Chapter 55 The Wardholder #2
A ward to prevent the world’s end.
So she knew how critical her role was. She hadn’t just inherited a task that her family had long since forgotten the purpose of. She didn’t resent the duty that cost her her magic, which would make it all the more difficult to convince her to betray it.
“If I did kill you now, would the ward fall?” Saffron asked. “Or do you have children of your own also upholding it?”
At the very mention of the word children, the woman shook her head so passionately that Levan had to peel back the blade so as not to cut her.
He didn’t bother to translate, but from context—and the recognition of the word fante, for girl—Saffron would have guessed her to be pleading: “Please, not my girl—please. Anything, I’ll give you anything. ”
“Anything,” Saffron said, barely recognizing the cool timbre of her own voice. “So you’ll let the ward drop? Let the world end?”
“Oul, oul, abien-cor.”
Yes, yes, of course.
How many parents would let the world end to save their children?
“And how do I know you won’t recast the ward when we leave?”
The woman spoke, and Levan translated, a darkness to his tone, a bitter bite to the edges of his words. “ ‘Take my tongue if you must. Just leave my daughter alone.’ ”
Doubt and shame warred in Saffron’s mind, in her heart. She knew that to get to the Fifth Prophecy, she’d have to do this. Kill or maim, threaten or hog-tie.
And yet the woman seemed too ready to give up the ward, especially when she had acknowledged the weight of her duty.
Was she one of many? Did she know that her lowering of the ward spell would not make Saffron any more likely to breach the cave’s entrance? Were there enough mages still loyal to Sarcane after a thousand years to uphold it without her?
A tall order—most councils and Crowns struggled to persuade enough mages to donate their wells to important defenses, let alone uphold a legacy ward with no clear purpose.
“Are there others?” Saffron kept her wand resting on the outer bone of the woman’s wrist. “If you let it fall, as does your daughter, will the ward still hold?”
“ ‘I don’t even know what the ward protects, let alone how many wells might be required to guard it,’ ” Levan translated.
“You said it prevented the world’s end.”
The woman’s slate eyes glistened in the moonlight, a smear of spit drying across her chin.
“ ‘So my family legend says.’ ”
Saffron searched the depths of this woman’s gaze for any trace of a lie. “You don’t have any idea what might hide inside?”
The woman’s breathing was still ragged as she replied, in warped Vallish, “I always thought it might have something to do with the Sordai.”
This caught Saffron by surprise. “The ancient foe Parlin defeated?”
Little was known about the creatures of old, other than that Parlin the Great had carved the first wand from the Elm of Eternity (giving the name to Elming, the third day of the week) in order to defeat them (giving the name to Sording, the fifth day of the week).
Besides the occasional flinging of the word as an insult to a particularly ghoulish mage—what an absolute Sordai—Saffron had never heard the name used in any real context.
“Parlin lived a thousand years ago, did he not?”
“Yes. He did.” Saffron shook away the curious disquiet at the mention of the Sordai—the cave concealed a relic wand, not an ancient demon foe. “After you lower the ward, I don’t need to take your tongue. Only your wand. But first, reach out to your daughter. Tell her to drop her ward.”
The woman nodded, and Saffron held the tip of the aspen wand to their captive’s dry, cracked lips.
“En vorcier, Ary Archatel.”
“Imera?” came a soft feminine voice. Mother?
The woman fixed Saffron with a look of vitriol so defiant and pure that it sank into her like venom. In thick Bellandrian, she muttered something that made Levan’s face harden.
“ ‘Don’t let the ward drop. Find your father and run. I love you.’ ”
The woman closed her eyes and murmured a prayer, a litany that sounded Augurest in nature, though she didn’t wear the shaven head or tattooed eyelids of the truly devout. She crossed her wrists into an X—a northern symbol of power and inner strength—and pressed them over her heart.
She expected to die for her treachery, but Saffron was not expecting to have to kill her. She’d offered the woman leniency in exchange for a fallen ward, believed the woman would take it. Now her bluff was called.
And Saffron did not want to take an innocent life.
If Saffron killed Archatel, her wards would fall. But she’d told her daughter and daughter’s father to run, which meant there were still at least two active wardholders protecting the cave. Would Levan be able to overpower them with exuan when his magic was so compromised?
She found her gaze drifting to Levan’s shredding blue stare, silently asking him for guidance.
“She’s a witness,” he said softly. A death sentence.
Saffron’s lungs felt like bruises. “Would you?”
A nod, small and self-loathing.