Rawlins #3
The ritual was mathematically advanced, but the elementals involved were relatively common—mostly precious metals, which would be activated but mercifully not consumed by the process.
Gold, silver, and copper ingots were laid out in sequence on three intersecting lines, which converged on a focal point at the center.
The quantities needed were determined by the period of time for which they wanted to induce immobilization. “I’m calculating for a five-minute duration,” Ellsbeth said, writing her math out neatly in her notebook.
“Make it two,” Rawlins replied.
She looked up at him, conflicted. “Five is an easier divisor and gives us more time for observation.”
“Two minutes,” he said definitively.
She narrowed her eyes, clearly wanting to know why but able to see he had no desire to explain himself. She relented and went about calculating for a two-minute duration.
In truth, Rawlins was nervous about the possibility of an unintended effect.
It was rare for him—for anyone—to perform a ritual that was untested, and in this case, one that was not even related to any other ritual he had previously performed.
He had a solid grasp on the underlying principles, but there were risks, especially with magic that directly impacted a person as its subject.
The human body and mind were notoriously tricky targets of arcane mechanical influence.
The ritual was meant to restrain only the wrists of the subject, but with an untested activation, it was always possible there could be spillover.
If Ellsbeth’s lungs were somehow immobilized, she wouldn’t be able to breathe.
He had a brief, awful vision of her collapsing to the floor, suffocating, which he tried to purge from his mind.
Two minutes might make her pass out; five would be lethal. But he didn’t need her thinking about that while she did the preparations.
Ellsbeth moved confidently through the space, making careful measurements. Rawlins rechecked as she went without finding a single error. Once she finished laying out the last trail of metals, she wasted no time stepping into the circle at the center of the platform.
Rawlins was starting to feel conflicted; surely, she knew the risks, and she had no doubt read gory reports of what could happen to people subjected to untested rituals.
If she was certain she wanted to do this, there was nothing to be gained by reminding her of the dangers now; he would only evoke fear and compromise the process.
So he asked simply, to clear his conscience, “You’re sure you’re comfortable being the subject? ”
She nodded. “I’m confident in my work. And in you to conduct it.”
“All right, then.” He picked up her written instructions and walked around the ritual circle, igniting the incense in four hanging burners, each suspended above a rune inscribed in chalk on the platform. The pungent smoke wafted across the space, already dim in the candlelight.
Rawlins stood at the edge of the ritual circle.
He looked at Ellsbeth in the center; she was visibly self-conscious, arms at her sides, feet planted slightly apart.
He could see her fear and, in proportion to it, her courage.
Admiration swelled within him as he began chanting. “Teneatur corpus. Animiat dormus.”
Ellsbeth exhaled and rolled her shoulders as Rawlins continued, intoning the Latin that she had written. “Teneatur corpus. Membra rigus.”
The metals on the floor began to gleam. In the dim candlelight, the effect was subtle, but it became more pronounced as he continued the invocation. The faint hum he loved so much pierced the silence; the mysterious droning sound, with no discernible source, enveloped them.
He kept his voice steady and slow, even as his excitement grew line by line—and with it, his fear.
It was undeniable that the ritual was working, but the final effect remained unknown.
He hadn’t experienced this thrill of discovery since early in his career, and the stakes were heightened vastly by the fact that the mysterious forces he summoned were not directed at some inanimate object.
They were very much about to impact a person—one whose body and safety he had, in a short time, come to care about more than he ever expected to.
So he struggled to maintain his equanimity and the even pace of his voice as he pronounced the final line: “Teneatur corpus. Manus ligatum.”
The glow of the metals on the floor flared to a new level of brightness, and instantly a suffocated gasp escaped Ellsbeth’s throat.
Her entire body tightened, and her hands, which had previously been hanging at her sides, snapped together in front of her.
Her eyes went wide, and Rawlins felt a moment of panic, fearing he had collapsed her windpipe or permanently altered some other internal system he could not reverse.
But he could see that she was still breathing. And there was excitement in her eyes.
“I’m okay,” she said, reading his mind.
“Your hands?” he asked. She held them out in front of her, showing that they were pressed together at the wrists, as though bound by an invisible pair of cuffs. He watched her flex and intertwine her fingers, marveling at the unseen force that kept them together.
“Pull them apart,” he said intently. “Try as hard as you can.”
Her arms flexed with the strain, then went slack as she gave up. “I can’t.”
Never had those two words been spoken with such joy and wonder, and Rawlins smiled at her delight. She deserved to celebrate. They had done it. The first instance of writ magic he had ever witnessed. It had worked.
“Incredible,” he murmured. Her joy moved him, its effortless transparency, and he surrendered to the moment, in ways that again brought him back to his first days as a practitioner of arcane mechanicals.
And then both of their smiles melted, replaced by…something else. A current of electricity coursed between them, shifting the energy in the room.
Rawlins’s mind moved off the fact of their accomplishment and instead was struck by Ellsbeth herself.
Standing in front of him. Her wrists immobilized in this way, for…
what? Another minute and a half? He felt a surge of excitement at her incapacitation—and was alarmed by his own reaction.
It was a predatory instinct, stirred in some distant evolutionary remnant of his mind.
The part of his genetic heritage that had once savored domination over prey.
A corner of his libido that he had long since sought to civilize into submission.
He felt shame, for a moment, at discovering the thoughts—not even thoughts, the impulses that were stirred by her helplessness.
He tried to suppress the instinct, to deny it.
He shook his head and looked away, attempting to bring himself to his senses—but, again as though she could read his mind, she said simply, quietly, “It’s okay. ”
Heat spread through his chest. Without even being aware of what he was doing, he stepped forward into the ritual circle. Approaching her.
The soft hum of the magic persisted, and the glow of the metals cast flickering golden light across her features, making her skin look ethereal.
He pondered her face more closely than he ever had before, her expression a study in contradiction.
There was joy at their success alongside terror at what they had done.
There was pride in her work, and power, alongside the natural, inevitable fear response of being physically captive.
But there was something else that burned even more brightly.
Desire. He could see it nakedly in her eyes, and he knew exactly what it was, unmistakably, because it was pitched in exact proportion to his own, which was growing by the second.
He fought to keep his expression restrained, not to betray what was happening inside him, even as it felt like a tether connected her body to his and was reeling him in.
This was not the force of magic, but of…what? Biology and psychology and chemistry in some blend that could not be untangled, that had not had a hold on him like this since he was a much younger man. A more foolish one. He was not about to abandon himself, to lose his senses, to succumb.
Yet he could not bring himself to retreat, either. He enjoyed riding the edge of this feeling.
As he strode across the platform, he savored how every step that brought him closer to her intensified the connection between them. Was this what it felt like to genuinely want someone? Had it been so long he had simply forgotten? Or perhaps this was unique to the circumstances…unique to her.
He stepped directly in front of Ellsbeth. “Give me your hands.” She lifted her arms and he grabbed her wrists, encircling them tightly, feeling the softness of her skin under his fingertips, the delicacy of her bones.
Then he pulled her wrists apart, forcefully, and her hands separated as he overpowered her.
He held them a foot apart for a moment, and her arms shook with effort, resisting him involuntarily, fighting to press back into each other.
The moment he stopped pulling, her wrists snapped back together.
“Guess you’re stronger than me,” she said, and those few words flooded his brain with the primal urge to keep holding on to her wrists, to pull her closer to him.
But there was a lesson to teach. He let her wrists fall. “What did we just prove?”
“It’s internal,” she said, her voice hoarse. “The effect is on me, from within. As opposed to an external force pressing against me, from without.”
“Most likely the ritual is affecting your nervous system,” Rawlins said, keeping his voice level, acutely aware of their proximity, as he instructed her softly.
“Your somatic nervous system. But you’re blushing, Miss Storer, and your heart rate is increasing, which indicates?
” His voice was low. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for her to answer.