44. Zarek
Zarek
IT’S NEVER EASY
Someone is walking behind me.
I hold my breath, listening. Trying to identify the click of those boots. How far are they? What direction are they moving?
The motion stops. Someone makes a sound in the back of their throat, almost like a laugh. I inhale slowly, then exhale.
“You aren’t fooling anyone,” a voice says softly, in a strange, clipped accent.
My body feels cold. Slowly, I try to lift my arm, expecting the tug of ropes around my wrists.
The ropes are gone. My eyes snap open, staring at my arm.
No ropes. I’m on something soft. A couch? A bed? The room comes slowly into focus. It’s enormous, with a high ceiling and tall windows. The sky beyond is a delicate gray; it’s either very early, or very late.
The drapes framing those windows look familiar. Hells, the windows look familiar.
“Vsenrog,” I mutter.
“Indeed.”
I turn. My body feels heavy, like there’s a weight on my chest. Several long, wooden tables are pressed against the wall behind me, making one massive wooden shelf filled with various strange devices. Large glass decanters, coils of metal, blocks of wood and iron.
I shift on the couch, trying to see where the voice came from. Boots click on the floor, and the man comes into view.
No. Not a man.
My mouth goes dry.
“Varitan,” I say.
My hand drops to my waist, feeling for my dagger. It’s not there, of course. It hasn’t been there since Ethiria.
Varitan woke me up four times on the trip between Ethiria and Vsenrog, each time to force me to eat and drink by making various colorful threats against Lilias. Shitty, but effective.
At least I got to see her. I was covered with thick ropes that were bound tightly around my wrists and ankles, but I was next to my wife. She was still breathing.
Now the ropes are gone. And she’s gone too.
“Where is she?” I ask. My voice sounds pinched and rusty from disuse.
Varitan makes that strange sound again, like he’s imitating a laugh.
“You’re not going to get me to obey without her,” I say.
“Now, that’s simply not true,” Varitan replies.
He turns his back to me and fusses with something on the massive table. Anger twists inside my chest. He thinks so little of me that he shows me his back? If I had a blade—
But I don’t, of course. He made sure of that.
“I can bring her here to hurt her,” Varitan says casually, like he’s making plans for lunch. “Or, I can bring parts of her.”
I shiver. Varitan turns to face me, a strange expression on his face.
“Tell me,” he says, “do you think you would recognize your wife’s finger? Or her ear? Out of all the humans in this city, if I brought you, say, ten ears, do you think you could identify which one belonged to that particular woman?”
I feel like I’m going to throw up. I clench my jaw until the room stops spinning.
“It would be an interesting experiment,” Varitan finishes, before turning back to his table.
“What do you want?” I growl.
Varitan ignores me. He makes a strange, humming sound as he moves things around on the table. When he finally turns back to me, I’ve managed to sit up on the low couch. My feet are on the floor, my hands clutch the plush fabric cushion, and the beginning of a headache pulses behind my eyes.
“I want to learn what you can do,” Varitan finally says.
He’s staring at me like he might stare at a creature caught in a cage, a trapped wild beast that may still bite. Slowly, he pulls something to the table. A long silver chain. It hisses as he tugs it off the wood.
I flinch. My skin pulls tight, and the back of my throat turns bitter.
“You’ve seen this before,” Varitan says.
I nod. There’s not much sense in denying it.
“What can you do with this?” he asks.
“I don’t know what in the hells you’re—”
He thrusts forward, the chain hissing in his fist like a snake. Silver metal leaps toward me. I pull back, but I already know I won’t be fast enough. My body stiffens against the blow.
There’s a crack, like a clay pitcher dropped against a stone floor. The chain stops just before it hits my face, then falls limp in Varitan’s hand. Varitan raises an eyebrow. I have the unmistakable feeling that he’s calling me a liar.
I exhale, air leaving my lungs like I’ve just been punched. My gut pulls tight, and I curl forward. My pulse throbs in my temples. I feel strangely exhausted, like I’ve just run the length of the palace walls.
“It always takes a toll,” Varitan says. “The better you get, the easier it is. But.” He walks closer, pinning me down with his pale eyes. “It is never easy to wield magic.”
“I don’t know,” I gasp, “what you’re talking about.”
He’s faster this time.
The silver chain strikes like a viper, coming straight for my eyes. My skin pulls tight; my gut curls. There’s another loud crack.
The chain freezes in front of me. And then it falls to the ground.
I lean forward and vomit onto the stones. Varitan kicks the chain. It skids across the polished stone floor and comes to rest beneath the table.
Magic.
Magic is a bedtime story for children.
But that chain was going to hit me in the face. And it stopped when I wanted it to stop. My skin prickled, my body felt hot, and the chain fell to the floor.
Exactly where I wanted it to fall.
“H-How?” I stammer. “How did I—”
I can’t bring myself to say the word magic.
Varitan rolls his eyes like he’s bored already.
“Because you’re like me,” he drawls.
I wipe my mouth on my sleeve and shiver. The room spins and pulses around me. The first flashes of a blinding headache scream inside my skull.
“I’m not,” I say. It comes out as a thin, creaking protest, like a rusty gate squealing about being opened.
“Oh, please,” Varitan replies. “Do I need to hit you again?”
I don’t respond. He turns to me with a nasty smile.
“Tell me,” he says, “was your mother a whore?”
“I beg your pardon?” I snap.
“Was she abandoned? An orphan, perhaps?”
I open my mouth, then close it.
Because my mother was an orphan. My father said she came from the other side of the mountains, across the Vederill Pass. That the traders brought her and left her in Dungal.
My mother refused to talk about it. She said she didn’t remember anything before Dungal.
“Your ears,” Varitan continues. “They teased you about them when you were a child, didn’t they? All the other, normal children teased you.”
My jaw clenches. You’ll grow into them, my mother told me. It runs in the family, Petrys said. We all looked like you when we were little.
“And let me guess,” he continues. “You never have trouble lighting a fire? Or you’ve always been good with animals? Perhaps you’re a very fast healer?”
I don’t reply. Varitan makes a sound in the back of his throat.
“Elven ancestry,” he declares. “It’s the only reason humans are able to access magic at all.”
“That’s—”
I stop myself before I can say impossible. The silver chain glints under the table. The chain that should have hit me, twice, but that froze in midair instead.
“Indeed,” Varitan replies with a sniff. “It is quite disgusting. Humans will fuck anything, but most elves have standards. Still. Here you are.”
I swallow hard.
“All elves have magic,” Varitan continues, pacing in front of the long table. “Fire, animal handling, illusions, healing. It’s nothing special, really. But, some of us—”
He turns to me. His eyes flash in the light streaming through the massive windows.
“Magicians,” he says in a low, deep voice. “We hold the real power. We can manipulate the magic of others. Turn it into great and terrible things.”
My throat feels dry, and my chest is tight. I remember dust rising in the air as Laurance’s pathetic imitation of an army tumbled into the gaping black maw that had just opened in the middle of the battlefield.
“You’re saying I— I’m a—”
Varitan laughs, sharp and hard.
“Oh, stars, no,” he spits. “You’re just a human with some dull flicker of magic left over from an elf who couldn’t keep their legs closed. Like a mongrel a few generations removed from a purebred bitch.”
“So I’m not like you at all,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest. “Why not let me go, then?”
Varitan laughs again.
“Oh, you think you’re clever, do you?” He snorts. “You’re useful, human idiot. A dull flicker is better than nothing. Even a mongrel can be trained.”
He turns back to the table and waves his hands over the strange assortment of crap piled on the polished wood.
“Most of this is shit,” Varitan says, waving a hand at the table. “Stage dressing, you understand?”
Of course. He wouldn’t want Malrik to know what he really needed.
“Silver is what’s important,” Varitan continues. “Silver can hold magic. Magic that I will teach you to use. Are you still following me?”
I frown. I don’t want to give this asshole the satisfaction of a response.
“Obey me,” Varitan says in a voice that’s almost a growl, “and you’ll have power few have even dreamed of.”
I try to swallow. My mouth still feels dry, and my body is cold. Varitan’s boots click across the floor until he’s standing in front of me. He reaches down and grabs my chin in his long, cold fingers until I meet his eyes.
“Disobey me,” he says, “and I will hurt her. Badly.”
I shiver. He drops my face, then wipes his hand on his black cloak like he’s just touched something dirty.
“My last pupil had a smart mouth too,” Varitan says in an icy voice. “I cut out his eye.”
“Gods,” I whisper. “That’s lovely.”
“He is lovely,” Varitan says, with a strange look in his pale eyes. “He’s my son.”