A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians--A Novel by H. G. Parry

Author:H. G. Parry [H. G. Parry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2020-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

She reached out with her magic a great deal over the next few days. She’d had a practice, over her long weeks on the road, of hiding and using others’ eyes to look at the road ahead, to keep herself safe, and to avoid any confrontations. Now she used it more deeply, to learn the place she had come to and the people she had come among. Her magic couldn’t give her people’s voices, but she had learned to read the things their eyes picked up, the corresponding flutters of emotion, and even rare glimpses of their memories. She learned, for example, that Celeste’s eyes were sharp to pick up on children and the weaker members of the camp so she could help them as she had Fina, but that she also stopped to gaze at sunsets and her heart would uncurl within her when she did. She watched, with her own eyes and with those of other people, as the ill-provisioned guerrilla fighters came back from the borders of the camp streaked with filth, laughing too hard. She watched the supplies dwindle, and the men sicken. She watched, and tried to understand the shifts in power that were taking place.

Most of all, she watched Toussaint Bréda.

She wasn’t sure what had drawn her to him at first, other than the fact that he had helped her. But it quickly became apparent, as she moved about the camp, that he was indeed special. He was older than many of the others, for one thing: in his midforties, yet still exuding wiry strength. He was born a slave, yet when the revolts broke out, he had been free and prosperous, with slaves of his own who were now part of the rebellion. More important, he was quiet, stern, implacable. When others raged, he listened, much as Fina did herself, and his eyes were like steel.

And he had been there at the start of the rebellion. He had planned the night the voice had spoken to his people and urged them to rise up. Perhaps he was one of the few trustworthy people who could tell her what she wanted to know. The trouble was, she couldn’t decide to trust him.

Instead, she watched him as he rode into camp with the dark, tireless after days without sleep. She listened, as much as she could, as he talked to his men in rapid creole. She reached out to him with her magic as he worked to make medicines to treat the sick. From behind Toussaint’s eyes, she saw the details of the aloe plant he was cutting, in startling precision. She felt the fleshy leaves in his hands yield a clear gel to heal the skin; she felt his awareness of the rest of the camp, even though he sat with his back to them all. She felt his purpose, as clear as hers had been the night she left the plantation, yet gentler, firmer, less at the mercy of anger and fear. And

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