darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,112

though Kelos might know better. I was really just copying his spell, and I don’t understand all the finer points of it.”

We spoke quietly as we squatted there, using the sounds of the nearby waterwheel to cover our words. I’d hidden the box inside a watertight jar wedged into a gap I’d made in the foundations of one of the stone piers supporting the stream side of the mill. Given the newness of the construction, I’d figured it would be at least a decade before anyone even thought about messing around with those piers, barring a truly extraordinary flood.

After I retrieved the jar, we’d slipped into the mill—empty at this hour of the night—to open it up and visually inspect the finger. It didn’t look good, which was no surprise to me. Though I hadn’t mentioned it to the others, I’d been able to sense that something had gone a bit off about the spell as soon as I’d gotten within a few miles of the finger. It was tied directly to my life force, after all.

I could feel the link as a sort of feathery itch that ran from inside the back of my skull and down my spine to whatever point of me was closest to the finger. When I had first made the thing, the sensation had been more like a tickle, but now it prickled and itched.

“That’s so disturbing.” Faran prodded the middle knuckle of the finger, and I felt the motion as a sort of tug on the invisible line between me and it. “It’s not quite blood warm down toward the stub, which is disturbing enough after two years, but up top where it’s gone all black and puffy. That’s just, eww.”

Kelos’s original spell had involved taking a finger from the living hand of Signet Eilif, affixing it to a carefully prepared disk of unicorn horn with a custom-made silver nail, and using that to bind it to Kelos’s own soul, keeping it alive indefinitely. It was only after he’d finished making the thing that Kelos let the Signet die.

I hadn’t had the luxury of planning my own version out in advance or preparing all the necessary materials ahead of time. Instead, I’d had to improvise on a short schedule, using a bent splinter of silver and a wedge of dracodon ivory, both hurriedly pried free of the abbey’s altar furnishings for the purpose. Not to mention that the Signet I’d taken my finger from had already stopped breathing for several possibly critical seconds by the time I harvested it.

Kumi frowned and leaned forward, but didn’t touch the box. “The finger is tied directly to your life force?”

I nodded, somewhat startled by her question. She’d been all but silent for most of the two days it had taken us to get to the ring, either by temperament or because she was following Jax’s orders to play the observer.

“That seems kind of risky,” she said.

I shrugged. “I didn’t have much choice, but yes. It’s not quite necromancy, but it comes from the same line of spell casting. An experienced mage could easily make that link into a weapon against me if they got hold of the finger and managed to get close enough to use it before I could stop them.”

I nodded toward the place where I’d fetched it from the stream. “That’s part of why I was so careful about where I hid the thing, and why Kelos was concerned about my leaving the one he’d made in the hands of the Son of Heaven.”

“I wouldn’t worry about Kelos,” said Faran. “I’ve no doubt he figured out some way to cut the link before it caused him any problems. Maybe even before you left the temple that night. The man’s a master at weaseling out of situations that ought to result in his death.”

“I can’t argue with that.” I shrugged. “Honestly, given the way he thinks, he probably had the means to sever the connection before he even made the finger.”

“Of course he did,” agreed Triss. “He’s not one to leave a loose end hanging like that. Not when it could get him killed.”

“Actually”—Kumi shook her head—“that wasn’t the danger I was thinking of at all.”

“What do you mean?” Triss asked, his voice holding sudden concern.

She took a deep breath. “Well, I’m not as good at magical theory as someone like Faran or Master Siri, but I spent a bunch of time studying up on necromancy when I was seventeen—right after Loris and Jax