The Hob's Bargain(27)

I sat beside the skeleton and touched her wrist gently. The bones were dry against my fingers. I wondered what the unknown mage who'd stripped the land of magic bindings had done with the power he'd acquired. Duck touched the top of my head with his nose, worried about my unaccustomed place at his feet.

I closed my eyes and tried to see what had happened to the woman. I tried to put aside all of my speculations. For a long time, nothing came to me. Visions all the time when I didn't want them, but they were harder to call on purpose. My right leg started to go to sleep.

I heard hoofbeats approaching. Kith and Wandel must have gotten tired of waiting. I opened my eyes and turned to look...

A bloodmage clad in black and red with arcane symbols climbing his sleeves stood alone in a gray tower that looked out over the city. Some of the runes worked into his clothing I knew from Gram - calls for health and well-being.

The man turned, letting his face touch the lamplight.

It was the face of a man eaten from inside by his magic. I knew what it was because Moresh's mage was showing signs of it. Father said it was because bloodmagic made the bones go soft. What this man's original features might have been was impossible to tell.

"I told you that we would lose this fight, my lord," he said. His voice was only a harsh whisper, but it carried power.

Someone made an answer, inaudible - but the effect on the mage was electrifying. "I have done all I could. Do you accuse me of treachery?" He listened, then replied even more softly. "A truce? What would he take in return for truce when he knows we have already lost?"

Madness lit his face briefly, then he closed his eyes, rubbing one of the black runes with his left hand. When his eyes opened, there was something sane dwelling there, but his left hand still moved on the runes, which glittered with an eerie yellow light.

In the manner of a man overtired by work, he repeated himself, but the dangerous edge to his voice was gone. "What have you offered him?"

This time I could hear the other man. "I sent your son to him with a sealed message which he has read several hours since. I told him the boy was his to do with as he pleased - like you, he is a bloodmage. What strength would he get from a mage as powerful as your son? But perhaps the boy was able to defeat him as you never have? The rituals you go through take so much time - perhaps you can do something about him before your son dies? Perhaps the war is not so hopeless after all?"

The bloodmage closed his eyes again and moved his right hand, the left one still tracing the runes on his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, he appeared calm and his left hand dropped to his side - but there was nothing sane about him. "You are correct. There is something I can do to defeat him - I discovered it a month ago. Who could have told you? Ah, no matter. All the reason I had for not doing it is dead with my son. For your part in this you shall not die here."

The mage spread his hands and closed his eyes again. An aura surrounded him, growing gradually, making first him, then the room, and last the tower glow red with the power he called to him. It took a long time to gather and barely an instant to send on its way, taking with it the mage himself.

My vision fell away from the tower and the king who sat there alone. I traveled some great distance outside the city before so much as a blade of grass survived the bloodmage's wrath. Far from the city, empty battlefields were covered with bits and pieces of metal scattered here and there across fields of yellow flowers where butterflies danced...

The butterflies were rather abruptly obscured by Wandel's mustached face. I blinked at the harper stupidly for a bit while I slowly realized that Kith was standing beside me. My arm ached. When I looked down, fresh blood spotted the bandages.

"I'm fine," I said, surprised at how steady my voice was.

"What did you see?" asked Kith.

I stood up stiffly, then swung my uninjured arm to indicate the dress-clad bones. "She was killed by the same thing that killed all the cattle in the fields - I'll wager we could find their bones under all that grass. It killed everything here larger than these chickens. The king's bloodmage pulled the bindings from the land to destroy everything he could reach. And he reached as far as Auberg."

Alarm flooded Wandel's expression. "Why would he do that? The nearest fighting is close to thirty leagues from Auberg."

"He set the spell from the capital - at least I think that's where they were," I said. "I don't think anything closer to the king's castle than Fallbrook survived."

Kith whistled sharply, and Torch trotted over from his grazing. The one-armed warrior swung gracefully to his saddle, collecting his reins by using his hand and his teeth. "Let's see what remains of Auberg. We'll go home with a report, and then perhaps we can send a party from here back to Beresford over some of the old trails if the raiders give us time."

The streets of Auberg were silent, but I hadn't expected them to be otherwise. We rode around piles of cloth and bone lying here and there on the streets. At the well in the center of town, Wandel pulled his mare to a halt. He'd been uncharacteristically silent since I'd told them what I'd seen.

"This will get us nowhere. If Aren's right, and I have seen nothing to disprove it, no one who was here when the spell hit has survived. Since we're looking for refugees from Beresford who might have come here, we ought to try and find somewhere they'd gather. The innkeeper of the Pale Grouse was from Beresford, so I suggest we check there."