His Cure For Magic (Book 2) (18 page)

"Where are we going?"

"You'll see when we get there."

"You don't trust me?"

She put her hand on Strider's flank, steadying herself before she tried to mount. Wilem had killed his master and his mentor to save her life. He had protected her while she was unconscious. "I do trust you. Come on."

Wilem followed behind her. When she hopped up to get her foot in the stirrup, he grabbed her waist and helped lift her. She got her legs over and the Mediator brought himself up behind.

"Let's go, Strider," he said, patting the stallion's side. Eryn leaned over and took the reins, and the horse headed towards the water.
 

Eryn stared down its length while they crossed it, searching for Silas, though she knew he wouldn't be there. He wasn't supposed to fall. He wasn't supposed to die.
 

How am I going to do this without you?

She felt Wilem's breath against the back of her head. Even in her grief, she found a measure of comfort. Wilem was a Mediator. Not only did he have the Curse, but he had been trained in it. He could teach her things that Silas would never have been able to.

She hoped it would be enough.

###

"How are you feeling?" Wilem asked.
 

They had been riding for almost two hours, following along the Wash as it gently meandered its way south. Eryn was keeping a lookout to the trees they passed beneath, searching for the owl that Saretta had promised them.
 

"Better every minute." She twisted so she could look back at him, putting their faces only inches away. Wilem's began to turn red. "How does it work?"

"How does what work?"

"The cure for magic."

Wilem smiled. "You keep calling it 'magic'. Why?"

"That's what my father, my birth father, called it. He said it was a disease that will first weaken you, and then kill you, unless you have the cure." She looked down at her hand, remembering how it had been gray and distorted before she had blacked out. "You must have given it to me, or I would have died."

"I did, though I wasn't sure it was going to help you. I've never heard it called a disease before. They teach us that when we use the Curse, our life force drains with the blood that runs from our eyes. Over time we grow weak."

"What do they tell you the Curse is?"

"A fault in our design. That we were made wrong, but that we can turn the weakness into a strength for the Empire. We don't hunt the Cursed because we are monsters. We hunt the Cursed to protect them from themselves, and to protect others from them. My teachers told many stories of unreported Cursed destroying entire villages, and killing hundreds of people."

"Are you sure they weren't talking about themselves?"

He was silent for a moment. "Not any more. My family is from Edgewater. It is where the Cursed are brought to train as Mediators. My father... My real father is a carpenter. When I told him I was Cursed, he called them right away. I never considered running."
 

"Then why did you help me? Why are you here? Why do you believe in me?"

"The 'cure' as you call it, is no cure at all. When we are brought to the Academy at Edgewater, the first thing they do is stick us with a thin rod of ircidium that is hollow in the center. It is attached to a glass tube, similar to the vials in the box." He leaned over and patted the saddlebag where he had placed the remaining refined blood. "They pull our blood out. We are then sent to our quarters to rest. We must remain there for a week or more until the Carriers return."

"Carriers?"

"They are soldiers in the Empire. Special soldiers. They wear ircidium armor that covers them from head to toe, including their faces. They ride horses plated in ircidium. Their job is to bring the blood that was taken to be refined."

Eryn shook her head. So little of what Wilem was saying made any sense to her. "Refined?"

"There is a place called the Refinery. I don't know where it is. No one knows except for the Carriers. They bring our blood there. Something is done to it, and then it is returned. The ranking officer or Mediator is in charge of holding our refined blood, for use when we become weak from the Curse. It is injected back into our bodies through the use of the ircidium rod, and our health is restored."

Eryn looked at her hand again. "You mean to say you put someone else's blood into me?"

"Yes. Talia's blood. I wasn't sure it would help you, since it was hers and not yours, but you are both female, so I was hopeful."

Eryn licked her lips and closed her eyes. She was stronger and healthier, and the scaliness on her skin was gone, but otherwise she didn't feel any different. Had Aren known anything about this?

"What I was trying to tell you is that I asked Kelkin why we don't collect the blood of the Cursed and bring it to the Refinery."

"What did he say?"

"He said it wasn't that easy. I don't know what that means, but considering he was poisoning me, he was probably trying to keep me from the truth. That is why I believe in you, Eryn. From the moment we met you haven't hidden anything from me."

She couldn't help but laugh. "I lied to you about everything."

"Not your name," he said. "Where you were from, what you were doing in Varrow, yes. Maybe some of the stories you told of your childhood."

"Those were as true as I could make them."

"You never hid your feelings. Your excitement about being in the forest with your brother. The love you felt for Silas." He paused, giving her time to absorb the statement. "The fact that you aren't attracted to me."

That surprised her. "You knew?"

"I had a feeling. That is why I tried to kiss you. Mediators are forbidden from relationships, so it never would have gone anywhere, but I needed to know."

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

"I knew you liked me. I wore the dress the other night to tease you. I've never been wanted before. Nobody wants a Cursed."

He didn't say anything. He looked past her, to the trees and the river before them. He was still staring straight ahead when he spoke.

"I still want you."
 

Eryn felt her heart begin to pound, but she didn't respond.
 

###

They found the owl a short time later. A quick glance into the tree wouldn't have been enough to attract attention to it, but Eryn stopped Strider beneath the branches and stared up at it until she was certain it was made of carved and painted wood.

"There should be a small cave here somewhere."

It might have been easier to find if the entire area hadn't been a mixture of stone, trees, and grass. The rock jutted out from the earth without rhyme or reason, some of it launching as high as fifty feet into the air. Spindly trees grew atop the stone, the roots hanging along the sides and digging into the moss that grew there, or dipping down and creating curtains on the way to the soil below. In others, it was barren and lifeless, the earth little more than sand and the stone a pale yellow, as though it were sick.
 

Eryn had never seen anything like it.

"What should we do, just feel along the sides of the rock?"

"Saretta didn't say how to find it."

She had explained everything to Wilem as they had ridden, starting from her discovery of Aren's secret cellar all the way up to when they had found Ames in the woods. When they had been at Waverly's, he had seemed so out of place and lacking in self-confidence, stumbling over his words and turning red with every turn of her wrist, or flash of a smile. Since then, he had shown a strength, determination, and decisiveness that she would never have expected. He had given up everything he had ever known because of her word, her conviction.
 

It wasn't just me.
He
holds
his
power through lies. Such power is destined to fail. He still turns red when I smile at him, though.
 

She liked that.

She slid off the horse, finding her legs more easily now. She bent and straightened them a few times, and flexed the rest of her muscles as well. It might not have been a permanent cure, but she felt better than she had since the night she had met Silas.

She closed her eyes and fought back against the threatening emotions. There was no time for that now. The best way she could honor him would be to finish what they had started.
 

"So many roots," Wilem said, dismounting behind her. "Lychnus," he said. A light formed in the palm of his hand.

"The words," Eryn said. "They help control the power of the Curse. Did your Academy tell you how?"

The light moved from his hand, floating to a stone wall and ducking behind a curtain of roots. It gained in brightness until they could see through to the sheer rock face behind it.
 

"You don't need them, if that is what you are asking. They say it helps our mind to focus on the task we wish to complete, like training a muscle to fight with a sword. The more familiar the motion, or the action, the easier it becomes. Creating light is the first thing we're taught, so the mastery comes from its manipulation." The light vanished. "If I wanted to tire myself, I could focus the light so tightly that it would become hot, and burn a hole right through that stone."

"Really?"

"I was considered quite gifted at the Academy," he replied. He looked down, and his face turned red. "My assignment was to replace Kelkin as General Clau's personal mediator. I considered it an honor at the time."

"What about Kelkin? What was going to happen to him?"

"Once a Mediator has reached fifty years they are replaced in the field. Kelkin was going to become a teacher at the Academy."

"Replaced? Why?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know how many Mediators are in the Empire?"

"Not enough," he replied. "The number of Cursed has been growing, but I don't think the number of Mediators has." He put his hand on his chin. "The Academy has twenty-four students at any one time. Never more, never less."

"That doesn't make sense. If there are more Cursed, and they are being brought in from the villages around the Empire... what happens to them?"

Wilem looked up at her, his face paling. "Before we get into the Academy, we have to pass a test. They have a way to draw out the Curse. It is a large purple stone that they keep in an ircidium box. A Carrier leads you into the room and removes the stone from the box. It pulls on you, your 'magic' as you call it. You have no control over it. When you pass out, the Carrier covers the box again. Many Cursed do not survive."

The thought made her cold. "Surely more than twenty-four must pass the test?"

He looked like she had punched him again. "I... I never... actually thought about it. I was grateful just to wake up. I don't know what happens to them."
 

"Killed, if I had to guess." Eryn said.

She scanned the outcroppings of stone again. Saretta had said they would never find it at night, but they couldn't seem to find it during the day either. She looked back to the tree with the owl in it. "Maybe it's on the other side of the river?"

"You're on the right side," Davin said, stepping out from behind a large stone. He was holding a crossbow, and had it leveled at Wilem. His hair was tousled, his eyes bloodshot, his clothes caked in mud and grass. "What are you doing with this?"

"Davin, wait," Eryn said. "He's a friend."

He looked at her, his eyes narrowing. "A Mediator? Do you think you can trust him? I couldn't even trust my best. Lance and Ames were like my younger brothers." He shook his head. "Where is Silas?"

He must have seen it on her face. He pursed his lips and lowered the crossbow.
 

"There's been enough killing for one night, eh? I'm sorry, Eryn. I hated him for a long time, but he was a fine man in the end."

"A fine man who died so that we could carry on," she replied. "Is Saretta here?"

He smiled at that. "She is. You have my eternal thanks for rescuing her."

"I don't want your thanks. I want the journal, and a guide to the Dark."

"The Dark?" Wilem asked. "The Dark is a myth."

"No, it isn't, Mediator. Come, Eryn. I have your other things, too."
 

"The Dark isn't real," Wilem said again as they followed behind Davin.
 

He brought them through a maze of stone and wood, to a twenty foot mound of rock made almost invisible by the density of the roots hanging from the trees at its peak. He swept some of the roots aside, revealing a small, dark hole, just big enough for them to crawl through on their hands and knees.

"It is real, and it's where I'm going. If you don't wish to follow, you can turn around now."

"I'm staying," he said without hesitation.
 

"You can leave your horse out here," Davin said. "I trust a stallion of his quality will stay quiet."

"One minute," Wilem replied. He undid the straps to one of the pockets of a saddlebag and withdrew the lacquered box.
 

"What is that?" Davin asked.

"It's a long story," Eryn replied. "I'll tell you inside."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Eryn

18 Avrille, 2904

We're leaving tomorrow. Abandoning this place. Will we ever return? Will we survive to have the option? The future has become so unclear.
 

 
I regret the day we reached the ebocite. I regret our pride and our confidence that we were the masters of this world, and that our simple human hands could maintain control of such power. We never fully understood the reactions. We never spent enough time studying the effects of the resonances.
 

I will go with Rossum and the others to the source. It is a risk to use the subroutes, but it is the only way to make it in time.
 

Everything that we have left is waiting there. An army almost two hundred thousand strong. It is a grand feat to hide them, and it comes at a grand cost, but this is our last stand. This is our darkest hour. Two days from now either the tides of war will have shifted, or the downfall of man will have been decided.