Brian Murphy - The Search For Magic

Shiv held thin-bladed knives in each gloved hand, smeared with an oily black substance so they would not reflect any gleam off the snow. He’d bought them two years ago from an expert weaponsmith in Bloodspring. Their metal was as hard as the set of his jaw, the edges so keen he hadn’t yet needed to resharpen them. Worth every coin, these tools of his trade.

He intended to kill the woman with them.

He would do it quickly, effortlessly, stepping close and slipping the right blade across her throat while plunging the left into the center of her heart. He’d done it so many times before. Afterward, he would drag her off the trail, take her body a little higher into the mountains where the wolves would catch the scent and devour the evidence.

But he wouldn’t do it here. It was too close to the village she’d just left, too risky that someone following after a stray goat might-despite this damnable storm-glimpse the deed.

And he wouldn’t do it tonight.

It was too soon.

He’d only just managed to find her, late this afternoon. He didn’t know her yet, didn’t have her walk down, hadn’t looked into her eyes. He didn’t know how strong she was, and, most importantly, he had no clue about her contacts in these mountain villages. This last crucial bit could take a few days to ferret out, perhaps longer.

So he followed several yards behind her, gloved hands reflexively closing on the handles of his weapons before sheathing them, dark eyes squinting against the frenetic snow as they trained on her back.

It was work to keep her in sight, his chest burning from the exertion, his legs aching from slogging through mounds of snow. Twice he dived into a drift when she turned to check her bearings. Were it not for the whirling snow she might have spied him or his tracks. His teeth chattered, and he muttered a silent curse that perhaps he’d been a fool to take on this job at this time. Couldn’t her assassination have waited until spring?

He guessed it took them nearly two hours to reach her destination-a ramshackle assortment of wood and stone buildings wedged into a mountain overhang. He made out on a sign partially buried by a drift: KETH’S CRADLE. More like the Abyss’s Cradle, he thought.

She hurried toward the largest dwelling, a turtleshell-shaped affair that was busily belching smoke into the sky. He watched her for a moment more, then quickly began to circle the tiny community, which by the malodorous aroma that hung in the air, and the pens he barely made out, declared it another village of goatherds.

She rapped firmly on the door.

“I am Risana,” she stated.

Ree-shanna. That was the name Shiv had been given, though his employers had pronounced it differently- Ris-aye-nah.

“Risana,” she repeated, as the door finally opened. “Risana of Crossing.” Her voice was musical and held no trace of the tiredness she most certainly felt. “You sent word that you needed me.”

“Yes!” came the breathless reply. “The Solamnic Knight.”

“I-”

“At last you’re here, dear woman. Please.” Without another word she was ushered inside, and the heavy door slammed shut behind her.

Shiv worked his way behind the turtleshell dwelling, peering through the cracks of a shuttered window that couldn’t close properly because the frame had warped. He could see only the main room from his vantage-point, but it was enough. The merrily burning fireplace made it appear warm, and Shiv pressed himself against the wall in the futile hope of catching some of that heat.

An old, bent man with a mustache and goatee, who Shiv idly thought parroted the village’s cloven-hoofed charges, drew Risana to the center of the room, where four blanket-wrapped forms were stretched out on cots. There were a half-dozen women of various ages sitting in straight wooden chairs, their backs to the fire and sympathetic faces angled toward the forms. Their conversation stopped as Risana moved to the smallest patient. Their eyes trained on her now.

Shiv watched her, too. On initial inspection the firelight revealed nothing untoward about Risana. She was just a tall, young woman wrapped in a tattered cloak, the rosy hue of which suggested the garment had been red at one time. She was a plain-looking woman, really, Shiv thought, a commoner who could have lost herself in the lower- or middle-class quarters of any town, someone most folks wouldn’t stop to give a second look. But then he gave her a second look, a careful one, and saw that she was young, all right, very. Certainly not yet twenty, he decided, and nothing common about her. The woman was singular. One simply had to see past her tattered garments and fatigue.

Her face was well defined, angular without being sharp, the planes of it smooth and unblemished, and it looked as if she was blushing because of the cold and windburn. Her nose turned slightly upward, a hint of aristocracy, and the bearing suited her. While her hair had looked like sparkling silver outside in the snow, here, wet and flat against her head, it seemed an unusual shade of blonde, the color of cooled ashes-an almost whitish-gray that shone like silk. He imagined it must be soft to the touch.

Her eyes were charcoal, dark and large and rimmed with long black lashes. Those eyes seemed to take in everything, and measure-the women by the fire, the bundled-up people on the cots, the old, bent man who was speaking to her, and the windows, where her gaze lingered. Had she seen him? He held his breath, not blinking. Were her eyes locked with his? No, he breathed a sigh of relief. Her eyes were clearly fixed at some point far beyond this room and Neraka.

Shiv turned his face, concentrating to catch fragments of what was being said inside.

“It’s not pneumonia,” the bent man was telling Risana. He wrung his hands nervously. “I know pneumonia. I can treat pneumonia. Someone here gets it every year. It’s something worse, this is-a plague maybe, something that spreads. Emil and his family have it, too. They’re in the house across the way. And the Donners might be getting it.”

“We might be next,” the stoutest of the six women cut in.

“We shouldn’t be sitting so close to the sick,” another whispered in a high-pitched voice.

“I’ll sit where I please,” the stout woman returned.

Risana knelt at the cot nearest the window, tugging the blanket back to reveal a red-faced child with dozens of lesions on his arms and neck. The boy, no more than six or seven, coughed deeply, shoulders bouncing against the pine frame of the cot. The child was overly thin, there was a sheen on his skin, and his clothes were dark with sweat.

“A plague,” the bent man continued. “It has to be. The runner said Graespeck and Tornhollow have sick folks, too. Just like this. Some of ‘em dying. That’s why we sent for you. The runner said you were fixing folks in the villages to the south of here. Said that you maybe knew how to cure this kind of illness. We’re desperate.”

She replaced the covers and smoothed the boy’s hair. He started to offer her a smile, but began coughing again, which was echoed by one of the other blanketed forms. The stout woman loudly sucked in her breath.

“That’s why our message said this was an emergency, ma’am. We’re a small village. Don’t want more people catching this disease, and we don’t want no one dying. Our Jamie-the little one here-he’s real bad.”

Softer, the bent man added, “He’s my youngest grandson.”

Risana nodded and ran her fingers across the child’s forehead.

“A very strong fever,” she said. She twisted to her right so she could reach to another cot, feeling the forehead of an elderly woman.

“My wife,” the bent man said.

“Mother,” one of the six women added, choking back a sob. “She’s not been conscious for two days.”