The weight of magic, p.38
The Weight of Magic, page 38
part #1 of Restriction Series
Visthor darted forward before Torian had a chance to even react.
His Blade was a blur.
It whistled. Torian thought that was probably a danger as well, because the whistling of the Blade could draw attention to them. He switched to a different first-tier pattern, drawing on the wind, and creating a buffer around them that might’ve been able to draw away the whistling. He didn’t know if it would somehow restrict what Visthor was doing, but it didn’t seem to slow the man down, and it didn’t seem to affect how he targeted this monster.
The creature roared.
“What is it?”
“A duba.”
“I’ve never even heard of that before.”
“You have already seen a soul sucker and the shurrel, so it’s not entirely surprising that this would be here. I begin to think they’re drawn here by whatever Tamish chases. Tainted power. That is what this is.”
Sylvia had never struck him as particularly faithful to the Saith, but her comments suggested that she was. Maybe that was how she was calmer than Torian felt. She had not used any of her patterns, nor did she extrude any power, which Torian thought might be a mistake. Visthor continued to fight with the duba, sweeping his Blade through the creature’s arm, but not all the way. Torian didn’t know if it was because he had somehow changed the Blade of Wind’s power by using the first-tier wind pattern or whether the creature was just that tough.
Whatever the answer, Visthor struggled with the creature.
Torian slipped forward, holding a first-tier lantern beam that he focused on his Blade, which caused it to glow.
The monster turned toward him.
Visthor attacked.
He drove his Blade into the monster’s back. The monster spun, sweeping one of its enormous paws at Visthor, who dove out of the way at the last moment. Two wolves darted in, snarling and jumping onto the creature’s back, but the duba shook those wolves free with little more effort than Torian would take to flick a spider off his skin.
Then the creature reared up, turning toward him.
Without meaning to, he flashed unfocused power into the Blade.
This was not formed in a pattern. This was more like what he had done when he had tried to escape when Aldrich held him and what he had done when he had been trapped by the soldiers. It was unfocused—though it did have a focus, as Torian pushed energy into the Blade itself. It didn’t blaze, though he could feel it buzzing in his palms.
When the monster reared up, Torian drove forward. There was no form, no pattern, nothing other than power. And the creature roared again.
Torian staggered back.
Visthor looked over. “Stupid,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Thank you. But stupid.”
The creature staggered away, leaving them in the clearing.
Visthor still held on to the Blade, with the end of it extended, turning in place. Torian released his Blade and shifted to a stacked stone second-tier pattern, as he now had even more power inside of him than he had intended, and he needed to release some of it. Fear had forced him to draw on more power than he had intended. As he probed, he found the shurrel had run off.
“Well, if nothing else, that monster scared away the shurrel.”
“What you think?” Visthor asked Sylvia.
“We need to know what’s up ahead,” she said.
“Careful,” Visthor said.
They followed the pathway Aldrich had left, weaving through the forest. Torian maintained his connection through the stacked stone pattern, testing whether there was anything up ahead, including any different monsters, but came up with nothing.
They slowed as they neared the runic markers. Sylvia motioned for them to get behind the trunk of a tree, with Visthor taking one massive tree to hide behind, and Torian staying with Sylvia. The wolves prowled off into the darkness, sliding in the shadows with skill that Torian couldn’t even fathom. Then he looked ahead. He didn’t need to worry about light as something glowed softly. There was the steady sound of hammering.
“What is this?” Torian whispered to Sylvia.
“Some sort of mining,” she said.
“What kind of—”
Torian didn’t finish. A person appeared in the darkness, but that wasn’t what cut him off. By itself, he might have trailed off at seeing somebody suddenly appear, but it was the fact that he knew this person.
It was Willa.
Which meant that the sahir from Sarot were here.
Chapter 43
THE PRICE OF CAPTIVITY
Torian could scarcely move. The runic markers blocked access to anything else, but Torian was tempted to push through them if he could. And with enough power, he thought that he might be able to push through those runic markers and shatter them so that he could detect…
Sylvia’s hand on his arm caught his attention, and Torian looked over to her.
“You know her?”
“She’s from my town,” he said softly. “A sahir.”
“They bring sahir to a work farm?” she asked.
“What?”
“That is what Rusav do. They take and use men for work. This would be a farm. But I don’t know why they would use sahir. Usually, they use others.”
“They killed the others,” Torian said. “And if Willa is here, it might mean my sister.” And Jensen. Dary. Eliza. Others. Could Torian save them? “I need to get to them.”
“It’s too dangerous,” she said. “Let’s walk the perimeter here and see what we can find. Perhaps there is something that we might be able to do.”
Torian didn’t need for her to tell him that she didn’t think there would be much that could be done, as he could hear it in her voice. Depending upon what Rusav was doing here, there may not be anything that could be done for the sahir unless they could overwhelm the captors.
But if his sister was here, Torian could not stand back and do nothing. There was something about all of this that felt familiar, though Torian wasn’t sure why it did, nor did he know if there was any reason that this place seemed that familiar to him.
She motioned to Visthor, who slipped across and joined them. “We need to check the perimeter.”
“Dangerous,” Visthor said.
“I know, but we are going to do it anyway.”
Visthor glanced over to Torian, and then he nodded. “I have wolves look.”
“That may not be enough,” she said. “We need to test whatever protections they have placed here. The only way to do that is to go in a straight line. Have the wolves look and make sure that it’s safe for us to walk around here, and then stay with us. We need your Blade.”
Visthor nodded. He let out a soft whistle, little more than a sigh of wind, but the wolves started off as if they knew exactly what Visthor asked of them. Torian turned his attention to the camp, staring through the darkness as he tried to understand what he was seeing and failing. He couldn’t help but think that this was fortuitous. And maybe this was what Aldrich had been after.
“It’s safe,” Visthor said, pointing to the east.
Sylvia slipped forward, with Torian following. Visthor stayed at their side, his Blade extended. Torian had not withdrawn his Blade, as he would much rather use the power inside of them if necessary, and partly because he thought that he might make a mess of things if he were to use the Blade. It was difficult to resist the urge to push some of the power into the Blade, and that might draw attention to them—something he very much did not want to do.
They reached another tree, and Sylvia crouched down, crawling toward a boulder up ahead. She motioned for Torian to follow, who did, with Visthor staying behind him. Torian didn’t think that Visthor would be able to stay hidden all that well, but the large man did a better job than Torian would’ve expected.
Torian slipped along the outside of it and began to probe with the second-tier earth technique. It was easier here. He could focus directly along the runic markers. He didn’t have to worry about a distance that separated them. But at the same time, there was a bit of a challenge in that he didn’t want to disrupt the runic markers in a way that something or someone would know that they were there and testing them. So he had to probe carefully. That was not Torian’s specialty.
“I don’t know how to do it without making them aware that we are here.”
“Then let me,” Sylvia said.
She began to push, and there was a faint trembling of the ground around them, though it wasn’t very strong. He was glad that she was the one doing it, as he knew that he would probably push with a bit more strength than she did and likely disrupt things in ways that she did not. She stretched first to the east, then to the west, and paused periodically. When she did, she would tilt her head back, and frown momentarily. Finally, she would move on.
When she was done, she released her hold. “These are skillfully made. More complicated than I could deal with. Aldrich probably could but maybe not. It’s possible that he came here and tested these and found that they were beyond even him.”
Torian leaned back, looking toward the camp of his townsfolk. He’d only seen one that he recognized, but against the quiet backdrop of night, the sound of other voices drifted toward him, and he knew that there was more than one person.
“Let’s keep moving,” he said more forcefully than he intended. Were it not for the two of them, Torian might not have made it to even reach this place as it was possible that the shurrel or the duba might be more than he would have been able to withstand without drawing the attention of the soldiers that had to be here to him.
“I understand how you feel,” she said softly. “You aren’t the only one who has suffered because of them.”
Torian swallowed, trying not to say anything more that would only upset her as he didn’t want to do that. “Can we look?”
“I go with him,” Visthor said.
“We’re all going to go,” she said. “I want him to know what he might encounter. And it’s not going to be what you hope for.”
Torian wasn’t sure what it was that he hoped for at this point. Save the sahir? His sister? The other students?
Who was he to think he could succeed where Willa had failed?
Maybe no one, but he’d stopped the soldiers once. He could do it again. He wasn’t as helpless as he’d been when they’d first been attacked.
They set off. Now Visthor took the lead, waving for them to follow as they used the trees for cover. The clearing gradually revealed itself to them as they moved around it; whatever trees that had once been here razed and opened up to show a large rocky section of ground. A massive pit had been dug at the center. There were others visible now. Torian recognized a few of them. Dary looked dazed, with dirt staining his cheeks. Desiree had on a tattered and dirtied shirt. There were a few others that he didn’t know.
There was no sign of his sister.
“Do you know them all?” Sylvia asked.
“I know some of them,” he said. “Not all.” But if there were some sahir students, the others might be as well.
“Where did you say your town was?”
“Sarot.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know it, but then I don’t know many of the towns found throughout Navarin. Only some of the larger cities. Now we’re getting close to another. I don’t know what your people call it. It is an ancient city, once a stronghold from a time of the Siansaal Empire.”
The empire had fallen long enough ago that few people knew about it. Torian did, but that was because it was required learning at school while studying the temple ruins, and not because there was anything to it that he thought particularly interesting.
Torian looked through the trees. He found one man kneeling, blood from a gash on his head dripping down the side of his face, but Torian couldn’t tell who it might be. Someone injured. There were a few men—all of the people of this work camp were men, making Torian think that this had to be the same caravan he’d been a part of—lying not far from him, motionless.
Not motionless. Dead.
The Rusavians hadn’t even moved them.
That brought a surprising anger to him, though it was an impotent anger as there wasn’t anything that he’d be able to do about it. Rage against it, but even that was impotent rage.
“We aren’t prepared for a fight. Not like this. We can head back to the wagons and regroup,” Sylvia said.
“We need to know what attacked Aldrich, though. Until we know, the wagons may not be safe.”
Sylvia didn’t seem pleased with the plan but didn’t argue with him.
They worked their way around the clearing. A hint of fresh-cut pine lingered in the air, telling him that whatever had happened here had been recent. The ground heaped where the men dug, using blunted shovels and piling up dirt all around the pit. Most were subdued, though Torian suspected that they would have suffered quite a bit on the journey that they would have to be subdued. Most would have long since given up on the hope for freedom.
Even in the short time that Torian had been a captive, he had started to feel the heavy weight of inevitability concerning his captivity. How could anyone think that they could get away from what they all must have experienced?
He paused at one point, probing with the second-tier earth technique as he felt for why the runic marker seemed to be enough to hold in these sahir. He didn’t focus on all of them, only on a singular marker, trying to get a sense of what power it had. Torian wished that he understood the runic markers better than he did. Unfortunately, his experience with them was limited. He had learned how to use them and how to read them, but he had not had enough time to learn how to make them as he had never been viewed as somebody with enough potential to do anything with those runic markers that would be beneficial to the school and to Navarin.
He withdrew. “I think the markers are meant to keep them inside. But there have to be some soldiers here, don’t there?”
“Undoubtedly,” Sylvia said. “And we need to keep moving before they realize that we are here.”
“But what if we just break through these markers?” He looked over to Visthor, thinking about what the other man had done when Torian had fought with him in the town. “We could save them…”
He trailed off as a figure appeared in view.
His sister. She looked dirty, the same as the others, but unharmed.
He had lost his brother. His parents. His sister was all he had left.
And she was right before him. He could go to her, rescue her, and then…
Torian took a step forward before Visthor grabbed him.
“That’s my sister,” Torian said.
After all this time thinking about his sister, feeling helpless that he couldn’t do anything for her, the same helplessness that he had known when Leven had been crushed, and here she was in front of him. Once again, he felt helpless to do anything for her.
Sylvia looked at him, shaking her head.
Surprisingly, Visthor was the one who nodded to him and turned his attention toward the camp. “We get her. But we do so smart.”
“How?”
“With surprise.”
Visthor whistled softly, and five wolves came prowling toward them out of the darkness.
“This is a terrible idea,” Sylvia said.
“I know it’s a terrible idea, but Aldrich had to have known that something was happening and wanted to stop it. We need to know why they have these sahir captured here.”
Sylvia took a deep breath, and when she let it out, Torian had the distinct sense that she was incredibly frustrated, but she nodded to Visthor.
“I will go to the other side, and I will release one of the markers while you stay here and release the other. The wolves will go in, and the two of you will take care of whatever soldiers you find, and then we get as many of these students away. Do you understand? Rescue your sister and send the rest away.”
Torian looked out into the darkness. “Do you think we can do this?”
“If there are a couple soldiers, then yes. If there are more…”
“Thank you,” Torian said.
“Only if this works,” she said, and she darted off into the darkness, sweeping around and disappearing from them.
“She would do this anyway,” Visthor said.
“Are you sure? I don’t have the sense that she really wants to do it.”
“Not want, but understand is necessary. Tamish after something. Not sure, but we must be careful.” Visthor twisted his Blade, getting it ready. “Now we go.”
Then Torian felt the surge of power from what Sylvia did.
It was his turn to act.
He focused on the second-tier earth technique and probed outward. When he reached the barricade formed by the runic marker, he pressed up against it. Torian shifted his second-tier earth technique to the third tier and let more and more power explode through him. When that wasn’t enough, he heaved on the weight inside of him, thinking that he had to do this so that he could get to his sister, rescue her, and then he could help the others. Power flooded through him, out of him, and into the runic marker.
Which cracked before shattering.
Then lights bloomed around him.
Chapter 44
A QUICK BATTLE
Torian realized the mistake the moment that he had released that power. It was some sort of a trigger, which he had suspected, and he knew that Sylvia had suspected it as well, but he hadn’t known that they would have had such a tight control over it. He looked over to Visthor, who had a tight snarl on his face as if he were eager to go rushing toward what was up ahead. They nodded at each other before darting forward into the camp.
Power bloomed all around.
Torian felt it as a series of different patterns. He wasn’t sure at the source of it, only that it was pressing upon him in ways that felt somewhat uneasy. That power started to build in a way that left some part of him trembling with the energy that he’d been feeling. He could use the patterns that he’d already started to form, but he hadn’t shifted the weight enough for him to draw on anything more than a second-tier pattern.
