Chapter Twenty-Two, Part One
A Beast Re-settled
Hiram was prepared to protect himself. He had his magic brimming at his fingertips, eager to leap free and engage in a way he hadn’t allowed it to for weeks, for longer. Sparks literally flared around him, power snapping and crackling, readying itself to strike at the snarling beast in front of him, the beast he knew, that he didn’t want to hurt but wasn’t sure he’d be able to stop any other way with how he felt right now—
And then the beast crumpled to the stone floor like a forgotten doll, limbs going limp, chest heaving as it panted desperately, glazed eyes fixed on Hiram’s face. Those eyes…they were so different from Avery’s, yet Hiram saw him in those eyes. They followed him unerringly, brimming with tears even as the beast’s claws retracted and his sharp teeth receded.
“Oh, my darling.” Hiram knelt down beside him and shifted Avery’s head onto his lap, holding him through the last of his transformation back into the man Hiram recognized. Gods, he should have known, he should have seen it sooner. If only he had pushed a bit, dug a little deeper into the mystery at the center of Avery Surrus. This might not have happened. He could have stopped it, he could have—
No. Don’t go there. If his past had taught Hiram anything, it was that he couldn’t take responsibility for someone else’s decisions, especially not when it was someone he loved. That was the path of madness, of too many questions and not enough answers. If he let himself get lost in that mire again, after all the self-recrimination he’d endured with Andurion, he would never get out of it.
They couldn’t go back; not him, not Avery. All they could do now was go forward, together. That meant keeping the curse from taking further hold. Avery had treasure in his hands, but it was still inside the Tower. That meant he wasn’t too far gone yet.
Avery groaned, something so guttural it could have come from the throat of his beast. He sounded like he was being pulled in half, and blood began to flow from his nose even as he pulled away from Hiram. “Don’t,” he gasped. “Don’t touch me.”
Hiram couldn’t help the little flinch that went through him at that. “All right,” he said evenly, but that just made Avery hiss with a combination of frustrated fury and despair. The look on his face, longing and hatred stamped into the hollows beneath his eyes and along his jaw, stripped Hiram of his ability to defend his heart.
“It’s not you,” Avery managed even as he pressed to his hands and knees. “I want to stay, but I can’t—I can’t, I have to get back in time or I’ll be arrested.”
“Why would you be arrested?”
“Because I’ll turn myself in!” Avery snarled, winding one hand into his hair even as he staggered to his feet. The other scooped up the gems, linked together with silver ligaments. “How are you even here?” he whispered in agony. “How? You should be home, you should be safe, I can’t—” It looked like it took every bit of will he had in him to lurch toward the stairs again, but he was unsteady on his feet. “I’m not going to make it back in time,” Avery whispered. “I’m not going to—I’m not—”
Hiram felt like an idiot when he finally realized what was going on. The geis, of course; Avery had to do what Marlon compelled him to, which apparently included a time limit. If he didn’t get his stolen goods back to the bard in time, he would be forced to turn himself in to the imperials.
If he took the gems from the tower, he would be sinking the final phase of the curse so deep into his bones that there was no way back again. But if Hiram interfered…if he gave away his location to the imperial wizards, it was as good as lighting fireworks for Andurion. They wouldn’t stop with one troop; they would heap the weight of their magic on this tower until it finally collapsed, taking him with it.
If he waited for them to do so, that was.
Avery screamed and clutched his hair hard enough to rend, the trickle of blood from his nose becoming a torrent. There was no more time to weigh the odds, and even if he’d had it, Hiram’s decision wouldn’t change.
Hiram got to his feet and wrapped his arms around Avery, pulling him close. He let his magic out, surrounding the two of them in a spell that was more feeling than technique, one that melded their auras and let him sense every part of Avery. He sensed the layers of the curse—one that was old and settled, one that still flared every now and then, and the third fighting to sink its hooks deep into his bones. He could see the geis as well, a filthy shroud layered over Avery’s mind and causing him pain that worsened with every second. He followed the shadow of it beyond the tower to the edge of the forest, where a man whose magic was like gilded tar waited impatiently, fists clenching as his arbitrary timer wound down.
There wasn’t time to wrest Avery from his control, but Hiram could at least fulfil the terms of the geis. The alternative was too grim to mention. He closed his eyes, then wrapped his magic around the length of gems in Avery’s hand. As long as he didn’t touch it with his hands, he wouldn’t overwrite Avery’s possession of it. Now, just a little bit of power in the translocation spell, wrapping the jewels with a wisp of elemental flame that could pass through mundane dimensions and follow the geis…and then they were gone.
For just a second, Hiram was able to use the wisp’s eyes to see Marlon’s shock as it deposited Avery’s stolen treasure into that vile man’s hands. Then the force of the geis dissipated, and with it so did their connection. Avery slumped against Hiram, the shocking relief from the geis turning him practically liquid, and Hiram tightened his grip as he felt the aftereffects of his spell reverberate through the Tower.
He’d done it now. Used his magic, and not just magic but high-level fire magic, at that. There was no hiding his presence at this point, not from the imperials outside, not from Andurion, not from anyone.
But as Avery lifted his head and stared at Hiram in pure amazement, he found himself able to put his own worries aside. “What…how did you…”
Hiram smiled. “Just a little trick I picked up long ago.”
“A little trick…you…” His hands clenched in Hiram’s cloak. “Are you really…Xerome?”
Hiram shrugged. “I did say as much.”
“But…but…” It said something about Avery’s handsomeness that, even gaping like
a jackdaw, he was still incredibly attractive. “I thought you were concussed!”
“I know.” Hiram shrugged. “It’s rather unbelievable when you think too hard about it, so my recommendation is not to. At least, not yet. We’ve got quite a bit to untangle first.”
Avery nodded dazedly. “Right. Right…” He looked down at himself. “I feel as though I should be slavering uncontrollably right now.”
“Mm,” Hiram agreed. “Well, the curse is a bit confused by the fact that what you stole is gone, but your body is still present here. I daresay that when you actually try to leave it will hit you again in full force.”
Avery sighed and averted his eyes. “You know about that, then.”
“Only just now,” Hiram assured him. “But seeing as the architect of that curse is still here, I’m optimistic that we can do something about it.” He could try breaking it, but curses were delicate things, prone to backlash. The last thing he wanted was for Avery to suffer more from his ham-handed experimentation.
“The architect?”
“Close enough.” Hiram glanced toward the stairs. “We should go talk to him.”
A firm hand against his cheek turned Hiram’s face back. Avery looked at him, blotchy and disheveled, red-eyed and with blood drying in twin streams beneath his nose. He looked terrible, and yet… “Not yet,” Avery said firmly, then pulled Hiram into a kiss.
His lips tasted of tears and blood, his grip was tremulous, and his mouth was sour from a night without sleep, yet it was still better than Hiram could have imagined. The circumstances could scarcely have been worse, but the person Hiram wanted, whom he was utterly enamored with, was here with him and wanting him back, giving him his heat and his determination and his passion. Avery opened his mouth and Hiram responded in kind, and the kiss turned softer, slicker, less forceful and more intimate and gods, now their bodies were pressed together as tightly as their mouths, Avery pushing Hiram up against the stone wall and bracketing him with his arms. There was so much strength in this man, not just from the curse but from the ferocity of his convictions, and Hiram was one of them. Even before Avery knew who he really was, he’d fallen for him.
They kissed until Hiram’s lips were sore from it, until the only taste between them was the sweetness of the kiss itself, and Avery finally pulled back. When he opened his eyes, they were bright—not with tears, but with satisfaction. “I love you,” he said, soft but firm. “Tell me you know that.”
Hiram smiled and kissed the tip of Avery’s nose. “Of course I do.” He kissed his brow, then his cheekbone, then his chin. Finally he found his mouth again and pressed their lips together, light enough that he could still say, “I love you as well.” Avery trembled against him, then grinned. “Now, let’s go see what we can salvage from this situation.”
The grin dropped away. “I’m sor—”
Hiram kissed him again. “No sorries,” he insisted. “Not for anything you did to protect yourself, otherwise I’ll have to apologize in kind and we’ll be here all day. It’s not too late for this to turn out all right.”
“I don’t see how,” Avery confessed.
Hiram looked up, toward the top of the tower. “It’s all about who you know.”
Chapter Twenty-Two, Part Two
Back and Forth
The Tower was far from silent as they climbed the stairs, as opposed to the last time Hiram made his way to the apex. Instead, splashes of color sparked off the structure itself as magicked arrows, bolts, and even a rock strike from what looked like a hastily constructed mangonel impacted the stone, hurled by the contingent of four imperial wizards and their soldier escort on the east side. Hiram stopped at one of the window slits and stared out morosely at the black- and red-robed wizards working in tandem to bring Gemmel’s Tower down.
“Idiocy,” he muttered. He was getting a headache just watching them throw themselves into the destructive work their emperor had given them. “They don’t even care what magnificence they might be destroying in here, all they want is to extract me like a bug from a carapace.”
“It’s probably more than just your reputation driving it,” Avery said in a quiet voice. He had a grip on Hiram’s left hand that didn’t seem like it was going to let up anytime soon, and Hiram didn’t want it to. “The Tower of Gemmel has a reputation of its own. I grew up on stories of people finding ways in only to emerge so mad they couldn’t be cured by spell or prayer.” He sighed. “I didn’t take them seriously enough.”
Hiram didn’t have much to say to that. Their best hope for handling the curse was waiting for them at the top of the Tower. “Let’s keep going,” he said instead, and they climbed the last two stories in an uncomfortable silence that not even the affection between them could soften. Avery was clearly distressed, for plenty of reasons both good and not, and Hiram wanted to soothe him, but they were under a bit of a time crunch now that his presence had been so firmly established on the outskirts of Lollop.
I’m going to have to leave. The thought didn’t fill Hiram with pleasure. It didn’t even make him resigned; instead, he detested the inevitability of it. He’d made friends here, met a man he loved here, made a home here. He had people who counted on him, Letty’s family and every person who benefited from his herbology, and Tilda and Jon and even probably Master Spindlestep as friends, people who liked him not for what he could do for them or for his perceived power, but simply because they did.
Would Avery come with him? Would Hiram even want him to, given how unstable his future was likely to be? How long would it be before Andurion responded to the rumors that he was here and came after Hiram himself?
Avery pulled him to a stop just outside the door at the top of the Tower. “I can smell your distress,” he murmured, leaning in against Hiram’s side and pressing his lips just beneath his ear. “What’s wrong?”
You’ll find out soon enough. Hiram just turned and pressed a kiss to Avery’s forehead, then opened the door. It was still incredibly bright inside the uppermost room, but Gemmel hadn’t resurrected his light trap. He sat where Hiram had left him, on the little bench against the far wall, unmoving except for the lanterns of his eyes. When he saw Avery, though, he tilted his head with a creak. “Interesting.”
“Hiram,” Avery whispered from behind him in a voice that was trying very hard to stay calm. “What is that?”
“Better to ask who,” Hiram said. There was no sense in putting the introduction off. “Avery Surrus, this is the Wizard Gemmel of Clan Blackstone.”
“But…” To his credit, Avery didn’t voice that it was impossible. How could he, when the evidence was staring him right in the face? “Ah,” he finished a bit weakly.
“So.” The construct shifted a bit, folding his hands on his lap. “You’ve brought me the thief, then.”
“I—” Avery shut his eyes for a moment. “I did steal from you,” he confessed, stepping up so that he was shoulder to shoulder with Hiram. Despite the gravity of the moment, Hiram felt proud of him. “I apologize for that. I never should have done so.”
Gemmel nodded. “Especially not after you felt the effects of the first time settle in, eh?” He sighed, a wholly mechanical sound given that he had no lungs to draw air with. “It’s always astonished me how little the short-lived peoples of this world use their brains. One would think that experiencing the first level of the curse would be enough to warn you off for good, but no! You came back not once, but twice more.”
“He was forced to come back this last time,” Hiram interjected.
Gemmel scoffed. “And is this person’s inability to distinguish friend from foe is somehow my fault? Such a weak mind deserves to bear the brunt of my chastisement, I’d say.”
Avery flinched, but Hiram had had just about enough of this. “Oh, is that the sign of a weak mind?” he asked acridly. “Is it the possessor of a strong mind that miscalculates its own genius and destroys those nearest and dearest to him, then? Is it a sign of strength, to use one’s magic to poison the land and the people living on it and tear their clan apart even further? Is it a sign of strength that your people, who were one of the greatest mountain kingdoms for centuries, have given up forges for kilns and carpentry? If that’s the case, then I suppose all of your kin were simply weak minds meant for destruction.”
“Hiram,” Avery protested, a tremor of fear in his voice.
The air in the room went from temperate to cool, then cold, as the brightness of Gemmel’s eyes flared. “You do not speak of my people,” the construct intoned. A flare of magic intensified in his aura, black edges with flickering gold. It was incredibly potent, and Hiram was reminded that this person was magic, the magic of a famously powerful wizard. The aura stretched toward them, flickers promising sparks of pain—
And met Hiram’s own fiery glow with an abrupt halt. “I will speak of your mistakes if it means reminding you to be compassionate. No one is above making mistakes, not the strongest or weakest among us. I’ve made many myself.” He smiled without humor. “Some of the biggest ones were turned into ballads. But at least I can say that I’ve never tortured someone for my own amusement under the guise of teaching them a lesson.”
“You—!” Gemmel leapt to his feet, magic bursting outward and into the mirrors. The light trap snapped closed, but Hiram was expecting this. He called upon his old study of shadow magic and drew both himself and Avery up into a pocket of shadow in the very top of the tower.
Shadow was a liminal space, one where you could slip inside the smallest sliver if you knew what you were doing, without being uncomfortably squeezed. Avery’s breath caught as he realized what they were doing. “I’ve never seen someone manipulate a shadow so fast,” he murmured as Gemmel raged below them. “Not the strongest rogues, not even Narion.”
“I daresay Narion’s specialty isn’t shadow magic,” Hiram replied, keeping one ear on what Gemmel was saying as he fended off rogue beams of light.
“But…neither is Xerome’s—yours,” Avery said questioningly.
Hiram shrugged. “My position required me to be able to use any and all magic depending on the situation. I’ve studied everything from druidism to necromancy, enough that I won’t be caught flat-footed. But you’re right, it’s not my preference or my strength.” Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t second or third best at shadow magic in all the Empire, but this wasn’t the time for bragging. “I shouldn’t have provoked him,” Hiram said after a moment as he stared down at the clanking construct, magic coming from him in terrible waves as he searched for the source of his pain. “We need him to release you from the curse, after all.”
“He won’t,” Avery replied immediately. “Or at least, not for nothing. Clan Blackstone has a reputation for shrewd dealings, but they’re not unreasonable.” He bit his lower lip for a moment. “I have an offer for him, if you can calm him enough for us to speak safely.”
Hiram’s lungs clenched for a moment. “Not your life.”
Avery shook his head. “What life will I live if I leave the tower as I am now? The curse will make me fully a beast.”
“I can find a way to forestall it,” Hiram insisted. “A spell of protection, a specific healing path—I can slow time to a crawl if need be!” He’d just found this man, someone he could love for the rest of his life. He wasn’t ready to lose him.
Avery cupped Hiram’s face in his hands and kissed him tenderly. “You’re kinder than I deserve,” he told him. “But I have to face what I did and try to make reparations for it. Please, just…let me try.”
Hiram stared into Avery’s forget-me-not blue eyes for a long moment, then nodded once. “I’ll see what I can do.” He looked down and projected his voice into the room. “Calm yourself, Wizard Gemmel, and we’ll come out and parlay with you.”
“Why should I parlay with thieves?” Gemmel roared with brassy thunder, sweeping magic as sharp as a scythe through the room. It scraped off the mirrors, leaving them flawed but not cutting all the way through the glass. “Why should I parlay with those who do not respect the dead, who would steal from a sacred sepulcher?”
“Give him the chance to make amends,” Hiram entreated. “Please. Let someone make amends for a wrong done to you and yours. After all…” Despite himself, his mind went to Phlox down at the base of the Tower, steadily feeding his heat into the false blackstone and weakening it further. “You’ve endured very many wrongs,” he finished a bit unsteadily.
Gemmel’s ire seemed to cool. “We have,” he agreed hollowly. “And it is my greatest shame that I added to them. I am magic, but even magic can cringe in shame and lash out in dismay.” He lowered his hands. “I will hear this offer of amendment.”
Cautiously, Hiram lowered himself and Avery out of the shadow and onto the floor once more. The mirrors were awry, but he was prepared to pull them away again at a moment’s notice. Once they were stable, he let go of Avery, who stepped forward and dropped down to one knee in front of Gemmel.
“Wizard Gemmel, I have wronged you,” he said, voice low but eyes square on the construct’s face. “I violated your privacy, invaded your home, and took things that weren’t mind to take. You would be within your rights to make me suffer forever for that. But…I hope you’ll give me the chance to fix this instead.”
“Mm. And how would you do so?”
“By retrieving what I stole and returning it to you,” Avery said. “I don’t know where every piece went, but please give me the time to track them down and bring them back in exchange for lifting the curse.”
Hiram held his breath as he watched Gemmel’s stiff, stern face. It was unreadable for a long moment, and then—
“Three months, then.”
Three months? That’s all? Hiram opened his mouth to argue, but the wizard went on, “This Tower has stood for long enough. It’s past time for me to take it down, and indeed the lower levels seem to be even more unstable than I previously thought.” It wasn’t meant as a rebuke, but Hiram read his own handiwork in the words anyway and grimaced. “It is past time for the dead, and myself, to be laid to rest.” He glanced at Hiram. “You have been hunted here, yes?”
“I have,” he said with a sigh.
“Then three months is certainly the most I can offer, with wizards of the Vordurian Empire attacking. And it will only get worse.” The thought seemed to cheer him, oddly. He sat back down on his bench and refolded his hands. “I will keep this room accessible to you for three months,” he said. “Return here with what you stole, and the curse will be lifted. Fail to do so, and you’ll bear it for the rest of what will likely be a short and miserable life.”
“You—”
“Thank you,” Avery broke in before Hiram could protest. “That’s very generous of you. I will endeavor to return as soon as I can.” He got up on both feet once more and stepped back beside Hiram.
“Good.” Gemmel nodded at them. “Then it’s time for you both to leave.” His lantern eyes flared for a moment. “I think you gentlemen will find it a bit easier than entering was. But first, I must ask for you to brace yourselves.”
Brace ourselves? Hiram reached for Avery’s arm—
—and the Tower shuddered strongly enough to knock them off their feet.
Interlude: Wizard Greenlief
To think, I was worried a post to Oribel meant falling in favor!
It was all the golden-bearded Wizard Greenlief could do not to rub his hands together in pure glee. To have chanced upon not just the opportunity to use his persuasive magics for the greater good, but to have discovered Xerome himself as he did so! Xerome might be a traitorous bastard, but taking him down would be the ultimate feather in any cap, especially given the price that Emperor Andurion had laid on his head.
I’ll be able to fund my own tower with that kind of money, Greenlief mused as his cadre of assistant wizards continued their steady bombardment. He’d already instructed them in how to set up a magical catch-basin to recapture and reuse the magic that cascaded off the blackstone, which was unfortunately most of it, and as a result it was hardly tiring at all to maintain the assault. Certainly not for me.
Greelief glanced behind him to where his bodyguard stood, silent and still, eyes fixed on the tower. After the backlash from Xerome breaking his last spell had laid Greenlief out for a week, even with his resilient elvish ancestry, he’d boldly requested the services of an imperial bodyguard. Highly trained, their powers tailored to the individual they were protecting and the threat at hand, Senica was a rare individual, their background so crissed and crossed to improve their defensive capabilities that it was impossible to know precisely from what cloth they’d been cut, so to speak. Greenlief was a bit intimidated of them, which he masked through his loquaciousness.
“You’ve met him before, haven’t you?” he asked.
Senica’s eyes flickered toward his hands, which he was still rubbing together compulsively. Greenlief dropped them so that they were hidden within the lengthy hems of his sleeves, but his itchy fingertips kept brushing against the smooth fabric liner inside.
“Back in Galenish?” he went on after the silence became too heavy to bear. “I thought I remembered seeing you in the company of the royal family during several of the festivals…”
“I’ve met the Wizard Xerome many times before,” Senica agreed. “But my previous posting was as the personal bodyguard of Princess Misha.”
Greelief’s jaw dropped. “Wha…starlit heavens.” His mouth opened again before he could stop himself. “How did you survive the burning?”
Senica’s gaze turned flat, and Greelief resisted the urge to bite his own lip. Fool, to mention that to them. The princess’s entire wing within the palace had been burned to the ground after she and Xerome had left, along with all of the personal servants of hers that the emperor could find. Which wasn’t many, in the end—the princess and the wizard had done a very good job of covering their tracks, and Andurion’s rage had been equally punctilious.
“I was away from the palace at the time.” Their steely eyes settled upon him. “But you may rest assured that the emperor himself thoroughly vetted my loyalty. I will protect you to the very ends of my ability, as needed.”
“Oh, I never doubted your prowess,” Greenlief assured them. “I just—well.” He smiled and shrugged. “I have a tendency to speak without thinking things through at times. Do forgive me.”
Senica looked away, and it felt like being out from under the eyes of a dragon. “It’s all right. But I suggest you take more care when Kelynn Zar arrives. He’s never been one to welcome questions.”
The wizard’s jaw dropped. “I…Wizard Zar? Here? But why?”
Was that a smirk on the bodyguard’s face? “Someone’s got to be prepared for personal combat with Xerome himself.”
“I don’t think—”
“You realize we’re just marking time right now, Wizard Greenlief?” Their words were like a sword through the gut. “Xerome wouldn’t be found, especially not in a place as backwards as this, if he didn’t want to be. Whoever ends up handling him, it’s not going to be either of us. We’ll be fortunate if we can find a way into the tower by the time Zar arrives.”
“But—” But that wasn’t in keeping with Greenlief’s plans! He wanted to be elevated to the Temple of Presiel in Galenish, wanted to rule from the glittering palace of the god of love and obsession in the heart of the empire! Taking down Xerome was meant to be his stepping stone to the greatest station of his life!
Before he could coherently voice any of his complaints, the tower…rippled. It was more than a shake or a shudder, more than a sway—it was as though a wave began at the very top of the Tower of Gemmel and spread down the sides of it, blackstone bulging before it settled back into place, down and down, until it got to within twenty feet of the ground itself. And then—
The ground burst.
Rocks and dirt flew through the air, practically pulverized by the pressure that had uprooted them. Greelief didn’t see any of it past the first split-second; Senica’s had thrown him to the ground and covered him with his own body. He stared, wide-eyed, up at the person’s shoulder as the sound of several screams and a sound that reminded him of his mother’s family’s tree being ripped out at the roots by a brute of a giant who was passing through—something too sturdy to sever without hideous force, followed by an obscure pain that only someone who’d lost something unspeakably precious could understand. It was more than a collapse, more than a break—it was a rending.
The magic in the air only carried the faintest hint of Xerome. Greenlief had been trained to recognize the human’s magical signature; every imperial wizard was ordered to do so after Xerome’s defection. The rest of it was much older, something dry, almost stale, but incredibly powerful. And…dwarvish? Of course, because it was the Tower of Gemmel and Gemmel had been a dwarf, and—
Senica’s shoulder vanished, and a second later Greenlief’s head was spinning as he was set back on his feet. His bodyguard didn’t linger beside him, though, instead shouting toward an unsteady cluster of imperial shoulders, “Triage, now! Gather the wounded and get them ready for healing. Send someone to the Temple of Melemor for support, and pull everyone back from the hot zone.”
Hot zone?
Greenlief turned to look at the tower, which was notably shorter than it had been a few seconds ago. It was as though the bottom level of it had sunk into the earth, only it hadn’t gone quietly. There was a pool of what looked like liquid blackstone around it, fizzing and crackling, shimmering with a nimbus of toxic purple power, and there were still some regular stones bobbing in the midst of it all, and standing on one of them was a cat, and—
Wait. A cat? Greenlief blinked and looked again.
No cat. Ha, no, of course not. Whatever had just happened, there was no way a simple animal such as a cat could withstand it.
What an odd thing to imagine.
“Wizard Greenlief, we could use your assistance with the wounded!”
Ah, of course, of course. “Yes, I…coming!”
A cat. How silly. He shook his head and continued over to the other imperials, completely missing the faint fluctuation in magical energy that might have clued him in to the fact that the tower was not quite settled yet—that, in fact, something…or someone…had just escaped from it.
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