“Have you chosen to obey me?” Robert asked them with a patronizing smile.
They could not wait to answer him in the affirmative, their words tumbling over each other in a chaos of terrified sound. They begged him for instructions, assuring him that they would do whatever he wished.
The wizards at the edge of the green watched the exchange nervously. True, mundanes were not as strong-willed as a wizard. Ari knew their thoughts. Could he break a wizard as easily as he dominated these mundanes?
Valgird’s mind traveled a similar path. After several moments of careful consideration, he opted for a change of tactics.
“Weard Wost, I see I have vastly underestimated your abilities. In all phases of this campaign, I will regard you as my equal in authority.” He fiddled with a gold amulet. “How did you ...?”
Robert smiled, clearly flattered. “The human psyche is terribly frail if approached in the right manner. An advanced illusion complete with physical sensations of great pain has made them docile. They will do my bidding.”
“What if they discover that it was merely an illusion?”
Robert touched a groveling girl’s face, lifted her chin up to meet his gaze. She shivered, and then her eyes fell in fear and deference. “If you have ever stabbed yourself with a needle, you know that such an injury will soon heal. Tell me, does that knowledge give you the desire to stab yourself with a needle?
“And why? Because it is not the injury we fear, but the pain. These people have sustained no injuries, but they have all experienced more torment in an hour than you could inflict on a person in a decade. A torturer of the body must be careful not to kill those in his charge, neither by allowing them to bleed too much nor by causing irreparable damage to a vital organ. But the pain I inflict does not wound. It merely sets every nerve in the body on fire. It is a fine, and delicate art, good weards, but one at which I excel.” Robert’s smile was envenomed.
“Is there ... a way to break such an enchantment?” Valgird asked slowly.
“The beauty of the Will-Breaker is it cannot be unraveled without killing the victim — well, not unless you are a powerful enchanter, of course. To them, I am Domin — from his alligator head to his fatal touch to the tortures he inflicts on those who displease the gods. They will obey me without question or hesitation all the days of their lives.”
Ari knew Robert could hand over that undying obedience to a buyer, too, but he knew why the enchanter skipped over that detail. He also suspected Robert was exaggerating the dangers of unraveling the Will-Breaker, although he had never had occasion to find out.
Valgird suppressed his curiosity about the Will-Breaker with visible difficulty. “What is your plan?”
“I will use my Will-Breaker to enslave the mundanes of the Protectorates one town at a time. You and the other wizards will make wands for them, and we’ll use the mundanes as our army.”
“That seems simple enough, if time-consuming,” Valgird said, but his voice was deferential.
“Let me finish, Weard Geir,” Robert snapped, all false humility cast aside. “The Protectorate defenses are a fully integrated network — like a spiderweb with every strand connected to the center. Do you know what I could do if we capture the central town?”
“Dismantle the defenses for all the towns in the Protectorates?” Valgird guessed, sounding like an apprentice instead of an eighth-degree wizard.
“Even better. I can use it to cast my Will-Breaker on every mundane in the Protectorates.”
Valgird’s eyes went wide. Ari resisted the urge to frown. He knew Robert well, but he had not quite expected this.
“But Sven’s minor magocrats will be there, so it will be better to draw out some of them. The wand-wielders are no more than a distraction.”
“And if the Mardux returns?”
“Then he’ll taste Domin’s burning duxy, too, and he will grovel before me.”
“He will mistake you for Domin?” Valgird wondered. “What will you ...?”
Robert smiled poisonously. “It would be too difficult to believe unless you experienced the Will-Breaker first-hand. Are you truly curious, Weard Geir?”
He recoiled, shaking his head violently.
“I thought not.”
Chapter 17
“Red is for Vitality. Vitality involves the manipulation and mending of the body. It is very useful, but also limited. It is far easier to heal surface wounds than internal ailments. Most wizards can close surface wounds with ease, but have difficulty repairing shattered rib or cracked skull. Only the most skilled healers can cure disease or poison, and even for them, it is seldom a swift or easy process.”
— Nightfire Tradition,
Nightfire’s Magical Primer
Sven’s condition worsened rapidly after his collapse on the Chair. Neither Horsa nor the other skilled healers in Domus Palus had ever seen a manifestation of Dinah’s Curse quite like this, though they seemed intent upon hiding that from Erika, claiming it was only a case of Seruvus’ Breath brought on by exhaustion. She knew better, though.
She knew her husband was slowly dying.
Now he lay in their bed with drapes around him, a priest in attendance keeping water steaming through the air. He rasped when he breathed and his chest looked expanded and red in the dim light. When his eyes opened, they were bloodshot and tight, and when closed, Erika could see his eyeballs jerking around. Sven had to be forced to drink water and broth every day, and if he didn’t vomit it back up, someone had to help him relieve himself.
Erika brought their daughter, Asa, to see him every day when he was coherent, which was rarely, but she seemed uncomfortable with him and would squirm until she was allowed to leave.
Erika sat alone in the library where Sven spent much of his time, quietly weeping in the shadows of the bookshelves while she pretended to read the magical primer he had written shortly after Asa had been born. Tears magnified a few words of the Vitality entry as though everything Sven authored wished to be larger than it actually was.
“Tell me about how you and Sven met,” Pondr said behind her, and she jumped.
“What?” Erika tried to surreptitiously wipe the tears out of her eyes as she closed the book.
“There are many holes in his story,” he said seriously, his blue eyes catching a shaft of sunlight coming from one narrow window. “How you two met, the situation in the town of Tortz, and so on. You can fill one in for me. How did you meet?”
She wanted to tell him to leave her alone. She didn’t feel like telling stories just now.
Can’t he see that Sven is dying?
But she found herself blushing as she remembered it. “It was a silly thing, really,” she said, and closed the book in her lap.
* * *
Leiben was a town that had survived for almost fifteen years in the forest shadowing the Morden Moors. In a straight line, it was four miles from Zerst, the first town of the Takraf Protectorates. But, so Sven had said later on, he had taken four days to find it.
Erika Unschul foraged for root vegetables. The town was bursting at the seams — a gobbel raid had destroyed Horm, several miles away, and the survivors had fled to larger, better-protected Leiben. There was a shortage of food. Even the wild rice was in short supply. So she had gone out on her own initiative, dressed in her black cloak and heavy leather boots.
Her thickly gloved hands rooted through the mud, pulling up a patch of onions. She could see white worms clustered around the root, all through the dirt, but she knew they weren’t the ones she should fear. Konig worms were too small to see, and if any attached themselves to your skin, you lost that limb or died. It was safer to root through mud in water, because the water might wash the worms off, but then you risked leeches or Dinah’s Curse.
A splash to one side made her look up. Ten yards away she saw a gobbel standing. She froze, but it had caught her movement, and now the greasy pig-eyes turned and saw her basket filled with the greens of plants.
If it’s j
ust the one, I might be able to fight it.
She tensed, steeling herself to grab the knife at her belt and fly at the gobbel. It turned its head and called out to some unseen companions, and Erika was off like a rabbit. It could be a bluff, but she knew she couldn’t fight more than one gobbel at a time.
She clutched her basket against her as she ran, heading for a part of the woods choked with underbrush. Gobbels were strong, but they had poor eyesight, so maybe she could lose them.
A thousand tiny hazards covered the ground in the tangled mass — roots, rocks, slick patches of mud. The gobbels crashed through behind her, shouting as they tripped and fell, but she seemed to be falling down almost as much. Once, her foot got stuck and she fell forward on her out-stretched hands, the basket tumbling out of her hands.
Erika stood up again. She was breathing hard, tiring and sore from all the falls. But she grabbed the basket and collected its scattered contents. The first of the gobbels spotted her and called out to its companions.
Six of them, Erika thought with dread.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she drew her knife and prepared to face them.
A wall of fire rose up in front of her, and Erika cried out in surprise. Gobbel voices shrieked in pain as the flames engulfed them. She ducked behind a tree and fell again on the slick mud, but crawled up to have a look at what was happening.
A Mar in a bright green cloak stood confidently to her left, arms held out before him. One gobbel rushed him, javelin rising into a throw, but the man didn’t flinch. The gobbel’s back arched as if it had run throat-first into a tree branch, even though there was nothing there. It fell backward and did not get up.
A motion of his hand, and a gobbel ten feet away from him crumpled as if a large rock had fallen on it. The last two gobbels died in balls of flame.
The wizard, for that was what he must be, had defeated six gobbels by himself. He had done it so quickly Erika’s knife was still clean, and she felt ashamed for not helping.
I probably would have just gotten in the way.
He looked directly at her and smiled gently. He had the most beautiful green eyes. He approached her slowly, as if afraid she would run.
“Peace in the swamp,” he said. “I’m Sven Takraf.”
She nodded, wiped her face with her hand, felt the tears there. “I’m Erika Unschul.” Sendala, let me not look too bad.
“Peace in the swamp, Erika. Do you live near here?”
She nodded. “I live in Leiben. It’s not far. I was lookin’ for food.”
His green eyes widened a little. “Alone?”
Erika couldn’t tell if he was horrified or impressed. She shrugged and deliberately set to collecting the fallen food into her basket. “Yes. It needs doin’, an’ I can take care of myself.”
She half-expected him to argue that she clearly could not take care of herself, since the gobbels had almost caught her, but he didn’t. He looked slightly wistful, as if the situation stirred some memory for him.
She caught herself picking nervously at the mud on her cloak. “I’ve some soup, Sven.”
He focused on her, and a grin lit up his green eyes. “I’d like that.”
* * *
“I flustered a little, then, because I thought he would want more than food because he saved my life, but the look in his eyes had nothing to do with that at all.”
“What do you mean by the look in his eyes?” Pondr asked.
“You’ve got the same look right now. That earnest, ‘all I want to do is learn’ look. He just wanted to test out some new hunting spells. Between the two of us, we fed everyone in town, that night. Leiben was the second town to join the Protectorates.” She looked aside and said more softly, “I never see that in him anymore.”
* * *
In his sickness, Sven relived the past. Bouts of semiconsciousness followed torrential dreams and nightmares. What he thought about for the brief moments he was awake haunted him through hours of sleep.
Days passed, and he could do nothing.
Every day, he prayed to his patrons to give him back his health and strength. He just needed enough energy to get out of bed.
You said you would give me more Energy than any Mar who has ever lived. Why do you deny it me now?
There was no answer.
Are you punishing me, or is this the wrath of Dinah and Domin?
Sven swallowed painfully and waited for an answer in the darkness behind his heavy eyelids.
When was I last sick? When I helped Erika feed Leiben, and I caught Seruvus’ Breath ...
* * *
Gudris, the mayor of Leiben, oversaw Sven’s treatment personally, feeding him a gruel laced with bitter-tasting medicinal herbs for several days before, at last, the illness passed. Strength renewed, Sven went immediately to work on implementing changes in the town as he had in Zerst. There were three things the two towns needed first: defenses against Drakes, land to grow food on and protection from disease.
He constructed a spell to warn the town of impending attacks, allowing hunters a greater range. He used Power to help drain the lands near the town, making it capable of supporting vegetables. He carefully implemented a system of sanitation. Following a meticulous purgation of skin parasites from the townspeople, Sven established a magical screen to eliminate mosquitoes and flies that entered the village and spread diseases.
The people marveled at the magical wonders Sven had brought to them, especially the last. The children would spend hours watching the sparks flicker and crackle above the buildings as insects were reduced to smoking husks. True, the moors themselves were as wild and dangerous as ever, but at least the town was safer and healthier.
Sven smiled as he watched the children.
The future. And this is just the beginning.
He sat with Erika one evening by the fire. Since his arrival, she had not been very far from him. He would return from a hunting trip and see her waiting for him. He would turn a corner, and she would bump into him. He would stand up from sowing seeds and see just her head behind a house.
The looks she gave him, the way she watched him, her body movements were all obvious. But inside, he was conflicted. On the one hand, they were of an age when most people married. He himself was older than average. On the other hand, involving himself with her would only tie him down, and this was what he was trying to explain to her now.
“Leiben and Zerst are not the only villages that would benefit from my protection. There must be other towns on the moors, people who are suffering as Leiben once suffered. And winter will be here too soon. That will mean frequent gobbel raids, less food and more disease. The malaria will fade, but Seruvus’ Breath kills so many Mar ...”
“But you don’t know where any other towns are. How’re you goin’ to fin’ them without leavin’ Leiben at the mercy of the gobbels?”
Sven picked up a stick and made a mark on a patch of earth. From the mark, he drew a slowly widening spiral. “It will take time, but this will clear more of the moors of gobbels. And no town will escape notice.” Sven’s eyes flashed red in the light of the fire.
“Think of creating Leiben on a massive scale! Hundreds of towns free of disease. Starvation defeated. Gobbel raids just stories we tell children.”
He felt the glow spread from him to engulf her. She could feel his energy and see his dreams before him.
She understands! he thought, and when it came time to leave, in private he pledged he would return to her.
From the fruitful womb of Sven’s mind, the Takraf Protectorates was born.
He traveled from town to town, the spiral nearly flawless except for little jitters here and there. On the paths in between, gobbels and other Drakes who dared to stand before Sven were blasted into ash, until among their communities bright green became equal to red in terms of danger. After Zerst and Leiben, word had spread among the Mar of the wizard who walked the moors and demanded no tribute, who used his power to fend off disease and Drakes. And as w
inter progressed, representatives of distant villages met Sven in the wilderness.
By the beginning of spring, as Sven rejoined Erbark in Zerst, the Protectorates numbered fifteen. At that point, he had reached the limits of his ability to renew the spells, and he knew he would have to find other ways to expand his protection. After careful thought, Sven made efforts to introduce the mayors to each other. Mar and Mar communities were generally unsociable creatures, but, especially in the central communities, the lack of diseases to cure and monsters to defeat left much free time. Erbark had suggested using warriors from the inner towns to protect the outer ones, and the mayors, after a few months of debate and a handful of objections, eventually agreed.
And the travel between towns — safe, dry and occasionally enhanced by Mobility — gave the mayors and elders a taste of what magic could do for them. Sven added that as a bonus to all the dealings, because those he had started to teach how to read in Zerst were happily ready to teach others, in an effort to reach the ability required by Bera’s Unwritten Laws — so they could use magic themselves.
When in Leiben, Sven and Erika spent as much time as he could allow together, which included many private lessons. She studied in earnest, soaking up everything like a starving Mar eating soup. She also had a knack for teaching and possessed a great deal of patience with students who learned so slowly that Sven wanted to give up on them.
In an effort to protect the towns more, Sven called upon his knowledge of reconnaissance, a word most Mar had never heard. They called it scouting, when they did it, though the word called mapmaker jokes to their minds because of the danger involved. But Sven wanted to take it a step further, and in Leiben, clearly as an excuse to stay by Erika longer, he built a hut and inside it made the first reconnaissance stone.
It was a simple flat, rough-edged disc, raised off the ground and made of clay. A spell that stretched the limits of Sven’s skill sent rays of Knowledge in eight directions for a distance of three miles once per hour, identifying Mar and Drakes as specks of red and yellow light on the disc.
Sven knew its limits. Rays left too many gaps, especially at the edges of the reconnaissance. A field of Knowledge would be more effective. Also, an hour was too long an interval, especially with a range of only three miles. Many Drakes could march from beyond the spell’s range to the walls of the town without being detected simply through lucky timing. It was the best he could manage with the knowledge at his disposal, but he never stopped looking for solutions to the problems.