I sat down on the bench. Touched fingertips to smooth, aged leather. Once I had read the book; once, when I had power. I knew if I opened it, I could read it again. That gift was Meteiera’s. What had been forgotten in the crumbled chimney as I poured out the magic was now remembered.
Umir’s tone was no longer as calm. “Open it!”
I put fingertips on the lock, on the hasp and latch. I let the words come up out of my soul. Spoke them very quietly.
The lock clicked and undid itself. The book fell open. As it did so, Del was up from the alcove, yanking Khalid’s sword out of its sheath. Of the items Wahzir had sent spilling from the table, one remained: a knife. And as Del killed Khalid, I grabbed the knife, flipped open the Book of Udre-Natha, dug the blade deep into the gutter between pages, and sliced down through the gut stitching holding pages to lambskin. A hard, heartfelt toss into the air sent pages flying.
Umir and Wahzir screamed in unison, terrible, stricken screams of shock, horror, denial.
Light rained upon us, blinding bright. Bursts grew tails, flashed into darkness. Pages were caught as the light began to spin, to spin and spin. The whirlpool was of writing, not of light. Words flying in the air.
Del crossed swords with Hamzah. Tariq was so taken aback by the suddenness of events that he hadn’t yet unsheathed. Khalid was down, dead. Beneath the body lay my sword. I shoved Khalid’s body aside, grabbed the sword, and took on Tariq as he finally unsheathed. He fell back out of the doorway, bleeding badly from the gut wound that would kill him.
Hamzah was good. But Del was better. She left him unarmed, wounded, and spun to face Umir. “No more!” she shouted. “No more of you!”
Delilah took his head.
All dead now, save Wahzir. He was grabbing page after page, holding them close to his chest as he bent and bent, trying to grab more. He chanted something under his breath. Somehow, he looked pitiful.
Then the chanting stopped. The clutching at pages stopped. He opened his mouth in wonder. And then he screamed with joy. “Whole again!”
Oh, hoolies.
“Run,” I told Del, who wasted no time doing precisely that. She leaped Tariq’s body, half-turned to look for me. I leaped as well, aware of singing in my bones.
“—not empty—!” Wahzir shouted.
Del and I ran down the corridor to the large, domed entryway.
“Sula,” she gasped. “I know where she is—”
“Go. I’ll get horses for us.”
Del ran, sword blade flashing. I turned toward the massive front door. Just as I reached for the heavy latch, something caught me and threw me down. I slammed into the marble floor. Every bone in my body felt shattered.
I made it to hands and knees. Everything in me was filled with light, with sound. Hair rose up on my flesh. Fingernails bled light instead of blood. My eyes burned in sockets.
“Tiger!”
Del was back. I tried to see her, but the light wouldn’t permit it. I saw nothing but blinding bursts. On hands and knees, I shuddered. The light within was singing.
“Tiger!”
It was difficult to hear her through the song.
I felt her hand on my shoulder. “I’ve got Sula. Tiger—let’s go!”
I vomited. Light fell out of my mouth.
“—I want it all—” Wahzir screamed, echoing down the corridor. “Don’t go to him!”
Don’t go to him. Don’t go to—him?
Magic attracts magic. Wahzir knew the only person in the palace who had any magic was me. Some of the power he’d tried to claim while clutching at pages had escaped him. Wild magic, coming to me. Strings of words, writhing through the air.
“Go!” I shouted hoarsely at Del. “Get out of here!”
Del yanked open the heavy front door. Through a scrim of brilliant light I saw Sula in her arms. Then both of them were gone.
The Book of Udre-Natha was a grimoire, a compendium of magic, of arcane knowledge and spellcraft written down over centuries. I’d learned as I read it two years before. Learned so much. But now the power in the book, attracted to magic, came flying to the foreign magic born of ioSkandi. Words. Lines of printing. Diagrams. I had an idea now why mages went mad and leaped from spires.
“Come back!” Wahzir screamed.
“Fight later,” I said breathlessly to both the magics within me. “If I’m dead, you’re dead.”
Inside my body I felt a pause. Light winked out of my eyes. I grabbed my fallen sword, scrabbled to my feet, ran through the open doorway. Del was on her white gelding with Sula in front of her. She ponied by lead-rope a buckskin already saddled and bridled. The spray of the fountain put droplets in his mane. Both horses bore saddle pouches and botas.
“Alric’s horse?” she asked.
“He can’t go,” I said. “Not again. I’ll have to take another.”
Del looked beyond me. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I turned. Wahzir stood in the doorway. His eyes bled light.
Oh, hoolies.
I ran to Alric’s horse, threw myself into the saddle, and turned him hard toward the gate. “I’m sorry,” I said. And to Del, “Go!”
Go she did.
I knew when we were free: Del, my daughter, and I. I felt Wahzir’s questing attenuate, die. He claimed magic now, was no longer an empty man. He wanted what I had, wanted the rest of the magic, but we were free of him for now, and he had other things to deal with.
I told her we were free. And so Del wanted to know everything, and everything took us all the way to the big oasis. There we went about our usual chores: found a tree, untacked the horses, unrolled our blankets, watered the horses, relieved ourselves, sorted through pouches. What we had never done before, at the oasis, was keep an eye on Sula.
You would never have known she’d been abducted. She didn’t know she’d been abducted. She was fine. She was Sula. She spilled the water I gave her and proceeded to play in the resultant wet sand. Well, a considerable improvement over horse piss.
Del sat cross-legged on her blanket, watching our daughter’s sheer joy in becoming dirty. I tended Alric’s buckskin. He was tired clear through, not unexpectedly. We had only galloped away from Umir’s palace a brief distance, as I knew the buckskin couldn’t do more. After that we walked. Khalid and Tariq were dead. Umir was dead. Hamzah may have survived, but he was wounded, and there was no reason to chase after me. No Umir meant no bounty.
I scrubbed and brushed Alric’s horse. As much as I could, I rid him of salty sweat stains and walked him around. When he felt cool and his breathing eased, I took him to the spring and repeatedly poured water over him with the communal bucket, which resulted in more than a few people expressing annoyance because mud and rivulets now surrounded the spring. I considered explaining that I’d just escaped an evil tanzeer who wanted my sword because of the magic in it, but decided I didn’t really feel like making up a story for people to embroider as it was passed around. I just finished pouring water over the buckskin and walked him back to our tree. Picketed him, collapsed upon my blanket.
Once collapsed, I saw Sula staggering off toward another tree. Someone had a dog. Sula liked dogs. Del went after her, caught a hand, turned her around and brought her back. Sula had no plans to stay with us when a dog was nearby, so Del dug through pouches and came up with a twist of stick cinnamon. She gave it to Sula, told her she could only have it if she stayed on the blanket, whereupon our distractible daughter became very well-behaved.