“But you…you are almost two thousand years old and you don’t look any older than I do.”
“There are reasons for that, Rik. One of them was that I was born in the Sacred Land before the coming of the Princes of Shadow. Terrarchs born here, on Gaeia, age much more quickly.”
“Did a Terrarch kill my mother then?” It would not have surprised him. It was one more tally to be added to the long score he had to settle with them.
“I believe so. Certainly the sacrifice she claimed to have witnessed was performed by a Terrarch.”
“How could she have seen such a sacrifice and lived?”
“I don’t know. It may be the sorcerer was engrossed by the ritual. It may be the sorcerer was so drugged he did not notice her. An enormous amount of potent narcotics must be consumed during such rites.”
“You seem very familiar with such things…” Asea recoiled as if slapped then she laughed.
“You do not know the seriousness of that accusation, Rik. I have had Terrarchs killed for less, and killed them myself.”
He saw he was on very shaky ground, and had not realised it. They had been talking so familiarly that he had almost forgotten who and what she was. “Still we need to understand each other, you and I. To answer your question, I am familiar with thanatomancy because I have been an enemy of its practitioners. To hunt a beast you must learn all you can of its habits.”
Another interpretation occurred to Rik but he kept his mouth firmly shut. If you thought you might die of a disease one day, and there was one potential cure, you might well seek out the knowledge of it.
“You think my mother saw the sorcerer, and managed to escape unnoticed.” It seemed best to get the conversation back on safer ground.
“I think she went into hiding when an arrest was not made immediately. I suspect the sorcerer was an individual of some power and influence.”
“Why?”
“All the records pertaining to the case save the most basic have vanished. It is not uncommon for the documents concerning old cases to be lost or destroyed. It is uncommon for pages to be torn from the watch ledgers on the days in question.”
“It would be easy enough to have done in Sorrow, if you were rich enough.” Rik knew this for a fact. Charges could be dropped, men released from cells, pardons granted if the right palms were greased. The gang lord Antonio had done it, and he had heard tales of many others doing it. Once it had even been done for him. Poor Leon, he thought. “Someone was covering their trail.”
“And they did it very well. It’s cold now.” Sadness pressed down on Rik now. He had lost someone, and he had never even known her. His mother had tried to do right, and she had been killed as a consequence. Someone who could cover a trail like that could track someone like his mother down eventually. There were places where you could hide for months, even years, but sooner or later someone sufficiently determined would find you. He knew it. It was why he and Leon had joined the army and left Sorrow behind them.
“Did you find out anything?”
“The constable thought your mother had been involved with some sort of cult. That would fit. Such sorcerers are often members of cabals.”
Another thought occurred to him. “Did she ever mention my father?”
“No, Rik, but I have my own suspicions about that.”
“How? Have you worked some sorcery?”
“I have. I did it the first time I talked to you in the camp in the mountains. Do you remember that?”
“When you asked me about soldiers selling mystical books?”
“Yes.”
“And your spell told you who my father was? That is powerful magic.”
“It told me something about you; you have something that might have come as a gift from your father or your mother. I have ruled your mother out. She was human, and this thing could only have come from a Terrarch, and most likely only from one born on Al’Terra, our lost homeworld.”
“What thing?”
“There are certain divinations that can be performed to reveal people’s surface thoughts. They almost always work. Those spells do not reveal yours.”
“Spells can sometimes fail, or so I have heard.”
“Yes, they can. There are a number of natural phenomena that can cause spells to go awry, not to mention the fact that even the most skilled wizards makes mistakes. God knows I have made some myself. There are other tests we need to perform.”
“Are there?” he replied.
“Give me a lock of your hair.” Rik was suddenly wary. Locks of hair, nail clippings, splashes of blood were all things the Old Witch had collected back in Sorrow whenever she wanted to lay a curse on someone. She stared at him, and offered him a small knife. Something in her manner told him that she would not take no for an answer.
Reluctantly he took the knife and cut off a small length of hair. He handed it back to her along with the knife. She took it and passed her hand over it murmuring something in the ancient tongue. “I suspected as much,” she said eventually.
“Suspected what?” She took the hair, placed it a sealed package and then placed the package within one of her trunks.
“That it would not hold a trace.”
“I would appreciate it if you returned that lock to me, or destroyed it.”
“I need to test it with more elaborate spells, but rest assured it will be destroyed when it is no longer needed.” And that was that, he thought. He would need to see about recovering the lock himself some time.
She opened her hand and held something out to him. “Take this and hold it.”
He studied the thing warily and made no move to take it. He was very suspicious now and wondered where this was all leading.
“Take it,” she said. Her voice was laced with subtle compulsions. He felt a near overwhelming urge to obey, but he resisted.
“What is it?” he said. The words were difficult but he spoke them instead of doing what he was told. She smiled as if he had just proven something she suspected. He wondered if he had fallen into some sort of trap by not taking the stone. He wished that he knew more about what was happening here, about what was going on. He did not like this feeling of being someone else’s pawn at all.
“It is something I brought from the homeworld, a magestone. It is a simple thing really, used for testing children, to see how much magical potential they had. That was a thing far more common there than here, and far more useful. Take it. It won’t hurt you, I promise.”
He took it. It was a smooth, hard gem-like object, cool to the touch. He thought one surface had been scratched but when he inspected it, he saw that it had been etched with an Elder Sign, one he did not recognise. He felt oddly disappointed. He had expected it to shine or glow or respond in some way, and yet it remained totally inert. Asea nodded as if another suspicion had been confirmed.
“I know you have magical potential,” she said. “Yet the stone says no. The sign should glow when you hold it. Keep gripping it for a minute. Let us see if something happens.”
There was silence. Both of them looked at the stone. Rik felt as if it were a grenade with the fuse burning. If he had no magical potential, he could not become an apprentice. Was it possible Asea had made a mistake about that? Of course it was. She had said so herself.
Eventually, she gestured towards herself with the palm of her hand, indicating he should return the stone.
“You resist all forms of divination very well,” she said. “Shadowblood.”
“What do you mean?”
“Have you never heard the expression?”
“No.”
“The old horror tales are no longer told?”
“Horror tales? What do you mean?”
“The Shadowblood were a dark legend on Al’Terra. They were the fist of the Desecrator, secret and deadly.”
Rik had heard of the Desecrator. Who had not? “The Prince of Shadow?”