LITMIR.BIZ

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that died even as they fell to the earth, and the globe was no more.

      “How—”

      Naramala did not finish her question, but immediately began to mutter again, building another spell. Colrean watched her intently, trying to read her lips, to work out which memory-hooks she was using in order to anticipate her casting. A few seconds after she started, he began as well, calling power as he sketched an outline in front of himself in the air. Smoke trailed from his fingers, lines of lurid too-white smoke that he drew across and up and down, weaving the smoke together to make a solid shield.

      Colrean finished a scant second before Naramala unleashed an incinerating bolt of power from her staff, of such strength it blew his shield of smoke apart and struck him full on the chest, flames licking over his entire body. But the shield had almost worked, for the flames died even as they struck. Though blackened and shocked, Colrean was hardly burned.

      Naramala shrieked in frustration as she saw he still lived, though he had fallen to one knee and was blinking away soot. Raising her staff, she ran forward, clearly intent on delivering a killing blow of both magical and physical force—a favored tactic of the most brutal wizards when their opponents were temporarily stunned.

      Colrean raised his hand and called more magic into it, but he was dazed and could not shape it, could not get his ashen tongue to utter a memory-hook, and then Naramala was in front of him, her staff blazing with power, and she raised herself up and—

      The rowan struck first. Two branches wound around the staff and plucked it from her grasp, even as another forked branch closed around the wizard’s neck. Lifting her high, yet another branch secured her legs, and then, just as a farmer might kill a chicken, the rowan broke Naramala’s neck and threw her down upon the ground.

      The wizard’s arms twitched. Her heels drummed, and a terrible inhuman clicking sound emanated from her throat. Then she was still.

      Colrean flinched as the rowan threw the wizard’s staff down next to her body. Coughing up soot, he groaned and leaned back against the tree, stretching out his legs. The wound in his left foot had opened again, the bandage blown off. His right boot had black-rimmed burn holes and scorch marks all over it, as did his breeches, and through the holes he could see the sheen of his narwhal-horn peg leg, and the shine of the gold bands that wound around the horn from tip to base.

      The Islanders also had wizards, but they did not carry their staves openly.

      Colrean looked across at Naramala’s body and then over at the Corner Post, looming dark against the lighter sky. The bronze foot of the staff high up seemed to wink in the starlight. Colrean stared at it and became certain of something he had begun to suspect.

      “Come out!” called Colrean, his voice unsteady. There were tears in his eyes, tears running down his cheeks, making trails through the layer of soot. They were for Naramala, as he had once thought she was, and for his younger, foolish self, and because he was hurt and weakened, and the night was still not done.

      “Come out!”

      The staff in the stone shifted against the backdrop of stars, slanting down. As it moved, a line of light sprang up behind it, so bright that Colrean had to duck his head, put his chin against his chest, and cover his face with his forearm. Even shielded so, and with his eyes tightly shut, it was almost unbearably bright.

      The light ebbed. Colrean risked a glimpse, raising his arm a little. There was a figure stepping down from the Corner Post—from inside the Corner Post—lit from behind by a softer light, as if deep within the stone there was sunshine. The silhouette was almost a caricature of a wizard, with the pointed, broad-brimmed hat, the trailing sleeves, the staff as tall as its bearer.

      “Verashe,” said Colrean, naming the wizard as she came toward him, now rounded and real under the moon and stars, not a shadowed shape backlit by the strange illumination from the stone, a light that was already fading. “Grand Wizard.”

      “Coltreen,” said the wizard mildly. She was very old, but not stooped. Still taller than Colrean, straight-backed and imposing. Her face was lined and thin, but her green eyes sharp as ever. Her long hair, once red, was pale with time and tied back under her hat, save for one slight wisp, which was escaping above her left ear. “Or Colrean, as I believe you call yourself now.”

      She bowed her head to the rowan as Colrean had done, if not so deeply. A greeting of equals, or those long familiar.

      “So you set your snare, and have caught two unbound wizards,” said Colrean bitterly. He lifted himself against the trunk of the rowan, trying to sit more upright, and winced as new pains made themselves felt.

      “I did not even know you were in these parts,” replied Verashe. “Not until I came here, at least, and by then matters were already in train.”

      “So the lure was for Naramala alone?” asked Colrean wearily. “Did you expect the Grannoch too?”

      “I was not sure what might come,” answered the Grand Wizard. She knelt down at Colrean’s side and ran her fingers over the sole of his foot, once again stemming the flow of blood with magic and doing something else that vanquished the pain. A curious thing to do for a condemned man, thought Colrean, and a small spark of hope grew inside him.

      “I did try to ensure Naramala would be foremost of the wizards, since it was well past time her ambitions should be thwarted.”

      “You knew she had evaded the oath?”

      “Of course,” replied Verashe. She sighed. “Almost every class has someone like Naramala, certain of their own cleverness and destiny. And the oath, though robust, cannot hold against continued use of blood magic and human sacrifice. She killed Cateran and Lieros too, you know, and quite a number of beggars and the like—those she believed would not be readily missed. All the while thinking herself unobserved.”

      Colrean wiped his eyes and pretended no new tears brimmed there. Cateran and Lieros had been fellow students too. He remembered first meeting them, brimful with the joy of learning magic. They had both come to their powers unexpectedly, unbelieving they had won places at the university in Pran, foremost of the schools of wizardry.

      Verashe ran her index finger from one burned hole in Colrean’s breeches to another, splitting the cloth all along the leg, to completely expose the limb made of gold-banded narwhal horn. In addition to the gold, the horn was deeply etched along the whorls with scenes of ships and the sea, and set with tiny pearls and pieces of amber.

      “I have only seen one such … staff … before,” mused Verashe. “A wizard called Sissishuram studied with us one summer, it must be thirty years ago now. Though her staff took the place of her left arm from the elbow, and ended in the most vicious hook.”

      “Sissishuram was my master,” said Colrean. “She remembered you, and told me I was a fool to risk coming back. Verashe will brook no unbound wizard, she said. Stay with us, we who are free upon the sea.”

      Verashe stood up and walked across to look down upon Naramala’s body, and the staff next to it.

      “How did you go within the stone?” asked Colrean. “What spell?”

      Verashe didn’t answer him, instead picking up Naramala’s fallen staff, so she held one in each hand.

      “I am overcurious for a man about to die, I suppose,” said Colrean. He laughed, a short laugh that ended almost with a sob. “Stupid of me, I suppose. To want to know such a thing now.”

      “Are you sure you will not come back to Pran? The oath is not so terrible for someone who has no desire for power.”

      “It is not the oath alone,” replied Colrean slowly. He looked up at the sky above, so vast with stars, the moon hanging in the corner. There were clouds drifting across from the west now, doubtless bringing rain. All the small sounds had come back, and the westerly breeze that had sprung up to bring the clouds was steadily strengthening, taking away the stench of sudden death as easily as it flung barley chaff across the field. He thought of the three villages beyond the commons to north,

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