without marring her appearance too badly.
The major loophole in these binding techniques, which the author
returned to time and time again, was that a binding’s meaning is interpreted by
the mind of the subject. A witch bound to tell the truth can still be mistaken. A
delusional witch will still be crazy after she’s bound. More subtly, a quick-
witted victim can choose how to interpret any ambiguity in her bindings.
That was an enormous problem with verbal bindings, because the
fallible nature of human memory meant details would inevitably be lost or
distorted over time. Make a homicidal witch swear to ‘never do harm of any
sort to anyone’ today, and she’ll eventually convince herself that only applies
to physical harm. Make the vow more complex, and that just gives her more
details to mix up and build loopholes out of.
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Written contracts could be far more complex, but had the drawback
that the binding was anchored in the physical document. A binding you can
break just by burning a piece of paper isn’t very reliable, unless you can be
very certain the paper is well protected.
The solution the church of Odin had come up with involved a standard
set of bindings known as the Riven Covenants, which were chiseled into stone
tablets and stored in some secret location. A clever bit of sympathetic magic
allowed anyone with a sliver of stone from one of the tablets to bind victims to
abide by their contents, despite having never seen them.
The last few pages of In Tauro de Maleficis claimed to be a copy of
the text of the Riven Covenants. The contents looked like they’d do an
exceptionally thorough job of making the victim into a devoted slave of her
binder, but of course there was no way to check their accuracy. For all I knew
the actual text on those tablets was completely different, and I wasn’t about to
bind someone just to see how they acted afterwards.
I was considering whether to add finding those tablets and destroying
them to my to-do list when a distant rumble and crash distracted me. A
cacophony of faint shouts and scream rose up as I hurried to the top of the
tower where I’d been taking my last break of the day.
I reached the parapet to find a pall of smoke hanging over the town.
From my vantage point I could see a wide gap in the old town wall, and dozens
of figures rushing across the snow-covered fields beyond. The setting sun cast
long, weirdly-distorted shadows across the mob, and for a moment I couldn’t
tell what they were. Large figures and small ones, some on two legs and others
on four.
Then the breeze blew some of the dust away, and I picked out a goblin
mounted on wolf-back. Beside him a troll lumbered through the snow, waving
a huge club studded with spikes over its head.
There were hundreds of them, and the lead elements were already
halfway to the breach.
“Damn it,” I growled. “Don’t these guys ever give up?”
There was no time to descend to ground level and make my way
through the crowded streets of the town. By the time I reached the fight that
way there’d be a few hundred goblins and half a dozen trolls inside the town,
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and I had no idea if there were enough troops in the garrison to drive a force
like that back out.
I vaulted over the parapet, pushed off from the side of the tower, and
threw myself into the air with a burst of force magic.
I still hadn’t figured out how to fly properly, but I had more than enough
power to throw myself around. I pushed again, sailing high into the air over the
town. Activating my force field muted the wind in my face, but the sudden
change in aerodynamics sent me into a spin.
I straightened out, found myself far too close to an approaching rooftop
and pushed off again. Up, arching high over a clump of three-story buildings. A
sideways push to correct the beggining of a tumble. A flex of my flesh magic to
suppress a sudden flash of nausea.
Up again, and now I could see the breach clearly. A thirty-foot section
of the old town wall had simply collapsed, crushing the buildings built against
it and throwing the townspeople into confusion. A band of goblins wearing
white cloaks were standing in the rubble, shooting arrows into the crowd of
fleeing civilians. Sappers? Some kind of goblin commandos?
Another push, angling for the center of the breach. If I could throw up
an obstacle before the main force arrived maybe we could keep them out of the
town. I could hear horns blowing and bells ringing all over the settlement now.
One of the white-coated goblins spotted me as I fell towards them. He
shouted, pointing and dancing around, and the others turned their heads
skyward. A rain of arrows rose to meet me, but my new shield was far stronger
than the one I’d used before. Goblin arrows weren’t going to do anything to it.
None of them missed.
The first few arrows rattled off my shield just as I’d expected, raising
little showers of blue sparks as they were thrown away. But these projectiles
were magical, imbued with all sorts of minor spell effects. Bursts of flame and
electricity flashed uselessly against the barrier, but speed and penetration
effects took a heavier toll on my amulet’s energy reserve. One carried a
dispelling effect that attacked the magic of my barrier directly, while another
struck with such force that it started me spinning again.
Then four shamans raised their little bone staves, and hurled dark blobs
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that trailed streamers of sickly green smoke at me.
I managed to dodge one, but the second went right through my barrier
and grazed my leg. Agony flared through me as the immaterial spell ate into my
flesh like acid, and for a crucial second I was too distracted to dodge. Another
curse smashed into my side.
I screamed.
I hit the ground moving far too fast.
My shield stopped first, but I’d intentionally designed it not to transmit
impacts to me. So an instant later I slammed into the inside of the barrier, still
tumbling from those last seconds of uncontrolled fall. I hit a solid mass of
stone, flipped over it and plowed face-first into a cavity in the rubble. For a
moment I hovered on the edge of unconsciousness.
But my amulet was still around my neck, mindlessly trying to heal all
my damage at once. With that help I somehow managed to cling to
consciousness. With a groan, I tried to move.
My right arm was a mass of pain, and my hand didn’t want to work. My
face was covered in blood, and my front teeth were missing. Worse, I couldn’t
feel my legs at all.
I managed to shift a little, so I could turn my head and see out of the
hole I was in. The flash of pain from my arm nearly made me pass out again.
Definitely broken.
An arrow smacked into my depleted shield with a flash of green smoke.
Goblin voices gabbled at each other in their own language, and then a shaman
cautiously peered over the edge of the hole.
His eyes met mine, and a toothy grin split his wrinkled face.
“We got you now, flying man,” he said. “No more running and killing
of goblins for you. Spirits of earth, crush!”
The stones beneath me shifted, and began to move.
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Chapter 11
The shifting stones pressed against my shield, raising showers of blue
sparks. It was holding for the moment, but I knew now they had non-physical