Page 35 of Turncloak

“Your magic is disobeying you.” The scholar leaned against a creamstone wall still smattered with dried blood. “What did you do, mil?”

Seeing no reason to lie to the one person who might be able to help, Levan’s lips pressed into a flat line. “Abolar. My mother’s old wand.”

“Ah. Dare I ask why?”

“Didn’t want it falling into the wrong hands. And now I know my mother won’t be able to use it once she’s Risen…”

“You did not heed the cautionary tales of what happens to those who kill a wand?”

“I thought it was little more than peasant folklore.”

“The arrogance.”

“You dismissed Halant’s existence as folklore mere minutes ago.”

“Once you reach my age, you earn the right to practice blatant and audacious hypocrisy.”

Levan rested back on his haunches. “Is there a way to mend my relationship with magic?”

“It will be long, slow. A matter of regaining its trust.”

A bridge rebuilt stone by stone. Levan swallowed hard. Jerking his head at Halant, he said, “Help me carry him to the crypt.”

After a few moments, Miret withdrew the necromancer’s wand from his waistband and tossed it on the ground next to Levan.

“No, I won’t.”

And Levan’s closest confidant—the only thing resembling family he had left—turned and walked away.

19

• • • •

The Binding Oath

It took almost an hour for the necromancer to regain consciousness—an hour spent hauling him around the snaking tunnels beneath the Bloodmoon compound and into the Rezaran crypt. By the time they arrived, Levan was drenched in sweat and cursing every Saint he had never quite believed in.

While he waited for Halant to wake, the kingpin leaned back against a marble-cold archway and stared at his dead parents—cast in eerie blue-white light, silent as marble pillars. When he did finally bring them back, would they hate him for it? Would they resent their barren wells, their lives without pleasure or pain? Or would the absence of pain mean the absence of such things as bitterness or hatred?

What did it even mean, to exist without pain?

He rolled his wounded wrist, unable to imagine such a thing.

It troubled him to wonder how the loss of magic would impact his mother’s relationship to the Saints, whose entire manifesto was centered around magic as a life-giving, world-sustaining force. Critics of the faith often noted how this ostracized Ludders, cut them out of any sense of abiding purpose. Imagining Lorissa Rezaran without her deeply personal relationship to the Sixteen was like imagining an empty grave.

Halant stirred, groaned.

Levan had been here before with Nalezen Zares, a necromancer in his grasp but unwilling to cooperate. Hissing alleycats like Zares and proud, stubborn mules like Halant were more likely to grit their teeth and resist than to cave.

Even if Levan’s compelling had been cooperating, it would be impossible to order Halant to do his bidding. Necromancy was an art so dark and power-draining that a mage’s full, authentic will had to be thrown behind it. A compelled command didn’t have the required depth, the raw force—a problem Levan had encountered with Nalezen Zares.

No, he had to call to mind what Halant wanted. Use that as a bargaining chip in pain’s stead.

“Where am I?” Halant’s words smeared together.

“Raise these two mages and I’ll let you walk free,” Levan said blandly in Tarsan, still holding both wands in his golden palm.

Halant scoffed, a coarse, hacking sound. “Do you take me for a fool? I do not know to which order or organization you belong, but there isn’t a dark mage on Ascenfall who doesn’t cover his tracks.”