“Boy, I wouldn’t do—” Sebo began to say.
It was too late. Arram released his strongest spell of revealing. Yadeen had taught it to him so he might find particular stones far underground, but it also worked for finding objects and people in all environments. This time the shadows blazed with light and went dark; a giant fist punched Arram halfway across the river.
Fortunately, Sebo’s water-walking spell was proof against almost anything. Arram was only dazed, not drowned. He lay among the roots of reeds, wondering where he was and why he had chosen to take up fisticuffs.
Enzi descended and shoved him so hard that Arram fell forward onto his face in the opposite direction. Stop playing, and help Sebo! the crocodile ordered. I did not bring you here for your amusement!
“Odd,” Arram said, pushing himself upright with care. “I don’t feel amused.” Slowly, still dazed, he walked toward the source of that poisonous wrong.
This is taking forever, he heard the god say behind him. Immense jaws closed on his waist. Enzi swam forward with Arram clasped in his mouth.
To Arram’s wonder, the god’s teeth only dented his protective spell, rather than tearing it. “How do you do that?” he asked. Enzi did not reply. He dumped Arram next to Sebo.
The mage had her fibers loose in her hands. “If a little power doesn’t do what you want, think of something else before you try using a lot of it,” she told Arram. He nodded, struggling in the boggy silt as he tried to stand. “Protections this complex often have traps to ward off mages.” She swiftly wrote three signs in the air with a couple of her fibers, then dropped them. They burst into flame and vanished. Light flooded the water all around. “Now,” she said as Arram finally got to his feet, “stay here and anchor my spell with these.” She reached through their spells and handed him more fibers.
“Did I know we could pass through our protections?” he asked, touching her spells. His fingers did not go through.
“I am able to do so. And I suppose it is time you learned, but not today. Someone wanted this thing hidden; I want to know why. Stay here and anchor my spell. Clear your mind and concentrate on your Gift, understand?”
“Yes, Master Sebo,” Arram said, feeling dejected. Why did every good new lesson have to come later?
“Stop pouting and concentrate, or I’ll give you something to pout over,” she snapped.
She raised her remaining fibers and muttered. Her Gift spilled out and away from her. Sebo walked forward and around the poisonous thing, passing behind Arram as she shaped two complete circles. He barely noticed her movement, busy as he was anchoring her spells. Within his Gift his power shifted and surged, moving as it often did when it struck greater magic. One day, he promised, I will stop meeting Gifts that are greater than mine.
Even as he thought it, he knew that promise was an empty one. If they learned nothing else at the university, they learned there was always someone with more power. Arram only had to look at his teachers to know that much.
The circles that enclosed him quivered. He braced himself: Sebo was working the spells and signs that closed her spell. Instantly her circles enclosed the object like a cocoon. The water and the shadows flowed out into the river, exposing the thing they had kept hidden.
Arram gasped. His protective globe was gone! Still, he could breathe. “Sebo?”
“I combined our protections with the larger one,” she replied.
Arram inhaled and coughed. The stink that rose from the thing that had been hidden so well reminded him vividly of the corpse fires during the typhoid epidemic. The object fell backward with no water to hold it upright, splattering Arram’s clothes. He gulped down vomit that rose with the odor and walked around the thing Sebo had uncovered.
Without shadows to mask it, he saw a series of chains and knotted ropes bound tightly around a collection of burlap sacks. Sebo motioned for Arram to remove the topmost layer of burlap. Inspecting it, Arram realized he would have to cut: the rough cloth had been pulled over whatever was inside and secured by the bindings. He drew his belt knife and showed it to Sebo. She nodded and waited, her Gift sparkling around her hands in case anything went awry.
Arram always made certain his knife was razor sharp. He needed it as the wet strands fought his blade. He started at the upper end of the thing, where he would not fight chains and rope as well as sacking.
There was another layer of burlap under the first. His knife lost its edge there. He had to borrow Sebo’s for the final layer, which was spell-written silk. He could feel something rounded under his hands. Finished at last, he pulled the silk away from human hair, black, sodden, and limp. Shoving the layers of material down past slender shoulders, he revealed a half-rotted face that still managed to look familiar. The chin, the nose…
Puzzled and frightened, he looked at Sebo. “Master?” He was proud there was no wobble in his voice.
“It’s hard, when the rot’s been at her,” she murmured. “The wraps kept the fish away. I’d say she’s been here three weeks, perhaps? Around the time of the storm. Have you learned the spell for a true appearance?”
His brain was still stuck at three weeks. Now that the cloth was off the corpse’s face, Arram was positive that the dead woman was a mage. He knew it in his bones and had been trying to think if anyone had gone missing around that time. But there had been the mourning, and living on scant meals, and new classes to start….
Sebo rapped his head. “A spell for true appearances, boy!”
Arram winced. It wasn’t right that the master’s knuckles should be so hard.
He touched the corpse’s chin squeamishly and turned her chin toward him. That was when he spotted silver at her neck. Without thinking he reached for it and drew the necklace up. It was thin silver, delicate, with a double-loop clasp and a scratched piece of jade.
Numb, he took the chain with both hands and slowly turned it, trying not to tear the rotten flesh of the woman’s neck. On one loop of the clasp, broader than the other loop, the artisan had carved a lightning bolt.
Sebo looked at Faziy aHadi. “Girl, girl,” Sebo whispered, her voice sad. “Look at you now. What did you get yourself into? All that new money cost you more than you could afford….”
“You knew her, too?” Arram asked softly.
“Of course I did,” Sebo replied. “I’d take her the odd trinket from the river’s floor, and we’d work out what we had. And then all that good fortune just dropped into her lap.”
Arram showed Sebo the lightning bolt on the fastener. “I made this for her. Master, she knew lightning snakes.” His mouth trembled, but he refused to cry.