Lawrence Watt-Evans - The Sorcerer's Widow

It hadn’t been aiming for the green dress, either, but Kel thought back to what he had seen a moment before. Dorna had been standing there in her shift, with her sorcerous weapon in her right hand, and the canvas bag slung on her left shoulder…

The magical blade had struck her on her left, as she dropped. Her head must have already been halfway to the ground when her long hair was chopped off.

“It was aiming at the bag,” Kel said, pointing.

“What?” Dorna looked up from tying her belt.

“It hit the hair on the left as you went down,” Kel said. “It was aiming for the bag.”

She looked down at the bag where it lay on the trampled grass to her left, then at a hank of black hair that lay beside the bag. “Blood and death,” she said. “You’re right.”

“Why would it do that?” Ezak asked. He was still sitting just where he had been all along; he had not stood up when Dorna did.

“Sorcery,” Dorna said. “It must sense the sorcery in the bag.”

“But it is sorcery!” Ezak said.

“It must be able to tell that some of what I have here is Ethsharitic,” Dorna said.

“Is your weapon Ethsharitic?” Kel asked, pointing.

Dorna picked up the black thing and looked at it. “I don’t know,” she said. “I never thought it mattered.”

“It didn’t try to hit that .”

Dorna glanced at Kel, then looked at the weapon again.

“The bag was a bigger target,” Ezak said.

“That’s true,” Dorna said, still studying the weapon. Then she looked around. The sun was moving down the western sky; they had spent most of the day pursuing the fil drepessis or dodging the Northern device’s attacks. She tucked the weapon in her belt, then swung around and began moving behind the ridge, sometimes on hands and knees, sometimes on her feet but bent almost double.

When she was about fifty feet away from the canvas bag she took a deep breath, then straightened up and looked out across the ridge and the meadow. Kel turned, too.

The Northern talisman was not moving. The horn, or tube, or whatever it was was still pointed toward the ridge in front of the trampled area where Ezak sat and the canvas bag lay.

“It’s not throwing anything at me,” Dorna said.

Kel nodded, though he realized that Dorna was not looking at him and probably did not see the gesture. He turned to watch her.

She raised the weapon, her gaze fixed intently on the Northern device. She waved it back and forth; the talisman did not react. “Whatever it doesn’t like must be in the bag,” she said.

No one answered. Kel glanced at Ezak; he was crouching behind the ridge, watching Dorna.

The sorcerer’s widow took a cautious step forward, then another.

No reaction.

She began walking slowly forward.

She had gone perhaps fifty feet, Kel watching every step, when he was distracted by a hissing. He turned to see Ezak beckoning to him.

He gave Dorna one more quick glance, then hurried up over the rise to where Ezak sat. “What is it?” he asked.

“Here’s our chance,” Ezak said. “We can take the bag and run!”

Kel blinked at him.

“She won’t even notice!” Ezak said. “She’s too busy with that thing over there.” He waved in the direction of the Northern talisman.

Kel shook his head.

“Why not? She’s probably going to get herself killed! Even if she doesn’t, we can get a good head start-we don’t need to go back for the wagon, there’s probably enough here to make us rich. We can just pick a direction, and she’ll never be able to find us without her magic.”

“No,” Kel said.

“Why not ? What’s wrong with you? Here’s our chance!”

“No,” Kel repeated, shaking his head again for emphasis.

“What is it? You think she’ll find us somehow?”

In fact, now that Ezak mentioned it, Kel did think it was likely that she would come after them, and she had far more sorcery back in the wagon than was here in her shoulder-bag, so she would probably be able to find them. Even if she couldn’t do it with her inherited talismans, she could always hire a wizard or a theurgist to locate the stolen goods. And she had said that if he stole from her, she would track Ezak down and kill him.

That was not why Kel had said no, though. That had not even occurred to him until Ezak brought it up. His objection was far more simple, and far more basic.

Taking that bag of magic now would be wrong.

Kel did not think all theft was wrong; he could not have survived on the streets of Smallgate if he had taken so absolute a position. He was perfectly willing to steal from those who could afford it, or those who deserved it. He had never objected to robbing other thieves, or cutting the purse off a rich man’s belt. He was perfectly willing to steal a few coins from the bar at the Bent Sword because everyone knew that Dulbek, the proprietor, watered the beer and shortchanged anyone drunk enough that Dulbek thought they might not notice a missing bit or two. Grabbing money from a dice game was just fine, since the players had put it at risk in the first place.

But Dorna was out there trying to protect people by removing that Northern sorcery. She was risking her life. She had done nothing to Kel or Ezak to deserve betrayal. Yes, she had tricked them into helping her move her belongings, but they had been trying to rob her; that sort of turnabout was only fair.

She could have sent one of them out to blast that thing. She knew Kel could get close to it. But she hadn’t; she was going out there herself. If that talisman belatedly noticed the weapon in her hand when she got close, she wouldn’t have time to dodge the next magical blade.

“If it kills her,” he said, “ then we can take it.”

“What? Why can’t we take it now?”

“It isn’t fair.”

“ Life isn’t fair, Kel! You know that better than anyone!”

“Well, we should try to be better than that.”

“Fine!” Ezak threw up his hands. “Fine! We’ll wait until it kills her. She probably would track us down, anyway.” He folded his hands across his chest and sat glowering at the canvas bag.

Kel watched him for a moment, then turned and walked back up the rise to see how Dorna was doing.

She was moving cautiously across the meadow, the weapon in her hand, eyes fixed on the Northern talisman. She was about halfway. She looked very small out there in the broad open space, and it occurred to Kel that she would probably need help carrying the fil drepessis back after she got it away from the device it had fixed. She had said she didn’t really know how to use it properly, so she probably couldn’t just tell it to walk back to the inn. If she had some magical transport in mind, that would presumably be in with her other sorcery; she would still need to get the talisman back to where she had left the bag.

“I’m going to help her,” Kel said. Then he started trotting across the meadow.

“Have fun,” Ezak called after him.

Kel did not bother to answer.

Dorna was about sixty feet from the Northern device, and Kel was perhaps two-thirds of the way across the meadow, when that loud voice spoke again, saying exactly the same thing it had said when he was about twenty yards away. Dorna stopped dead.

“Do you know what it said?” Kel called.

Dorna turned, startled, and Kel realized she hadn’t noticed him following her until now. “No,” she answered. “I don’t. It sounds vaguely familiar, though. I think it might be asking for a password.”

“Do you know a password?”

“No,” Dorna said, as she raised the weapon and pointed it at the talisman.

The vaguely tube-shaped structure on the top of the device pivoted toward her, and Kel shouted, “Look out!”