He knew there were spells that allowed conjurers to see in the dark and hear far beyond their normal abilities, but he hadn’t learned them. He didn’t even know if they could be cast with blood or if they needed some other source. But at that moment he would have given everything he owned to know how to cast such a spell.
What was Diver doing with these people? What business did Derne have with Sephira? He reached for his blade, thinking that he might try that spell after all. If it failed, no one would be the wiser.
And that was when he felt the pulse of a conjuring radiating up through the stones of the lane. A spell that was directed at him.
He braced himself, expecting an attack. But there was no pain, at least not yet. The spell gently coiled itself around him, like a vine climbing the trunk of a tree. He couldn’t be certain, but forced to guess he would have said that this was a finding spell. And he felt certain that if he were to cast a revealing spell he would see that golden yellow light he had glimpsed in the King’s Chapel crypt. The conjurer had found him.
Knowing that he hadn’t much time, he ducked back around the corner, away from Diver and the others, and then found a narrow byway. If the conjurer struck at him with the right spell, it would overmaster his concealment charm. The last thing he needed was for Sephira and the conjurer to attack him at the same time.
Once he was out of sight, he pulled his knife from his belt and pushed up his sleeve. Before he cut himself, though, he remembered the mullein leaves that Janna had given him. Pulling out the pouch he quickly counted out how many remained. Eleven. Three spells, if the castings were to amount to anything. After that he would have nothing but blood to use as a source for his conjurings. He pulled three leaves from the pouch.
“ Tegimen ex verbasco evocatum. ” Warding, conjured from mullein.
He felt the stone tremble, and he knew that the conjurer had felt it, too. But immediately that ethereal vine released him. Not that it mattered. If the finding spell hadn’t told the conjurer where he was, Ethan’s own spell had.
For his part, Ethan had some idea of the conjurer’s location. That finding spell had been double-edged. The conjurer had used it to locate him, but in doing so had revealed his whereabouts to Ethan. He was close, no more than a city block or two away. To the west and south. If Sephira hadn’t been on the street, and if Ethan hadn’t been so sure that her men were close by, he would have run. But whether by design or sheer coincidence, his two most dangerous enemies had him trapped. One might have thought that Diver and Derne had lured him here. He didn’t want to believe that Diver would have any part of such a plan, but at that moment he didn’t know what to think.
“There you are!”
He knew the voice. Anna.
She stood in the narrow, dark space behind him, glowing faintly, her expression cross, as if she were a parent and he a wayward child. She ignored Uncle Reg, but the ghost bared his teeth at her. Ethan could almost hear the old man hiss, like a feral cat.
“You shouldn’t have done that last night,” Anna said. “You shouldn’t have hurt me like that. You shouldn’t have killed that poor dog. There are a lot of things you shouldn’t have done.”
Ethan wondered if Diver and the others could hear her. At that moment he would have preferred Yellow-hair and every tough who had ever worked for Sephira Pryce to this little girl and the man who had conjured her.
He opened his mouth to shout for help, but Anna raised a finger to silence him.
Agony. Pain so sudden, so excruciating, that it banished all other thought from his mind. It felt as if someone had driven a spike through his right eye. Clutching his face, Ethan crumpled to the cobblestone. He drew breath, an anguished scream building in his chest.
“Shhh,” Anna whispered from just beside him.
As abruptly as it had come, the pain was gone.
“Don’t make a sound,” the little girl said, bending over him. “I’ll have to kill them all. And while you might want a few of them dead, I know that at least one is your friend.”
Diver. The conjurer knew that Diver was his friend. But far more important, the conjurer couldn’t be Derne. Whoever he was, Ethan had grown pretty sick of him.
The remaining mullein leaves were in the pouch hanging on his belt, and now he racked his brain for a spell to fire back. He could preserve the leaves for two spells, or he could use all the rest of them for one powerful assault.
“When they’re gone,” Anna said, staring down at him, “which should be just another moment or two, you’re going to get up and walk north on this lane.”
“Why not just kill me here?”
Her smile was so innocent, so normal, that Ethan shuddered. “Other plans,” she said, in a singsong voice.
He thought about asking what would happen if he refused, just to keep her talking and perhaps to distract the conjurer so that Ethan’s attack would have a better chance of success. But he knew what would happen if he asked, and he flinched away from the idea of it. He thought that years of forced labor and brutal floggings as a prisoner had inured him to pain. Apparently they hadn’t. At least not the type of pain this man was capable of conjuring.
Anna smiled again. “Smart, Kaille. I thought you would fight me, but you’re learning.”
Pain or no, this was too much.
Ambure ex verbasco evocatum. Scald, conjured from mullein.
At the thrum of power Anna straightened, then vanished. Ethan thought he heard a voice cry out. Not wasting these precious moments, he pulled out his knife and cut himself.
Discuti ex cruore evocatum! Shatter, conjured from blood!
Another pulse, another cry-this time he was certain. But still Ethan didn’t stop. Cutting himself again, he struggled to his feet. Ignis ex cruore evocatus! Fire, conjured from blood! The street felt alive with the power of his spell. Another cut, more blood, which he spread on his face, like some warrior from the realm of the dead.
Tegimen ex cruore evocatum! Warding, conjured from blood!
It was remarkable to him that so few people could feel this spell, that they could be unaware of the power rippling through the city lanes. Never had he cast so many spells in quick succession.
The last conjuring, the warding, continued to tingle along his skin-a shield that covered his entire body.
He left the narrow lane and strode around the north corner of Ship Street, intending to call to Diver. Derne and Sephira be damned. But they were gone. He ran to where they had been standing and scanned the street for any sign of them. Nothing.
“Damn!”
And then he was on the ground again, his body rigid, molten iron in his veins, blades impaling him through the eyes, a taloned claw raking his heart. He couldn’t scream or breathe. He couldn’t even curl up into a ball and die. Torment pinned him to the cobblestone, obliterating all else.
Except her voice-Anna’s voice-which somehow managed to reach him through his suffering. “You are a fool, and you will endure agonies you can scarcely imagine before you die!”
He had managed not to drop his knife, and even as the assault on his mind and body continued, Ethan tried to move his hand, tried to cut his arm one more time.
The conjurer didn’t like that at all. Ethan hadn’t believed that anything could hurt more than what the man had already done to him. He was wrong. He heard a cracking sound. Several of them. Bones. In his hand. The knife fell free. Pain crashed over him like a storm-driven breaker. He rolled onto his side and vomited on the cobblestone lane.
“No more spells!” Anna said severely.
He would die before he would agree to that. Through all that he had suffered, he realized that the conjurer was coming nearer. He was still to the south, but closer, perhaps less than the distance between lanes. Useful information.
Desperation could prompt a man to do strange things, things he had never even considered before. It wouldn’t sustain another fire or a shattering spell, but perhaps something less violent would also prove less expected.
Scabies ex vomitu meo evocata. Itch, conjured from my sick.
The foul mess vanished from beneath his face, and the stone street hummed along the length of his body. He didn’t hear a scream this time, but the image of the little girl vanished again. Ethan assumed that meant his spell
