“I’m fine, elf,” he said in a rough voice.
Jaren searched his eyes, then nodded before looking back toward the front of the building from their place in the shadows. “For this, my lady, you have left the Fair Kingdoms. Where men talk so casually of buying a girl likely stolen from her own family to be bartered and sold.”
“No. Not for this,” she said, shaking her head. “For freedom…but…being the one to put a blade to the balls of the monsters behind this? Well, I call that a life worth living.”
They entered through the sewage tunnels, the way lit by mage light Tyriel called forth.
Aryn had grown used to her small magics and appreciate the gentle glow as they descended into the earth through one of the access points. Once they were within, the mage light split into thirds, one settling at each person’s shoulder and never flickering.
The light also gave off enough to light the way but illuminated little else.
Aryn didn’t want to see anything else.
A sewer tunnel wasn’t his preferred route to…anywhere, even if this one had been out of use for years.
Small though the town was, it wasn’t so small the inhabitants hadn’t learned how to take advantage of their position on a hill, using the area’s natural terrain to develop a rather advanced sewer system, considering most families there had little personal wealth. Nearly every home and business in the town limits had access to the system, provided they paid their yearly allotment to maintain the system, dumping human waste and soiled liquids through a carefully covered hole that drained to those tunnels.
Those tunnels hadn’t been used on the eastern side of the city in some years because the families there didn’t have the resources to pay those allotments. When the money missed one season, perhaps there would be leniency. But two or three? Well, eventually, those charged with maintaining the tunnels would come in and seal up the grates.
Nobody in the Alley had made use of the tunnels in decades.
At least not proper use.
The air inside the narrow space was still fetid, although the heavy seasonal fall and winter rains had long since washed away most of the foulness.
As they drew closer, Tyriel’s senses whispered a warning and she found one of the narrow spots that were tall enough for a man to stand upright. For some distance, they’d all walked bent over and her back whispered thank you as she straightened. Jaren and Aryn met her eyes but said nothing as they waited.
“Can Irian protect you against most magic?” she asked. “He protected you against sorcery once before, but what about attacks from elemental mages? Enchantment?”
Aryn felt the soft rustle in his mind as Irian moved out of his ‘resting place’ and then the enchanter shimmered into view. “I am an enchanter, lady of the Jiupsu. A sorry one I would be if I could not protect him against the very magic I practice. But I would have to borrow his body and blood for a time.”
“A time?” Tyriel and Aryn asked in unison, doubtfully.
Jaren studied Irian with curious eyes, but said nothing.
Irian laughed, a deep, husky laugh that filled the tunnel and made both Aryn and Tyriel shiver. Jaren just continued to stare at the enchanter.
“A time, a few moments. Long enough to draw blood and raise wards,” he said, smiling slowly at Aryn’s obvious discomfort. “’Tis a sad day when I must beg permission to protect my ward, Aryn.”
Aryn asked grudgingly, “What must I do?”
Irian moved closer and Aryn felt the enchanter settle inside him, but not taking him over, more like he was sliding inside his skin with Aryn.
“Watch…learn…remember,” Irian said, his mental voice quiet inside his head. “First, we draw the blade. His name was Asrel. Once. Long ago. Much magic had to be forged into him for him to withstand the ages. He belonged to my father—”
Images swirled inside Aryn’s head as he drew the blade—no, not him. Somebody else, in a land much more primitive, wilder, newer, a man, similar to Irian forging a blade, breathing magic and life and blood into the weapon as he shaped the enchanted iron. A wide-eyed youth looked on from the safety of the yard.
Blood, death, mayhem, a young girl’s scream, the father’s sightless eyes, a woman, Irian’s mother, somehow Aryn knew, who lay dead, her body raped and battered and mutilated before they granted death. And the youth, not even fifteen, taking up the sword.
“Asrel.” Irian whispered the blade’s name as Aryn whirled the blade in front of him, almost hypnotized, remembering. No, reliving Irian’s memories. “We must place our palm along the blade’s edge, my brother, but we cannot cut too deep. Don’t be worrying, though, Asrel will heal the wound. He always has before.”
And Aryn remembered other times had done this, Irian controlling the movements and then stealing the memories. Why he remembered now, he didn’t know.
Aryn barely felt the sharp metal slice through the toughened flesh of his palm and he stared at the welling blood for a long moment before Irian guided him into sheathing the blade with his uninjured hand and smearing his index finger through the blood. “If we were protecting the ground we watched, it would be a circle we paced. But we ward ourselves. Gather earth, spit, and salt.”
“I don’t carry salt,” Aryn said. His voice sounded loud. Too loud.
Irian laughed. “Aye, but you do. Look in your belt, my brother. What kind of—”
“…Enchanter would you be if you let your ward go out without salt,” Aryn finished in a mumble as he reached into his belt and rifled through it. And lo and behold, a small vial of salt. Fine-grained, and worth a small fortune. Cupping his bleeding fist to keep the blood from spilling the precious grains, he added the salt, the earth and then spat into his hand, listening to Irian’s voice and making the paste with a curl of his lip.
He dimly heard Tyriel laugh.
“Never thought I’d see the day. Aryn makes a fastidious enchanter,” she murmured to Jaren. “Oh, wouldn’t he hate earth witchery?”
He was also distantly aware of Irian’s amused chuckle but he was too focused on the heat in his soul, something he hadn’t ever felt before.
“That’s the magic, boy. It’s becoming a part of you…the more we do together, the more it becomes a part of you,” Irian said softly. Aryn felt Irian settle more firmly inside his body and realized he was just a watcher now as Irian’s magic took over. “Not mine…ours…and soon…it will be yours.”
Symbols etched onto Aryn’s face, wrists and hands. One on his chest. Irian’s deep, guttural voice echoed out of Aryn’s mouth and foreign words filled the tunnel as the runes on Aryn’s skin seeped into his body. The heat spread outward and took on color and form, a silvery blue in the corner of Aryn’s eyes that disappeared every time he tried to focus on it.
“The ward. And you can see it. Enchantment takes its hold on you, more and more,” Irian mused as he left Aryn’s body with a sigh and shimmered back into view. He bowed to Tyriel and said, “He is protected against any magic that may be thrown at him—save for mind magic. The protection from mind magic has always come from the blade. Asrel’s magic still holds, after all these years. A fine blade, like none other in the world. Only the Jiupsu could have forged such a blade of steel and magic and have it hold after all this time.”