Chapter 18 Haïl Halant
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Ha?l Halant
As the necromancer Halant appeared in ?ernasti’s tavern, Levan stepped back into the shadows. He wanted to capture the violet-cloaked mage, of course, to bargain until the blood ran warm and vital through Lorissa Rezaran’s veins.
But first, he wanted only to observe.
Halant was one of the tallest people Levan—who himself towered over six foot—had ever seen in the flesh.
Kissing the boundary of seven feet, the necromancer was wiry and pin-straight, like a cathedral spire.
Coarsely curled black hair was cropped close to his scalp, and the severe hollows of his cheeks gave the impression his skull had been caved in and never properly repaired.
His hooded eyes were deep-set, dark as peach pits, with a heavy brow and a pair of emerald-rimmed glasses.
An unusual cinnabar wand with a narrow, pointed tip hung by his hip, leathery hand clenched around it.
“Ha?l Halant,” moaned the surviving Disciple, touching her thumb knuckle to her brow and dipping her head in a reverent half bow. Her greeting was thick with tears—and, Levan thought, a serrated edge of terror.
Around them, the tavern emptied of patrons sensing trouble. Only ?ernasti and the cheerfully oblivious lutist, who played with his eyes pressed shut, remained. Levan felt the tension emanating from Miret.
Halant strode toward the corpse, and the Disciple started negotiating in such dense Tarsan that Levan only garnered snippets. From those slices he pieced together that the Disciple’s proposals for her final bargain were retreading old ground, and the necromancer met her with stony silence.
Eventually, the Disciple pleaded, “Can’t you just tell me what you want?”
At last, Halant responded. “Ak tosar Djarelki vol av?lti cis.”
A true Disciple would already know.
He nudged at the bloodied pocketwatch with the pointed toe of his shoe.
“Where did you get this? I certainly did not give it to you. These belong only to those with an ülam Kasit in place—otherwise I would not have traveled so far to heed the call. It is rather tiresome, and rather risky, but I honor my final bargains. You, however, are a fraud.”
“I found it in an antique artifact shop. But I am a true Disciple.” She climbed to her feet, every inch of her body trembling.
“I see your vision. I know you bide your time on Nomaden, gathering strength in numbers, building your army from the devoted and the Risen. I know you’re building boats.
I know you plan to take Irisi first. I just do not know how anything I can offer will give you the jeweled throne you deserve. ”
All over the world, powerful mages covet thrones, Levan thought.
One of the inevitabilities of being born to a great power, to a rare magical classification: the sense that one must put it to good use.
Irisi was a fool’s target—a volcano-and-jewel-crusted island with intense fortifications—but Halant seemed arrogant enough to believe a magicless army of the Risen could take it.
“Küratstula,” Halant hissed, an ugly slur insulting her intelligence. “You cannot slot those pieces together?”
The Disciple lifted her chin, a dried smear of amber honeywine around her mouth. “I’ll join you on Nomaden, then. We both will. Leave our lives behind and devote ourselves to your cause.”
Something sickly, almost grotesque passed over Halant’s face. A gargoyle imitating empathy. “You truly love your friend.”
“My sister.”
Some ancient part of Levan felt a sharp twinge of remorse, a remnant of the version of him who’d once been loved by his own brother.
“Very well.” With a curdled grin, Halant extended the sharp tip of his cinnabar wand. “ülam Kasit.”
The Disciple lifted her own, and as the jagged end of Halant’s pierced the tip, the simple pine wand whimpered in pain. “ülam Kasit,” she whispered. “Mar?ta-vel, mar?ta-vel.” Thank you, thank you.
Halant withdrew his wand then pointed it blandly down at the corpse on the ground. “Avi vicerak.”
One incantation was all it took.
The dead Disciple bucked, spine arched, eyes peeling wide, air gasped into her lungs.
Her sister sank to her knees and wept.
Levan thought bitterly of all the thousands of times he had uttered ans visseran to no effect.
All the times he sat beside the body of his mother and sobbed into her cloak.
All the times he felt small and sad and helpless, all the times he questioned why he bothered to exist at all if he could not do this one thing.
The surge of emotion ushered him from the shadows, wand raised.
“Sen debilitan.”
The spell flew ninety degrees west of target, sinking into ?ernasti’s unsuspecting chest. The tavern keeper stood rigid, immobilized, an expression of shock and outrage hewn into his paralyzed face.
Hells, Levan cursed.
Magic had disobeyed him again.
Halant turned on his heel with a swish of violet cloak, peach-pit eyes narrowing to knife slits. “Siv curida.”
Vicious shards of magic shot in Levan’s direction. Levan jumped and swiveled, landing on his feet with catlike elegance. The shards buried themselves in a support beam, drilling small, deep holes that sizzled and smoked.
A filthy Tarsan curse, designed to kill—but not in the clean, painless manner of ammorten. Halant not only wanted him dead, but wanted him to suffer, wanted him to squirm long enough to be questioned.
More shards flew in Levan’s direction, and he spun and dodged and ducked with effortless speed, grateful for the combat training Miret had instilled in him, grateful he did not rely on magic as the only source of power.
Behind Levan, the tavern wall was a hissing, perforated mess. Miret sought refuge under the table and threw up a shield, a fundamental pacifist even when his kin was in peril.
“Siv ammovra,” Halant snapped, impatient enough for the cleanest killing curse now.
Levan lifted a squat table by the legs, using its top to absorb the curse before tossing it to one side. “Sen vertigloran.”
As he cast the fresh magic, the enchanted hold on ?ernasti dropped. But instead of a disorientation curse, Levan’s wand spat out a stream of colored light, spiraling and squealing through the air like a firework.
Magic was taunting him.
Behind the bar, ?ernasti muttered a slew of incantations. A coil of blackened rope dropped from the rank ceiling, hanging like a levitating serpent as ?ernasti looked between Halant and Levan—as though deciding who to lasso.
In the moment of hesitation, Halant seemed to realize none of this was worth the hassle and lifted his needle-sharp wand to his mouth.
“Pivar—”
The necromancer was about to portari back to Nomaden.
Hells, how was he powerful enough for two thousand-mile trips and a resurrection within a quarter hour without replenishment?
Levan charged like a bull, lowering his head and slamming into the taller mage’s ribs.
Halant, willowy as he was, crumpled beneath the sheer force of it.
The cinnabar wand clattered across the sticky floor.
Levan wrestled and wrangled the other mage’s thrashing limbs until he was straddling him in a way Harrow might envy.
Pointing his wand at Halant’s throat, Levan had no idea what to do. Perhaps he might still be able to compel.
“You’re coming with me,” he said lowly. “Do you understand?”
Nod your head.
Halant instead began to hum the national anthem of Laudon, making flatulent noises every third syllable.
The riding crop of dread really struck Levan then. He was supposed to be the most powerful mage in the Bloodmoons, in Atherin entire.
Halant twisted suddenly, reaching for his cinnabar wand. His fingertips almost grazed it when a scuffed brown leather boot stamped down on his wrist.
Miret bent to retrieve the necromancer’s wand, tucking it behind his brown belt with a disapproving sigh. “What now, Levan?”
All at once, the Disciples broke into a sprint, aiming straight for Levan as though to topple him from their deity, to prove their loyalty once and for all.
Gritting his jaw and hoping for the best, Levan grabbed Miret by the bony ankle and muttered, “Portari, Rezaran crypt.”
The tavern winked out around them, folding itself into a canvas of blinding white, a swooping in the stomach, a rush in the head, and then they were elsewhere.
Elsewhere—but not the designated crypt.
They arrived in the alley where Levan and Saffron had met for the first time, where she’d found him repeatedly severing and reattaching the hand of an innocent Brewer, where he’d caught sight of her white-blond curls and known that she was the mage Harrow’s prophecy had foreseen.
Where his world had rearranged itself in a single moment.
Levan and Halant landed awkwardly, the former still straddling the latter but at an odd angle, giving the necromancer purchase to roll free.
Halant lunged for Miret, who still had his cinnabar wand.
Levan knocked out the necromancer with a sharp right hook to the temple, and Halant crumpled to the cobbled ground.
Miret sighed a long-suffering sigh. “You have a rather fluid interpretation of no unnecessary bloodshed.”
At this, Levan bristled. Everything about this night was gritty, wrong, like sand beneath his skin. “I don’t take orders from you, Miret.”
Miret, who had never been wounded by something so trivial as a harsh tone, simply smiled. “Yet you care what I think. And I’d like it to be known that I do not approve.”
Levan fought the urge to scowl like a sullen youth.
“Your magic is disobeying you.” The scholar leaned against a creamstone wall still smattered with dried blood. “What did you do, mil?”
Seeing no reason to lie to the one person who might be able to help, Levan’s lips pressed into a flat line. “Abolar. My mother’s old wand.”
“Ah. Dare I ask why?”
“Didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands. And now I know my mother won’t be able to use it once she’s Risen…”
“You did not heed the cautionary tales of what happens to those who kill a wand?”
“I thought it was little more than peasant folklore.”
“The arrogance.”
“You dismissed Halant’s existence as folklore mere minutes ago.”
“Once you reach my age, you earn the right to practice blatant and audacious hypocrisy.”
Levan rested back on his haunches. “Is there a way to mend my relationship with magic?”
“It will be long, slow. A matter of regaining its trust.”
A bridge rebuilt stone by stone. Levan swallowed hard. Jerking his head at Halant, he said, “Help me carry him to the crypt.”
After a few moments, Miret withdrew the necromancer’s wand from his waistband and tossed it on the ground next to Levan.
“No, I won’t.”
And Levan’s closest confidant—the only thing resembling family he had left—turned and walked away.