Lynn Flewelling - The Bone Doll's Twin

He was drafting a letter to Iya when Nari knocked on his door and stuck her head in. “There’s someone here I think you’d best speak to, Arkoniel.”

To his alarm, she ushered in one of Orun’s armed escort. He was a pleasant-looking young fellow, but all Arkoniel noticed at first glance was the red-and-gold badge the man wore, and his sword. Readying a killing spell, he slowly stood up and bowed.

“What is it you want with me?”

The guardsman shut the door and bowed. “Iya sends her greetings and told me to give you this as a token of good faith.” He held out his hand.

Arkoniel approached cautiously, still expecting violence, and saw that his visitor held a small pebble in the hollow of his palm.

Arkoniel took it and closed his fist around it, feeling Iya’s essence infused into the stone. It was one of her tokens, the sort she left only with those she felt would be of use to Tobin’s cause later. How this man had come by it remained to be learned.

When he looked back at him, however, he let out a startled gasp. Instead of a soldier, he found himself facing a man who only slightly resembled the one he’d just been looking at. He was fair-skinned and blond, and his features showed a strong strain of Aurënfaie blood. “You’re a shape-shifter?”

“No, just a mind clouder. My name is Eyoli of Kes. I met your mistress last year while passing myself off as a beggar and picking pockets. She caught me at it and told me she had better work for me to do. I didn’t know, you see.”

“You didn’t know you were wizard born?”

Eyoli shrugged. “I knew I could cloud minds and make ignorant people do as I wished. She sent me to study with a woman named Virishan at Ilear. You remember her?”

“Yes, we spent most of a winter with her, a few years back. I’ve met mind clouders before, but this—” Arkoniel shook his head in admiration as Eyoli resumed the form of the soldier. “And to carry it off without detection. It’s a rare gift.”

The young man smiled shyly. “It’s my only talent, I’m afraid, but Viri does say I’m the best she’s seen. I’ve had the dreams, Arkoniel. That’s what Iya saw in me and she says that Ariani’s son is part of that vision somehow, and that he must be protected. She sent word to me when she learned of the duke’s death. I arrived in Ero just in time to get myself in with Orun’s lot—”

“Wait.” Arkoniel held up a hand. “How do I know that this is the truth? How do I know that you aren’t clouding my mind now, pulling thoughts from my own mind and telling them back to me?”

Eyoli took Arkoniel’s hand and placed it against his own brow. “Touch my mind. Read my heart. Iya says you have the gift.”

“It’s not a gentle magic.”

“I know that,” he replied, and Arkoniel could tell that he’d been subjected to such tests before. “Go on. I knew you’d need to.”

Arkoniel did, not a gentle brush of the mind but a deep, direct delving into the core of the man who stood so trustingly under his hand. It was not a pleasant spell, and never suffered between wizards without permission, but Eyoli allowed it, even as he groaned aloud and clutched at Arkoniel’s shoulder to keep his balance.

Arkoniel pulled the substance of the other man’s life from his mind like juice from a ripe grape. It was a brief life, and a sordid one in its earliest details. Eyoli had been a harbor brat, orphaned early and raised in filth, using his innate skills from an early age to keep himself fed and cared for as best he could. His talent was a meager one, and unpolished until Iya found him, but once tapped, his potential was amazing. He was right in thinking he’d never make a true wizard, but as a spy, he was quite unique.

Arkoniel released him. “You say this is all you can do?”

“Yes. I can’t even make fire or light.”

“Well, what you can do is extremely useful. Are you sworn to watch over Tobin?”

“By my hands, heart, and eyes, Master Arkoniel. The Harriers haven’t numbered me, so I can come and go in the city. Orun and the others think I’ve been with them for years. They won’t miss me when I’m gone.”

“Amazing. Where is Iya now?”

“I don’t know, Master.”

“Well, I’m glad to have your help. Keep a close eye on him, and Ki, too.” He held out his hand and Eyoli clasped it respectfully, wincing a little at the older wizard’s firm grip.

When he was gone Arkoniel inspected the corner of his little fingernail. Lhel had taught him how to sharpen it, how to clasp a man’s hand so that it would nick without hurting, and just deep enough to draw a tiny “bitty of the red.”

He squeezed the blood out and rubbed the tiny smear into the whorls of his thumb. Then, fixing the patterns in his mind’s eye, he spoke the witching words Lhel had taught him. “Into this skin I go, through these eyes I see, into this heart I listen.”

In Eyoli’s heart he found a burning hatred of the Harriers, and a vision of Virishan’s school and a shining white city in the west filled with wizards who welcomed her orphans. For that vision Eyoli would do whatever was asked of him. Arkoniel also caught a glimpse of Iya as the young man remembered her. She looked older and more tired than Arkoniel recalled.

All the same, he breathed a sigh of relief, feeling less alone than he had in years. The Third Orëska had already truly begun.

Tharin’s story about Orun continued to worry Arkoniel, but the troublesome noble went to bed early in a surly humor, settled his nerves with a large pot of Cook’s hippocras, and was soon snoring loudly. The herald did the same on the other side of the hearth. Meanwhile, Tharin saw to it that the men of the King’s Guard were under close watch in their makeshift encampment in the meadow below.

As silence settled over the house, Arkoniel sat quietly in his darkened workroom, alert for any disturbance in the hall below.

Intent as he was on this task, he was taken quite by surprise by stealthy footsteps just outside his own door. Sending out another sighting, he saw Tobin stealing past in his rumpled nightshirt. The boy hesitated briefly outside the wizard’s door as if to knock, then turned away and continued on.

Arkoniel went to the door and opened it a crack, knowing there was only one place Tobin could be going in this part of the keep.

Arkoniel had almost let himself into the tower several times, wanting to see the place Ariani had called her own, the place she’d chosen to die. But something—honor, fear, respect for the duke’s wishes, perhaps—still held him back.

Tobin stood near the tower door now, arms wrapped tight around himself in spite of the humid night. As Arkoniel watched, he took another hesitant step, then stopped. Then another. It was painful to watch, and worse to feel like a spy doing it.

After a moment he leaned out and whispered, “Tobin? What are you doing up here?”

The boy whirled around, eyes huge. If not for what Arkoniel had already witnessed, he might have thought he’d been sleepwalking.

Tobin hugged himself tighter as Arkoniel approached.

“Do you need my help?”

Another agonized hesitation, a sidelong glance—at Brother, perhaps? Then he sighed and fixed Arkoniel with those earnest blue eyes. “You’re Lhel’s friend, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. Does this have something to do with her?”

Again that sidelong glance. “There’s something I have to fetch.”

“From the tower?”

“Yes.”

“Whatever it is, Tobin, I know Lhel would want me to help you. What can I do?” “Come with me.”

“That sounds easy enough. Do you have the key, or shall I use my magic to open it?”

As if in answer, the tower door swung open for them. Tobin flinched and stared at the open doorway as if expecting to see something there. Perhaps he did. All the wizard could make out were a few worn stone steps leading up into darkness.