darkened blade_ A fallen blade novel - Kelly McCullough Page 0,83
would have approved of what we are about to do.”
Kelos nodded, whispered a few phrases, and touched fingers to his lips when spell-light answered his call. Without so much as another word to the rest of us, he turned and dove into the pool. I chewed on the inside of my cheek, and tried desperately not to think back to my nightmare about the throne.
Aral? Are you all right? sent Triss.
Not even a little bit, but I told Siri this was her show, and she asked me not to interfere. This is me not interfering, hopefully without drawing blood from my own cheek.
She doesn’t make it easy.
That she does not.
Siri spoke again. “Jax, this is going to be a directional magic. The pool faces north and the deep lake. That’s going to make you and Kelos the Wardens of East and West respectively. I will be the South Warden. Aral, as Faran’s sponsor, you get to assume the role of the Warden of the North since that is the direction of Justice in this case. While we wait for Kelos we can set up the warding patterns—a diamond rather than a circle or something fancier, in this case—and fifteen feet on a side. You two cover your directions. I’ll do for me and Kelos both, as well as making the connections. Be about it.”
Ritual wards come in a relatively small number of flavors, and they are drilled into every mage at a very young age. The simplest arrangement of all is the ward of the four directions, though a circle or octagon sealed to the eight elements is nearly as easy and buys you more flexibility. It scales up from there. Considering how nervous all the talk about blood and pain and fetching the head of the goddess had made me, it was a damned good thing that all I had to handle was the ward of the North.
I had to recenter myself and force my breathing back to calmer rhythms twice before I was able to assay it properly. By the time I was done, Siri had finished both the ward she would hold and the one for Kelos. Then she started in on laying the connections down, using the tip of her index finger to draw lines of light across the paving stones.
I turned to Faran while Siri was finishing up, and spoke quietly. “How upset am I going to be with you later that you didn’t give me plenty of warning as to what’s coming?”
She grinned at me, though it obviously took an effort. “In the short term? Extremely. Once you’ve had time to think about it? Less . . . I hope. Now, shut up and let me concentrate. This is going to take a lot out of me, and I need to prepare myself.”
I wanted to pace and swear, but, again, the First Blade doesn’t get to do that sort of thing. Not with Roric and Kumi there at any rate. Instead, I settled cross-legged on the pavers a few feet south of my ward, and pretended to meditate.
Good try, but you’re not fooling anybody, sent Triss. Well, maybe the youngsters, but Siri and Jax and Faran all know how you feel about meditation.
Then I’m fooling the only ones I need to fool. Now, shut up and let me pretend to be peaceful in something resembling actual peace.
Too late, sent Triss. Kelos is back. Which means you probably need to move.
Kelos came up out of the water as I returned to my feet. He was trailing a thick blue chain of spell-light from his left shoulder. Once he’d coughed the water out of his lungs, he unlooped the chain. One end of it vanished into the skin of his chest, just above his heart, as though it were anchored there.
Once he had the chain free, he started pulling it up out of the water hand over hand. From the way the thick muscles of his shoulders and back bunched and strained it must have taken enormous physical effort to supplement the magical working. With each pull, the slack he created vanished into his chest, like a capstan winding up one of the heavier ropes on a sailing ship.
As much as I didn’t trust the man or want to be anywhere near him, I didn’t like to think about what would happen with that chain if he slipped or stumbled. But he was Kelos, and he didn’t. Not even at the end, when the great weed-encrusted