Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

A moment later, Jolivet was gone. There was a deep groaning sound from within the mountain, the rattle of gears and pulleys. The platform began to recede, sliding back into the Hill; in seconds, it was gone, along with any evidence that anything unusual had just happened. As Kel rose to his feet, he saw that even the surface of the sea where Fausten had died was smooth again, an unruffled expanse of blue-green silk.

Kel started back up the path to Marivent. He felt numb, as if he had been dosed with morphea. When he had to stop halfway to the walls to vomit among the rosemary and lavender bushes, he was more surprised than anything else. He had not even realized he felt sick.

He must have seemed normal enough to the guard at the gate, who let him in with a friendly word. He stopped in the courtyard of the Castel Mitat to splash water on his face. His heart was racing as he made his way up to the rooms he shared with Conor.

Conor was there, sitting in the window embrasure. He looked up when Kel came in. There was something about him that seemed different—he was smiling, and there was real relief in it, as if he had been divested of a weight on his shoulders. The last time Kel could remember Conor smiling like that was before he had found out about Prosper Beck.

Kel hated to have to shatter that expression. But Conor needed to know; it was not something he could keep from him. “Con,” he said, his voice rougher than he’d expected, “there’s something I have to tell you. It’s about your father.”


It was Second Watch, and there was not enough moonlight to read by; Lin, with a sigh, rose to light the lamps. She had been sitting at her kitchen table all afternoon and into the evening, translating Qasmuna’s book and taking careful notes.

Not in the original book, of course. She wouldn’t have dared to write in it, and besides, the pages were already loose in the binding, the paper soft with age, almost powdery under her fingertips.

Lamps now glowing, Lin returned to the table and her cold cup of karak. There were, of course, still passages she didn’t understand, so she planned to bring the book to the Black Mansion tomorrow; surely among the forgers and thieves Andreyen employed, someone must be able to translate Callatian. She suspected Kel could do it, if it came to that.

There were many passages in the book about how magic was used for healing. The first of them followed what she had learned about Source-Stones: Magicians in the past had been able to use their powers to heal, but were limited by the power they could themselves expend without dying. Those able to store energy in stones were able to do more. When Suleman (the betrayer, the traitor) created stones that could hold limitless energy, the ability to heal became, also, nearly limitless. A man would fall dying on the field of battle, Qasmuna wrote, and the sorcerer-healer would come and raise him up to fight on; even if his wounds could not be healed, he would still fight.

It was a chilling image, and gave Lin pause. She even had to rise to her feet, and make a circuit of her room, before returning to the book. Every power can be used for evil, she reminded herself. But she would not do so. She wanted only to heal Mariam. But her stone seemed dead, and had since she had used it to heal Conor. And while she had known that there was a way to put her own power into the stone, to imbue it again with strength, she had not known how to do it.

According to Qasmuna, as Lin read painstakingly on, the issue was one of binding. A Source-Stone needed to be bound to its user via a series of steps. Some seemed simple, while others involved words that, even with her dictionary, Lin could not yet understand. There were also places in the manuscript that Lin found blank—sections, she guessed, where the Word itself had once been written, and had vanished when the Goddess removed it from the world.

Still. There was enough for her to try binding herself to her stone, and why not now? Why wait?

Her eyes fixed on the page in front of her, she took the stone, embedded in its silver setting, in her hand. She laid her hand against her chest—as the book bade her to do, and as she had done instinctively when she healed Prince Conor—and closed her eyes.

Against the darkness of her lids, she imagined the stone as her heart. Imagined it set into her chest like a jewel that was also a living part of her. That pulsed with light in time to her heartbeats.

For a moment, she felt wind in her hair, and smelled the scent of smoke. She saw the top of the tower in Aram, and Suleman, rising to his feet, his stone pulsing at his chest—

Her eyes flew open. Her heart was hammering almost painfully, as if she had run flat-out until she could run no more and must crouch down, gasping for breath.

Her hand ached. She opened it, stared down at the stone in her palm. It was still pale, milky as a blind eye, but was there something moving in it now? A swirl, down in its depths, like the first rise of smoke from a fire . . . a whisper, in the back of her mind.

Use me.

A sharp rap on her front door. Lin jumped to her feet, flipping the tablecloth across Qasmuna’s book to hide it.

“Lin!” A familiar voice. “It’s Chana. Mariam—”

Lin flung the door open. Chana Dorin stood at her threshold, her broad face creased with worry.

“It’s bad, Lin,” she said, in answer to Lin’s silent question. “She’s been coughing up blood. And her fever—”

“I’m coming.” Lin slipped the stone into the pocket of her tunic, caught up her satchel, and stuffed her bare feet into a pair of embroidered slippers Josit had brought her from Hind. She followed Chana out into the night, her heart hammering as they raced through the dark streets of the Sault.

She found Mariam in her bed at the Etse Kebeth, racked with uncontrollable coughing. She held a bloody rag to her mouth, and more rags were littered on the bedspread. She was pale as starched linen, drenched in sweat, but she still managed to glare at Chana.

“You shouldn’t—have bothered Lin—I’m fine,” she gasped. “I’ll be—fine.”

Lin clambered onto Mariam’s bed, already unbuckling her satchel. “Hush, darling. Don’t talk. Chana—tea, with feverfew and willowbark. Quickly.”

Once Chana had left, Lin wrapped a shawl around Mariam’s shoulders, despite Mariam’s coughing protests that she wasn’t cold. There were streaks of blood on Mariam’s chin and neck, blackish red.

“It’s always worse at night,” Mariam said, hoarsely. “It . . . goes away.”

Lin wanted to scream in anger, though she knew it wasn’t Mariam she was angry at. It was the disease. The blood on the rags was flecked with foam: It was coming from deep within Mariam’s lungs, carrying air inside it.

“Mari,” she said. “How many nights? How long?”

Mariam looked away. Sweat shimmered on the sharp divide of her collarbones. The room smelled of blood and sickness. “Just make me well enough to go to the Festival,” she said. “After that . . .”

Lin caught Mariam’s thin wrist. Squeezed it gently. “Let me try something,” she whispered. “I know I keep saying that. But I think there’s a real chance this time.”

Some part of her knew it was a terrible thing to keep asking—to keep raising Mariam’s hopes and then dashing them. But the voice in her head was louder: You have the book now. You’re so close. She cannot die now.