Chained Adept Read online

  He turned to the Horsemaster. “What did he look like?”

  “I don’t know—ordinary. Um, I remember one eye drooped a little lower than the other.”

  “Menbyede, from the mirror,” Chang said. “Maybe you’re right, Zandaril-chi. Maybe this is a big bluff.”

  Penrys watched him drop into intense consideration, all the frustrated anger forgotten. No one moved, hoping to avoid notice. She tried to yawn surreptitiously, her mind on the bedroll Hing Ganau had fetched for her, back in Zandaril’s tent near his wagon. I’m not used to riding all day like this.

  Chang turned back to her. “You think he was a wizard. Like Zandaril.”

  “No, not like Zandaril. Like one of the Collegium,” she said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “I haven’t met other Zannib but the books said, and Zandaril’s like that, too, that the Zannib wizards are famous specialists in beolrys, the mind-skills. The Ellech are more interested in raunarys, the thing-skills, controlling physical objects.”

  Chang stared at her blankly.

  “Moving things, binding things, destroying things.” In exasperation, she continued. “That’s why there are devices, to amplify or control that. It’s what much of the Collegium is for, the study and development of that craft. Anyway, it leaves a different flavor in the mind, as a baker and a brewer do, though both are concerned with the transformation of grain using yeast.”

  In the silence that followed, she seized her opportunity. “I want to examine that mirror. Maybe it can tell me something.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “Are you saying this Rasesni was trained at the Collegium?” Zandaril asked Penrys as he led the way to an armory wagon, one of several that housed the squadron’s inventory of weapons. The mirror was stored there, to take advantage of the guards already in place.

  “No, I don’t know that,” she said. “There may be many places where similar work is done.”

  “Skill, blood, and power,” Zandaril muttered. At Penrys’s look, he explained. “Magic comes in different forms and is born in blood. In bloodlines it lives and sometimes skips generations, like hooded eyes or notable noses.”

  She nodded.

  “Skill can be learned,” he said. “Anyone with magic can better their skills. But power, well, that is partly inborn.”

  “And partly not,” Penrys said. “There are ways to get more power.”

  “And you are a maker of devices. You know something of how that can be done,” he said.

  “Yes, I do.” She eyed him, sideways. “And you do not?”

  How could he explain to her?

  “It’s not right, to do this. Not… proper.” He could see she didn’t understand. “Good people don’t…”

  He cleared his throat and tried again. “The little gods, the lud, would not…”

  “Approve,” she suggested.

  He detected an odd note in her voice. They walked on carefully through the darkened camp, where most of the fires burned low and the lights in the tents were extinguished. An occasional touch of smoke drifted their way.

  “You know,” she said, at last, “the Collegium would almost agree with you. Except that they would consider the line to be drawn immediately after the inventions of the prior generation. It’s only advancement from that point that they consider… unsanctioned.”

  This time the bitterness in her voice was clear.

  “Yes, I make devices, I spent much of my time there learning how to do that. I’m sorry if it offends you.”

  I’m not the one offended. “It’s not my affair,” he told her.

  She made no reply.

  “Truly, it is not. We of the Zannib do not do this, but other people have other gods.”

  He glanced at her. Who are her gods, if she can remember nothing? Do they remember her?

  He pointed to the guard walking a path around a group of wagons, drawn together side-by-side. “There, that’s the wagon where they put the mirror. Can you feel it?”

  Penrys glanced at the wagon, its high wooden walls topped by a white covering looming out of the darkness in the distance. If not for the watch-fires nearby, she wouldn’t have been able to make it out. She noticed that the fires burned inside the guard’s circuit, so that his eyesight looking outward was not affected. The watchman silhouetted against the fire-light hesitated and then came to a stop to wait for them as he saw them headed his way. She couldn’t make out his back-lit features.

  She checked to see if the mirror was detectable, slowing down as she concentrated, and Zandaril matched her pace. She scanned the wagon for a device’s power-stone, trying to see it clearly through all the iron and other metals stored there. Yes, there it was—a faint throb with an odd signature. What is that? What does that remind me of?

  Cocking her head as she took another step, she poked further into it, and it vanished. Her instant of puzzlement was overwhelmed by the punch of air that knocked her down and tumbled her backwards. In the confusion, she glimpsed Zandaril rolling until he fetched up hard against the wheel of the wagon they had just passed. What happened? Why can’t I hear anything?

  Time seemed to slow. She stopped moving, having ended up on her right side facing what was left of the armory wagons. The one she’d been examining was gone, utterly. A rain of objects flew through the air towards her. She tried to lift her arms to cover her head, but it took far too long. All around her she saw them hit the ground, some bouncing, and some sticking—fragments of swords, unidentifiable crushed metal, in silence, like a dream. Something heavy thumped her on the left shoulder and her arm went numb.

  In the deathly stillness, she saw people running through the fire-lit darkness, flickering in and out of the dusty air. Their mouths were open, as if they were shouting. Where’s the guard? With her good arm she groped the ground, trying to brace herself to stand up, but she was clumsy and couldn’t seem to organize herself.

  She gave up and looked for Zandaril again. He wasn’t moving. Leaning on her right arm, she hitched her way on her side in his direction, pulling herself through the trampled grass. She felt the juices sticking to her bare arm. Why is my arm bare? People ran past and ignored her. It was strange to see so much activity all around, and not hear a thing, not even her own heartbeat. Her left arm didn’t hurt, but it flopped around loosely in a way that worried her, distantly. She avoided looking at it.

  One thing at a time. Let’s find out if he’s alive. She blinked and felt tears trying to wash the dust out of her eyes. Come on, it’s not that far. Is he breathing?

  She started to bespeak him, to check on him, but stopped. I shouldn’t do that. That puzzled her. Why not? Something inside told her, it went wrong last time. She didn’t understand why she hesitated, but didn’t let it stop her from dragging herself closer to the wheel where Zandaril lay, crumpled sideways on the ground.

  She reached one out-flung foot, stocking-clad. Why was he out here without his boots? The other leg was still shod, and she couldn’t make sense of that. She glanced at her own feet. Still have my own shoes. That’s good.

  She pulled herself up alongside him and leaned on the wheel next to his body. Skin to skin should be safe. She held her right hand up in front of her face, surprised at how filthy it was, clods of dirt and bits of grass smeared everywhere. Reaching over her left side, averting her eyes from whatever was wrong there, she laid it along his throat.

  It pulsed, and she could feel the shallow breaths. Good. She lay back against the wheel to rest. I think I’ll just sit here a while and see if things get any better.

  From a great distance away, she could hear a dull wash of undifferentiated noise. She half-closed her eyes and let her vision blur to match it—the shadows and movements were restful, undemanding.

  CHAPTER 8

  “There they are.”

  Penrys flinched as her body was jostled. Her left shoulder throbbed,

  “What about him? Is he alive?” A woman’s voice, this time.

  They were
talking about Zandaril. She opened her eyes and threw her right arm over him protectively. Someone gently pried it away and told her, “He’ll be fine. We’ll take care of him.”

  She clutched her injured shoulder instead and tried to make out who it was, but the face was unfamiliar.

  “Let me see,” the woman said, and pulled her hand away again. The man accompanying her raised his torch closer for light, and she was fascinated for a moment by the warmth and the busy movement of the flame. She inhaled sharply as the fingers probed, and then exhaled in relief when they stopped.

  “Dislocated,” the woman commented to the torch-bearer. She grabbed Penrys’s wrist and twisted the whole arm until, with a dull snap, it settled into place, almost before Penrys could exhale from her sharp and surprised gasp.

  “Let’s get it in a sling for now.” She pulled a cloth from the satchel slung over her shoulder and folded it into a large triangle. Then she bent Penrys’s left arm at the elbow and cradled it in the cloth, slipping the ends around her neck and knotting them just below her right collarbone.

  “What about the Zan?” her companion asked.

  “I can’t find anything ’sides a knot on the head. He’s lucky he wore a turban. We’ll have to let him sleep it off, and set a watch in case it gets worse.”

  Penrys cleared her throat. “What happened?” Her words sounded slurred to her.

  “Well, we don’t really know, yet. Something destroyed one of the armory wagons.”

  “I remember.” She thought about it a moment. There was a question she wanted to ask, from before. “What happened to the guard?”

  The woman’s lips thinned. “Not much of him left, I’m afraid.”

  Penrys swallowed.

  The doctor continued. “We’re still finding people like you and fixing them up. Maybe a dozen dead, so far.”

  The mirror. I was looking for the device. That’s what set it off.

  Dead, a dozen dead. I caused that.

  Her stomach clenched, and she leaned over to her right and retched onto the ground. The woman held her forehead until she was done.

  “Get me up,” she said, flailing with her right arm. “I have to speak with Chang.”

  “I don’t have time to waste on this.” The doctor stood up and closed her satchel.

  “It’s important,” Penrys insisted, and the doctor threw up her hands.

  “Stay here. I’ll send word,” she said.

  The man with the torch had waved a couple of men and a stretcher over for Zandaril, and they helped haul her up and steady her as she limped over to a camp seat one of them found. She watched them carry the Zan away and hoped for the best.

  She sat on her flimsy support and endured the dizziness, trying not to tumble off of it. Waves of nausea wracked her, and she wished for a canteen, anything to take the taste away. She bent her head and concentrated on staying awake and controlling her stomach, staring at the grass in front of her.

  Eventually, a pair of black boots intruded into her view. They were no longer highly polished.

  She blinked and lifted her head.

  Commander Chang loomed above her, his face smeared with soot. Several men with grim expressions trailed behind him.

  “How’s the Zan?” he asked.

  “They took him away somewhere, with a bump on his head,” she said.

  He glanced at her sling without comment, and she shivered.

  “Well?”

  “I think I know what happened,” she said, her voice low.

  Chang waited.

  “I checked on the mirror while we were approaching. From outside the wagon. It was a device. They didn’t just project through it last night—the mirror itself did some of the work.”

  She cleared her throat. “Devices use power. When my mind touched it, the power released, all at once, like an overloaded spring.”

  She looked down again. “That’s not supposed to happen.”

  “It was a trap,” Chang suggested. “For our wizard.”

  “That’s what I think.” She picked at her guilt again. “How many dead?”

  “Too many,” he said, and she winced. He paused for a moment. “But it was my mirror. Could you tell when it was tampered with?”

  “I never got a good look at it. Could have been a long time ago.”

  “Or it could have been by our Rasesni spy, now gone. Yes?”

  She nodded. “Why not? If he was undisturbed, if he had tools and knowledge, sure, he could’ve done it recently. It’s not a device I know, but they all have similarities.”

  She shivered again.

  He raised his head and turned to one of his staff. “Tatgomju, have someone get her to bed in the Zan’s tent. There’s still work to be done here.”

  Penrys didn’t get a good look at the trooper who helped her hobble back towards Zandaril’s wagon and tent. Her surroundings seemed to fade in and out as they made the slow journey, and she gave all her attention to not falling down. When he stopped moving she lifted her head, surprised to find their tent in front of her, its flap open and a cresset burning in front of it.

  “Is this the place?” he asked her.

  “Yes,” she croaked.

  “No one’s here. D’ya need help?” He peered at her more closely. “You don’t look so good.”

  All she wanted was to collapse. “You should get back to them. I’ll be fine, thanks.”

  He looked at her dubiously, then nodded to her and turned away to jog back toward the disaster. She watched blearily as he vanished.

  She swiveled her heavy head back to the beckoning darkness of the tent’s interior and shuffled carefully inside, aiming for the nearest bedroll on the ground. She hadn’t slept there the night before, and she wasn’t sure if any of the bedrolls were hers, or even if there were enough of them. Doesn’t matter—Zandaril’s somewhere else.

  Mindful of her injured shoulder, she lowered herself carefully onto the closest bedding and rolled over on her back, shoes and all. The sudden change of posture dizzied her and she closed her eyes to recoup, just for a moment.

  Someone passed a cool, wet cloth over Penrys’s face, and she blinked.

  Hing Ganau sat beside her, his splinted leg stretched out to the side. He’d placed a bowl on the ground next to him, and kept up a low, running monologue as he worked.

  “They fetch me to keep watch on him, and I do that, and then he wants to know where the other one is, and nobody knows, and he’s out again. And the healers won’t talk to me, too busy, they say, go away, they say, ask someone else, they say. And nobody knows what’s happened.”

  He caught her looking at him, but carried on as if nothing had changed.

  “And I come back here to get clothing for him—and what became of his boot, I’d like to know—and look who’s lying on his bed like a cuckoo in a nest where she don’t belong, in her dirt and her rags.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, and he gave it an extra-heavy swipe that shut it again.

  “And how did she get here, all the long way, I wonder? She never walked it, like that.”

  She nodded her head carefully, and watched his face. He was older than she’d realized, his face wizened and his hair going gray.

  “I had help,” she whispered.

  “‘Help,’ she says. Didn’t do much for her, did they, just tied a scrap around her neck and called it done.”

  “Not high priority,” she croaked, and he snorted in response.

  He reached behind him and brought out a flask. He helped her lift her head and monitored the two careful sips she took. Whatever it was, it burned all the way down.

  It tasted of peaches, somewhere underneath the fire, and the aftertaste in her mouth was an improvement.

  “How is he?” she asked, choking on her dry throat.

  “Talking, is she, and won’t wait for some good, fresh water.”

  He clambered up and fetched a stoneware pitcher and a cup. He sat himself down again next to her and poured out the water. She could
smell the moisture of it and tried to rouse herself enough to reach for it, but he gently batted her hand down and once again helped her lift her head.

  “Slowly, now—I don’t want to be seeing it again, coming back up.”

  She’d thought she could drain the cup easily, but after making it halfway she lost the energy, and he let her slip down again.

  “All right, then, she’s been a good girl. How is he, she wants to know? The Zan’s got a bump like an egg on the back of his head, is how he is, so he don’t stay awake for long, but I’ve seen the like before. He’ll have a headache like a signal drum for a couple of days, no worse. Bad enough, he’ll think it.”

  Hing rinsed out his cloth.

  “How many killed?” she asked, trying to keep her voice steady.

  “Not saying yet, are they, and some of the survivors ain’t likely to. Survive. A mess, it is. Don’t know if we’ll march tomorrow or not. Decision in the morning, they say.”

  All this time, he’d been continuing the work with the wet cloth. He’d ripped off the rags of her shirt, wiping her down impersonally afterward, like a horse. For all his muttering, he’d refastened the sling on her left arm after giving the bruises a thorough look.

  It felt wonderful to have her face and hands clean. She couldn’t bring herself to care about the impropriety of her clothing or, rather, the lack of it. She groped up to her neck and felt the chain. Still there.

  “Weren’t you going to have clothes for me?” she wondered, sleepily.

  “And a good thing you weren’t wearing them yet, or I’d have to fetch new ones, wouldn’t I. Never you mind, you won’t need them tonight at any rate.”

  She realized her shoes were off, and she felt the blankets pulled up over her, the sheet beneath them smooth against her bare skin.

  “Don’t you stir, now,” he said to her, looking down sternly.

  She smiled faintly. Small chance of that.

  CHAPTER 9

  “Sixteen dead—two of them afterward—and another eight wounded badly enough to be incapacitated,” Penrys said.

  “I’d rather be up than lying here like a lump.” Zandaril glowered at her from his cot at the far end of the healers’ tent, set up in a cross of five squares, like the command tent. He transparently envied her relative mobility. Without his turban, his black hair hung in loose curls to the line of his jaw.