Page 127 of Untempered
I shook my head again. I hated being the one to tell herno.“There’s a lot of types of magics in the world, Audrey. We say they’re either mages or they’re evil, but it’s more complicated than that. To the north over the seas, they use runes to summon their ancestors to advise them from beyond this world, and another group uses magic to transform their shape. Another has it woven into their words so when they speak, they can enthrall you. I’ve even heard of people raising the dead.”
“Blood magic,” she said dismissively.
“It works,” I reminded her, feeling the bite of steel against my palm. Wasn’t blood magic the reason I was here, having this conversation?
She stilled. In the light of dawn, there was so much compassion and grief on her face that it took all I had to stay sprawled in the chair under her gaze. “It’s okay,” I said, hoping it was true. “We’re both here through circumstance. That isn’t my point. There’s power in it.”
She went back to pacing, squeezing her hands rhythmically into fists. “It would make sense if it was elemental magic, though. The storm, the wind, that we saw. The wave it turned back, and the regrowth?”
I didn’t think growth was an elemental thing, but she knew more than me, so I let that go. “So how would we activate it?”
“It doesn’t say,” she said, throwing her hands up. “Anywhere I can find mention of it, it doesn’t say how toactually do it.”
“Huh.” I rubbed my palm against my jaw. “It’d make sense that’d be forbidden information. You thought of asking someone whose family’s lived here forever?”
She looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “My line isunbrokensince Barloc himself terrified my ancestor into allowing him into the keep, and then killed her family and gave her to his General.”
That sounded like pretty much what I expected from war, but I didn’t tell her that. Expected and acceptable were, after all, different. “How often would your ancestor have been allowed to visit the stone or tree? Find a family who wasn’t so closely watched as your own.”
She came to a complete halt, her expression flickering from joy to horror to humiliation and then back to joy. “By the One, it makes so much sense. I’m looking in the entirely wrong direction.”
“This direction taught you things,” I disagreed. “You exhausted it, so turn elsewhere and keep looking.”
She looked at me with so much gratitude that it made me feel a little uncomfortable. All I’d done was tell her she was wrong.
It seemed good things came from sayingno,too.
CHAPTERFIFTY
THOMAS
“And those that fall upholding the Word of the One will return to his keep in Velkyn, to live in grace and glory forever more.”
~ The Book of Bread and Salt
Every bone in my body ached, and I hoped it was because I was exhausted, but I wasn’t sure anymore. The stones beneath my feet were icy. I couldn’t imagine the keep ever feeling like home. It didn’t feel like prosperity, either. It felt like a tomb.
Odds looked good that I’d have company in a common grave, so that was a boon. I didn’t think I was cut out for a tomb.
I lifted my hand and rapped on the door. In the quiet that followed, I listened for sounds of stirring inside. The lady rose early. She’d see me.
The sound of dripping water made me glance down. I was soaking wet and filthy.
Wishing I’d changed clothes first, I was considering turning back to the barracks. Was the bathhouse still open? The door opened, though, and Chay met my eyes, his expression turning solemn as he looked at me. I doubted he’d shaved in days, and his hair was a disgrace. His boots, at least, were polished well. Swallowing advice that he didn’t want and probably didn’t need this moment, I nodded and let myself in.
Immediately, I noticed the lady’s pallor and the large pupils that were tell-tale signs of the disease firmly established. And the last hope I had plummeted.
Rose had gotten away, though. I stood away from her rugs, dripping on the stone, and somehow managed to say, “We’ve set up the hospital in the market square, my lady, as was ordered.”
“Thanking you,” she said, her eyes big and gentle and worried, like a wobbly-legged calf.
I braced myself and accepted it with a nod. “I need to report, my lady, that we were set upon by a group not wearing any colors. They killed most of the staff and those who fought back, and made off with the food, medicines, our herbalist, and a number of carts.” I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “We haven’t the men to retrieve them.” I’d gone to Kaelson first to confirm what I’d already known. I wanted to be sure before I gave the lady the most accurate account I could. “I’m sorry, my lady. I’ve failed you.”
She was shaking her head firmly. “You did what you could. The failure is mine, not yours.”
She wasn’t crying. I didn’t understand why she wasn’t crying, though she’d been so distraught last I’d seen her. I didn’t dare ask after Isolde. “Is it your wish that I carry on at the hospital?” I asked.
“Are you willing to, still?”
