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Horde Thief
Chapter 38
Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven tries, until she'd won her way free of the trap that the Fomor had set about her, and lost her family all the same.
The statement sat in the air between us, laden with a power unlike anything I'd ever faced. Not just for what it implied, but also what it meant. A breach of any of the Laws of Magic is punishable by death, with ignorance no excuse, except in rare cases like my own and Molly's where a member of the Council spoke in favour of leniency. Yet that thought was a distant thing, overwhelmed by the shock, fear and utter wonder that my brain was shrieking was due the young woman in front of me in equal measure.
Shock not for what she'd confirmed, but the scale of it. To act upon the world like that, and surely it must have been more than once, and survive was worthy of that. It was also terrifying. To succeed in changing what had been, to…overcome what Vadderung had told me was near to a relative constant. Conservation of history, I'd joked, but his agreement had held a note of lethal seriousness. There's…inertia behind the path the world takes, and from what I'd been told by a retired god, it makes it very hard to change things. Kathy was powerful, she had to be. But that sort of strength lies beyond the grasp of all but the most gifted humans, with centuries of experience.
But if what Vadderung had told me was true, looping a day should have just yielded the same result, and it hadn't. Hence the wonder. How had she done it, without even a teacher? How had she found a way to draw up that much power the first time, without burning herself to cinders? Either she wasn't human, or there was something else in play. But what could do that? Allow a novice, no matter how gifted and brilliant, and there was no doubt she was both, to work complex Chronomancy like she had?
Something that isn't aware, Harry, my own voice whispered in my head. Simply present, if someone with the right gifts reaches out. Could it be that simple? It would have explained some of the oddness to the town, if there was something that powerful around or beneath it. If only the Warden report had included a map of the local leylines.
"Kathy?" Her eyes jerked up and across to me, from where they'd been staring down into her half-full glass, lost in memories I had no desire to share. I didn't flinch away from her eyes, honest, but it was a close-run thing. "Did the things that called you a Warden ever talk about the Laws of Magic?" The look of total incomprehension I got in return was answer enough. Damn.
"They just…said enough to know that Wardens were the people who fought them, most of the time." She said in reply, confusion clear. "I always knew I was missing some of it, but even when I tried," she trailed off with a shrug, and helpless thoughts spun around my mind. How could I tell her this? After everything she'd done?
Something must have shown on my face. True fear flashed across hers, a burst of panic as primal as anything I'd ever felt. "Did I miss something?" The words came out quick, high. "What did I miss?"
"Calmly, Lady Kathy." Viserys didn't change anything about how he spoke, but power rippled behind the words, lending them a depth greater than mortality. Kathy stopped, the panic fading a little. It had been moving towards defence, and I would have slapped myself if could. Two years. The Fomor wouldn't have just stopped after the first try, she'd said they hadn't. How many times had she hurled herself into death in the hopes of finding one of the keys to victory. And, I realised, not just that. She hadn't been content with surviving herself. She'd fought to defend her home, which was more than just the wooden walls of the house we sat in. Missing something was how she'd lost all the other times.
Viserys leant forward, setting his glass aside, and his expression was troubled in a way I'd never seen it before. And when he spoke, he was not the persona he'd taken for this, but all I knew he truly was. "My lady," she giggled a little at the archaic title, and he smiled a little, recognising the reason. "If those creatures you fought gave only part of the story, then it is no fault of yours. For many such beings, it is their nature."
"To put their failings to rest: Wardens are more than just a body meant to protect humanity from supernatural threats," no matter how little they truly do, I heard distinctly in the moment of silence that followed. "They serve the White Council, a body made up of the most powerful wizards on the planet, and do so as soldiers and…officers of its law." 'Which I don't agree with' came through loud and clear, too, though not as strong as it might have before.
Viserys had seen what Warlocks could do now, how Black Magic twisted a person into a state where people stopped being people, and where that led. He'd seen similar creatures wearing human skins, it had been obvious from how he'd handled the executions of the groups and singular Warlocks that we'd brought in over the past weeks. Equally, he'd seen that the line wasn't always as sharp as what the Council liked to make it. Like the first practitioner we'd talked to, and left with only the warning that if he ever stepped further down the path he'd been treading, there would be consequences. But Kathy wasn't like either of those groups.
She was, if my own read of her was right, like both of them, but in different ways.
"I see," Kathy nodded, the near-mindless fear receding, and the feeling of lethal energy around her fading with it. Why had she reacted like that? I knew I'd read…something about that.
"What is that law, Warden?" Kathy asked. "Is that why you came here?"
"Not exactly," Viserys said smoothly. I had to hand it to the kid, he knew how to bend the truth without ever breaking it. "There are seven laws, each covering an area that is considered Black Magic."
She looked to me, and I nodded. Then I told her.
"Thou Shalt Not Swim Against the Currents of Time," Kathy repeated, her dark eyes very still after what I'd just told her. "That's what I've been doing for two years, isn't it." I nodded, not trusting my voice. "What is the punishment for such a crime?"
"That depends," Viserys said, before I could answer. I shot him a look, and had to stop myself from stepping back sharply at the fire blazing in his eyes. Don't you dare, those eyes snarled, right next to hasn't she suffered enough?
I didn't disagree, she had. But the Laws exist for a reason. I'll be the first to tell you that the Council should do so much better at making sure they're known, and what the price of breaking them is. But they're there, in the end, because they have to be. Black Magic isn't just what people do with it. It's the belief behind it, and that once they've seen the effects of it once, any practitioner will slowly start to see how it can be used again. How it should be used again. They're the most powerful arguments that magic can be a tool, but they're also tools that can be applied to far too many things.
And after a while, they change you.
"It's true that there can be lenience in sentencing," I said carefully, though I was certain that Viserys would catch my undertone. It didn't happen often. "Someone could speak on your behalf, and that has worked. Though that would require a hearing," those words were more for Viserys than Kathy. The fire in his eyes hadn't abated, but I saw the reason working within the emotion.
"You know there's another way," he said calmly, and I couldn't deny he was right.
"The cost," I replied calmly. "You're trying to make things better. You know that won't." Fire blazed again, but I stared back unflinching this time, waiting it out until it subsided. Kelly looked back and forth between us, confused, but not interrupting or reaching for her own power. Praise be to small mercies.
"I can," he began.
"You promised," I replied. We locked gazes again, and though neither of us looked away, I knew that had gotten through. I leant forward, murmuring. "Viserys, you know this sort of exposure twists someone. If you want a Hearing, I can call for one. I can even find a way for you to speak at it. But you can't ask me to just look the other way."
"Your apprentice," he responded in the same low tone, and I shook my head.
"Hearing."
"But it's hope." Viserys said, his voice drifting louder. "Even if she has to come with us to-"
A glass thumped to the ground beside us, and we both turned to find that Kathy had snapped upright an instant ago. There were tears on her cheeks, and the pain in her eyes cut like a knife. And, belatedly, I remembered what I'd been trying to ever since her panicked reaction on being asked about the Laws.
The White Council is a meticulous record keeper. Their libraries and archives go back centuries, and are utterly meticulous in every possible detail. The Wardens are no different, and in my time among them, I'd read a little about how each particular brand of violation to the Laws would change someone. It hadn't been fun reading, but it had stuck with me. And I remembered now that violation of the Sixth Law created a very specific effect.
It's a subtle and terrible thing, and I'd found it more terrifying than the effects of using mind magic on another. Magic is what you believe, you can't do anything that you don't believe is right. Moving against the currents of time carries with it the belief that what has been is, on some level, wrong. That you can, somehow, make it better. And once you start…you're never finished. Time and again you will find reasons to use your power, to make things better as you see them.
And in that moment, it hit me. Kathy's sanity was tied to an idea she'd given us. The town was, what had she said? Not perfect, but better. After her parents had died, that had been everything she had. She'd endured pain and most likely as close to death as a human could to find not just a way to save herself, but to save everyone around her, too. And that meant that this place was the only thing holding her sanity together. And we'd just suggested taking her from it.
"I can't go with you," she shook, a full-body motion born of atavistic terror. "I can't, they won't be safe. The monsters, if they come, I won't be here to stop them properly."
I opened my mouth, Viserys did too, maybe reaching the same conclusion? He didn't known what I did, but that had never stopped him before.
"We can have someone assigned here," he looked the question at me, and I couldn't answer. I didn't have any authority left in the Wardens, and all my favours were currently being expended on the work of trying to make the Council change. But…if it was a nexus, like it might be. That would be a reason.
"Yes," I said, nodding. "It should-"
"No!" Kathy cried out, the word stretched until it was almost a wail. "You don't understand. I'm not finished!" She looked between us, as if desperate for us to understand, yet I could feel the energy coiling around her. Viserys reached up towards her, an open palm extended in an expression of trust as old as time.
"Kathy, please. There's a way out of this, I swear it. Even if it's not here and now, please believe me when I tell that there is a way." Passion made his words like a bonfire and they hit her like physical objects, fighting to break through the wall of emotion driving her. She jerked once or twice, her eyes flicking up and down to Viserys' hand and back to the two of us. "Come with us, and we'll stand beside you."
For a moment, I almost thought he was going to do it. Then she shook her head, very slowly. "No, Warden." She said, fresh tears streaking her face. But I couldn't miss the awful resolution in her eyes, behind them.
"You're just another thing that I have to fix." If the pain in Kathy's expression had been a knife, her voice was like salt and shattered glass in the wound. She'd not been feigning her excitement on seeing us. To her, we'd been hope, the first she'd ever dared believe in two years and who knew how much more. And now, I saw it die. Turned against her. She took a step back, and I felt her reach out with her power and draw on…something. Something big.
"Kathy," I called out. "Wait!" She didn't. She hissed a word, and a lance of air and force lashed out at me, the one to speak. My shield bracelet was still ready, and I brought it up ahead of the attack, and gasped in shock as the bracelet flared into sudden heat on my wrist. Hell's bells she was strong. White Council level for sure, and with the sort of control that only the most lethal experience forced you to learn. She might have more of that than I did!
"Viserys!" I barked, and the slight man moved, darting around the edge of my shield and summoning power that I'd seen him use before. The spell he'd used to immobilise the first true Warlocks he'd met. He released it towards the girl, wisps of shadow already blossoming around her. More power blurred between his fingertips, and I struggled to keep up with its purpose. A ray of green light speared past the tendrils of shadow, only for her to literally slide away from it with an ease that was more than human. The air between them rippled, concentrating in as if to trap her, force magic on a scale I'd witnessed only a handful of times and almost all of them from Viserys himself.
A look of pure hate flashed across her face as the ray splashed harmlessly on the wall behind her, the motion that carried her away from it raising her hand towards Viserys, and I felt the pressure on my shield lessen the moment before she cried out a word of her own.
"Discara!" A tight cone of pure chaos washed over Viserys, covering his spells in the air too, and the finely tuned workings between and about him shattered in a roll of light and fury. Even through my shield, I had to fight to keep my feet, and I couldn't see Viserys through the haze of light and dust all around us. My other hand groped in my pocket and came out with the massive pistol that Murphy had given me, only realising as it came to my hand I couldn't shoot in here. A bullet would go straight through the walls, and who knew who it might hit. Kathy's hands tore at the air around her, more power lashing through her willowy frame, and then the entire world twisted and fell sideways as magic vanished.
It wasn't an entirely new feeling to me. I'd been in a massive ritual circle once, that had cut off all magic outside of it. But this was much closer, and yet spread out over an area, as I saw Kathy react to it. She backpedalled towards the door that led into the yard, and Viserys stepped forward, Dark Sister in hand. Kathy snarled at him, but didn't stop, hands moving to continue the spell.
"Viserys!" I yelled this time, unsure if he could hear me. "She can still," he moved before I'd finished speaking. The magic he'd summoned didn't cut us off from our power, just anything outside of it. And whatever she did to manipulate time, it mustn't require projecting beyond herself.
I saw his mouth move as he closed on her, but I'm no lipreader. The blade of black steel whistled through the air, and Kathy cried out as it pierced her side, driving in and then entirely through. I recognised the bright red of arterial blood on the sword's tip as it slammed out the other side. Viserys caught her a moment later, holding the sword in place with one hand and moving her gently down with his other. I almost didn't catch the beginnings of the arcane gesture in the fingers on the hilt of Dark Sister.
"Don't drop the spell!" I snapped, and he turned towards me, rage of his own in his eyes, but it wasn't all for me. Not even most of it, a very detached part of my mind noted. "Death Curse, Viserys. She'll just be able to play this all back." He still almost did it, I could tell. Then he snarled something that could only be a vicious curse in a tongue I'd never heard him speak, and let me help lower the young woman to the ground. She was looking between us in shock, confusion, and pain. Deeper than physical.
"No!" She struggled weakly against us. "I can't leave them all." I bowed me head, but wouldn't let myself look away. "I know what's coming, they won't be safe." Something hot slid down my cheeks. "I just wanted to help!" It would have been a wail but for the coughing blood that ended it, and I blinked back my tears, forcing myself to look at the brilliant young woman who'd fought so hard to save herself and so many more. Brilliant…and broken, but that would never make this right.
"I know," I found myself saying. "I know." Death is never pretty, but when it comes, it equalises. It doesn't care who you are, just that your time is up. Kathy had been running from hers for two years, and had succeeded in a way I was sure almost no other wizard could have. "We should have been here."
"What," the words came slower, almost childlike. Blood pulsed out onto the carpet, the sword doing nothing to stop it, and her eyes started to go unfocused. Viserys leant down over her, squeezing her hand very gently. "What did I do wrong?"
"Nothing." He told her, and his voice was terribly weary. "I'm sorry."
He drew back. And she was gone.
. Did elementals ever get summoned for the magic school? I remember that being a thing due to lack of teachers.
