Barb Hendee, J. C. Hendee
First and Last Sorcerer
PROLOGUE
...what are you ... why have you come ... who do you serve?
Magiere lay on the cold stone floor of a locked cell beneath the imperial palace of Samau’a Gaulb, the main port city of il’Dha’ab Najuum and the Suman Empire as a whole. Shackled by her wrists with heavy chains anchored in the cell’s rear wall, her wrists had long ago torn, bled, and half scabbed from straining against her bonds. And those three questions repeated over and over in her mind.
She’d heard them pressed into her thoughts rather than spoken by a voice, and they still echoed even now. Her tormentor had asked these on his first visit to her cell, though she never once heard him speak aloud. At times, she awoke thinking he stood inside the closed door, but when she opened her eyes to the complete darkness ...
Magiere was alone until he came again and tortured her without even touching her.
Was that even possible, or did she only think so?
She didn’t know anymore.
She lay curled up with her long black hair lying tangled and lank across the floor stones. Strands stuck to her nearly white face, which was smudged and marred with filth. Her falchion and Chein’âs white metal dagger had been taken before she’d been locked away. How many days or nights had she been here?
Hunger, thirst, cold, and pain were her existence, leaving little room to feel anything else ... except fear for what had become of Leesil. She remembered her husband—and Wayfarer, and Chap, and the few others who were precious to her—but only by memories her tormentor had somehow ripped from where they hid in her mind.
Memories of those she loved had become shadows in the dark. Whether she closed her eyes or not, only Leesil remained clear enough to hold on to ... along with her hate for the one who’d come again and again.
Hate now kept her alive more than anything else.
A metallic clack echoed in the cell.
Magiere flinched, shuddered, and struggled to the cell’s back wall. In the beginning, she’d risen into a crouch and watched the cell door open whenever he came. She hadn’t resisted her dhampir half when it overwhelmed her in those earliest days—or were they nights? There was no way to tell the difference in the dark.
Her jaws had ached under the sudden growth of her teeth. Her irises had widened until they blotted out the whites of her eyes. And she’d lunged again and again.
Chains creaked and clattered but never broke. Their anchored brackets wouldn’t rip from the wall. All she’d done was savagely claw the air halfway to that door ... and him. But now she curled against the back wall, unable to summon her other half so she could at least see in the dark.
Perhaps this time it was just a guard sliding in another bowl of scraps or water.
When the door opened, its hinges squealed. She scrunched her eyes, shielding them with a raised hand against the sudden but dim light of a lantern. The iron door slammed shut before she lowered that hand ... and there he stood.
As always, he was robed in shimmering gray with shadowy but glinting strange symbols upon the fabric. That was all she ever saw of him. With his arms raised waist high, each hand was always tucked into the opposing sleeve, and the sagging hood hid his face as well. He was slender, though tall for a Suman. She’d guessed he was a he only because the robe’s thin fabric would’ve exposed a woman’s build.
On the floor to his left but back nearer to the iron door sat an oil lantern with its wick turned down low. Perhaps it was the same one as before—and before—though she’d never seen him touch it in any of his visits. And each time she’d stopped screaming, she’d found herself on the floor. When she could lift her head, the cell had been dark and empty.
She’d never heard the door reopen, let alone close, when he’d left, though a few times she’d glimpsed the Suman guards outside. Once, when they’d opened the door to slide in food or water, she’d demanded to know who he was. They’d stared at her as if she were a witless, mewling beast, and then they’d left. It had taken a few more times before one apparently understood her.
“No one come you,” answered that one in broken Numanese, and then he’d snorted with disgust. “You lone ... till die.”
She’d stared in confusion and shrieked like a beast when he left and the door clanged shut. After several more times, she gave up trying to talk to the guards. How could none of them remember letting in the one who now stood before her?
The whispers began again in Magiere’s head.
...no one left to trust ...
...no one will come for you ...
...all are locked away or fled ...
...you are alone ... forever ...
Like a chorus of voices that rarely spoke the same words, they never stopped so long as he was there. They scratched and skittered like bugs in her skull until she’d clamped her hands over her ears. She didn’t bother anymore, for it wouldn’t stop them.
“What do you want ... this time?” Magiere hissed through clenched teeth.
As if rising out of those whispers, memories came again ... of home, her long-dead mother, the bloody tales of her birth ... of her travels, her friends, allies, and enemies ... of an orb once under her hands but now gone and hidden by someone else.
Her parched voice gained an edge. “I don’t know anything more! So why bother? Why keep me alive?”
Out of that noise trying to smother her thoughts, one whisper rose above the others.
For a bargain with my master ... your master.
Magiere slumped down the cell’s back wall. It wasn’t the first time she’d asked, heard the answer, and he never explained.
“Then what?” she croaked. “I don’t have anything else ... so what do you want ... now?”
The gale of whispers waned to a soft breeze. That brief moment was an eternity of relief. Then they rose even louder and whipped into a frenzy.
Magiere grabbed her head as his answer came.
Another scream ... please.
Leesil slumped against a cell’s left sidewall with his chained hands limp in his lap. The only scant light came from around the edges of a closed peep-window in the cell’s iron door, and this wasn’t enough to let him see anything.
Somewhere in the dark with him, Chap and Wayfarer—a large dog and a girl in her youth—lay sleeping, each of them chained to a separate wall.
From the first night, Leesil had tried to count passing days by when guards brought food or water. They were the only ones who ever came. Even so, he wasn’t certain how long he’d been here. The guards he’d seen changed now and then. What that meant for the passage of time he had no idea, for he didn’t know the length of their shifts. What little food they brought was so bad that Wayfarer hadn’t touched it for the first few days ... or had those been nights?
Leesil listened in the dark and heard only Chap and Wayfarer’s slow, weak breaths. He wore the same clothes from the first day he’d been imprisoned, and all of it was filthy and stank. All of his weapons had been confiscated.
On the day they’d been arrested, in anticipation of resisting, he’d dropped the pack and travel chest he carried to free himself for a fight. Then he’d realized they were too outnumbered and a fight would further endanger those he cared about. Nearly everything they owned had been left behind in the street.
Only the aging assassin—that butcher, Brot’an—had eluded capture, as if he’d known what was coming.
“A guard should ... might ... bring water soon,” said a small, weak voice.