E07 - Ch 30: Talisman

After a night of camping, Brint arrived at a small trading outpost on the bank of the forest near noon. There was a chill in the wind, and the weather would soon turn cold. He was already farther north than he’d ever gone, and he needed both directions and a coat for the coming season.

The stalls of the trading post were empty, the traders likely only meeting on certain days of the week for a location so far from any major town, but there was a small goods store beside an inn. He headed inside, a shopkeeper’s bell ringing beside the door as he entered.

The goods store was a cluttered, dimly lit place. The assortment of items seemed to be placed without any understandable order, each item differing wildly from the one beside it. Brint guessed the store contained mostly leftover wares from what did not get traded.

The store owner stepped down from a flight of stairs behind the counter. He was a thin, grizzled man with shrewd eyes, and he smiled pleasantly at Brint as he came down.

“Good morning, lad,” he said. “Welcome to my shop. I’ve got anything a man could want. What are you in for today?”

Brint did not immediately respond, scanning the store.

"I'm looking for a coat," Brint said finally. "Something sturdy, for travel."

The owner scratched his head thoughtfully before leading Brint to the back corner of the store. "Got some second-hand ones here," he said, pulling out a rack from behind a shelf that held an assortment of worn coats.

Brint did not have to approach to smell the reek of sweat and leather.

"How about something that doesn’t smell like piss?”

"Like I said, I've got anything a man could want. But that doesn't necessarily mean a man can always afford it."

"I'll pay if it's a fair price for a fair good."

The owner shrugged and went to a back closet and pulled out three dusty coats. But to his credit, none looked worn or frayed by use.

Brint tried on two and kept the second one.

The coat was made of thick wool that felt heavy and substantial on Brint's shoulders.The

owner quoted three hundred arcas and raised a brow when Brint didn't haggle over the price. Brint set his finger on the pay tab and pooled three hundred arcas of arcana into a small square chit.

He looked around for any other items that might serve him on his journey but saw nothing of interest.

“I’m heading to Elduros,” Brint said. “I hear I can stay on the Northern Trail to take me there, but are there any better routes?”

“Elduros, you say?” the owner said, rubbing his chin. “The Northern Trail will get you there, but it goes deep through the Kasara Forest, and the word on the wind says bandits dwell there. Better to take the Road to Celindrin, once you reach it, then cross over from Celindrin to the Road to Elduros.”

“How much further up the way until the Road to Celindrin?”

“About five or six chants by foot.”

Brint nodded his thanks and headed for the exit, but as he opened the door, the owner called out to him.

“You a mage?”

Brint looked back, surprised by the question. “Do I look like one?”

The man shrugged. “I’ve got a spell that I’ve been trying to get off my hands, but never mind if it’s not your interest.”

Brint could hardly believe his ears. There was a spell talisman in a place like this? Brint knew there were heavy restrictions on spell selling, although that didn’t prevent people from doing it.

“I’m interested,” he said, stepping back into the store.

The owner dug around beneath the countertop and pulled out a box made of black wood. Inside was a talisman that still radiated bright violet light.

Brint did his best to hide his surprise. Syl had taught him that each color spoke to the spell's type. Violet spells were extremely rare, as they were a type of alteration spell capable of changing a person’s body.

"What is it?" Brint said, trying to keep his voice disinterested.

The owner smiled, seeming to recognize Brint’s excitement beneath his features. "Beats me. A powerful mage gave it to me in exchange for a loan. Unfortunately for him, the loan’s past due, which means, fortunately for you, this spell could be yours."

"You want to sell me a spell that you don't even know what it’s for?"

"It's a powerful spell, I assure you."

Brint scoffed. “It could be for herding chickens into a coop for all you know.”

The owner laughed. “I think not. Violet means it’s a metamorph.”

“A metamorph?” Brint said, uncertainly.

“A type of alteration spell that allows one to improve their body.”

A metamorph. Syl had told him there were three types of alteration spells. Dark blue, violet, and dark violet, but he had not known each had a name beyond its color.

“How much?” Brint said.

“You tell me,” the store owner said. “What would you be willing to spend for this rare magic?”

"I'll give you five hundred arcas for it," Brint said.

The owner laughed and began closing the box. "You couldn’t even buy that chicken spell for five hundred arcas. Come back when you have the funds."

“How much then?” Brint said, heat rising in his voice.

The man knew Brint wanted the spell, and he knew Brint could pay. He cursed himself for getting trapped in the negotiation. Worse, he didn't know the going price for violet spells.

“Seven thousand,” the owner said. “More than fair for a metamorph.”

Brint’s jaw dropped. “I don’t have seven thousand.”

“What do you have?”

In the end, Brint paid six thousand five hundred arcas for the yellow talisman. It was everything he'd had on his person and almost everything from his arcavoir. He still had some of his father’s savings at the bottom of a pack on Whisper, and in any case, he knew it wouldn't matter as he knew his purse would be replenished in only a few days by his arcumen.

He didn't wait to learn the spell, wanting to be sure he could get his arcas back if it was somehow a fake, not that Brint knew such a thing could be faked.

He sat down on one of the empty benches of the trading post and pressed his hand to the talisman, closing his eyes. Then he drew the magic within the talisman into himself.

A flood of fragmented memories washed over him. He saw a black gauntlet reach out and press against a man’s body. There was rage and conviction in the action. Then came the spell itself.

“Sarcova.”

Then came belief and the flow of arcana to make reality bend to its will.

Brint felt the crushing pressure, the sickening snap of bone, the tearing of flesh. More memories came of that black hand pressing against limbs and flesh. He saw bodies collapse, twisted and broken. It was a spell that exploited the fragility of the physical form.

Again and again, the spell twisted bone and flesh. And all the while, he felt a raw joy at every mangled body and life taken by the spell.

He pulled back from the talisman, his breath coming in ragged gasps. His hands trembled from the sheer intensity of what he had experienced. He now knew the spell. He knew the feeling of crushing, the sound of breaking, the finality of death.

He looked down at his hands, feeling as if he had been the one to kill hundreds of faceless lives. He had wanted the power to avenge his father. He had not expected to find it so soon, and a spell such as this was far more terrible, far more potent than he could have ever imagined.

And there was something strange about this talisman. The ones that he had used before never contained the emotions of the spell creator. He still remembered the joy the spell creator had felt as he murdered his victims with the gruesome magic.

Brint felt a shiver. What was such a deadly spell doing in the shop?

He wondered who had traded such a spell for a loan. He wanted to go back and ask the shopkeeper but then reconsidered. He may have to explain what it was and that he had consumed it. He feared who would come looking for such a spell, and if they ever did want it back, Brint could easily claim he sold the spell for a higher price to a traveling tinker.

Putting the cold, used talisman in his new coat pocket, he quickly unhitched Whisper and climbed onto his saddle.

Within moments, the wind was in his hair again, and he was headed north. But as he rode, a smile grew on his face. One day, that joy would be his when he used the spell on Syl.

***

After an hour at a light gallop, Brint slowed Whisper to a trot through the lightly wooded hills.

As he rounded a bend, he spotted something unusual up ahead. A young woman was kneeling before a fallen horse in the middle of the road. Her shoulders were shaking with sobs. The horse was neighing wildly.

She saw him as he rode up, and she began wiping away her tears. She was pretty and perhaps only a couple of years older than he was. Her skin was fair, and her hair a light gray. She wore no powder or coloring on her skin, as was common for women in Greytown. But her clothes were better than those of the villagers of Village Aldin and well-suited for traveling.

Brint dismounted from Whisper and came around to check on the horse. Then he saw it, the horse’s front left leg had been broken. Half of it was caught in a hole in the road.

There was nothing to be done for it.

“You should put him down,” Brint said to her.

The young woman let out another sob, but she nodded and hugged the horse’s head to her chest, trying to calm it.

“You served me well,” she whispered. “Goodbye.”

Then she pressed a hand to the horse’s forehead and incanted, “Kryovata.”

Frost spread from her hand across the horse’s head until ice covered its entire head. It had stopped moving long before then.

“A frost spell,” Brint said with surprise. Such a spell was highly prized for its many applications. “Are you a mage?”

The same question the owner had asked him. Unlike farmers, tradesmen, and other professions who only knew spells for their work, mages were students and collectors of magic. It was also a pursuit that only belonged to the higher classes.

“One day, I hope,” she said, staring at her horse, her mind still on the tragedy. “Everything had been going so well. We were having a lovely ride, and then suddenly he fell. What is a hole doing in the middle of the road?”

Brint frowned. It was a good question. The hole was deep, and the road was made of hard, impacted dirt. This was no animal dwelling. Then he looked around, becoming more alert.

The young woman noticed his wariness. “You think something is afoot… a bandit trap?”

Before Brint could answer, a new voice rang out from behind a tree. "Of course it is bandits!"

Both Brint and the young woman spun around to face the speaker. Emerging from between two trees was a tall man with long dark black hair and a sly grin on his face. He was flanked by two others wearing leather armor, and Brint noticed that color seemed to slide off them. They had been hidden under some kind of camouflaging spell.

"Run," he whispered.

"What?" she hissed back, her eyes wide with panic.

"Run!" he repeated louder this time.

The young woman hesitated for only a second before turning to run. But an arrow landed just before her second stride, putting her off balance and sending her tumbling into the dirt.

“Kyrodhanus!” she incanted, and a lance of ice shot out of her hand in the direction from which the arrow had come.

He followed its trajectory, watching it hit a tree branch that the archer had been standing on. There were two of them there.

“I’ll take the archers, you deal with them!” he heard the young woman call.

But Brint had no arcana, he had spent it all on his spell. He rushed to Whisper, grabbing at the pack that carried his arca, but before he even got a hand into the bag, rough hands pulled him off the horse. Then a blade was pressed to his throat.

He tried to see the man who held his life, but he stood behind him. In front of him, the young woman was still trading missiles with the archers. Though it seemed the archers were bad shots, the arrows littered all around her, or they had not intended to hit her.

He heard the man’s voice call out, “That’s enough, girl. Another icicle out of you, and pretty boy here gets his throat slit.”

The young woman paused her incantations, eyes wide and worried as she met Brint's gaze.

He could tell she was thinking about what to do. He didn’t want to die, he still had his vengeance to complete, but in that moment, all he could think was that he couldn’t let this woman be caught by the bandits on his behalf.

“Kill them!” he called. “Don’t—”

Someone hit him hard on the back of the head.

“Surrender to us, Missy," the leader said. "I won’t ask again. We’re bandits, not murderers. You’ll be let on your way once you give up your valuables.”

Brint was dazed, but he could feel the knife kept tight to his throat, and he watched in horror as the young woman dropped her hands.

The two leather armored men beside the bandit leader rushed forward and bound her mouth and arms.