Magic's Poison by Gillian Bradshaw

Author:Gillian Bradshaw [Bradshaw, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amazon.com
Published: 2011-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

-10-

They’d gone perhaps half a mile when they rounded a curve of the lakeshore and lost sight of the castle. Essell, who had been glancing over her shoulder almost continuously, abruptly stopped. She stood still for a moment, swaying, then dropped to her knees, hugging herself and rocking back and forth.

Jarrit promptly dropped the lead of his horse and ran over to her; Marin had to send the animal a sharp danger-stay-with-the-herd in order to prevent it from bolting back toward its familiar stable.

Essell began gabbling breathlessly to Jarrit in a foreign tongue, clutching his hands tightly. He knelt beside her, his head almost touching hers. Marin might have been a thousand miles away, for all the notice either of them took of her.

‘I’m sorry,’ Jarrit said at last, sounding it. ‘I don’t speak Lhahassia, not more than a few words.’

‘Who are you?’ Essell demanded in Dorian, touching his face with the inside of her bandaged wrist. ‘Are you from Shoanshathala? Have you come to save us?’

‘No, no, no!’ protested Jarrit. ‘Shoanshathala is gone.’ He paused, then asked in a voice suddenly trembling with hope, ‘That is, I was told that it was gone, but if your people have heard... ’

‘I was told it is gone, too,’ said Essell. ‘But you are using vithya, you must be, and they say that is all gone, too, that nobody knows it now... ’

‘I only know a little,’ replied Jarrit. ‘Just enough to disguise myself. A lot of this,’ he flicked a hand dismissively at himself, ‘is physical.’ He paused, then added in passionate shame, ‘Mutilation, is what it is: I never saw that, till now. Done by mothers to babies. Take a newborn, tie a rod across its nose, cut off the last joints of its outside fingers... it’s not surprising my people have all died out.’

‘Died out?’ gasped Essell.

He caught her hands, linking his fingers with hers, pressing his scored wrists against her bandaged ones. ‘You are the first woman of my own kind that I have ever seen,’ he told her passionately. ‘—Apart from my mother, that is.’

‘But—where have you come from?’ Essell asked in bewilderment. ‘We think, my people, there are no others!’

‘So did I!’ Jarrit said in a choked voice. ‘And, oh God, when I found that there were, I thought my heart would break, I was so afraid for you! --But, but, you want to know where I come from. When the Empire fell, the lashaya sent three boatloads of women and children down the Enarra river to Ras Inith, with half a dozen vithyanal to protect them. They were to take ship and sail to some place that was remote from the troubles of the Empire, where it was hoped they would be safe.’

‘This I heard,’ said Essell. ‘But I heard, too, that the humans burned the ship and killed everyone.’

‘They burned the ship and killed everyone on it,’ agreed Jarrit. ‘However, only two boatloads had actually embarked at the time. The remaining women and children,

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