A slow grin cut over my mouth when I finished reading. Thoughtful of Emi, but I doubted it would do much to change my thoughts on the Sentry.
I plucked another slice of fruit and openedTales of the Wanderer. The binding smelled of old leather and ink and dust.
Memories of Gammal’s smoke-haggard voice telling the tale filtered through my head with each page. “Why did the Wanderer divide the magic of the gods?”
“Why should I care about your myths and legends, girl?”
It was her response every time, but always said with a glint of mischief in her eyes. I’d beg no more than three times before the old Unfettered woman would recite the history of my lands, all to make a young girl beam with intrigue.
“This Wanderer chose his fate through tricks and betrayal.” Gammal would lower her voice to lift the hair on my arms. “The Wanderer’s wife realized her husband—already powerful—craved more. He wanted immortality like the gods.
“The god-queen feared the power-lust in her husband’s eyes. So, while the Wanderer slept, she stole three drops of his blood, then marked the brows of their three children, blessing them with the craft of their father, and taking it from her king.
“The first son was given craft of bone—to heal, manipulate, or rot. The second son, the craft of souls—to protect, control, or destroy. The third, to the Wanderer’s only daughter, the craft of blood—to heal, disease, or summon.”
One day, when I was bold enough, I asked the question I’d kept buried since I arrived at the young house. “Where does the silver curse fit, Gammal?”
The woman had paused for half a breath before kneading her seed bread with more fervor. “What I have read is the Wanderer was furious at his queen’s betrayal. It is said one night, he stole into the chambers of his children and poisoned his own heirs. When his bride discovered her young ones thrashing and near death, the Wanderer vowed the antidote if she would tell him how to become a master of all the crafts, just like a god.”
“Did she tell him?”
“In desperation, the god-queen told the Wanderer how to mark bones of those who’d gone to the gods’ hall and summon a lingering piece of the soul left behind. Then the bone of the dead would be fastened to the Wanderer’s living body, feeding new strength from the dead into his own soul. Since the fallen soul had already touched the magic of the gods’ hall, the sagas say the Wanderer could then take slivers of wisdom from the soul he’d absorbed; he could borrow from the dead’s former strength. With the additional soul, old scars healed, youth filled the Wanderer’s bones, and like many of the gods, his skill with the blade grew tenfold. But it was a curse. With its strengths, the Wandereralso took on the cruelty and the vices of the dead bones. Each time made the Wanderer dangerously greedy for battle, blood, power.
“Disgusted by his corruption, the gods took back their daughter and her young ones, and marked the Wanderer with the scar of silver, leaving him to suffer alone until he met Salur. That is the legend of the silver scars. Who knows if it is true, but we both know when a melder uses their craft recklessly, they do not stay the same, don’t we, girl? Be wary of those scars, child. Never use the curse in your blood.”
As a child, I vowed to Gammal I would never be reckless. To save Kael was the first I’d used my craft.
Still, I could not deny the sense of power that hummed in my blood as I drew him back from death.
Was it truly possible to fall prey to the desire for more? Is that what King Damir wanted? A melder with insatiable desire to feed their own craft?
But how would such a thing grow the king’s influence?
I thumbed through a few pages of the old poems and tales, stopping on the warning from the god of wisdom when he gifted the Wanderer his magic.
To harm the living, craft mirrors the pain.
To split the soul, craft sacrifices the blood.
To curse the body, craft devours the mind.
To bind dead and living, craft corrupts the heart.
Kael had used his craft only to shape blades, never to cause pain. The same could be said for Hilda and Edvin. Did Emi Nightlark feel pain when she harmed the living bone?
Soul craft, as little as I knew of it, was the magic that wallowed in blood somehow.
Blood craft was tangled in curses and spell casts. Used too wretchedly, it spun a mind with madness.
The last was the warning ignored by Stonegate. It was the risk of melding.
If the tales of the Wanderer were to be believed, to use meld craft in excess, the magic of it would feast upon a melder’s heart until they were a husk of what they once had been.
Like a disease feeding from the inside out.
King Damir coveted melders. He would use my craft in excess, and if the tales were true, I would wither to nothing soon enough.
I slapped the pages closed and hugged my knees to my chest. On the morrow, I would be inspected by the king. No doubt, he would require me to prove my craft and I would be tossed back into that strange, mirrored world of mists and shadows.
