Тамора Пирс - Magic Steps

"Gorry, they's fast," someone else whispered. "T'nail the ol'wolf like that. I seen him turn a spell on a copper bit, he were that quick."

Sandry rolled Wulfric over as tears streamed down her cheeks. She tugged her handkerchief from her pocket and tried to wipe the blood from his face. "Now you don't have to tell Uncle any bad news," she whispered.

A warm hand rested on her shoulder. It was Kwaben's, blood ran over it in a thin trickle. "Lady," he whispered sadly.

"I liked him." Sandry let her handkerchief settle over Wulfric's open and staring eyes. She wiped her own eyes on her sleeve and struggled to her feet. "Let me see that arm," she told Kwaben.

She was no healer, but it was easy enough to lay silk threads from her belt-purse across the shallow gash over his bicep and use them like stitches to pull the wound shut. With that done, the bleeding slowed. Oama wrapped the arm in linen, and it stopped completely.

Sandry couldn't leave. There was the provost to be notified, and investigators to talk to. Waiting for them, she sat on a stool that bore no taint of the killers, and looked at the room. The Dihanurs had left their packs. That would give the Provost's Guards more information about them, maybe. Sandry doubted that any of it could be used for tracking, if their very blood was so corrupted by unmagic that traditional spells didn't work.

Of course these people would slaughter two children. The nothingness they used to slip by watchers and hunters was eating the Dihanurs, just as it had almost devoured the mage whose power came from it. It had taken enough of their life force away that Sandry's magical web could, not capture and hold them. Next time her magic would probably be able to grip still less. Even, if she could, hold a. small part of their bodies captive, how long would that last? And, how on earth could, that mage be captured?

The Dihanurs had to be stopped. Otherwise they would penetrate even the layered spells on the inner keep, where four families were hiding.

How to deal with that mage. How to deal with a mage and two killers who could reach through Sandry's magical barrier as if it were a net with large holes…

There was a scrap of shadow inches from where she sat. It could be worked like magic, or the killers would not be able to wear it as a cloak. She could work her own magic like thread, and the magics belonging to others. Could she do that with unmagic?

Steeling herself, she reached into the dark smear and pinched at it with her fingers. As she pulled her hand away, it followed in a long strand like a fine grade of fiber. Goosebumps rippled over her skin—the almost-greasy, almost-sticky, whisper-sense of it on her fingers was very unpleasant—but she did not let go. Instead she twirled the strand as she might a tuft of wool, testing to see how easily it would spin. The strand turned as her twist traveled through it, thickening, just as wool might.

She got to her feet. "Everyone out of this room, right now," she said loudly. She turned, and held the eyes of the Provost's Guards with her own. She had to convince them that she was a senior mage and in total control, or they would never let her do this. "You can't see it, but the that lets those people get about unseen is smeared everywhere in here. It must be got up. That's what Master Snaptrap and I came here to do. If you don't want to track it all over Summersea, spreading gods only know what kind of ill power, then I've got to clean it up."

"But there's the investigators," objected the most senior of the guards present. He bore a corporal's yellow arrowhead on his sleeves. "They need statements from you and from your guards. That's how murder is looked into. There's the mages, who will try to see what happened."

"We know what happened," Oama informed the corporal. "We were right here.” She looked anxiously at Sandry, who was digging in one of the packs Wulfric had brought. "You'd best do as she says, Corporal." She drew the man's ear down to her mouth, and whispered to him urgently.

From the pack, Sandry produced a bolt of spelled white silk. It had already been, rubbed with the oil of attraction, so much so that it was already pulling the dark smears from her hands, arms, and the front of her gown onto itself. She marched, out through the guards and into the hall with it. As she'd thought, the killers had kept to this part of the building—the marks they had left were confined to a small area… The hall that stretched toward the back of Rokat House and the stair that led to the third story were clean of unmagic.

Sandry threw the bolt of cloth into the long hallway, shoving it with her power. It unrolled to its full length, giving off a heavy, flowery scent. "Walk or sit on that, and nowhere else," she ordered the Guards. Returning to the packs, she found another such bolt, and spread it in the hall that led from the stair to the office. It moved as it settled over the smears of nothingness, pulling them from wood and carpet.

"I'll be in here," she told the Guards. They watched her with dismay. "Make sure the people who arrive know what I’m doing, and don't bother me."

Kwaben and Oama stood in front of the Rokat office, their faces mulish. "We are not going to leave you,"Oama told Sandry. "What if they come back?"

"Then keep out of my way," Sandry advised them. "I have a lot of work to do in a hurry before you can so much as use these benches." Oama nodded and made shooing motions at the Guards.

Next, Sandry found canvas bags stuffed with spelled cloth squares in the packs. Placing one bag on the floor near Wulfric's body, she forced apart the stitches that held it together. A second unvoiced command, and squares flew through the room in a blizzard of white silk. They raced to cover every spot where Sandry could see unmagic. Taking the second canvas bag into the outer office, she did the same thing there. One canvas bag remained; she ordered its contents into the hall, where they draped themselves over benches and windowsill, sopping up darkness.

Walking back past Kwaben and Oama, Sandry noticed shadow smears on them. Getting a few extra squares of silk, she rubbed them briskly over her guards, collecting all of the nothingness she could find. Once she had it, she called one of the linen bags in the packs to her. It came, unfolding itself as it did. It blazed with signs for protection and enclosure written onto the fabric in the same powerful oils that filled every fiber. Sandry let it hang in front of her as she dumped the cloths she'd used on her bodyguards into the bag. Oama shifted, when Sandry looked at her, she realized that both dark-skinned guards were pale. They were staring at her.

"What's the matter?” Sandry demanded. "Why are you looking at me that way?"

To her surprise it was silent Kwaben who spoke. He said, "Lady, we knew you were a mage, but… Mostly you're like a cat with it. You never let it show any more than you can help, I think because you know it makes folk nervous."

"You only throw it around when you're upset," Oama added.

"I am upset," whispered, Sandry. She plucked, the linen, bag from, the air and went back to the inner office to collect the silk in there. She had to keep after the squares, to make sure they gathered everything.

Wulfric had brought plenty of those cloths, and plenty of bags to hold all they collected. Sandry blessed him as she cleaned, and tried not to look at him. That was hard, particularly when she had to slip a magical weaving underneath him, as she had first done at the castle infirmary, to gather the unmagic hidden by his blood and his body.

When all her silk was used up, she had to stop for a few minutes and think. She knew there was more nothingness in the building from the killers' earlier visit. She couldn't bear the thought of it lying about. Holding on to her last bag, the one in which she'd placed the two bolts of silk, she began to tremble. How would she get it all?