Dawnbringer

He flinched farther into himself as the hot walls constricted once more.

Kill you? Never. You will live forever, pressed on all sides by red metal and thorns. Give what I ask for!

Was the voice that of the Rhythanko? Could his bound avatar turn against him so? Or was his tormentor the alien mind that possessed the long-sundered key to his prison?

Fandour could bear no more. Take, he shouted, opening up and exposing a soft underbelly, going against every instinct to do so. Take, and stop this torment.

Ah, the voice gloated as something, not another entity but a thought and will made material and animate scooped out a part of Fandour, twisted, and escaped like a small savage fish nipping a chunk of flesh from bigger prey and darting away.

The thorns retracted, the searing heat was gone. Exhausted and quivering with remembered pain, Fandour sprawled on the floor of the oubliette and strove to understand what had happened.

Someone had used the Rhythanko to tear away a little of Fandour’s Power, to mold it and forge it into something of use.

Eagerly, ignoring the waves of pain that still rippled through his essence, Fandour sent tiny thought tendrils along the fragile and ephemeral ley lines that still connected the Rhythanko and the oubliette. Someone was out there, sitting on a great mass of stone, stone from the flaming heart of a mountain, cool and hard now and honeycombed with tunnels. Two people: one had the knowledge of the nature of all manner of locks and keys, magic, mundane and mechanical, in her head and held the Rhythanko in her hand; the other was harder to see, having little magic in him. He reached out, and the other, the mistress of things locked and unlocked, put the Rhythanko in his hand. A jolt of Power struck Fandour’s thought tendril, sending it back into him like a blow.

Fandour curled up inside the oubliette, clinging to the memory. The man reaching with tentative fingers for the Rythanko was bound to it by blood. The Rhythanko, inturn, was bound to him by the Power the woman had ripped from Fandour. That small essence Fandour had lost forever, but in that brief contact, Fandour had sniffed out the dark one’s blood, a nexus between him, Fandour, and the Rhythanko.

Time was long and until Fandour healed, there was little else to be done. He coiled about the memory of the blood, the nature, the taste, the smell, the tiny components of it.

Fandour would not forget anything to do with that blood.

A troubled expression on her face, Jandi sat silent as the green light of her Art faded. She turned the bracelet round and round between her fingers.

“You’d impress them back in Mulmaster,” said Gareth. “Why the glum look?”

She looked up at him, ignoring the hand he’d stretched out to help her up.

“I wish I knew more about how the Key was made, and the exact nature of the Power it taps into,” she said.

“Why? It did what you wanted.” He wiggled his fingers at her.

She seemed to see his hand at last and took it. He winced as she grasped his wounded finger tightly while pulling herself to her feet. She staggered, and he extended an arm to steady her.

“Are you unwell?”

She breathed deeply and raised her eyes to his.

“It’s just … I have a feeling I caused pain to something, to some entity or Power the Key is connected to. I felt a cry of pain, and more-despair. Something with no hope, and nothing to do but watch and plan for … for something. A chance to escape, to be free of the Key.”

“But you didn’t intend to hurt anybody.”

“No, of course not. But sometimes you can cause great harm, accidentally. When you were a sailor, and you had to fight a pirate, do you think you ever had to hurt … or kill … someone who was innocent? Because of the circumstances, or the tools of your trade, just in the course of business?”

Gareth turned away to look at the horizon, black starred silk against black velvet, and pulled on his gloves, for the mountain air was chilly. Neither he nor Ivor had told Jandi they’d served on Ping’s ship before they’d met her in Mulmaster.

Gareth found himself wondering if Ivor would tell her, now that she’d thrown her lot in with pirates.

“Yes, I suppose,” he said at last. “You can’t avoid stepping on every ant. And maybe you did injure something in using the Key, but it’s over now, and they’ll likely forget.”

“Yes, very likely.” Jandi’s voice told him she wasn’t so sure. She swayed again.

“Careful of the edge,” said Gareth, guiding her to a stone knob. She didn’t sit but leaned on it, still twisting the torque in her hand.

“Are you all right?” He glanced at the rock beneath their feet and wondered if he was imagining the ambient green glow that seemed to cling to the contours of the rough stone. “Did … did it work?” He tried not to sound too eager.

She nodded wearily. “It worked, possibly in more ways than we’ll ever know. But your palace is warded to you, and I wish you the joy of it.”

He looked at the dull metal she wound between her fingers like a snake. Tentatively he reached out for it.

“Shouldn’t I-shouldn’t I hold that?”

Startled, she looked at him, then down at the torque.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “But … do you mind if I hold it a while longer?”

Reluctantly he pulled back his hand.

“It’s drained me,” she said. “But now it’s over, I feel some of my strength return. And I’d like-I’d like to find out if it can give me any more information before you take it back.”

She looked down at it, brooding.

“I’d like to find out whom I’ve hurt. May I? Just for a while. I’ll give it back tonight.”

Suddenly Gareth longed for the brisk walk down and a slap of cool water on his face at the base of the Fist.

“Come on, then,” he said, taking her elbow. “Dinner and your sweetheart below, and then you can tinker with that Key as long as you like.”

Jandi made it down the rough-hewn stairway unaided, but Ivor persuaded her to mount the donkey for the short trek back to their campsite at the old oak. The donkey grumbled, but Jandi was light and there wasn’t far to go. She kept turning the bracelet over in her hands, and every once in a while the mark on her cheek shone green.

“We’ll need a name for it,” said Gareth to the company in general.

“A name for what?” replied Ivor as Jandi and the donkey were silent.

Gareth gestured with his thumb over his shoulder at the monolith.

“That,” he said. “The Giant’s Fist is an unwieldy name for a trading headquarters.”

“I have a name for you,” said Ivor with a suspicious glance backward. “Jadaren’s Folly.”

Chapter Four

NEAR THE GIANT’S FIST, LATER JADAREN HOLD

1461 DR-THE YEAR OF THREE GODDESSES BLESSING

Between the lacework of the oak’s branches, Jandi, staring at the sky darkening from lavender to purple, stretched her neck before looking back down at the torque in her lap. The presence she’d felt while warding the Fist-or the Hold, as Gareth decided to call it on the hike back to the campsite-was gone, but the memory lingered of a great intelligence imprisoned, all too aware of its confinement. It gave her the unpleasant feeling of seeing a forgotten pet in a cage, staring at her with dumb, tortured eyes, mired with filth and too big for its shackles.

Ivor had ventured under the forest’s canopy to restock their wood, taking the donkey with him (“I should’ve