Magic Steps

The messenger bowed her thanks.

The walk to the infirmary was a brisk one. Sandry wanted to protest the pace, but the bleak look in her uncle's eyes discouraged her. I can't coddle him forever, she thought as she trotted to keep up. He'll just get impatient and overdo.

Knowing that, it was still hard not to protest. She couldn't forget how he'd looked when, only six weeks ago, she got word that he'd collapsed in his library. When she had reached him the duke was in bed, his face ash gray and pain-twisted. He looked old and. half-dead. It had taken all her strength to bind his spirit to his body until the healers could do their work. She never, ever wanted to see him like that again.

As if he felt her worry, the duke slowed near the infirmary door and waited for her to catch up. I’ll be all right," he murmured as a guard opened the door for them. "and I promise I will eat as soon as we're done here."

The injured Guryil lay in a curtained alcove at the rear of the small infirmary. A healer sat with him, one hand on his wrist, the other on a leg braced with splints. To Sandry's magical vision the healer's power was a cool silvery blaze that ran through the Guardsman. It flickered in the broken leg, as if the magic fought something there.

"Guryil has broken that leg several times," remarked a short, stocky man who watched from the curtains edge. "He’s built up a resistance to healing." The speaker was only a handful of inches taller than Sandry, with curly white-and-gray hair cropped short, a salt-and- pepper mustache, and full, dark eyes. He spoke with a crisp Namornese accent, and wore the uniform of the Provost's Guard. His insignia was two yellow concentric circles surrounded by a rayed circle, which meant he was a colonel. The fastenings and trim on his uniform were all white, he was a mage.

"I am told his mount fell," remarked the duke quietly.

"Collapsed, poor beast," the stocky man replied. “Tendons cut in the right fore and hind legs."

"I swear, I saw nothing!" cried the young man beside the bed. He, too, wore the uniform of the Duke's Guards, he clung desperately to Guryil's free hand. "Not a midget, not a child—Gury's too good to let anyone get close like that, and they didn't use confusion balls on us, just Rokat's bodyguards!"

"Confusion balls?" Sandry whispered to the duke.

The stocky man heard and replied, "Clever devices. Mix spells for addlement and visions, throw in a drug to give the horse the staggers, and stitch them in a ball. Throw it at a man's chest, it bursts, and you've got him and his horse useless for three or five minutes, depending."

"They are illegal," said the duke coldly.

The mage shrugged. "Of course they're illegal—they're for the one purpose, aren't they? More importantly, they cost. Our killers have full moneybags."

The duke went to the Guardsman who sat beside Guryil. "Tell me what happened." He gave a flask to the young man—and where did Uncle get that? wondered Sandry—who opened it and took a long drink.

She squinted at the Guardsman as he returned the duke's flask and began to talk. There was something, not in, him but on his sleeve, like a brush of ash, something that felt alien. She wanted to go closer to look, but he was far too nervous. His full lips trembled as he talked and his eyes flicked repeatedly to the man on the bed.

"Guryil is the solid partner," the harrier-mage murmured. "Guardsman, Lebua is superb with a blade and a quick thinker, but he needs a calm hand on the rein.»

Sandry nodded, and took a better look at Guryil. He was brown to Lebua's black, a few years older, with long, crinkled hair mussed from lying on a pillow. The healer seemed to ease his pain if not mend his leg. The lines in Guryil's face were not so sharp, his body more relaxed, than when she arrived.

A shadowy smear lay on Guryil's splinted leg, a long stripe from his thigh to his foot. The healer's magic flickered in the flesh under it, like a candle shining through dirty glass.

"What is that?" Sandry whispered, staring.

"What is what?" asked the mage.

"The shadow on his leg. You can see the healing through it."

"Seeing, is it?" The harrier-mage fumbled at a ribbon around his neck, A glass round set in a copper rim hung from it. He raised it to one eye and walked closer to Guryil, leaning over him.

The healer glared at him. "Do you mind?" he asked. "This is hard enough without you meddling."

The mage returned to Sandry. "It's a shadow, all right," he said, tapping his palm with the glass. Sandry glanced at it, and caught the glint of vision-spells written into lens and rim. Niko had spelled Tris's spectacles that way four years ago, before first Tris and then the rest of them developed the uncommon ability to see magic on their own.

"Who are you, please?" Sandy asked the mage.

He bowed. "Wulfric Snaptrap at your service, my lady."

"Wulfric pain-in-the-rump," muttered the healer.

"Now, if you'd just let me talk to him—," said Wulfric.

"He was in pain. He's in less pain now, but I want him in no pain. Then you can muddle his poor head with questions," replied the healer.

"I wonder…" murmured Sandry, thinking aloud. "Could something fight your power? Another magic?"

"Something you may not recognize," Wulfric added. "I certainly don't."

The healer glared at them. "If it's a magic I haven't seen before, how would I know if I were fighting it?" he demanded. "I admit, Gury here should be resistant to healing, but not like this. The more I pour in, the less it helps."

Sandry opened her mouth, then closed it. She wasn't sure that either of these men would let her do something.

"Speak up, my dear," the duke said from his seat beside Lebua.

"Master healer, might I try something?" she inquired. The longer she looked at that shadow, the queasier it made her feel. She wanted it off the injured Gury and his partner Lebua as well.

The healer raised his brows. "What did you have in mind, my lady?"

She stepped forward. "Take your magic out of him. All of it." Guryil's eyes flew open. "I'm sorry, Guardsman," Sandry told him, "but I really think this must be done."

Guryil nodded reluctantly.

The healer laid his hands on the broken leg. Sandry watched as all of his magic flowed out of his patient and back into him. Guryil whimpered, and sweat poured off his forehead. His pain had returned.

Sandry rested her hands against his foot, her fingers just missing the shadow. She closed her eyes and fell into the heart of her magic. Swiftly she collected what she needed, sorting her power into a thousand hair-fine strands.

She opened her eyes. Looking through her power, she could see the healer's magic, Wulfric's blaze—accented by bright spots that were the spelled tools he carried—and the glow from the steady-heart charm the duke's healer had made for Vedris. Against all that brightness, the shadow was still just a thin layer of grime.

She spread her fingers on Guryils foot, and carefully slipped a thread under that layer. The feel of it against her magic made her skin creep. She had to get every shred of it.

Once her thread was under the shadow, she let it grow until she saw it emerge from under the darkness at Gury's thigh. She chose more threads, ru

She felt it when her moving thread hit empty air. Now her woven power lay solidly between that shadow and the injured man. She held her left hand over it and called the free end of the thread back to her. It came, folding the magical cloth in half. She looped her thread around it three times, tying the whole into a tight bundle. Only then did she let her thread break