“Okay.” The truth was, the old man was right; the questions would bother her if she didn’t get them out of the way. “How did the dragon know who you were?”
“Dragons are wonderful things and grow more wondrous with age. Zuri-shantar has had untold millennia to age, and his powers are unknowable. I believe, either through some particular insight into the world that eludes the lesser beings or else through the magic of simply being a very old dragon, that he knows things about the world around him automatically. He had no other way of knowing who I was, or for taking interest in me other than a random encounter in the wilderness. It’s possible he can read minds, as well. The short answer is that I don’t know, but there are known ways of doing what he did, and I am sure there are unknown methods as well.”
“So, magic.”
“Yes. Of one form or another.”
“Was Rattle helping you look?”
“No. I left him behind, right here, as a sentry to ward off any opportunistic thieves who might have noticed a seemingly abandoned home and thought it to be easy pickings. He was incredibly helpful during my research, however. For whatever reason, he’s got a real mind for books, and that affinity for the written word was indispensable for cross-referencing and fact-checking the sources I’d been able to locate, evaluate, and eventually return. He excelled in both duties,” Belamy said with a smile, patting Rattle on its glassy body. It looked around the room, avoiding eye contact.
It’s embarrassed by the praise, she thought as it resettled itself, shaking its wings out briefly.
“That thing the dragon told you, about liches always going insane. Is that true?”
He ruminated on the question before answering. “As far as I know, I am the only person to have ever achieved lichdom using the method I have. In that way, I am unique. I am aware that this very subtle distinction between myself and those like me will do little to allay any fears of those who—for the most part, rightly—condemn a lich to damnation for his decision, for choosing to throw away his life for a permanent facsimile of it, for ripping his soul to shreds and throwing the wastage into a pot of filth.” Belamy brought his free hand up and scratched the side of his head, and she winced at the dry rasp of his skin. “Whether this difference will protect me, I don’t know. But what I have seen from the larger body of research and commentaries of the world’s liches seems to indicate that the gradual loss of memory and even the ability to make sense to others are wholly inevitable. They can be postponed, alleviated, or simply accepted, but the madness comes just the same. I have taken some steps I think will help to stall it, but only time—and a lot of it, at that—will tell whether they’re of any use.”
“What steps?”
Belamy smiled and patted Rattle on its side. “Go fetch the memories for me,” he said. It slid off his lap and began flapping, winding its way to the stairs. “Shall I continue, or was there anything else nagging at the corners of your mind?”
When Skate shook her head, Belamy continued as before, dispassionate and staring into the fire. It had begun to burn low, so he willed a log to hover into the fireplace before continuing.
My guide stayed behind as I entered the isolated, ill-kempt hut. Though it was a structure of threadbare rope and salvaged branches, it was sturdy; it barely creaked as I rested my weight against it in the doorway. In front of me was my enemy, Petre Hangman. The man who’d killed my daughter.
He was in terrible shape. His ragged hair hung about his face, which had been weathered by a life on the run—by his surviving in the wilderness where no lone man could hope to survive for long, even a skilled young wizard. Dried blood caked the lower half of his face, and further patches of blood were splattered on his clothes, which themselves were little more than rags. He was seated on the floor and bound to the wall, the same thin but resilient rope keeping him there that held the walls of his prison together. He looked up at me but couldn’t see anything but a shadow in the light. The sun was glaring through, and his squint only made his position look even more pitiful.
“Who’s there? Is it you again, Slisthak? I can’t answer more questions today, I’m so thirsty.” He dropped his head, which lolled from side to side in a daze. “Anything; water, juice. I can barely see.” His voice sounded as if his claims of thirst were well-founded. It was more of a croak than his usual sounds.
“Who is Slisthak?”
He immediately recognized my voice. His daze wasn’t gone entirely, but it was more muted. “The shaman of the tribe.” He no longer spoke as a prisoner. In fact, he spoke as he always had to me. He spoke as an equal. “I’ve been teaching him what I know of magic in exchange for food and water, though I try to get more of the latter beforehand. Talking dries me out, you see.”
“I imagine so.” I came into the hut more fully, within arm’s reach of the man. “Why have you not escaped?”
He laughed, a bitter sound. “I would love to, believe me. I’m out of spells. Slisthak has my book. I was caught unready and am paying the price for it. I doubt I shall ever leave this hut alive.”
“I have the same doubt.” I no longer had flowing blood to pour through my ears or heat to rise from my heart, but I still felt anger; I felt it as clearly as I ever had. I bent down to eye level with him. “Why is my daughter dead, Petre?”
He met my eyes and quickly turned away. “Because of me.” He tried to move his legs underneath him, but he failed. The effort took his breath from him, and he slumped down again, coughing and rasping. “I killed her.”
I stood back up. “Why?”
He caught his breath. “Because…because I’m a fool, Barrison. I taught her, and I pushed her too far. When I realized what I’d done, I tried to pull her back, but it was too late, too late.” His throat choked him; by the grimace on his face and the heaving of his breath, I knew that he was weeping, despite having no tears with which to do so. “She tried what was beyond her, and it took her. The spell backfired, and she was gone.”
The report was unexpected. I had thought that Petre had been directly responsible for her death. “You did not kill her?”
“Of course I did; aren’t you listening?” He tried to bolt upright, but his restraints kept him from rising completely. “It was my fault she was studying magic at all; it was my fault she was pushing herself beyond her abilities. Who else could be responsible but her own teacher?”
“Why did you run?” I had assumed his direct guilt from the very beginning for that reason; his immediate escape and subsequent attempts at hiding had made it perfectly clear he had been the one to kill my daughter. It never occurred to me that she might have died for her own efforts, that her own drive to take on more than she could handle had hurt her.
“To get away from you, of course. I knew you’d be out for my head when you learned that she’d died under my care. So to save my own skin, I fled.”
“She was under no one’s care.” I performed a simple trick to release his bonds; he slipped forward and caught himself with unsteady hands. He stayed in that position, shuddering and breathing raggedly. “That was my folly, Petre, and yours. Alphetta was her own person and would not be controlled or made to do anything other than what she wanted to do. Even had you not eloped with her, she would have found a way to learn magic. I knew that, deep down. It was who she was: determined, proud, and courageous. You could have no more prevented it than you could stop the sun from rising or the moons from waning. You’ve wasted a decade of your life fleeing from me, and I chasing you. Your skin is your own. You bear no guilt.”