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20
Oliver was awakened by the feeling of large, warm fingers tucking his hair behind his ear. The fingers remained, after, a hard, smooth callus stroking the tender skin just below his ear, slow sweeps that would have left him purring if he was a cat.
He smiled. “That’s nice.”
He’d already known it was Erik, from the texture of his fingers to the scent of pine and leather, but the low, up-close rumble of his voice was a treat in and of itself. “Are you planning to come to bed? Or is the table too comfortable to resist?”
“Shit,” Oliver muttered, and forced his eyes open. He’d fallen asleep at the library table and lifted his head with a wince. His neck protested the movement, and a book page peeled away from his cheek. He’d drooled. Wonderful. He tried to wipe his mouth with his sleeve before Erik saw, but, well, there was nothing for it. Drool happened; sharing a bed with someone shattered all sorts of fantasies of perfection one held about a person. “What time is it?”
“After three.” Erik sat beside him on the bench, his back resting against the table, face etched with fatigue.
“That late? Shit,” he repeated. Rubbed the grit from his eyes and frowned. “What are you still doing up?”
Erik shrugged. “The coast lords were talkative.”
Oliver didn’t refute the obvious lie. The coast lords, who’d arrived while Oliver and Tessa were sharing what they’d discovered on their ride west, had already been yawning and rubbing sleepy eyes at dinner. There was no way they’d been the ones to keep Erik up until the wee hours.
He turned back to his book, open on the page he’d been scanning when his eyelids grew too heavy to hold open. He didn’t remember much of it, already halfway asleep, but a scan proved it to be a century-old account from a Half-Point Islander describing a Selesee battle mage’s spell-casting in the field.
Erik leaned closer to see. “Now that is a very old book.”
“Yes. All the Sel history manuals were written by Aeretolleans or Aquitainians. I wanted something a bit closer to a primary source, as it were.”
He was still poring over the page, but he could hear the frown in Erik’s voice. “But le Duc was Aquitainian. From Inglewood, yes?”
“Innis, actually,” Oliver corrected. “It’s a very tiny little strip of a duchy between Inglewood and the Crownlands. Landlocked, wholly uninspired. All of the South’s greatest explorers come from there, wanting to go off and see the wonders of the wider world.”
Erik snorted with faint amusement.
“So, yes, he was one of my fellow countrymen to begin with, but he lived very little of his life there. His father was a merchant who sailed the trade routes to Seles, if legend is to be believed, back in the days when they were still importing elephants and silk and spices in exchange for good Aquitainian wool and wheat. More than two-hundred years ago.”
“Hm.”
“Le Duc had a chance to witness Sel magic up close, and in a non-combat scenario. He and his family spent a lot of time on the Half-Point Islands, talking to the locals. This man.” He tapped the page. “Lived through the Selesee overthrow of the Islands. Le Duc copied down his firsthand account of the battle, such as it was. The Islanders’ spears and shields didn’t last five minutes against the battle mages.”
Erik didn’t comment, but scooted closer, until his hair fell silky and fragrant against Oliver’s neck, and they could read together.
“‘They could throw stones without touching them,’” Erik read aloud. “‘And fused them together with earth and sand to form great floating weapons, to build ramps over the sea walls, and siege engines with which to batter down doors.’”
“It’s the closest I’ve gotten to evidence they could do something like build the bridge that we found. There are only vague mentions of rumors in the books written on this continent: control of the weather, of enchantment and shapeshifting. That sort of thing.” Oliver turned the page, and the Islander’s account continued. “Look: ‘Once they’d slain many of my brothers, a mage robed all in the colors of dawn stepped forward and lifted their corpses into the air; made them dance, made them…fight us.’”
Oliver blinked, and then turned to Erik – close enough for his breath to stir silver-shot braids – to find a single brow lifted. “That sounds like…”
“Reanimation of the dead,” Erik said. “Aye. Like Náli.”
His memories were blurred with the ice rose he’d taken, blue-tinged, hazy, and sluggish, but Oliver recalled an army of skeletons dressed in rags, rusted swords hacking at their enemies.
Erik’s other brow lifted. “Before you go thinking the North is beset with Selesee magic–”
“You don’t know what I was thinking.”
“Hush. Before you do, consider that Northern magic – raising the dead, communing with them; dragon-riding and shape-shifting – goes all the way back to the very founding of Aeretoll. It’s old. Similarities aren’t evidence that we are the same as the Sels, much less descended of them.” He sounded revolted by the very idea. The furrow between his brows betrayed more than revulsion; Oliver sensed worry, also.
“How do you think magic came to this land?” he asked, quietly, and marked the muscle that leaped in Erik’s clenched jaw.
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t from them.”
You don’t know that, Oliver thought. You can’t know it, and you’re wondering if the general was right, just like I am.
