Chapter 15

Siska awoke to find the house empty, save for Keeley, who slept on in the massive canopied bed. She moved through the house in her nightgown, padding from room to room. Siskana was curled up on the cushions of the long reclining couch in the common room, with a small hand towel covering her.

Outside, the skies hung low, the clouds pregnant with impending rain. It was still early morning, but the day showed little sign that it would lighten much more than it already had. The fireplaces gave off little warmth, so Siska set about clearing the still warm ashes and setting new fires in the common room, kitchen, and her own bedroom. As she cast a spell of ignition, Keeley's voice emerged from amid the thick blankets.

"I may never get used to you really being a wizard," said Keeley. Her eyes were wide, but crinkled at the edges as she smiled. "It's amazing, in truth."

"Some people can write poetry, too," said Siska, shrugging. "I can't do it, not well, at least."

The slender brunette slipped from the bed, shuffling over to the fireplace where the logs blazed with loud crackles, to warm herself. "I'm surprised we weren't awakened for chores before now."

"There's no one else here," said Siska, her expression becoming thoughtful. "Just you, me, and Siskana." She smiled at Keeley's grin upon her saying 'Siskana'. "I'll make us something to eat."

Keeley followed Siska back downstairs and giggled as Siska lit the kitchen hearth with the same ignition spell. She managed to find some fruit and located some day-old muffins in the breadbox. "There should be some thinned milk outside the door," said Siska. "They're supposed to deliver it every morning."

Since she took over the day-to-day running of the kitchen, eggs, meat, and milk were delivered as needed. Phillip seemed to think that it was some other sort of spellcraft, one that was not wizardry - a spellcraft to which he was not privy - and was constantly amazed to find there was food in the larders.

When Keeley unbolted the door, it was as if a tornado had entered the room. The door smashed into the young woman, driving her backwards until her feet went from beneath her and she fell, knocking her head against the flagstones of the floor.

Siska turned to face the commotion, unaware yet how urgent the matter truly was. She barely managed to raise an arm as the first slash cut her forearm deeply, the steel of the blade grating on bone as it finished its pass.

She might have recognized the face before her, but it was twisted in such a grimace of hatred and rage that she only knew it to be a young woman. "Die witch!" screamed the girl in a voice that had an edge of a growl in it.

Even as she howled those words, she began another swing of the long, slender blade. Siska leaped back, coming up against the cabinets painfully with the small of her back. Warmth flowed down her arm and she held up the other to fend off a possible slash toward her head.

The girl missed with her second swing, Siska's desperate leap back having thrown her aim off. She glowered through disheveled hair at Siska, raising the knife for a stab.

Desperately, Siska forced herself to focus upon the mana within herself. She had no time to draw from outside. A spell of apportation formed and tried to seize the girl, forming a mist about her. Just as the mist touched her attacker, however, it dissipated, the magical energies shredded into minute fragments and falling aside.

The girl smiled, and Siska recognized her from the ceremony for the Defenders. "Claya?" asked the apprentice, blinking in startlement that her spell had failed to even form completely and her breath coming in gasps.

Claya smiled wickedly, stepping forward to close with Siska. "Your vile magics will not touch me, spawn of the Dark One," she grated out. "The One protects those who..." Her speech dissolved into a howl of pain.

Siska looked down to see Siskana sliding over the flagstones and a long carving knife sticking out of Claya's bare foot. The girl looked down, too, and Siska reached for something - anything with which to defend herself. She swung the first thing she gripped even as the girl jerked her head up so fast that her hair flung itself back from her face.

Shock ran up Siska's arm as the bottle of vinegar shattered against Claya's head. The liquid splashed over her face and matted her hair to her skull on that side.

What the improvised weapon lacked in impact, it's contents made up for in effect. Claya screeched again, her long, slender knife falling from her fingers as she reached for her burning eyes. "Bitch!" she wailed, rubbing furiously. Behind her, Keeley had managed to regain her knees and gaped at the scene before her.

Siska tried to dodge aside as Claya reached out with a hand twisted into a talon and swiped at her, trying to claw half-blinded at Siska's face. She was successful insofar as it did not strike her face, but the strong nails dug into her shoulder, leaving three long, deep runnels. One of the nails snapped off and she could feel it painfully imbedded in her flesh. The blood and vinegar on the floor, along with shards of broken glass, caused Siska to fall, sprawling onto the floor as pain lanced up her calf. The tumble knocked the wind from her lungs and made her head spin.

Claya fell upon her back, nails digging into her flesh from one hand, the other hand fumbling at the floor near the counter, seeking the knife.

With the sound of a loud crack, Claya's weight upon Siska's back suddenly stilled, becoming dead weight. Siska pulled her hair from her face trying to look behind herself. Claya's head was slumped just below hers, the dagger clinking off the floor as her hand went limp. Turning, Siska saw Keeley standing over both of them, a broom handle, snapped halfway down it's length clutched like a sword in both hands. She should have looked comical, but the fierce look of determination on her face and the set of her shoulders told Siska that she was in deadly earnest.

Siskana was there too, peering at Siska's face from close range and making agitated sounds while shifting from foot to foot. "Thanks," said Siska faintly, having recovered only enough breath for that and not likely to get more with the plump girl on her back. She discovered the weight had effectively pinned her. "If you could just help me with..."

The body rolled off of her as Keeley shoved with a foot, rolling Claya off her back. The look of distaste that marked the brunette's features left Siska unworried as to whether she should concern herself with Claya's well-being as she tumbled onto the shards of glass from the vinegar bottle.

"Siska, you're burned," said Keeley, looking where a patch of Siska's back had smoke rising from her night shirt. Siska clutched her cut arm with her free hand while craning about to look at the smouldering cloth. It was burned in a pattern that looked like chain links.

Keeley lifted the night shirt and peered at the row of raised blisters and whitening flesh across the small of Siska's back and over the upper lobe of one side of her rump. "It looks bad," said Keeley.

"I didn't feel it," said Siska, blinking at what little she could see of the burns. She looked at Claya, then saw the belt. "Her belt." The chain patterning of the links of Claya's belt matched the blackened spots on her night shirt and the repeated pattern of burned flesh beneath.

"I'm tying her up first," said Keeley, dropping the broomstick and looking frantically for a moment before kneeling beside Claya and using the long, slim knife to cut the hem of the girl's night shirt into strips. She tied the girl's hands behind her back and then her ankles together as well as she knew how, then touched the belt. It felt cold, like the iron it was made of should feel in a chilly room, especially having come in from the cold outside.

Opening the buckle, she unfastened it and held it up. Siska peered at it but did not reach to take it from Keeley. Focusing mana into her eyes, Siska saw a dark but pulsing aura about the belt. "It's magical," she said while covering the cut in her arm with a hand towel. "I think you should put it down."

Keeley hastily put the belt on the stones of the floor, a good ways from Claya's still limp form. "Why?" she asked as she turned back to face Siska.

"I don't know," said Siska. "She said something about me being a witch."

Keeley blinked. "There are some who think wizards are touched by the Dark One," she said. "But I would have never thought any lived in Tressen. Mostly the Rojandos and Theocracy are like that."

"Given recent events, I'd guess the latter," said Siska, sitting heavily in one of the chairs and lifting her arm up while holding the towel against the wound. "I'm going to need a healer - or at least a good seamstress."

Keeley's smile was half grimace. "I'll go find someone," she said. Siska watched her walking directly for the front door.

"You may wish to dress first," said Siska, breaking into a feeble giggle. "Else you'll catch your death out there before you find me help."

Keeley grinned back at her and turned about to run up the stairs. She came down a moment later with a heavy traveling cloak about her and a pair of Siska's boots in her hands. The boots were a little large on her, but fitted well enough to be worn. She was out the door less than a minute later.

Siskana was sitting on the table then, watching Siska and patting her arm in commiseration for her hurts.

A faint scrape told her that Claya was regaining consciousness and Siska gripped the long knife off the tabletop and stood to face the girl.

Claya's burst of speed was startling. She came up off the floor in a single motion, somehow flinging herself at Siska head first, despite her bound feet. Siska cast the apportation spell before she could truly think on it. Even as she finished the incantation, she knew she was about to get knocked about again.

The impact never came. Claya was floating in the air over the kitchen floor. Her nightshirt clung closely to her while she hung suspended, matted to her by blood, vinegar and night mist. She growled and thrashed about, but could not move. "I'll destroy you, demon-spawn," she said, looking maniacally through her mussed hair at Siska. "I'll send your soul back to the Dark One."

Siska looked at the iron-linked belt then back at the girl hanging suspended in mid air. "No. I don't think you'll be doing that this day," she said, a coolness in her voice that startled even herself. "I think you may just stay right there until more people arrive."

Claya's thrashing redoubled and she grunted like some beast caught in a snare. "Release me!" she howled.

"And let you kill me?" asked Siska. "That would be cooperative of me, would it not?" She advanced at the girl as she still wriggled about in the bindings of magic that held her aloft. "Who sent you - Tornadin?" she asked. "His first assassin failed, so he sent another?"

"Who?" hissed the girl. "No one sent me - I'm serving the One."

"I find that highly unlikely," came Salira's voice from the kitchen door. She walked in, followed by Phillip and Tarmal, then Thean and one of the other guardsmen, one Siska had yet to be introduced to. Thean stopped in the doorway causing Keeley to run gently into her back.

Claya's eyes flicked to the others as they entered. "This is not your fight, wizards," she said in a grating voice. "The One only seeks the death of Siska."

Salira stood before the girl, interposing herself between Siska and the floating, tied girl. "The One?" asked Salira.

"She was wearing that," said Siska, Pointing to where the iron belt lay in tumbled links. "I think it stops magic."

"Wizardbane iron," said Phillip. "It absorbs mana like a sponge."

"It burned Siska," said Keeley, pointing at the apprentice's back.

"It would if it touched you," said Phillip, looking at Siska's burned nightgown.

"I'm glad Siska has her bound," said Salira. "I don't think I could even cast a spell this close to wizardbane, not that much of it, anyway."

Both Phillip and Tarmal murmured agreement and Tarmal gave Siska a long, considering look.

The guardsman with Thean stomped down the hallway and the front door slammed. "I sent Gulchof to get a healer," she said as eyes turned to her. "I don't think he was terribly comfortable with so many wizards about." She turned a wide smile at Phillip. "Unlike some of us who think wizards are pretty appealing."

Siska's eyebrows shot up at the blush that turned Phillip's whole head bright red and Keeley broke into open giggling. Tarmal contrived to cough uncomfortably and Salira simply quirked her lip upward in a half smile.

The bound girl was gibbering now, flicking her gaze from person to person, though it lingered still upon Siska, and flashed to hate every time it did so.

"I think I'll take her out front and have one of my men run her to the jail," said Thean, stepping into the Kitchen at last. The girl thrashed as Thean reached for her and the young soldier simply curled her hand into a fist and punched her in the head. At that, Claya went limp, hanging in the constraint of the apportation spell. "Can you leave her floating like that? At least until I get her to my men?"

"Yes," said Siska, investing a portion of mana into the spell to make it maintain itself for a good while. "It should last a few hours."

Thean chuckled and grabbed the collar of Claya's nightshirt, towing her out the door and down the hall. She was none too careful about letting the girl bounce off walls and door jambs on the way. A moment later the front door slammed again.

"You sure got her quickly," said Siska, turning to Phillip.

"We were on our way back when Keeley ran right into us - literally," said the tall, slender wizard, rubbing his arm, though he smiled at the source of his new bruise.

Salira hovered over Siska, examining the still bleeding wound to her forearm. "It cut muscles," she said. "You'll need real healing, not just stitching up. You certainly seem to have a knack for being knifed."

Siska winced as the woman probed near the cut with her fingertips. "It's a skill I surely would unlearn, if I can."

It took a good portion of an hour for Corporal Gulchof, huffing as if he had run the entire time, to return with a small man who looked rather put upon. Siska instantly wondered if all healers were wrinkled old men.

"Corporal, could you take that belt outside?" asked Phillip, giving the wizardsbane belt a look that dripped distaste. "And leave your gauntlets on, just in case."

"Just in case?" asked the corporal, scratching at the side of his bulbous nose, though he did walk toward the pile of iron links. He picked it up and walked out the back door, held open by Tarmal, then returned after dropping it in the center of the large stone ring.

"Why on earth would a wizard own a belt like that?" asked the old man. Siska could not help but smile at him, for she was taken by his cottony wisps of hair that stood out over each of his ears, marking his baldness better than sheer baldness itself ever could have. His wrinkled, leathery fingers were deft, though, as he touched her wounded arm, examining it closely.

Phillip did not deign to respond, just shrugging while Gulchof took up a post just outside the kitchen. Keeley and Salira were speaking quietly while they cleaned up the mess on the floor, Keeley using some rags and Salira wielding small magic.

"Nasty cut, that," said the healer.

Siska nodded in wholehearted agreement. "Can you tend it?" she asked.

"Girl, I can tend any wound," he said with a nearly toothless grin. "The guardsman said you had other injuries?" he said, looking at her face and other arm.

Siska nodded and stood. When she began to hoist the hem of her nightshirt, both Phillip and Tarmal hurriedly moved out the door, dragging the corporal with them to the common room. Salira laughed at them and Siska just watched them oddly and finished removing her nightshirt.

He examined the deep scratches and the burns. "The burns will be hardest," he said. "The others are simply cuts, though one seems to still have a fingernail in it. Did you take up with some woman's man?"

"No," said Siska with a chilly tone, though her facade broke when he pulled the fingernail loose with a pair of small tweezers and she yelped. She glanced back to see if the man was taking liberties with her nudity, but his eyes only rested on her injuries, for which she was immensely grateful. "Don't worry, girl," he said. "Even if I were younger, I only ogle healthy women, not the walking wounded."

Siska blushed slightly having been caught, but watched his hands nonetheless.

"This will hurt," he said. "Leastwise, I've been told it hurts."

A gasp erupted from Siska's throat as fiery tendrils of pain spread through her from where his hands touched her back. Tears fell from her eyes and her knees felt weak. "One save me," she groaned as the pain cored through her. "The wounds didn't hurt this much."

"Yes, but this way, the pain ends sooner," said the old healer, clicking his tongue as he completed each healing. One after another, bright lances of pain ravaged her and she found herself cupping her face with her hands while she cried openly into them and whimpered between healings.

Salira stood beside him as he worked. "I see acceleration intermixed with your healing," she said.

"You've a good eye," said the old man. "I can only heal a tiny bit, most of what I do is speed up the healing process. Though a tiny bit I have to actually mend, like her muscles and such."

"Can you accelerate yourself?" asked Salira.

"I've done it, though it leaves me tired," said the old man, grinning. "I used to joke that I'm only twenty-five years old, only I accelerated myself too often."

The woman laughed but watched in fascination as he healed one after another of Siska's wounds. When he was finished, Siska grimaced. "It's hard to say thank you after someone hurts you like that," she said.

"I'm used to it, girl," he said, patting her shoulder. "At least you didn't hit me. That would not be a first, either."

Keeley fetched Siska a fresh gown. She suddenly felt uncomfortable as she sat in the hard wooden chair in the nude. Memory recalled that he said he only ogled healthy women, and she was now mostly healed, though the healer pointedly kept his eyes on Salira's as they spoke. She slipped the gown over her head and hugged the old healer. She discovered that he was surprisingly short when she stood up. "Thank you," she said.

Phillip returned and proffered a small pouch to him and he accepted it with a small bow.

She looked where her arm had been cut. A faint white scar ran there for a hand's span. Around that spot was a patch of lighter skin in an oval that extended over an inch in every direction from where the wound had been. It was still a bit tender, but not at all sore. "I'm sorry, but how I heal doesn't prevent scarring. It's a shame to mar your fair skin, but there is nothing I can do about such."

"Adds character," said Keeley, grinning. "She was too blasted perfect, anyways."

The old man bowed again and left the kitchen, shown out by Phillip.

When he returned, Phillip said, "They've ordered your relocation." He had a look of resignation on his face. "You must move out to the home this day."

Siska sighed and shook her head. "I suppose what happened here surely didn't help," she said.

Phillip barked a laugh. "They told me that before this all happened, but it surely would convince them even if I had talked them out of it." He paused a long moment and sighed himself. "I'm not altogether sure it's not the best option. I seem rather poor at keeping you safe."

The look of dejection on his face made Siska want to weep. "No," she said. "It's not your fault people keep trying to kill me. It's that damnable Lord Tornadin," she said. "I should never have crossed him."

Salira's features adopted a look of maternal worry. "You cannot go about sacrificing your sense of right and wrong to avoid conflicts," she said. "You were right to call him down, from what I hear. His reaction surely is overmuch for such an affront."

"Overreaction or no," said Siska, "He seeks my death, and seems to be closer with each new manner of doing so."

"Regardless," said Phillip, interjecting himself between the women. "You are ordered to move to the home of the Blue Order, and Councilor Tarmal is here to see that order carried out."

Tarmal suddenly looked very uncomfortable. "Don't look at me, it wasn't my idea," he said indignantly. "I'm only an officer of the council, and I have to do what I'm told, too."

Siska felt that she had enough control of her knees to rise, and did so. "I'm going to pack my clothes, then," she said. "Would you like to help, Keeley?"

Keeley nodded eagerly and the two made as if to leave the kitchen. "Keeley can go, too," said Phillip. "Though, technically, she will have to be introduced as my chambermaid."

The other two wizards looked at him askance. "That's stretching the rules a bit, considering you have to stay in the city."

"She will be my 'chamber' maid, not my maid," said Phillip with an air of false pompousness. "My chambers are there, and she is the maid of them."

Keeley stifled a giggle at that and curtsied in the manner of a household servant. "As milord commands," she said in a falsetto squeak.

Thean walked in behind her and crossed her arms. "Milord had best not be giving any commands to pretty young gels if milord knows which end of a sword is pointed," she said. Her expression somehow blamed Phillip for a myriad of crimes he had yet to commit.

Despite the injustice of the situation, Phillip swallowed visibly.

Traveling to the home of the Blue Order had been a misery. The ominous clouds had released their load of icy cold rain upon the city almost as soon as the little group had begun its pilgrimage. Once outside of Tressen, the road was unpaved and soon became a bog of deep, clinging mud.

The horses seemed almost as much hindrance as help as one after another of the riders had to dismount and pull their animal free of a particularly sticky portion of muck. They were chilled before passing the last outlying houses of the city and only a steady flow of mana from the three wizards kept someone from catching a death of a cold, or worse.

The situation improved slightly when they entered the actual properties owned by the Blue Order, and the road became somewhat more passable. Good drainage ditches followed the road there, kept clean and clear by the labors of dozens of apprentices.

They had only traveled half the way from the property line to the house, itself, when two men materialized as if from nowhere. Both carried long, silver-shod staves that glowed with an ominous green light down the length of the wood. "Who travels this road?" asked one of the men, still deeply shadowed within the protective cowl of his oilcloth cloak.

"Councilor Tarmal, Mentor Phillip, Apprentice Siska, and company," said Tarmal formally, pulling back his cloak's hood and glaring at the tall figure. "And if you don't lower that staff, I'll show you a new manner of holding it which will leave your hands free for healthier pursuits."

A grin flashed from the shadow of the cowl. "I suppose a password would be asking too much, eh?" he asked, but indeed lowered the staff hastily, the green glow winking out as soon as he started moving. The other took a half-second longer, but his staff lowered, too, with a similar disappearance of its threatening glow.

"They've taken to handing out staves, have they?" asked Phillip, pulling back his hood only enough for his face to be clear and giving the long oak rods a dubious look.

"Well, it is a war, Phillip," said the man who had lowered his hood. A blond man with tight ringlets and a strong, handsome face, he might have been only a few years Siska's senior, yet she wondered if perhaps he was not much older, in truth.

"Those damned things are as dangerous to you as to your enemies," growled the wizard, giving the staffs another wary eye and turning halfway to Siska. "They amplify some spells, the ones they're enchanted for. However, they draw a lot of mana through themselves, and can make you draw more than you intended if you get caught up in the heat of the moment. Far better to trust in your own abilities, rather than workarounds like staves and wands."

The two men on the ground chuckled but the unhooded one nodded. "Teach her right, Mentor," he said in an approving tone. "Besides if she tried to use one of these, it'd likely burst into flames before she even reached half her own capacity." He hefted the staff, though, and shrugged. "Some of us aren't as gifted, though, and these do a bit to balance the scale."

"Until the backlash catches up with you," muttered Phillip, but he nodded.

Siska held her tongue during their exchange, and only partially from consideration of more highly-ranked members of the Blue Order. Her teeth were trying to chatter from the cold and the presence of armed, or what seemed to be armed, wizards on the home's properties seemed more an affirmation of the state of war than the actual fighting had.

She did not like the idea of entering an armed camp despite the recent attacks on herself and the hope that such precautions might well prevent further assaults. She watched the wizards banter a bit more before the blond man pulled his hood up again and both stepped back from the path, fading almost instantly into the foliage that ran a few paces to either side of the ditches. She leaned toward Salira.

"Are they using magic to hide?" she asked.

"Yes, but not their own," said Salira, dismissively. "Enchanted cloaks."

Siska smiled. She had seen how the mana was used around them as they shifted from view and thought she could manage such with a few simple 'letters' from her magical vocabulary. She would try it once she got warm again. Would that Phillip had not warned her against her abilities until safely within the home of the Order, she would not be cold. He fretted, though, thinking that more attacks, from whatever quarter, might still materialize.

The home, as before, seemed unexceptional, just a series of one- and two-storey houses, built in the rural fashion, with peaked roofs and pastel-stained plaster over their brick construction. Closer examination revealed that this small village's worth of buildings was interlinked and that they were in truth one building, a massive, sprawling thing that meandered through the woods, covering an untold amount of land.

Amid the mundane structures were a few of more peculiar construct. A few seemed to be greenhouses, with huge panes of glass over frail-looking wooden lattices. Another was a tall spire of exposed wooden framing that stood up above the trees, with a platform atop it. Young boys approached as the party neared the house, taking the reins and leading the horses off without speaking to try to avoid the wet cold for longer than necessary.

Siska wondered at never having noted the tower before, but realized that they were not entering the home from the same direction as she and Phillip had the first time they were here. The foyer that they found themselves upon was broad, almost ten paces wide, with doors and windows facing into it, as if each room to the side were a house unto itself. The roof was of light construction, like the greenhouses she had seen outside, with glass panes inset to allow light to enter. Currently, the glass only showed rain cascading down its surface.

"This is one of the Atriums," said Phillip, shaking the water from his oilcloth cloak and hanging it in a small room just inside the door. The others followed his example and then he led them down the long open space. A balcony ran along both walls, with similar doors and windows along it - another tier of apartments, Siska guessed.

Phillip opened one of the doors and the scent of disuse wafted out to meet everyone's noses. The sitting room was small, but well-furnished. It was almost cluttered, in fact.

Three doors opened off the sitting room, and Phillip pointed toward one. "The bed chamber," he said, then pointed to another. "Study and servant's room."

Salira clicked her tongue at the state of the rooms, with the thick layers of dust and general air of neglect. "How long since you've lived here?" she asked.

"Almost twenty years," said Phillip, shrugging. "Though I was in here for a few days last year, when we were having the troubles with that pirate band."

Siskana, who had ridden concealed in Siska's cloak, moved off into the rooms. She was clad in a tiny tunic that hung to her knees, a gift from Thean. Siska was unsure, but thought she was even an inch taller than she was just two days before.

Thean and Varachski stood near the door, which was being left open to admit light. Soon, though, Salira had located lamps and had the room brightly lit, despite the sourness of the oil within them. The slender guardsman had a large oilcloth sack slung over his shoulder, containing Siska's clothes and what Keeley had brought with her, as well.