Passion Play (River of Souls 1)

In answer, he lifted a hand and curled his fingers, murmuring in a strange tongue. Erythandran, Therez realized with a rill of wonder, recognizing the words. But unlike her own poor attempt two weeks before, there was no doubt of magic’s presence. She felt a pressure against her skin and the faint tattoo of another pulse. The scholar spoke another phrase and a sharp green scent overlaid the camp smells of horse and wood smoke. It reminded her of hot sunlight, of fresh-cut hay and summer fields. When the scholar opened his fingers, a light bloomed within his cupped hand.

“Touch it,” he said to Therez.

Warily, she stood and approached him.

He was tall, with a bony face and the ruddy-brown coloring that marked the borderlands around Károví. The cuffs and hem of his robe were frayed, and the black dye had turned a rusty brown in places, but in his eyes she read assurance. At his gesture, she touched her fingertips to the light. Something tickled her skin. “Steady,” the man said. “Almost.”

He spoke another phrase in old Erythandran. Her fingers turned transparent. Where her blood flowed, threads of light gleamed.

Therez let her breath trickle out. Magic. Inside her. It was … it was far more wondrous than she could ever have imagined.

“Try it yourself,” he said. “Look at something tiny—a nail, a stone, a freckle. Good. Now breathe slowly. Find the point between inhale and exhale. When you think you’ve found it, repeat these words.”

Ei rûf ane gôtter. Komen mir de strôm.

The words rolled through her mind. Magic echoed against magic, and she sensed the possibilities unraveling from that one phrase. Healing. Fire. Illumination of the soul. If only she had known these words two weeks ago, when she bent over her dying grandmother.

Suddenly afraid, she plucked back her hand. “You must have studied for years.”

His mouth tilted in a wry smile. “Hardly. I know a little. I’m going to Duenne to learn more. Maybe you should join me, instead of working as a maid.”

“I can’t,” she said quickly.

“Why not?”

Therez opened her mouth, closed it. “I don’t know.”

And she didn’t. She no longer lived in her father’s household, where magic was not precisely forbidden, it was merely discouraged, labeled a useless distraction outside of a few practical applications.

Except it’s hard to break the habit of nearly sixteen years.

But the scholar was smiling, as though he had expected such an answer. “Maybe you should think about it,” he said. “We have a few more weeks ahead of us. Talk to me before you leave the caravan, and maybe I can find you a place in Duenne that better suits your talents.”

Therez stared after him as he walked back toward the main campfire, where Ulf was handing out coffee to the next perimeter watch. Magic. He thought she ought to study magic. The idea so distracted her that she didn’t hear what the others were saying until Brenn tugged on her arm. “You’re from Melnek. You must know.”

“What should I know?”

“About Károví’s King Leos—the man who traded his heart for magic. I thought all the people from the borderlands knew those stories.”

Therez shook her head. “They’re just folktales, Brenn. They’re not true history.”

“History!” Gabi laughed. “I’d rather have stories.”

They insisted until Therez finally relented and told them the folktales she had learned from her grandmother. How Lir and her consort (sometimes called Toc) had created a lake of fire called the Mantharah and, from it, the rest of this world. How Lir took a handful of fire from the Mantharah and squeezed hard to make a single white jewel, which she gave to the first emperor of Erythandra. How centuries later a traitor sent a thief to steal the jewel so he might take the throne himself. The emperor’s chief mage had used powerful magic to divide the jewel into three pieces, and hid them in three secret places within the palace. But in the latter days of the empire, a prince of Károví named Leos Dzavek had turned thief himself and took all three jewels so he could gain eternal life.

“The old kings never dared that,” Therez said. “Their priests would not allow it, saying that Toc himself had died and was reborn, and so no ordinary man should refuse what the gods themselves endured. But some claim that King Leos was the chief mage reborn. They say he bargained with Toc to win his life and the jewels as a mark of the god’s favor, so he would never have to die again.”

“Then the gods took back their favor,” Gabi said softly.

“Not the gods, but a wolf,” Therez said. “A giant wolf, who led King Leos through the paths of the dead. But this time, there was no bargain. This time, there was no victory. The wolf buried the jewels forever and King Leos returned without them.”

The crescent moon was sliding behind the trees when Therez finally said good night to her friends. She picked her way between the wagons until she reached Otto’s. A movement in the trees caught her attention. One of the caravan guards? The mysterious scholar?

Alarik Brandt emerged from the shadows. He held a short club in one hand. His other hand rested on his knife hilt. He paused and glanced at Therez. His teeth bared in a smile.

He wants to frighten me.

She smiled back to prove she wasn’t afraid. (Even though she was. Could he sense how her pulse beat faster? Could he see her shiver from all that distance, through the night and shadows?)