Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

Arkoniel turned in the saddle and regarded her with concern. His unruly black curls dripped sweat beneath the wilted brim of his hat. “You’re red in the face. We should stop and rest again.”

“No, we’re nearly there.”

“Then have some more water, at least. And put your hat back on!”

“You make me feel old. I’m only two hundred and thirty, you know.”

“Two hundred and thirty-two,” he corrected with a wry grin. It was an old game between them.

She pulled a sour face. “Just wait until you’re in your third age, my boy. It gets harder to keep track.”

The truth was, hard riding did tire her more than it had back in her early hundreds, although she wasn’t about to admit it. She took a long pull from her waterskin and flexed her shoulders. “You’ve been quiet today. Do you have a query yet?”

“I think so. I hope the Oracle finds it worthy.”

Such earnestness made Iya smile. This journey was merely another lesson as far as Arkoniel knew. She’d told him nothing of her true quest.

The leather bag bumped against her thigh like a nagging child. Forgive me, Agazhar , she thought, knowing her long-dead teacher, the first Guardian, would not have approved.

The last stretch of trail was the most treacherous. The rock face to their right gave way to a chasm and in places they rode with their left knees brushing the cliff face.

Arkoniel disappeared around a sharp bend, then called back, “I can see Illior’s Keyhole, just as you described!”

Rounding the outcropping, Iya saw the painted archway glowing like a garish apparition where it straddled the trail. Stylized dragons glowed in red, blue, and gold around the narrow opening, which was just wide enough for a single horseman to pass through. Afra lay less than a mile beyond.

Sweat stung Iya’s eyes, making her blink. It had been snowing the first time Agazhar brought her here.

Iya had come later than most to the wizardly arts. She’d grown up on a tenant farm on the border of Skala’s mainland territory. The closest market town lay across the Keela River in Mycena, and it was here that Iya’s family traded. Like many bordermen, her father had taken a Mycenian wife and made his offerings to Dalna the Maker, rather than Illior or Sakor.

So it was, when she first showed signs of magic, that she was sent across the river to study with an old Dalnan priest who’d tried to make a drysian healer of her. She earned praise for her herb craft, but as soon as the ignorant old fellow discovered that she could make fire with a thought, he bound a witch charm to her wrist and sent her home in disgrace.

With this taint on her, she’d found little welcome in her village and no prospect of a husband.

She was a spinster of twenty-four when Agazhar happened across her in the market square. He told her later that it was the witch charm that had caught his eye as she stood haggling with a trader over the price of her goats.

She’d taken no notice of him, thinking he was just another old soldier finding his way home from the wars. Agazhar had been as ragged and hollow-cheeked as any of them, and the left sleeve of his tunic hung empty.

Iya was forced to take a second look when he walked up to her, clasped her hand, and broke into a sweet smile of recognition. After a brief conversation, she sold off her goats and followed the old wizard down the south road without a backward glance. All anyone would have found of her, had they bothered to search, was the witch charm lying in the weeds by the market gate.

Agazhar hadn’t scoffed at her fire making. Instead, he explained that it was the first sign that she was one of the god-touched of Illior. Then he taught her to harness the unknown power she possessed into the potent magic of the Orëska wizards.

Agazhar was a free wizard, beholden to no one. Eschewing the comforts of a single patron, he wandered as he liked, finding welcome in noble houses and humble ones alike. Together he and Iya traveled the Three Lands and beyond, sailing west to Aurënen, where even the common folk were as long-lived as wizards and possessed magic. Here she learned that the Aurënfaie were the First Orëska; it was their blood, mingled with that of Iya’s race, that had given magic to the chosen ones of Skala and Plenimar.

This gift came with a price. Human wizards could neither bear nor sire children, but Iya considered herself well repaid, both in magic and, later, with students as gifted and companionable as Arkoniel.

Agazhar had also taught her more about the Great War than any of her father’s ballads or legends, for he’d been among the wizards who’d fought for Skala under Queen Ghërilain’s banner.

“There’s never been another such war as that, and pray Sakor there never shall be again,” he’d say, staring into the campfire at night as if he saw his fallen comrades there. “For one shining span of time wizards stood shoulder to shoulder with warriors, battling the black necromancers of Plenimar.”

The tales Agazhar told of those days gave Iya nightmares. A necromancer’s demon—a dyrmagnos , he called it—had torn off his left arm.

But gruesome as these tales were, Iya still clung to them, for only there had Agazhar given her any glimpse of where the strange bowl had come from.

Agazhar had carried it then; never in all the years she’d known him had he ever let it out of his possession. “Spoils of war,” he’d said with a dark laugh, the first time he’d opened the bag to show it to her.

But beyond that, he would tell her nothing except that the bowl could not be destroyed and that its existence could not be revealed to anyone but the next Guardian. Instead, he’d schooled her rigorously in the complex web of spells that protected it, making her weave and unweave them until she could do it in the blink of an eye.

“You’ll be the Guardian after me,” he reminded her when she grew impatient with the secrecy. “Then you’ll understand. Be certain you choose your successor wisely.”

“But how will I know who to choose?”

He’d smiled and taken her hand as he had when they’d first met in the marketplace. “Trust in the Light-bearer. You’ll know.”

And she had.

At first she couldn’t help pressing to know more about it—where he’d found it, who had made it and why, but Agazhar had remained obdurate. “Not until the time comes for you to take on the full care of it. Then I will tell you all there is to know.”

Sadly, that day had taken them both unaware. Agazhar had dropped dead in the streets of Ero one fine spring day soon after her first century. One moment he was holding forth on the beauty of a new transformation spell he’d just created; the next, he slipped to the ground with a hand pressed to his chest and a look of mild surprise in his fixed, dead eyes.

Scarcely into her second age, Iya suddenly found herself Guardian without knowing what she guarded or why. She kept the oath she’d sworn to him and waited for Illior to reveal her successor. She’d waited two lifetimes, as promising students came and went, and said nothing to them of the bag and its secrets.

But as Agazhar had promised, she’d recognized Arkoniel the moment she first spied him playing in his father’s orchard fifteen years earlier. He could already keep a pippin spinning in midair and could put out a candle flame with a thought.

Young as he was, she’d taught him what little she knew of the bowl as soon as he was bound over to her. Later, when he was strong enough, she taught him how to weave the protections. Even so, she kept the burden of it on her own shoulders as Agazhar had instructed.

Over the years Iya had come to regard the bowl as little more than a sacred nuisance, but that had all changed a month ago when the wretched thing had taken over her dreams. The ghastly interwoven nightmares, more vivid than any she’d ever known, had finally driven her here, for she saw the bowl in all of them, carried high above a battlefield by a monstrous black figure for which she knew no name.