Chapter 46 #2
They’re looking forward to this expedition as much as I’m dreading it.
Ster. Torstem pulls out a small chest from beneath the bench. He produces several vials of a greenish liquid that he passes around to each of us. “Let’s buoy up our festive mood! The gods deserve all our emotions bared.”
With a few whoops, everyone else unstoppers their vial. I do the same and take a quick whiff.
It smells the same as the stuff we drank before. One small relief.
Feeling Torstem’s gaze on me, I toss mine back with the others. I don’t risk trying to spit any down my sleeve while I’m in his sights, but I do pop the other two antidote pills into my mouth under the guise of wiping it.
How do you feel? Julita asks, as if I can answer her right now. Do you think the antidote is working?
My nerves are still jittering, but none of the dizziness has come over me so far. Around me, my companions are laughing and swaying on their seats. I force a grin onto my face and giggle at a jolt of the wheels as if I’m equally ecstatic.
Avoiding the drug was the least of my many problems. What’s this special something Torstem has planned?
In the midst of the growing clamor, someone pulls out a sack of clay masks like the kind we wore during my initiation. I guess we college-goers still want to stay disguised from the rest of the Order of the Wild, wherever they come from.
Or maybe they see it as part of their worship, merging our humanness with animal forms.
I fix a mask over my face, the sense of concealment oddly reassuring even though I know everyone here is aware of who I am already.
A quiver of energy tickles against my skin, but the illusions don’t spring into being yet—they must be triggered by other magic cast near the place where the Order of the Wild carries out their rites.
It isn’t much longer before I have the sense of the wagon tilting up a slope. We jostle against each other with more giddy laughter that I have to fake.
Did Torstem drink any of the drug? I think he might be totally sober too, though he joins in the laughter with a few chuckles of his own.
When the wagon lurches and stops, we scramble out onto a broad hilltop. A bonfire is already roaring away in the center of the grassy plateau, where three other covered wagons are parked nearby.
A figure whose mask gives the look of a weasel is just tossing more logs to feed the flames. At least a dozen others stand around the fire, cloaked in illusions of various beasts.
As Ster. Torstem ushers us forward, the heat crackles over my skin alongside a ripple of the magical energy that must be concealing it to more distant eyes. Some of the other conspirators start reaching their hands toward the flames and whirling around in chaotic dances.
“We open ourselves up for the All-Giver!” someone shouts.
More cries go up through the warbling of the flames. “Worship the wildness within!”
“Remember where we came from!”
“Honor the spirit at our center, the true life the Great God gave us!”
I spin and clap my hands as if thrilled to be there, eyeing the supplies around us surreptitiously.
There are the four wagons, although I need to be careful of the horses.
A couple of people have brought out crates, one holding a few bottles of wine and another a heap of apples.
Several of the revelers have dropped their cloaks or jackets to bask in the fire’s heat.
I have no sense of where the materials my men arranged to have stashed for me ended up relative to our unexpected diversion in route, but I think I have everything I need with me as it is.
Should I ask Kosmel to guide my magic now or let the scourge sorcerers get even more caught up in their arcane ritual?
My magic stirs in my chest, and I instinctively balk against it.
What if Kosmel doesn’t approve of the course I’ve taken? I don’t even know how much might be at stake if I give my power free rein without any divine direction at all.
In my hesitation, Torstem waves toward one of the wagons and raises his voice.
“Wildings, we have a special guest with us tonight! Throughout our realm, there are those who’ve sacrificed much to support our cause and enhance the gifts we’ve been granted.
Please celebrate Ginelle for all she’s given us and her deep devotion to our gods! ”
A woman emerges from the wagon with a masked figure on either side of her. Or at least I assume she’s a woman from her name.
A shroud—pale gray, unlike the black ones the Order has favored before—drapes across her from head to feet. But even with that covering, having seen people like her before, I can make out the signs of a sacrificial accomplice.
No hair fills out the folds around her head, where her scalp will have been carved bald. No doubt she gave up her ears too. The fabric falls flat across her face, where she’s probably sacrificed her eyes and nose.
Her entire body looks oddly slim, because she’s had both arms carved off at the shoulders like Wendos’s accomplices in the tower. Her lurching gait suggests she gave at least part of one of her legs as well.
And who knows how much they cut out of her insides.
Another one, Julita murmurs with a shudder.
My stomach churns. The current scourge sorcerers have tried to skirt the prohibition against claiming another’s sacrifice for their own power by keeping their victims alive… but I don’t know how what those poor dupes are put through can be considered a life at all.
Torstem grooms them from childhood, seeking out orphans and maybe other vulnerable boys and girls as well. Telling them stories of the greatness they can help him achieve in the name of the gods.
Persuading them that mutilating themselves to the edge of suicide is the greatest offering they can make to the divinities and their country.
The shrouded woman drops into an awkward kneel and bows her head. From the hazy whispers around the fire, I’m not sure how many of my companions have seen one of the accomplices meant to support their sorcery before, even concealed like this.
Torstem points across the darkened land.
“Over there lies a count’s manor house. A despicable man who doesn’t deserve the title.
He gathers taxes for himself in the name of the false king and ignores the pleas of the peasants living under him.
We can free them to pick their own master.
Ginelle’s gift will amplify our own. Let us show the false leaders of this world what the gods think of their arrogance! ”
A cheer rises up from the revelers. I lift my voice alongside theirs, restraining a snort at the hypocrisy.
Arrogance? Has Ster. Torstem looked in a mirror lately?
“If you have any kind of talent that would allow you to move or project or send something to a destination, join us now,” the law professor goes on. “Let’s throw some of our fateful fire onto the count and send his manor home up in smoke as an offering to the gods watching over us.”
I’m exempt from this act of sabotage, then. My gift is supposedly for forging replicas, not conjuring anything real, and an illusion of flames isn’t what they’re looking for.
That fact doesn’t stop my gut from plummeting as several of my companions step even closer to the fire.
“Repeat after me,” Torstem orders. “These divine words tell the gods that we want to merge our gifts with Ginelle’s for their benefit. Say them and picture the house of corruption. Use whatever power you have to cast the flames toward it.”
He points in the direction he indicated before and starts speaking the same disjointed syllables I heard from Wendos in the tower. Julita cringes back in my head.
The participating Wildings pick up the chant, some with the confidence of experience, others cautiously as they adjust to the sounds. The fire flares higher, a sharper heat washing over me.
My pulse lurches. Whatever I’m going to do, I’d better do it soon.
I delve my hand into my pocket, flick open my locket, and press my thumb to its inner surface.
The summons has been sent. There’s no going back from this.
I ease toward Torstem, counting on the ritual to distract part of his attention. I want to be near enough that I can spring in with one of my knives if my other plan goes wrong.
Someone breaks from their chant with a triumphant shout. My gaze jerks across the darkness—and catches on a flicker of light that appears to have sparked on a rooftop.
Even as my pulse stutters, the flame fizzles out. But the voices around me intensify with eagerness as the scourge sorcerers see the first proof that their efforts could work.
A pool of icy horror forms in the pit of my stomach, setting my riven power banging at my ribs for release.
I don’t know anything about the count who oversees this domain, but he won’t be the only one in that house. He’ll have a family, maybe children—there’ll be staff and servants. Most of them asleep and oblivious to any threat.
I have to act now.
I take one more step in Torstem’s direction but fix my gaze on the fire. Through the clamor of my magic, I open myself up to the divine touch that’s come to my aid before.
Kosmel, direct the backlash of my magic away from any who don’t deserve the harm. As I command the fire, steal heat where it won’t be missed. Please.
He doesn’t answer. But like Casimir said, this is about faith, not certainty.
The only thing I’m certain of is that I don’t want to be a true murderer.
I loosen my hold on the power inside me and funnel it toward the flames. With a yank of my will, they shoot higher—and lash out toward the gathered figures around me.
The chanting sorcerers yelp and scatter, dashing backward from the fire that’s turned on them. A tingling pressure forms on my shoulder, like someone has set his hand there, confirming he’s with me.
You’re doing it! Julita crows. Let’s teach these fiends a lesson.
I’m not alone, inside or out.
But I’m not here to murder by burning alive either. All I want is to sow chaos against the people who’ve encouraged it—and remove the scourge sorcerers’ means of escape.
I fling the fire toward the wagon we arrived in, letting it lick across the discarded clothes on the grass in between. The lumps of fabric and the wagon’s canvas covering burst into flames.
I yank their searing heat down toward the base and its wheels, holding it back from the horses and their squeals of panic.
Kosmel’s wryly divine voice reverberates through my body. Very good, my wayward rogue. A few houses that had caught fire in the next province over have found themselves abruptly saved so you could bring the flames here. I’m sure you don’t mind.
I have to hold back a laugh. Power vibrates through my veins.
I can do this. I can bend my own wild power to serve a good purpose.
Let the scourge sorcerers see the results of their arrogance. Let them think about why their worshipful fire might have turned on them.
I will another blast of flames toward the second wagon—
And they sputter out before they reach the arched canvas.
The heat sizzling through the air dwindles. The fire on the first wagon snuffs out too.
Julita gasps. What in the realms…?
My gaze flicks around the hilltop, understanding hitting me like a jab to the gut.
Something is countering my magic.