Blood for Magic

Chapter 1: The Monster in the Woods-2

Tarquin landed hard and rolled on the stones, somehow getting his ankle tangled in the reins. He ended up with most of his body off the highway, stunned and scraped from the icy ground.

The haldur squinted down at him with its hand dripping blood. It grinned.

Tarquin gritted his teeth and made light.

Casting light was hearth magic. Hearth lights were like floating candles without the heat or flame. Small children used the spell to light their bedrooms at night. Farmers used it so they wouldn’t burn down their barns.

Anyone could learn hearth magic. A few were talented enough to learn more powerful spells than those. Those people become magicians: alchemists, or witch skalds, or animists, or seers.

Almost no one became a mage.

Mages were the most powerful magicians because they didn’t cast spells. They manipulated pure magic into what they needed. This was the power mages paid for with their blood. The skill was in knowing what to use the magic for, and especially in knowing how much blood to give in return. Recompense for the gods’ gift. Blood for magic.

Tarquin imagined himself standing in a circle of sunlight, and then used his blood to make it real. Instantly he was lying in the center of a disc at least ten paces across and as bright as if he’d summoned back the day.

The haldur howled and staggered backward, smacking its hands over its eyes. Tarquin kicked the reins off his throbbing ankle and scrambled to his feet. He spun awkwardly to face the haldur, backing up a few steps to keep himself firmly in the center of the light. He still had his mage knife in his right hand. His left arm itched where he’d cut it, and the blood oozing from the wound felt bizarrely warm.

The haldur forced its eyes open. Its lips pulled back in a snarl that made its face even uglier. “Magician,” it spat, then loped toward him, angry enough to ignore the pain of the light.

Even half-blind, the haldur only missed because Tarquin used his magic to keep it from gouging out his heart. The next strike, a swipe upward meant to disembowel, only managed to rip his tunic.

Enraged, the haldur drew its arm back for a blow that would’ve carried off half of Tarquin’s head, except that gave him enough space to shove his mage knife blade deep into the haldur’s chest, above Ainya’s arrow, and right into its malformed heart.

The knife was sharp and long, but it turned out the haldur was bigger and thicker than Tarquin had estimated. All that happened was it jerked and staggered a step, then bent its massive head to squint at the knife.

It looked up at Tarquin again and smiled like a fistful of broken glass, then used its thumb and forefinger to pluck the knife out like removing a splinter. The haldur dropped it onto the road.

“Oh hells,” Tarquin breathed. He turned to run again, give himself enough space for more magic, but when he leaped a tree root that had grown across the road, his already aching ankle gave out. The haldur grabbed his cloak hood in its fist when he stumbled, then used it to yank him backward so hard, it felt like his head would rip right off his neck. Tarquin heard the cloth tear, and then he hit the ground headfirst. His mage light went out.

He blinked woozily in the moonlight, barely able to see, but he could hear the haldur’s leisurely approach, feel how every heavy smack of its footfalls vibrated like a bowstring through his skull. Hearth magic wouldn’t help him now, and he wasn’t bleeding enough to pay for more magery. His mage knife was somewhere on the ground, but even if Tarquin could find it, it was tainted from stabbing the haldur. With his fingers, he tried to reopen the cut he’d made, but the haldur got to him first.

It yanked him up by his neck, then pulled its free hand back with the fingers hooked, ready to disembowel him with its claws.

Then suddenly, instead of being dead, Tarquin was coughing on the ground and the haldur was on its back, fighting for its life. Something had attacked it, but Tarquin could only see shadow on shadow, with flashes of pale gray as the two combatants rolled like cats on the ground. They both screamed like cats, too: loud, grating screeches of anger and pain. It was impossible to tell which of them was winning.

Tarquin crawled out of the way, then used the trunk of a nearby tree to pull himself up, trying not to put weight on his bad ankle. The world swayed, and his head hurt so badly he wanted to vomit. But the gods had spared his life, and he wasn’t stupid enough to waste it by just standing there sucking wind.

He cast another hearth magic light so he could see, lifting it overhead with an unsteady upsweep of his hand. The haldur was fighting something far more human in size and shape. Likely male, with hair so black it seemed part of the night around it, and skin so pale it glowed like silver under the moon. He wore some kind of robe like a person, but he fought like a haldur—all teeth and strength and claws—and the sounds that forced their way out of his throat were nothing remotely human.

He had the same hatred of light, too, because as Tarquin’s hearth light fell on him, the monster bared his teeth, squinted in pain, and missed his next strike. The haldur lunged forward and slashed through the cloth covering his side to the silvery body underneath.

The monster cried out and automatically curled over the wound, which allowed the haldur to grab him by his thick black hair. Then the haldur used its favorite tactic of smashing its victim headfirst into something hard. The monster hit the stone of the highway and stopped fighting.

Tarquin could see he was still alive, but too stunned to move. The haldur grinned and put its knee on the monster’s chest. Even Tarquin could hear the creature’s bones creak as the haldur pressed down with all its weight.

For the first time, Tarquin could see the haldur’s back, and that the amber he’d glimpsed earlier came from the tattered wings strapped there like a grotesque, mocking souvenir. There were chunks of freeze-dried muscle attached to the bones that had been wrenched out of a shareblood firu’s back. The wings were the same color as the young woman’s eyes.

“Gods above!” Ainya was right. Whatever this monster was, whatever harm he had done, he hadn’t taken the firu’s wings: the haldur had. And Tarquin had accidentally helped the haldur kill him.

He’d already bled so much he didn’t dare use more magery, but there was always hearth magic. Like the little spell he cast now, to set fires on the shafts of Ainya’s three arrows, still embedded in the haldur’s body.

The haldur bellowed and reared back, slapping wildly at the flames. Its knee slipped off the monster’s chest. The monster drew one shaking foot up and kicked the burning arrow in the haldur’s stomach, driving it deep into its body.

The haldur bent forward, howling, and the creature rolled out of the way, sprang to his feet, and leaped onto the haldur’s rounded back. He grabbed the haldur’s head, and then he bit the back of its neck so ferociously, Tarquin heard the haldur’s spine break. The haldur slumped over on its side, dead. The last two arrows were still burning.

The monster slid off the haldur and flopped onto his back on the highway, turned his head, and spat a gob of bloody flesh out of his mouth. His arm was trapped beneath the haldur, but he dragged it free while Tarquin was trying to decide if he should help or run.

The creature—man? Was it a man?—sat up slowly, holding his side, then carefully gathered his legs under him and stood, squinting in the light.

He and Tarquin stared at each other.

The silvery man-creature monster-thing really didn’t look much like a haldur, Tarquin decided numbly. His skin was far more pebbled than the leathery haldur hide, and far too pale, though it was hard to tell its true color under the rime of filth that covered him. The creature’s hair was pure black, which might have been yet more dirt. He wore a too-long robe that looked like he’d found it in a ditch, and now Tarquin had time and air to notice, the monster stank like an unwashed dog. His features seemed pleasant enough and definitely humanlike, but thin and sallow and just as grubby as the rest of him. His eyes had the same attractive slant of any person from the far north, but with narrow pupils like a cat. Instead of the northern deep brown, they were bright yellow, like a wyvern’s.

This skinny, filthy creature hardly looked like the deadly brute the villagers had described, and he certainly hadn’t ripped off the poor firu girl’s wings. And he’d saved Tarquin’s life and been wounded for his kindness, and he was probably colder than Tarquin was, considering how he shivered in his flimsy robe and bare clawed feet.

One of them really needed to say something.

“Thank you,” Tarquin said, because that seemed the best way to start, given the circumstances. “My name’s Tarquin. What—”

One of Ainya’s arrows stabbed deep into the monster’s side, in almost the same place the haldur had gouged him. He cried out and then leaped straight up into the high branches of the tree spreading over them. Tarquin caught a glimpse of the tip of a pointed tail, and then he was gone, scrambling away through the winter limbs. A drop of his blood splashed onto Tarquin’s cheek, as warm and red as anyone’s.

“Quinny!” Ainya lurched up to him. Her blood had frozen red streaks in her hair and down her arm, and the torn skin of her face looked like stripes of paint. “Quinny, are you all right? The monster…” She trailed off, grimacing in pain.

“I’m fine. He saved my life,” Tarquin said.

He wasn’t fine. He’d watched Gretta die and his mare was likely dead, too, and there was a haldur in the Realm of Kelor, and he was dizzy and aching and trembling from cold and fear. He was still better off than Ainya. She looked like the next breeze would knock her over, despite how she’d still managed to use the bow now dangling from her hand.

“He saved my life,” he repeated when Ainya only blinked. “Look.” Tarquin gently turned her so she could see the haldur’s back. “He killed the haldur before it gored me. And he didn’t kill the firu either. See?” He pointed at the remains of the girl’s wings, on the back of the haldur.

“Oh,” Ainya said. “I shot him.”

“You thought he was hurting me.” Tarquin hoped the man with lizard skin was all right, but he had to worry about Ainya first. “Can you get on your horse? We have to go back to the village.” Tarquin could probably heal her, but not now. He felt like the next breeze might knock him over, too.

“Ensi-Var is closer. And Prea and Faladir should be at the animist’s house by now.” She slid her bow slowly onto her shoulder, then whistled faintly for her horse, who plodded over. Of them all, Southwind seemed perfectly fine, if understandably spooked.

When Ainya pushed herself up and swung her leg over Southwind’s back, she almost slid off the other side. Tarquin darted forward and grabbed her ankle, then yelped as his own hurt ankle took his weight.

“Are you sure you can ride?” he asked her.

“We don’t have a choice.” She reached down. “Take my hand.”

“I need to check on my horse.”

“Hop’s dead,” Ainya said. “Her neck’s broken. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, no.” Tarquin put his hand over his mouth, blinking hard to force back the sudden tears. “It’s my fault.”

“The haldur would’ve killed her if you’d been riding her or not,” Ainya said. “Just be glad it was quick.” She reached down again, gritting her teeth as she moved. “Come on. We can’t stay here. Wolves’ll smell the blood and come.”

“Gods above.” Tarquin hadn’t even thought about that. “We can’t leave Gretta here.” Bad enough they couldn’t do anything for the horses, but the idea of leaving Gretta to be eaten made him want to throw up. “What if the wolves tear her body apart before the collectors come?”

“I don’t want to leave her either, but I can’t help you get her on Southwind’s back,” Ainya said. “I’ll send shields back for her. The collectors must have her by now.”

Tarquin nodded, hoping it was true. He let Ainya help him onto Southwind’s back, ignoring her sharp breaths and his own discomfort. Ainya made sure he wouldn’t fall before she clucked her horse into a slow walk.

He tried not to look at the dead bodies, intensely grateful Prea had agreed to go on ahead with her husband, instead of coming with them.

If it hadn’t been for the gray-skinned monster, the haldur would have killed Tarquin and Ainya, and then maybe gone to Ensi-Var to kill Prea and Faladir—

“Souls in hell!” Tarquin gasped as his tumbling thoughts fell into sudden, awful realization. “The village!”

“What?” Ainya sounded more alert, Tarquin’s anxiety sharpening her wits.

“A haldur killed the firu girl, not the monster,” Tarquin said. “And—”

“Haldur don’t hunt alone,” Ainya finished.

She reined Southwind around and kicked the horse into a dead run, going back the way they’d come.