The Sorcerer's Equal (The Telepath and the Sorcerer Book 3) Page 3

  Try to be back before dark, he said, as if they needed to be told.

  Up on the mountain, tall trees loomed around them, walls of forbidding green that obviously were untouched by loggers, despite the obvious need for wood down in the valley. Sorcerers had reason to guard their wild places, because they produced strong magic. Grau certainly would own tracts of untouched land if he could.

  Their footsteps fell softly on a carpet of pine needles and leaves, but Tomato’s constant squawking, chattering and dashing around to chase chipmunks would certainly prevent them from sneaking up on wildlife.

  “So you grew up on the river?” Velsa asked Kessily. They had plenty of time to talk. “Near Perris Pellin, I’m guessing?”

  “You know your accents, huh?” Kessily said.

  “When I was a concubine we actually had a class on accents,” Velsa said. “Men came from all around and I was supposed to be able to say, ‘You didn’t come all the way from New Sajinay, did you?’.”

  “Blech,” Kessily said. “Though, better classes on small talk than some other things, I guess…”

  “Our classes were dull. They didn’t want us to know anything about men, besides the basics and how to be obedient. It’s not all romantic like in books.”

  “I would never think that was romantic.”

  Velsa smiled. “I can also tell you’re a river trader because you’re blunt.”

  “You have to be. My dad always told me not to take any crap from anyone. Everybody wants to squeeze every last coin out of everyone else.”

  “Why did you join Kalan’s navy?”

  “I wanted something different.” Kessily shrugged. “I sure got it, huh? I should have stayed home. I should have appreciated it more. On the river, everyone works very hard, but everyone has equal value and we didn’t try to look pretty like the land folk.”

  “I’ve heard that.” Velsa grinned. She remembered the river traders had a reputation for wearing lots of ragged layers and crude tin ornaments. Like they wandered out of the garbage, the House Mother used to say.

  “My mother used to joke that you make a shirt with two arm holes, and throw it out when it has four arm holes. Don’t laugh.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You must’ve been very clean and sweet.”

  “Naturally. I had classes.” Velsa tried to suppress her smile. “But then, I also would never dare throw a man overboard for taking liberties with me.”

  Kessily’s face darkened. “I don’t like thinking about it. It was a horrible mistake.”

  “But I admire you for it! Wasn’t it self-defense?”

  “Yes. But I was more powerful than him, with my magic. He seemed to forget I was a sorceress and not the ship’s floozy who just happened to be in a uniform. He was a bit drunk. I didn’t mean to kill him.” She sighed. “I was on edge. Guys were always asking why I didn’t go home and have babies.”

  “That’s what Kalan has been saying women are good for for the last century, isn’t it?” Velsa asked. “Grau’s sister had the same complaint. But when you’re a Fanarlem girl, you never get any respect and it’s terrifying to challenge that. I wish I had the guts to strike back more than I do.”

  “Do you suppose it’s a portent that we’re talking like this right before we face down some old sorcerer with a reputation for being standoffish?” Kessily asked.

  “Oh.” Velsa frowned. “I wish we were better armed.”

  “I wish I was armed at all.”

  “Please,” Velsa said. “No puns. I know the river folk aren’t known for their sophisticated humor, either…”

  “Hey!” Kessily was laughing. “It’s true. Blame my dad.” Her expression briefly wrestled with something before she said, “Say, could you—braid my hair? Get it out of my eyes? I had it tied back, before, but the tie fell out while we were running around, and—”

  “Of course! Say no more.” Velsa tried to take hold of Kessily’s long brown hair.

  The wyvern flew at her and made a chittering scold. It perched on Kessily’s shoulder and raked its little claws through her hair.

  “Ouch! Now what? Don’t tell me I have lice, too. It’s the fault of that cave, if I do.”

  “I think he just likes you.” The little reptile curled itself around Kessily’s neck.

  Velsa beckoned with her hands, like the wyvern was a toddler. “Hey, Tomato…” It stared at her, unblinking and unmoved.

  “Do we have any treats to give him?” Kessily asked.

  “Treats? I don’t even have trousers, and if I was going to shop for anything…”

  Kessily made a little “tch tch tch” sound with her tongue and brushed the wyvern with her feathers. It squawked in protest before taking flight, hovering around Kessily's face.

  Velsa finally succeeded in braiding Kessily’s hair, as Tomato landed on Kessily’s head and stared at her hands, occasionally interjecting a little scaled hand like it wanted to help. Velsa nudged it away, evoking little mutters of protest.

  It was sort of annoying, and at the same time, Velsa wanted one herself. She’d never had a pet.

  “It’s hilarious, except for the part where I have a feeling I’m stuck with this thing forever,” Kessily said. “Wyverns probably live to be a hundred years old, don’t they?”

  They walked for an hour, or perhaps more. Hard to say when they didn’t have a clock, but the sun moved noticeably and alarmingly toward the west. The temperature was dropping. Spring came in fits and starts, this far north. The huge evergreen trees of the forest took on an orange cast in the lowering sun, and now just over the treetops rose the stern stone lines of the ancient castle. It had one very tall tower, and the rest of it was a greenish-gray rectangle of stones with sentry posts and narrow windows. Vines crawled up part of the tower and much of the sides.

  Along the way, they hadn’t heard so much as a clanging hammer or a shout far in the distance. Stillness and silence pervaded the woods. Even the birds seemed muted.

  “Almost there,” Kessily said. She sounded like she was trying to be reassuring, but it wasn’t fooling anyone.

  It was obvious that no one shared the mountain with the Keeper of the Dead.

  That probably wasn’t a coincidence.

  Velsa put a hand to her ribcage, feeling the weight of the jewels. Their mission was urgent. Hopefully he would understand, and take pity on them; keep the transaction quick and easy.

  It’s taking longer than we thought, Velsa projected to Morgnar. But the dragon seemed to be napping.

  ‘Almost there’ proved optimistic. The path ended abruptly where a shallow green moat blocked their passage. The only way to cross was a swinging bridge made of ropes and planks. Beyond the bridge, the castle was perched atop a hill of scrubby grass and boulders, a steep ascent.

  Tomato was making all sorts of noise like he didn’t trust the place either.

  “Hush, please!” Kessily hissed, stepping onto the bridge. Her wings couldn’t grasp the ropes, but could only brush them for balance. The wind tugged at her wings like it wanted her to take flight. She was able to grip the planks with her toes, but since she wasn’t very used to the shape of her own body, she seemed unsteady.

  Velsa knew how she felt. The weight of the jewels inside her made her a little top-heavy, which seemed like a much bigger deal when she stood on a swaying surface. Besides that, she was stuck wearing the boots Calban had given her, which had higher heels than she was used to wearing.

  Below them, some sort of large fish—or worse—kept skimming the water and leaving ripples behind that bloomed out to the edge of the murky water. Velsa’s head spun when she looked down, but it was hard not to keep doing it.

  “He really doesn’t like visitors, does he?” Kessily said.

  They reached the end of the bridge, and now the hill loomed before them. This was hardly an improvement. There was not really a path so much as a rock-climbing expedition.

  “If only Dennis were here,” Velsa said. “This would be so easy for hi
m.” But she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on the vampire’s fate, or she would start to feel guilty for leaving him behind in Nalim Ima. The last thing she needed right now was a vulnerable thought in her head.

  Kessily had to go very slowly, crawling her wings forward. A few feathers broke loose. Tomato flew off after them, caught them in his small hand, and tried to give them back to her.

  Velsa wished her own arms were stronger. She gripped a rock with her fingers and tried to pull herself up, but in such moments she felt the limitations of her form. Her shoulder joints felt strained; her arms seemed to be nothing but rickety parts. She scrabbled with the toes of her shoes until she found purchase and flopped forward, her heavy ribcage hitting the ground painfully.

  “We are a sight, aren’t we,” she muttered.

  “I don’t suppose your telekinesis could help,” Kessily said.

  “I want to save all my strength.”

  By the time they reached the top, the sky was lit with rose and fire beyond the ocean of sharp dark trees that ran along the mountain ridge as far as the eye could see toward the west. From this vantage point, they could see another mountain range off to the north, snowcapped and dreamlike. Velsa could hardly believe the humdrum village was so close. Perhaps by design, a little row of trees blocked the view of the valley to the south, so the castle seemed like the only sign of civilization for miles around.

  “It’s beautiful up here,” Velsa said, drinking it in for a moment. As a girl, she used to get an annual trip to the mountains, but those mountains were hills compared to these, and she had never seen a view that cast off into some wild endless distance of snowy peaks.

  “I don’t like it right now,” Kessily said. “It makes my wings tickle. The bird wants to go somewhere.”

  “All right. Down to business.” Velsa ducked behind one of the larger rocks. “I need to get the jewels out of my chest before we get there,” she said. “Keep watch.”

  “Sure.”

  Velsa fished a small sewing kit from her boot. She unbuttoned her clothes and peeled them away from her torso. With careful fingertips, she searched out the invisible seam that ran along her side and cut a slit with the seam ripper. She pulled out the stuffing she had packed around the jewels earlier and reached inside her chest, finding the hook that held her stolen bounty against her rib cage, and removed the small, heavy parcel. Kessily looked away, trying not to stare.

  Velsa jammed the stuffing back in and buttoned her clothes back up. She would worry about resewing the seam later; her clothes were tight enough to hold her skin together. Quickly, she unwrapped the fabric that held the jewels, with a thrill of accomplishment that she had stolen so much value out from under the Peacock General.

  “You should keep some back,” Kessily said. “You’ll need money later.”

  “You’re ri—” Velsa’s words died. What she found inside the wrappings was not what she had stolen.

  The diamonds were paste, the jade were common little rocks. The settings were cheap, and the gold snakes that had circled her arms were not gold at all, but some dull, roughly pounded metal.

  “Wha?” Velsa sputtered, as Tomato sniffed the objects. “Illusions? I really didn’t think illusions were Calban’s style!” She dropped her face into her hands.

  Kessily’s mouth fell open. “They might still be worth a little. I don’t think people here have much taste. Did you see that one woman wearing a necklace made of nuts?”

  Velsa grabbed the headdress that she’d thought was made from diamonds and threw it down the hill with a little shriek of anger. “Damnit!”

  Tomato shot off after the headdress.

  “It’s okay, Tomato, we don’t need it—yeah, he’s not listening.” Kessily gave Velsa a look of earnest sympathy, which was about all anyone could do. “We’ll figure out something,” she said.

  “Yeah,” Velsa said feebly. She felt utterly naive. She had nothing to bargain with, and she couldn’t buy a Fanarlem body for Grau either. The sun was setting and they stood at the top of the hill, their capes whipped by the wind. Grau was counting on her. There was nothing to be done but press on.

  Just around the bend, where the rocky path met its end, they found a door that seemed almost mocking in its politeness. It was painted blue and had a straw mat for wiping off one’s boots. Pansies and geraniums bloomed in pots.

  Velsa rapped the knocker and then straightened her cloak around her.

  Several long moments passed and then the heavy door swung open with a dramatic creak. If this were a story, Velsa thought, it would surely be raining.

  A man dressed in a black coat and trousers with pale, waxy skin and dull eyes answered. He hardly seemed to look at them, as if he was some sort of automaton. “May I help you?” he asked. His voice sounded very old, like hundred-year-old air confined in a tunnel.

  “Are you the Keeper of the Dead?” Velsa asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, we’re here to see him. Please. It’s urgent.”

  “Come inside.” He waved them in. The castle interior was colder than the outside air, and the tiny windows didn’t let any of the fading sunset into the small entrance room.

  “You may hang up your cloaks if you like,” the servant offered, pointing at a coatrack in the shadowed corner.

  Velsa and Kessily politely declined. The cloaks gave their appearance a shred of dignity. The servant picked up a lantern and led them through a door into a long hall. The light flashed across the face of a skull, and Velsa gasped.

  She quickly realized that was only the beginning of it. Skeletons, posed in chairs and suspended eternally in their death, lined both walls of the long hall. Some of them held goblets or books in rigid arms. They wore clothes and headdresses of many different eras: richly dyed woolen robes, slowly disintegrating and pecked with moth holes; unnaturally narrow feet clad in slippers from the shape-shifting obsessed age the Halnari still imitated; armor shaped like scales; hats with sagging plumes. There were empty chairs, too—at least a dozen of them, as if they were waiting for more skeletons to join them.

  “Gods—what is this place?” Kessily sounded breathless.

  “Wait here,” the servant said, unmoved by the edge of fear in her voice. He left the lantern on one of the chairs, between the legs of one of the skeletons, and pressed on into the dark depths of the castle.

  The lantern cast ghastly flickering shadows on the grinning skulls, with their empty eyes. The skeletal hands lifted in gestures, the figures posed to face one another, the jaws wired open in mid-conversation, all contributed to the sense that they might all come to life at any moment. They might begin to speak with hollow voices.

  Kessily gaped for a moment before squeezing her eyes shut. Tomato was perched on her shoulder, making his little muttering noises.

  Velsa clutched the crystal Grau had given her. It was the closest thing she had to his presence. But despite the sinking horror inside her at the sight, she couldn’t stop looking. It was just as much compelling: the sense of frozen time, of death defied, the jewels from rings and the gold threads of fine clothes winking in the light. She put a reassuring hand on Kessily’s cloak, feeling the shape of fragile feathers beneath the coarse wool.

  “They’re just bones,” Kessily said, voicing a confidence she obviously didn’t feel.

  But they weren’t just bones, not at all. The longer Velsa stood there, the longer she began to feel the weight of something holy, the deep magic that hid behind life’s mysteries.

  Footsteps approached purposefully. Not the shuffling of a dead-eyed footman this time, but the stride of a man’s boots.

  Kessily lifted her head, setting her jaw.

  He was a tall shadow in the doorway before he walked into the glow of the lantern. His long robe was so black that the illumination didn’t wash out the color, didn’t bring to light the fibers or seams. The fabric seemed to absorb the light. He was a pale face shrouded in darkness, with thick brows and eyes lined with kohl. The only speck of l
ight on him was the two thin shards of crystal hanging from each ear. But he was not the gaunt phantom Velsa expected; in fact, he was imposing, broad shouldered and handsome. He had a walking stick, infused with a shimmer of magic that Velsa could see when she focused on Grau’s crystal.

  “Are you the Keeper of the Dead?” Velsa asked.

  “Indeed. And what brings two women all the way up here to see me?” His voice was a little deeper and older than Grau’s. It was a voice that filled the space, although he spoke softly. “Whoever sent you, I hope they warned you that I don’t like visitors.”

  “They did,” Velsa said.

  “There are few things in the world I need or desire.”

  Velsa clasped her hands, frustrated. His eyes already said no, and they hadn’t even asked for anything yet. “Sir, my husband has been badly wounded. All I want is a body with healthy organs we could use to heal him. And we’re in a hurry. We already came all the way from Nalim Ima with his injury, caught in the hand of a dragon.” Name-dropping a dragon couldn’t hurt. He looked like a man who might respect dragons.

  “A body,” he repeated.

  “Do you have any?”

  “I always have bodies.”

  Kessily still looked obviously nervous. She handled Dalaran and Dennis with ease, and Velsa envied her toughness. But the skeletons seemed to have unraveled her.

  “You are no Ven-Diri, are you?” the Keeper asked her. “Haven’t you ever seen a skeleton before?”

  She immediately straightened and composed herself. “Excuse me if I’ve never seen a room full of skeletons playing dress-up.”

  The Keeper held up a hand. “They’re the guardians of the place. They like to see who comes in. I’m not sure they’re done looking.” He lifted the edge of her cloak with his stick, revealing tips of black feathers. “What happened here?”

  Kessily stepped back, eyes snapping. “In Nalim Ima,” she said. “They tried to turn me into a shape-shifter.”

  “Do tell.”

  “I just told you.”

  “I mean, elaborate.”