As I climbed, the dregs of my fear began to evolve into something leaner, sharper, and a lot more angry. The orthodox wanted me to be afraid. The toadies of two senior elders wanted to see me panicked, crawling and quaking in my silly little human boots, wanted me to cry and beg, to be submissive and weak, so they could protect the town from the evil magic-worker, a sexually promiscuous, wicked, licensed witchy-woman.
I stopped on the landing at the top of the unheated stairs, one hand on the knob. Yeah. They want me afraid. I pulled out the summons, fingering it in the dim light, tracing the broken seal. My skin tightened into tiny peaks of chill bumps. "Blow it out Gabriel's horn," I swore, and pushed open my door on the echo.
Inside, I ripped off the tunic, boots, and leggings and tossed them to the floor. Standing in my underleggings and long-sleeved, low-necked, silk tee, I opened my armoires and rummaged in their backs, between the clothes and linens. In the back of the third armoire, behind the dolls that smelled of my foster father, Uncle Lem, and my early years in Mineral City, I found what I wanted and tossed bags packed for a fast getaway on the stripped bed, abruptly fighting angry tears. A sob, a wretched sound like linen tearing, caught me by surprise and I stopped, shocked, as anger and grief welled up. I hadn't known tears were so close to the surface, and I was fiercely glad no one was here to see me cry.
For a long moment I gave myself over to misery, one hand on the armoire door, one holding a baby doll, its body soft, its porcelain face angelic. I had named her Asia, for her tilted eyes and blue-black hair. Tucking her under my chin, I stroked her hair, soft as seraph down. Her lace dress wavered in my tears.
When my breath came easier, I wiped my face and smoothed Asia's dress. Holding the doll close, I breathed in her scent. If I had to run, I wouldn't be able to take the dolls, and they were all I had left of Uncle Lem. They still carried his scent: old pipe smoke, stone dust, and after-shave. I put Asia on the shelf, straightening all the dolls, giving myself a moment of respite, a moment to grieve.
When I was forced to leave Enclave at age fourteen, I was brought to Uncle Lem, a human man who had no idea what he was harboring. Though he had wanted a son, he opened his home to an orphan, thinking me wholly human. For years, the taciturn, gruff old rock hound had given me beautiful dolls, which I adored, and he shared with me his love of stones, taking me into the hills looking for mineral specimens. I had grown to love him, and he me, until he died unexpectedly in my eighteenth year, leaving me totally alone.
Suddenly, I missed Uncle Lem with an ache that felt brand-new. Of the two loves, dolls and rocks, only the love of rocks had lasted. But I still kept the dolls. And now I might have to leave them all behind. Stroking Asia's hair, I closed her up with her friends.
More settled now that tears had come and gone, I held up the battle uniform I had worn in defense of the town, and the formal mage-clothes I hadn't put on in over ten years. I hung both sets of garments over the armoire doors and walked around them in my sock feet, studying. Dobok or formal attire? Acid-burned and talon-scored black mage-leather, or silk and lace? Battle dress or sex in silk?
I added items to the luggage as I considered what I might do and the impression I might make. The dobok would treble any guilt the orthodoxy felt about my fighting Darkness on the Trine only a few weeks past. It would remind them that I was a warrior, and that I could kill six of them before they even noticed. The fact that I fought for the Light wouldn't occur to them.
The silks would have an entirely different effect. They'd probably swallow their tongues. Not that I would be any less deadly in the formal attire. Which reaction did I want? Could I do this? I fingered the material of each outfit. Yeah. I could.
Satisfied that I had the guts to follow through with the role, I opened the stained-glass window at the back of the loft and dropped the packed bags to the ground. At the thump, Jacey's big, strapping stepson, Zeddy, stuck his head out the barn door and waved up at me. "Morning to you, Miss Thorn," he called. "Hope you live through it."
I waved back with sour amusement, shutting the window and cutting out the cold. "Me too, kiddo," I said to the apartment. Then I let down my hair, set my amulets aside, and laid out my weapons.
On top of the underclothes I pulled a heavy silk mageblouse that followed the plunging neckline of the undershirt. The points of the long sleeves were navy lace; the neckline was brightly embroidered, and sown with delicate stones to signify my status as a stone mage. I smoothed the teal fabric to my waist and tightened the stays at the front, pulling them out and pushing my small breasts up against the lace and stones, tying the cords under them. The blouse was part come-hither bustier, part defensive weapon, its torso lined with thin, mage-tempered steel laths that shaped me and provided a limber, mail-like corset.
The silk and lace would offer less protection against sleet and snow than the dobok or even street clothes did. Stone mages react badly to the touch of water that has passed through air, elements that work better for water mages, sea mages, and weather mages. A prime amulet blunts the discomfort, and the fact that I have two primes, one more than most mages, means that I seldom even think about protection from the weather. A dunking, however, is torture, and with the thin clothes, I'd feel the patter of snow or sleet. Not that I would change my plans because of minor pain.
I settled the copper and gold bracelet of my office over the sleeve, where it couldn't be missed. The bangle was too small to slide off over my hand, and had been equipped with a GPS locator device. It was inscribed with the words "106 Adonai." If I cut it off, the seraphs would know. If someone severed my hand to get it, the seraphs would know. If I died, the seraphs would know.
Presumably, if I needed seraph help, I could call them with it, but no one had bothered to tell me how, other than cutting off my hand, and Lolo, the Enclave priestess, had stopped receiving me when I tried to scry her. Maybe my constant questions had ticked her off. Or maybe she was still dealing with the fallout of a mage in hiding being found, going into battle, and being licensed after the fact by the seraphs. Couldn't be easy, explaining me away.
On my forearms I strapped my ceremonial weapon sheaths. I hadn't worn them in ten years, but they gripped my arms perfectly. I'd stopped growing taller at the age of twelve. I still looked pretty much the same now, slender, short, muscled, little body fat. The sheaths were tooled leather, dyed teal and fuchsia, and I slid long-bladed throwing knives into the casings, checking to see that I could pull them unimpeded. I missed my kris, its wavy blade catching the light as I fought, but I'd broken off the blade in the body of a Minor Darkness and damaged the hilt in the following battle. I figured my life was worth its loss.
I stepped into a Bohemian-style skirt, see-through silk gauze floating around my calves with the movement of the overhead fans. The fabric was studded with tiny rings and small copper and brass bells that chimed with each step. I shimmied mage-fast, the bells a warning or a paean of joy. It would all look perfect, if the ambient temperature of the meeting hall were warm enough to go without the underleggings and undershirt, but the outfit looked pretty good even with extra layers.
On one thigh and the opposite calf I strapped standard weapon sheaths over the leggings and slid a knife in each. A show of force was the mage way. Today, if I had a blade, I was wearing it. Setting the worn and tattered battle boots aside, I pulled out my only pair of dress mage-boots. They were constructed of tooled and dyed leather, conjured to resist burning, smoking, melting, or charring from the blood or spittle of Darkness. I tugged them over my feet and stamped hard to find that they still fit. The calf sheath peeked from the top of a boot, the decorative hilt set with rainbow fluorite in teal and ocean blue. There wasn't time to charge the stones sewn and embedded in the formal attire, but the humans wouldn't know that.
I looked at myself in the armoires' mirrors, turning and considering the effect of the clothes. I touched the prime amulet on the bed and let my mage-attributes shine out in full force, the scars earned in defense of the town blazing white through the soft, roseate sheen of my flesh. My cheek scars looked weird, white light shining in a crosshatch pattern that matched the mesh of the cage that had frozen to my face. Eventually it might heal. The scars still looked dangerous and would serve as reminder that the Administration of the ArchSeraph had kept me prisoner for a while. Only a while.
As I dressed, my heartbeat settled into a steady, fast rhythm. Grief firmly put away, battle-lust thrummed in my bloodstream, speeding my breathing. A flush lit my cheeks. Where my battle glove had torn, the blood of devil-spawn had left acid burns on my knuckles. The scars of my other hand glowed like a torch. A reminder. A show of force. Oh, yeah.
I braided my hair into a war-braid, the plait close to my head and turned under, the style exposing the tooth scars at the bottom of my neck and decollete, revealing the mark left by a demon-iron sword. I strapped on the spine sheath and I secured the hilt of the battle blade in the queue of scarlet hair. It protected my neck from spawn teeth and from beheading. Its hilt was silver-plated forged steel set with garnets. The steel crossguard, silver, and stones glittered through my hair.
On my wrists went cuffs of Mokume Gane gold, studded with stones. Though I seldom wore rings, I placed one on every finger, different stones in each: some polished nuggets, some faceted, some charged with power. Into my ears I slid thick gold and copper hoops. Satisfied that I was wearing enough silk, lace, blades, precious metals, and stones to cause even the most hardened mage-watcher to gawp, I shook my hips, hearing the bells jingle. Oh yeah.
Over my head I settled my amulet necklace, in plain sight, to be worn in public for the first time in ten years. The prime amulet was a four-inch hoop composed of topaz, peridot, amethyst, citrine, and garnet in five inner layers, with a double helping of bloodstone sealing them at top and bottom; seven layers in all, a religious symbolism. The amulet had changed, however, from the conjured stone created by the mage prophetess at my birth. I had chipped it, then mended it, and the crack had filled with a fine, bloodred line like mortar, sealing it together. The center amethyst layer was subtly larger, thicker than the others, and it glowed, just a hint, with power that wasn't mine. I had been testing the altered prime to see what it would do but I still didn't know for sure. Today, perhaps reacting to my emotional state, the prime glowed hotly. I positioned it below my breasts, centered on my ribs within easy reach.
Beside it I settled my sigil of office, my visa, a ring of watermelon pink tourmaline, inscribed like the bracelet with "106 Adonai." One hundred six was the year my visa ran out, 106 Post-Apocalyptic Era. One year from now. If I lived that long. Adonai was a name of the Most High.
Lastly, I clipped on three stones from the time of the first neomages that were filled with wild-magic. The magic sometimes vibrated into my aura. I had little idea what they did, but I liked them. I had set each with a pendant cap and strung them onto my necklace. I added the newest amulets, a bloodstone cat and three damaged, half-repaired crucifixes, scorched and partially melted. The cat was an energy sink. I hoped. I had taken the incantation from the Book of Workings, modified it so I could draw on all the energy at my disposal at one time. A sort of a last-ditch conjure. I hoped I'd never need it. But today might be the day.
I looked again into the mirror. Shock settled its weight across my shoulders. "Seraph stones," I whispered. Maybe I couldn't do this after all.
I had never seen the being looking back at me. Last time I had dressed in formal mage attire, I had been a teenager. Now I was a woman. I didn't look sexy. I didn't look good. I looked dangerous. Real dangerous. A mess-with-me-and-die woman who would still have every man in sight drooling. And some of the women too.
Well, that was my intention. To take the town fathers by storm.
I tossed the dobok out the window with the last of my supplies. Sleet fell in a heavy patter, dancing off the uniform when it landed on the ice. Zeddy stuck out his head a moment later and jerked with surprise. He stared at me, taking in the hair, the glowing skin and scars, and the exposed flesh. "Holy moly," he said, mouth and eyes wide, and then he looked around to make sure he hadn't been overheard. Dragging his eyes back to me, he said, "You sure you want to go like that?" When I nodded, he gave me a half salute and said, "Okay, then. Sorry I can't be there. Hope someone tapes the meeting for me." He shook his head. "Horses are ready, Miss Thorn, if you need 'em. Holy freaking moly," he said again, whispering the oath.
Not trusting myself to speak, I closed the window. I looked as outlandish as I thought. Outlandish as Enclave. For a moment, doubts eddied but I pushed them away. Strength, surprise, and the unexpected. It would save me or stun the elders long enough for me to run.
I pushed the kitchen table to the side and poured a salt ring on the deep turquoise tile, leaving six inches open. The salt wasn't sea salt, defiled by water and air, but had been mined from the earth, from deep underground. Earth salt for a stone mage. It had a faint bluish-green tint in some light, but in midmorning, even with sleet falling and a heavy cloud cover, it looked white. I entered the circle and sat yogi-fashion on the cold tile, bells tinkling. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, feeling the pull on the amulets with which I had decorated myself. Once, it would have taken long minutes to calm my emotions and settle my body into the proper forms, but lately, though I didn't know why, it was easier. Much easier. Within moments, I sealed the circle with a final handful of salt.
As it closed, power seized me. Power from the beginning of time, heard as much as felt, tasted, and seen. It hummed through me, a drone, an echo of the first Word ever spoken, the first Word of Creation. The reverberation was captured in the core of the earth for me to draw upon, a constant, unvarying power of stone and mineral, the destructive potency of liquid rock and heat. Its vibrations rolled through my bones and pulsed into my flesh, the thrum of strength, the force, the raw, raging might of the earth, a molten mantle, seeking outlet. Finding me, rising within me.
I was a crucible for the incandescent energy - it was mine to use. Mine. I was the strength of the earth and stone, the might of the core, the power of creation. The prime amulet on my chest pulsed softly, harnessing the energies needed for the simple incantation. I needed only enough power to keep myself calm and focused during the coming town meeting.
Until recently, drawing on leftover creation force had been a dangerous moment of temptation. Only a few weeks past, I hadn't been able to begin such an incantation while wearing the amulets, but had to start without them and then place them around my neck at the right moment. Like my prime amulet, I was different. I didn't want to look too closely at the change in me, in my life. Maybe someday I'd have the leisure for introspection. Not now.
I breathed, calm just out of reach. The silence of the loft settled about me. I could hear the ticking of the black-pig clock over my shoulder, the sound becoming one with the stillness I sought. My heart rate slowed, decelerated to a methodical, slow pace. In mage-sight, my flesh was a roseate radiance lined with blood rushing through my veins and the bright, terrible tracery of scars down my legs and arms.
The loft pulsed with energy, a bower of neomage safety I had created in the humans' world. Stones were everywhere, at the tub and bed and gas fireplaces, in every window and doorway, on the floor. Even on the wood beams overhead. My home glowed with pale energy, subtle, harmonious shades of lavender, green, rose, yellow, and bloodred. Mage-sight saw what humans couldn't, the power beyond physical manifestations. Mage-sight saw the energy of creation in everything. Such power should have been protection enough to keep me safe from an incubus, but this particular beast had access to my blood, which gave it power over me. I shelved that worry, concentrating.
When I was centered and calm, I sent my senses scouring out, drawing power from every stone in the loft, pulling it into myself and my amulets, as I would before battle, in a slow, easy drawing of strength, not fast enough to interrupt the charmed circle, but enough to leach through and into me, like osmosis. As I drew it in, lavender energies misted out of the walls and floor, following the might I pulled from other stones. Startled, half disbelieving, I watched the mist as it moved for the first time in weeks.
As if scenting me, it coalesced into the shape of a cobra with glowing, dark blue eyes and a hint of yellow chatoyency, like blue tigereye stone. A pale hood expanded; its tongue tasted the air. My body tensed. Evil often took the form of a serpent, but this thing didn't glow with the energies of Darkness. It glittered with the brilliance of Light. Yet even Light could be dangerous to a charmed circle. If it tried to pierce the conjure, its energies would combine with mine, a fusion of wild-magic, the kind formed nearly a hundred years ago in the time of the first neomages. The union of disparate energies would discharge into a destructive explosion and splatter me all over the loft. Fire and death everywhere. If it was real.
I blinked. The serpent was still there, coiled on the floor in front of the salt, looking at me, a twenty-foot-long, lavender-and-purple-banded cobra of might. I blinked off my mage-sight and it was still there, a physical beast, but like nothing in nature. I knew that if I touched it, I would feel a real body, sinuous muscle beneath cool scales.
With a slow, hypnotic sway, it inspected the circle, tongue forking out, tasting the energies of the incantation. I sat frozen in the center, having no idea how to stop it from doing whatever it wanted. The serpent was a manifestation of the culled energies of the amethyst sealed in metal ammunition boxes stored below, in the stockroom. Stone that was empty, last time I looked: stones that had been so totally drained that I thought they were dead.
The cobra opened its mouth, exposing white tissue, devoid of life and blood. Hinged fangs lowered from its palate. It was hungry. It wanted in. It swayed, asking, begging. No words were exchanged, but I knew what it wanted; to join with me again.
Again? My mind found the only incantation I could remember, the first small conjure taught to every neomage, a nursery rhyme, almost the first words we spoke, later used as a conjure to calm and prepare, when a mage was afraid. Softly, I said, "Stone and fire, water and air, blood and kin prevail. Wings and shield, dagger and sword, blood and kin prevail."
It blinked once, hissed, and struck. I flinched, garbling the words of the verse. It pierced through the charmed circle, precisely, cleanly, without disrupting the incantation. There was no discharge of disruptive mage-power. No explosion. But now it was inside with me, writhing on the floor a foot away. Fear whispered through me, raising prickles on my flesh. I didn't know what to do except continue the incantation, my voice ragged.
The cobra grew more vivid, more intense, more solid with the ancient words. Once an incantation begins, a mage has to see it through, finish the verse, reach the end, close the purpose of the intent. I was breathing hard. My chest ached. As a trickle of sweat slithered down my back, I whispered the verse again, and then stopped, the last syllable fading away.
The serpent's hood swelled. I raised a hand as if to stop it, and it undulated, moving side to side, its eyes on me, its tongue tasting the air in front of my outstretched palm. "I hear," it thought at me, hissing. I realized that in speaking an incantation meant to settle oneself before battle, to draw in energies for war against Darkness, I had called it, welcoming its power. And now I didn't know what to do with it, how to control it, or how to banish it.
"No," I said. "No."
The serpent slipped back against the salt of the circle, its hood brushing the circle wall, which should have shattered the conjure but didn't. "No," I said again, my fear swelling, thickening, my hand raised against it. The snake glittered, a coruscation of light and might. The elemental mist of its essence rippled, scales shifting, widening. Becoming eyes. A lavender snake with a body of purple eyes.
I was swaying in time with it. I blinked. It blinked. Mesmerizing. Asking. Begging. "Take me. Use me. You made me yours. And I am lonely."
"I didn't," I thought back.
"Yes. Yours."
I faltered. And the serpent struck, fangs buried in my palm.
My heart stuttered. In a single instant the snake saturated every amulet on me and overflowed, sloughing off the stones, splashing into a puddle of eyes on the tile. The floor heated beneath my thighs. The puddle expanded, splashing wetly against the walls of the conjure, soaking my skirt. But it didn't melt the salt, didn't feel like water against my skin; it tingled like electricity, like power. I could hear a soft resonance of bells as it rose in the circle, purple eyes rising like a flood.
My breath was rough, hoarse, my heartbeat fast, an erratic drumming of fear. "No," I whispered. It ignored me. A pressure like the deeps of the ocean pressed against me. I had never seen or heard of anything like this. The liquid eyes rose over my waist, up to my breasts. I needed to break the charmed circle, but if I did, what would happen to the energies gathered here? Would they explode? Burn? Kill half the town? Power shouldn't be able to gather, shape itself, and act on its own. The purple liquid that wasn't wet reached my chin, prickling, burning against my skin. I didn't know what to do. And I was going to drown in the stuff, whatever it was. A laugh tickled in the back of my throat, hysterical giggles of fear.
"Don't be afraid. I won't let them harm you," it promised.
The liquid energy eyes spilled over my lips and down my throat in a torrent. I gasped reflexively, and it flooded my lungs, pungent and sweet, suffocating me. It filled my sinuses, my ears, speeding to my stomach when I gagged and swallowed. My arms lifted, trying to swim, but the stuff was insubstantial, ethereal.
The energies, the eyes, sped into my bloodstream like cobra venom, reaching my heart in a rush. My heartbeat stuttered, a painful irregularity I could feel in my eyes and ears and throat, a heavy pressure in my chest. It swam into my bowels, filled my muscles and tendons, and moved deep into my bones and marrow. It electrified my nerves. Mouth open, no air to breathe, I was drowning. My vision telescoped into pinpoints of purple light. And was gone.