting on a knife’s edge. This is why the sigil was embedded in the handle of a dagger. Whispered tradition says the one who wields the dagger, applying his will to tilting it just a little toward chaos, will gain dominion over an army of demons whose only mission is to create havoc and pain.”
Yvette stopped chewing and swallowed the date in one hard gulp. Her glow dwindled. “But don’t you have the dagger now? Doesn’t that make you the, you know, wielder of . . . demons? Merde, do you have it on you?”
The girl’s ignorance was at times astounding.
“Do you look in my eyes and see reckless stupidity?” Sidra showed her teeth and still the fairy didn’t balk. Good, she would need her nerve. “I have no ambition to bring humanity to heel. The world is a wild thing that doesn’t deserve to suffer more than it has already. But there are those like Jamra who would see the human race shackled and forced to do their bidding in return for past insults and degradations done against our kind. The dagger, in his hands, could do this. Intention, always, is the force behind any magic.”
“But where is it?” The vine witch set her grimoire aside, leaving the pages open as promised. “How does Jamra know you have the knife?”
Sidra explained how she and Hariq had brought the dagger back from the island, before they knew exactly what they’d found. The couple knew only that it was a powerful magical relic. They left the bones behind but collected the rings and amulets in the hope they might help identify the magus who’d died on the island.
“We asked at the markets if anyone recognized the jewelry so we might know who the priest was and what he carried. Many offered to buy the trinkets, but an old sorcerer in a village shop across the sea got a strange look on his face when we brought out the dagger to ask about the owner. The scent of char rose around him, the kind that hungers for destruction.”
“He knew what you’d found,” Elena said.