My power was swelling, my Gift grown stronger. I found it much easier to reach into people’s minds than I could ever remember. Breaking into those stolid and unimaginative guards outside Lynas’ warehouse should have proven troublesome and yet I’d cracked them open as easily as tossing eggs at a rock. I healed quicker than I should and as the years ground on I was growing increasingly resistant to alcohol and alchemics. Every magus lived with the fear of change – we had all seen the warped flesh and bizarre mutations, the seeping wounds and howling madness, that resulted from somebody using more power than their Gift could handle. Even if they somehow pulled back from going over the edge it always changed a magus. I was terrified of losing control.
My introspection was interrupted by the door opening. I looked up expecting to see Cillian. Instead my blood chilled at the sight of the wrinkled countenance of Shadea. Whatever horror I felt at my body changing paled in comparison.
“Leave us,” she said.
The guards and sanctor scurried out and secured the door behind them. She eschewed use of the chair, instead stood scrutinizing me with the same passion she might show a corpse splayed open on a table. I was in deep shite. I shivered as her grey eyes judged me and found me contemptible. If the hag wanted to she would take me apart as easily as a snot-nosed pup pulling the legs off spiders, and probably with more curiosity. I had no doubt I would tell her everything she wanted to know. People said they’d take a secret to the grave but they had no concept of what real torture was. Everybody broke sooner or later, and what little I knew of Shadea’s practices was more than enough to give me nightmares.
“To what do I owe a visit from you?” I said, finding my voice.
“Guard your tongue, boy,” she said. “You will show me the respect I have earned.” It was not a demand but a statement of fact. Coming from Shadea, I dared not disagree. Even if I hadn’t been chained I would never dream of attacking her.
She tutted. “I had some faint hope for you once, despite your background. You showed an aptitude for unconventional thinking and a dynamism that the cliques of traditionalists lacked. I wonder if it is the nature of your unfortunate Gift, your base personality, or your lowly upbringing that has led to the situation we must now deal with. What might we have made of you if only the sniffers had discovered you a few years earlier?”
I clamped my jaw shut to stifle the retort. Instead I shrugged, chains creaking.
She caught and held my gaze. “However, I am aware that in the past the Arcanum frequently assigned you to Archmagus Byzant’s service, and I suspect some of the tasks he set you.”
I swallowed, suddenly nervous. Over the years I had done many unpleasant but necessary tasks for Byzant throughout Docklands, the sort of things that were best never recorded in Arcanum records. How much did she know?
“Not that there was ever any proof, of course,” she continued. “But I have known Archmagus Byzant far longer than you have been alive, Magus Edrin Walker. I know him, and I know you, and for that I am willing to delay judgment on your activities pending a thorough investigation of both your recent claims.”
“Did you capture that bastard Harailt?” I growled. “He must reek of blood sorcery.”
“The man passed my own personal testing,” she replied. “He is not corrupted. No magus can do what you claim and show no evidence.”
I blinked, gawping at her. “What? That’s not possible. He is a blood sorcerer and he commanded daemons. Test him again!”
“You are a liar or you are mistaken, Magus Walker. Which is it?”
“Neither,” I said, struggling to escape my chains. “Whatever lurks inside has managed to fool you. I told you, I felt a traitor god helping him! He needs to die, and die now.” I considered trying to use my power to convince her, then quickly discarded such a foolish thought. Even if she didn’t detect me opening my damaged Gift – a vanishingly unlikely chance an adept like her would fail to notice – she was an elder, and I didn’t fancy my chances of surviving after intruding into her mind.
She shook her head sadly. “Ludicrous. The gods of Setharis are all missing and Magus Harailt Grasske has neither the power nor the skill necessary to fool an elder magus such as myself; however, he has been confined to the Templarum Magestus pending further investigation. We agree that something did happen to you in the Boneyards. Councillor Cillian has been successful in persuading the Inner Circle to investigate those warnings. You will be coming with us.”
My stomach clenched and I almost threw up. The Boneyards terrified me beyond all reason. I had to stay calm, act reasonable, then seize my chance to escape and ram Dissever through Harailt’s black heart. He had tried for ten years to kill me and now it was my chance to return the favour.
Somebody knocked on the door. “Enter,” Shadea said.
Old Gerthan hobbled in, cane clacking across stone. He nodded to Shadea and approached me, looking me over with his droopy eyes. His back to Shadea, he gave me a crafty wink. It was nice to know that I wasn’t universally hated.
“No skin contact during the healing,” Shadea ordered. “He is unstable and we will take no chances without a sanctor present.”
“I will not be able to effect a full healing in that case,” Old Gerthan replied. “You understand this?”
Shadea nodded. “Heal him enough to walk but not run. I do not want him capable of fleeing. He has a nasty habit of that.” Her eyes never left me. It seemed she would only allow a single small and calculated risk and not a grain more.
Old Gerthan carefully unwrapped the bandages around my wounds, grumbling over the inflamed and swollen mess of my left thigh. I gasped and bit my lip. I didn’t have to pretend to be in pain, I just had to exaggerate it for maximum gain. Perhaps I could tease out a little extra healing.
“Very well,” he said, stretching a near-skeletal hand out over my legs. “I will do what I can.” He was looking into my eyes when he said that last bit, but Shadea took it as meant for her.
A warm tingle crept from my toes up my legs, washing away pain and replacing it with tiredness as my flesh exhausted itself in quickened healing. He was facing away from Shadea, and she couldn’t see the confusion in his eyes at the discovery my body was not as wrecked as by all rights it should be. I winced as torn muscle knit back together with sparks of ragged pain. And then the tingle reached the wound gouged into my leg. Dissever writhed inside the wound and I shrieked, no longer faking anything.
“What is this injury?” Old Gerthan said, his hand held over my leg. “It refuses to heal.”
I opened my mouth to tell them, but a deeper pain wrenched within my thigh. I screamed as something squirmed inside every muscle of my leg. Idiot, Dissever’s voice rasped into my mind. I will not be caged by ignorant children. I clamped my jaw shut to muffle the screams. Dissever was more talkative than I remembered. No. More awake, it said. It sent a feeling like a tongue lolling over jagged metal teeth. Walker blood has matured well. But your war god’s blood was far stronger. Nourished. Woke. A chill cut through the agony. The secret in my head rattled its chains and mocking mirth was Dissever’s only answer.
Somehow Dissever was hiding inside my body. That should not be possible – it shouldn’t even fit. The exact words of our spirit pact rose unbidden to make me shudder: My blood, your blood. My flesh, your flesh… Now those words sounded horribly literal, it had merged with my flesh, become a part of me…if it wasn’t already. This was no normal spirit-bound object, it was something far more sinister. As it stirred inside me blood welled up from the wound to soak through trousers and bedding.