A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead to the scar on his cheek. His hand slowly drifted to the handle of his sword. Avena gasped behind him. His sword whipped from the scabbard, thumb activating the jewelchine.
Green light flared. The deadly buzz hummed. “What did you see?”
“That dark man just went into the barn.”
Something was not right here at all. That man, this creature . . .
Ōbhin whirled and ran for the barn. Avena hiked up her skirts and raced with him.
*
Avena’s hands clenched about her skirts as she raced with Ōbhin across the farmyard. She felt the uncouth bandits watching them from where they lounged across the yard. She didn’t care. Nothing had felt normal since arriving at the derelict farm. A pall covered the place. A thick malaise that coated her skin like a film of pond scum.
The dog stalking through the field.
The menacing man with the white-haired lady.
This meeting.
Dualayn’s revelation.
Her world felt cantilevered, bent at odd angles. The only thing familiar she could latch onto was caring for Carstin. He may have meant ill towards her, had been injured trying to slay poor Ni’mod, but that mattered little. He was someone whose life needed tending. Someone she had helped save.
He was alone in that barn.
Ōbhin’s stride forced her to run with every ounce of speed. They ate the distance across the farmyard for the open barn doors. She couldn’t see into the darkness beyond, the contrast between the orange light splashed across the graying boards of the exterior and the yawning opening into black was too great.
Why has that man gone in there? rippled across her thoughts. She’d never met a person who so unnerved her. Not Ust nor any of his rabble. Not any thief roaming the slums of Kash. He almost had that unnatural aura that had possessed her mother on that terrible day.
Guilt and fear whipped her to race faster, to keep up with Ōbhin and his humming sword.
From the open barn nickered one of the horses. Another whinnied in nervous fright. The watching eyes from the field followed her. She felt a cold malevolence lurking behind her while before her something sinister slunk through the world, tilting it to these bizarre angles.
They reached the entrance, Ōbhin and her both slowing to a walk. She panted, chest rising and falling from the effort, cheeks pink. The dark interior grew sharper. In the wagon bed, the dark-skinned man knelt over Carstin. He gripped something in his hand, a small stave of some sort, almost like a cudgel made of a dark yet shiny material. It reflected what little light spilled through the open doors and reached the wagon.
Dark stone with a glassy surface . . .
Obsidian?
Her stomach clenched as she stared at the forbidden gem held in his hand, a wand like a sorcerer out of legend would wield. Every Colour had a gem, like the emerald on the pommel of Ōbhin’s resonating sword. The seven righteous hues of Elohm and the one dark. Evil.
Obsidian was outlawed in every civilized land. Jewelchines made from the dark gem could only power nefarious devices. They required not tin or silver or gold or one of the other proper metals to act as a guiding catalyst, but black iron. A rare substance that poisoned the world.
Blood dripped from the man’s hand gripping the obsidian wand. It dribbled down the fluted shaft to rain upon Carstin’s chest. It was like grasping the item had cut open the dark man’s palm.
His head turned slowly to fix his gaze upon Avena and Ōbhin. The whites of his eyes almost glowed, reflecting the light. The jagged shadows reaching around his head seemed deeper than the black in the darkest corner of the barn.
“What are you doing?” Ōbhin demanded, advancing slowly, weapon held low but ready.
“Helping him pass,” the man spoke, his accent strange, different from the lilting way Ōbhin spoke. He had almost a sibilant hiss, reptilian and cold. It should be impossible for him to be a sorcerer. They were legends, bedtime tales of men who could manipulate gems without making them into machines. “He is dying. He should be free.”
“No!” Avena squeaked, voice tight with fright. This man offended her. “I didn’t spend a sleepless night tending him for you to put him down like a lamed horse.” Despite the fear, despite the man’s unsettling presence, she marched forward.
She’d stood by once before. Never again.
Ōbhin’s left arm shot out before her, barring her progress. She squeaked in indignation. She wouldn’t let fear hold her back to protect her patient. She would march up there. The man might have a menacing air, but she would box his ears or . . . or . . . or do something.
Ōbhin raised his sword, the blade humming. “Step away. If he dies, it won’t be with your aid.”
The man rose to his full height, blood dripping from between his fingers. “Are you sure you wish to do this?”
“Yes!” she snarled, refusing to be intimidated even as her bowels liquefied to jelly. The man’s eyes were dead of all emotion but a dark hunger. A flicker of inhuman desires that she had no word to describe.
“So be it.”
*
The smell of death filled Ōbhin’s nose as he faced the dark man. Blood dripped, the only sound echoing through the barn. Avena bristled behind him as every instinct in Ōbhin screamed at him to run. Dark stories of sorcerers and black rituals danced in his mind.
The foul stench rose.
The horses whinnied in fear, screams of terror. One kicked at its stall door, rattling the wood. Fear squeezed Ōbhin’s pounding heart. Sweat soaked his gloves. His feet shifted their stance
