Crucible Read online

At Torec’s table, a girl picked up the gittern and plucked out the opening chords of “Sun and Shadow.” The boys laughed at her romantic choice, though Torec just let his eyes roam over the innkeeper’s son again. At a table nearer to Kweilin, a group of old men tapped their feet in time with the girl’s attempts. A serving girl replaced one of the burnt-out tallow dips, making her skirts flip and flirting with the old men as she did.

  Kweilin allowed relief to drip into her body. Her grandfather was aware of this strange barrier, and he was fighting it. The presence of his spell comforted her, even though he hadn’t been successful in destroying it. She wondered why he’d kept this from her, why he hadn’t asked for her help in dispelling the anomaly.

  He was probably worried about the strain on her and her daughter. She’d talk to him about this immediately. Maybe together the two of them could free Torec.

  Her reading of the barrier left her stomach gnawing at her in hunger. Despite having let her stew sit long enough to grow lukewarm, she devoured it before the next candlemark passed.

  • • •

  By the time she extracted Torec from his friends and brought the Companion back to Gareht’s stables, the night was almost half over. Torec’s reluctance to return home had melted away at the sight of the Companion, and though Kweilin didn’t tell him of their guest’s true nature, he readily accepted the chore of caring for her and seeing she was comfortable in the best stall.

  Satisfied that the two were bonding as much as they could despite the barrier, she went to awaken her grandfather.

  Though she couldn’t take the stairs to his chambers two at a time as she once had, the excited climb and subsequent wait for him to wake up had her feeling like she was ten years old again, impatient to tell him of a late-night breakthrough in her studies. She rocked back and forth on her heels, curling her toes in the plush carpet beside his bed and wishing he would hurry up with his yawning.

  “A Companion has come for Torec!” she gushed once he looked alert enough to understand her. “I know it is not what you wanted for him, but it is still an honor on our family and our village.”

  Gareht blinked and did nothing to hide the shock her statement brought, then ran a trembling hand down his face. “But he is not Gifted. The Companions cannot Choose someone without a Gift.”

  Kweilin knelt beside him and took his hand, touched by the concern in his expression. “Grandfather, I know what you have been trying to do for him. The Companion made me aware of the barrier, and when I examined it, I felt your spell there fighting it. Let me help you. If we work together, I’m sure we can free him from it.”

  Gareht shook his head, and Kweilin read fear in the motion.

  “Kweilin, no. Torec’s Mage Gift is too dangerous. I cannot bring down my barrier.”

  “Your barrier?” Kweilin rocked back, trying to understand. She pictured the barrier and the red lattice that curled through it. She’d been so certain the lattice was a destructive spell, but then, she’d only gotten a glimpse of it.

  Her grandfather nodded. “I had to. The Mage Gifts of my male heirs bear an evil that would rise up against us if not held in check. It’s not something you’ve had to deal with, my pet, and I was so grateful that you were born female. At least I could pass down my knowledge to one of my offspring!”

  Kweilin could not close her hanging jaw. “Then, Mareth . . .”

  “He was Gifted, too. I’m sorry. I know his death caused you great pain, but I couldn’t risk lifting the barrier I had placed on him as well. Doing so might have unleashed whatever terror killed him upon the whole village.”

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  “I’d hoped I could banish the evil before you ever found out. I wanted to tell you after Mareth’s death, but then little Torec had the same problem. I didn’t want you to lose hope for him, so I kept working on it alone.”

  Tears slipped down Kweilin’s cheeks, and she did not brush them away. Perhaps her brother had been doomed to die from the moment he was born as Gifted as she. Was Torec headed for the same fate?

  “Kweilin, listen to me,” her grandfather whispered, taking her by the shoulders. “It may be necessary to place the same barrier upon your daughter.”

  Kweilin clamped her arms around her belly. “No!”

  “Yes. I do not know if the same evil that plagues my male line will plague your female line, but it may be a necessary precaution. It will give her the greatest chance of survival, and you the greatest chance of success with her.”

  The tears came freely now, and Kweilin nodded. She pictured Mareth’s mangled body, and vowed she would never see her daughter the same way.

  “What about Torec? The Companion—”

  “I’m afraid the Companion will have to Choose someone else. I know they don’t like doing that, but surely Valdemar and King Thandar would not care to bring a dangerous Herald-Mage into their Heraldic Circle. It is best for everyone that the Companion Choose elsewhere.”

  Wordless, Kweilin rose from his bedside, leaving her grandfather crumpled in on himself among his blankets. He looked older than she’d ever seen him, older than the day Mareth died. Older than the day her father, his only son, died. How much heartache he’d suffered from his own failure to protect his descendants from the evil that attacked them from inside, she couldn’t guess.

  With her hands shaking on her swollen belly, she plodded back down the stairs, afraid she wouldn’t have to guess for much longer.

  • • •

  She composed herself in the passage between the house and the stables. Torec had developed an observant streak, and she didn’t think she could bear to explain everything she’d just learned to him. Leaning against the stone wall and shivering from the chill seeping in, she breathed with slow, deliberate puffs.

  :You are distraught. What did your grandfather say?:

  Kweilin twitched at the Companion’s voice in her head. She’d forgotten they didn’t have to see one another to Mindspeak.

  :Torec is afflicted with an evil magic,: she said. The thought burned at her eyes. :He is in danger.:

  :Yes, that barrier. Did your grandfather have any ideas on removing it?:

  :The barrier is not the evil, the Gifts are! It’s the same as what killed my brother.:

  A sob escaped Kweilin’s throat, and she clapped a hand over her lips. :I’m sorry, but you cannot Choose Torec. If my grandfather took down the barrier, Torec’s Gifts would be a danger to those around him.:

  The musical chiming of the Companion’s hooves rang from the stable, and Torec’s exclamation of surprise followed. The Companion thundered out to the passage, where she stopped in front of Kweilin. Her sapphire eyes shone dark with anger.

  :Your grandfather either knows nothing about magic or is lying to you! No Gift is evil! Evil comes from how a person uses his Gifts. And a Companion never Chooses wrong.:

  Torec appeared beside the Companion, his hands fluttering with concern over her flanks. When he saw Kweilin standing against the wall, he smiled.

  “I thought something was wrong when she sprang up like that. I guess I should have kept the stall door closed, but I thought she’d like it better open. She’s so smart, you know, it almost seems like she understands what I say.”

  Kweilin watched him stroke the Companion’s side, watched the look of contented awe slide across his face. She’d never seen him so blissful. Not even when he’d looked at the innkeeper’s son tonight.

  All that happiness, without even knowing how close he was to being Chosen!

  But if her grandfather was right, and Torec’s Gifts were dangerous . . .

  :They are not! Do your Gifts control you, or is it the other way around?:

  :Of course they don’t, but Grandfather said—:

  :If the Gifts truly are dangerous, does your grandfather think that I cannot hold their supposed evil back just as ea
sily as he? Protecting my Chosen is my duty, not his!:

  Kweilin saw the way the Companion stood like a wall between Torec and the passage, the way Torec leaned into her support unknowingly, and Kweilin realized the Companion was right.

  :Help me take the barrier down, Kweilin.:

  She nodded.

  No further discussion was needed. Kweilin braced herself against the wall and reached out with the tendrils of her awareness. This time, she brought the magic with her as she brushed at the barrier. Tensed for the slightest twinge of pain, she found the small hole from before and tugged at it.

  A tiny fraction of the structure peeled back before the pain hit, and she recoiled with a gasp.

  “I can’t!” she cried, wrapping her arms around her belly. “It’s too much. I’ll hurt her.”

  “What’s too much?” Torec asked. He knelt beside Kweilin, keeping one hand on the Companion’s side.

  Kweilin shook her head. The pain was fading, but the fear remained.

  A stabilizing presence pressed against her mind, and the Companion blinked at her. :I will do what I can to protect your child. You handle the barrier.:

  Kweilin took the offered strength and gathered her magic deep within herself. Together, she and the Companion built a barrier of their own around her womb. It was fragile, but maybe it would give her the extra power she needed to free Torec.

  Ruthless this time, Kweilin attacked his barrier again. Torec shuddered, but the cocoon inside her held, so she kept on.

  She tore at it, ripping chunks away and digging in for more, until the outer layer hung in tatters and the lattice lay exposed. She saw it now for the support of the spell, saw how it held the entire structure together. It pulsed a dark, angry red.

  Behind it, a white light spun. Kweilin reached for it, weaving her tendrils through the lattice work of the barrier. If she could awaken Torec’s Gifts, he might break out by himself.

  A blinding heat came off Torec’s light. Sweat rolled down Kweilin’s body. She was aware of the Companion shaking beside her and of Torec’s shivers. Still, she reached a little farther.

  Suddenly, the barrier snapped down on her awareness. The severing of her tendrils sent her stumbling backward, and her head smacked against the stone wall.

  The cocoon around her womb shattered.

  “What is going on here?” Gareht thundered.

  Kweilin blinked through her blurry vision. Her grandfather came forward, his hand raised and glowing the same red as his barrier. Deep lines of anger carved his face into shadowed crags.

  “Kweilin? Did you understand nothing of our talk?”

  Kweilin pushed herself away from the rough wall. “Grandfather, I understood, but the task of keeping Torec safe no longer falls to you or me. His Companion will do it. If I understand their nature well enough, I believe she will do a far better job of it than either of us could.”

  Torec’s jaw dropped. “What? My Companion?” He stared at the Companion, then back at Kweilin and Gareht.

  “Yes, Torec,” Kweilin said. “She came for you. You’re Gifted.”

  Gareht tightened his glowing hand into a fist. “No, Torec,” he said. “You cannot go with her. You will stay here and carry on the male line!”

  His brow took on a murderous slant as he undid all Kweilin’s work and firmed up his barrier anew.

  But Torec didn’t back down. “I’m Chosen. You can’t tell me what to do anymore. I’ll never marry Miss Hettya, or any other girl!”

  “Fine, then. Making more of my own will be inconvenient, but you’ve been so troublesome as to not be worth the wait.” Gareht pumped his fist, and Torec fell to the stone floor.

  The Companion screamed. Kweilin’s grandfather tackled the creature next, forcing her back into a stable and slamming the door on her. She pounded her hooves against her prison, but it held firm.

  Kweilin’s grandfather turned his hand back to Torec, where he writhed on the floor.

  “Stop it, you’ll smother him!” Kweilin shouted, making to rush to her nephew’s side. Her grandfather grabbed her arm and held her back.

  “Pay attention, Kweilin,” he said. She recognized his lesson-time voice. “I’m going to teach you the spell I use to remain youthful. You can use it once your daughter gives you a granddaughter. Pray she marries younger than you did, my pet. The wait for the next generation will test your patience like nothing else.”

  He opened his glowing hand into a claw.

  A wind rose in the corridor, tearing past Kweilin and her grandfather to swirl around Torec. The boy struggled to his feet, raising his arms against the tempest.

  The barrier appeared as a physical lattice surrounding Torec. He shouted wordlessly, grasping at the structure.

  “The key to this spell is minimizing distractions,” her grandfather said. “It is much easier to take on another’s vitality when he can’t retaliate with his own spells.”

  A cord of magic appeared at Torec’s chest, writhing through the air toward Gareht’s outstretched hand. Torec screamed as it yanked him against the barrier.

  As the cord connected with her grandfather’s hand, Kweilin realized she was watching a reenactment of her brother’s death. Tears blurred her vision, and Torec’s pale face became Mareth’s. His screams as the cord tore at his chest became her brother’s guttural cries.

  She blinked, and the face behind the red lattice became her father’s.

  “You murdered them!” she screamed.

  “I lent them their lives to begin with, pet. But when the village needed me to keep my position as patriarch, I took their vitality back.”

  :Stop him!:

  Kweilin tore her magic up from her core. Every drop of it came under her command as it hadn’t for six months, ripping through her own fear-formed barrier with the force of her fury.

  She flung it in a disc at the cord connecting her relatives. The cord cracked like a whip, and Gareht staggered back with a shout.

  Kweilin caught the flailing end of the cord, tying it off with her magic and shoving it back toward Torec. Adrenaline pumped, and she reached the barrier in three bounds.

  “Stop!” her grandfather shouted. He rushed up behind her, his anger palpable.

  Kweilin crashed her magic-encased fist through the barrier.

  The barrier broke into shards, and she closed her fingers around Torec’s light.

  “Live!” she commanded.

  Fierce pain shot through her belly then, and she fell to the dirty floor, moaning.

  Her grandfather’s fingers dug into her shoulder.

  “Don’t touch her!” Torec shouted. A flash of orange and a searing heat swooped over Kweilin’s head. Gareht’s high-pitched scream mixed with the stench of burning flesh, and the pressure of his fingers disappeared.

  The pain in her belly wasn’t receding. She knelt on the floor, tears pouring down her cheeks, her arms around her stomach.

  “He’s gone, he’s dead,” Torec said. “I cast a spell, and . . .”

  Kweilin became aware of him shaking her. “I’ve killed her, my baby,” she sobbed. Everything inside her was crumbling. She’d killed her daughter.

  But her grandfather . . . he would have killed Torec. Her only nephew, all she had left of her brother. What could she have done but stop him?

  The Companion approached her, freed of her prison at her captor’s death. The white muzzle pressed against Kweilin’s side, firm but gentle.

  :She lives, friend.:

  Warmth spread in Kweilin’s core, and a faint rhythm beat under her hand.

  Her daughter’s heartbeat.

  Trembling, Kweilin lifted her hand to grasp Torec’s.

  “What do I do now, Aunt Kweilin?” he asked. He was trembling, too.

  The Companion walked over to stand beside him, and his trembling lessened. They strike a fine p
icture, Kweilin thought. Chosen and Companion.

  “You will go to Valdemar and be a Herald. It’s what you were always meant to be.”

  “And leave you?”

  Kweilin climbed to her feet and smiled. “Someone of the line needs to keep the village running. I don’t see why it has to be a male heir.”

  They embraced, and Torec climbed into the Companion’s saddle for the first time as naturally as if it were the thousandth. Kweilin stood in the stable doorway, hands on her belly, watching them ride into the night.

  Tomorrow, she would begin preparations for Gareht’s funeral. The village would be saddened but unsurprised. He was very old, after all. Too old, it turned out.

  Kweilin closed her eyes and remembered Mareth and her father once more. She vowed to never again remember their appearance in death, only their faces as they had lived.

  Standing there in the swirling snow outside the stable, she made a second vow.

  Her life would belong to the village from this day on. To her people, her husband, and most of all, to her daughter.

  Her vitality would flow down the line as it should. It would never be the other way around.

  Ghosts of the Past

  Angela Penrose

  The shadowed woods near Lake Evendim stretched across the hills, a cool, green layer of quiet. It felt like waiting, like that pause before something bursts out. Something dangerous, or frightening, or maybe just startling, but something. The beat when everything has stopped and whatever is out there is gathering itself, right before whatever is going to happen happens.

  Except it didn’t.

  That pause went on and on and on, anticipation stretching out and out until nerves wanted to snap, but just kept stretching.

  Herald Arvil had been riding trails through the dim, green woods north of Rabbit Hole for the last day and a half, searching. An herb-healer had gone into the woods collecting, something she’d done regularly for years, and her father before her, but she hadn’t returned home.

  Before that a hunter had vanished, and a trapper. And five months ago, the twelve-year-old son of a charcoal burner had been sent by his father to fetch a Healer when the man was felled by the black cough. When a woodcutter found the man four weeks later, near to death and with no sign of the boy, they assumed he’d been taken by some beast of the wood.