A Baron of Bonds (Conduit of Light #2)

75. Karus

Chapter 75

Karus

THE FIFTH TRIAL

I plunged face-down into mud.

The slimy grit coated my tongue, and I spit from my mouth, wiping it with my sleeve.

I looked around, rubbing at my eyes and finding that I had not, in fact, returned home.

“Rev?” I called, my voice young and high-pitched, not one I recognized.

I looked down to my chest, finding it small and thin. I was wearing a ripped brown overcoat. Several of the buttons were missing up the front, and one of the pockets was patched with black thread.

My hands were little. I stared at short, stubby fingers caked in mud with dirt under wide fingernails. My emerald conduit ring was missing.

Revich hadn’t been keeping secrets about the conduit trials. He’d been keeping a secret about this.

Whatever this was.

I pulled my short body up from the ground, surveying my surroundings.

I was at the edge of a small village. Wood houses lined muddy streets, smoke billowing from their chimneys. The sun was rising on the horizon to the east, and behind me was a vast wilderness of the strangest trees I had ever seen.

Each one was enormous at the root base, their trunks long and thinning out at the top to a small display of dark green leaves. The roots of each tree wove under and over the muck, a tangled maze of thick wood that spread across the silt, wet and bubbling.

“Rev!”

I turned back to the village, my eyes searching for him.

A woman stood on the doorstep of the nearest cabin, wiping her hands on her dirty apron. A sense of familiarity washed over me as I squinted at her. Her pitch-black hair was pulled up into a bun at the nape of her neck, bits escaping and hanging over her ears. Her skin was tanned against her brown, drab dress. Her eyes were a deep blue.

I knew those eyes.

Those were Rev’s eyes. Even the shape was his, along with the straight black brows above them.

She smiled, and I found my feet walking forward, not of my own doing.

She put her hands on her hips, addressing me as I neared. “Revich Schayel, how have you managed to muck yourself up already? Don’t you come in here with that all over your hands and face. Go wash before breakfast.”

She pointed to the side of the door where a bucket sat on the mossy ground, its surface glassy with dark water.

“Yes, Mama,” I spoke in that same little voice.

She went back inside, and again, my feet took me forward.

My mind raced with realization, confusion, and a threatening doom that settled into my stomach for who and where I was. I watched my small hands— Revich’s small hands—rinse in the bucket, splashing water on his face— our face.

He glanced in the small, dingy mirror hung on the side of the wood house, and as his hands wiped at his cheeks, I saw Rev as a child. His face was thin, too thin, his eyes that deep blue of his mother’s. Black hair in need of a wash had been cut short, falling in thick beginnings of waves across his forehead, curling around the nape of his neck.

He— we —sniffed the air and smiled, two front teeth missing, the new ones barely peeking through.

I laughed, the sound coming from his chest light and uninhibited.

“Do you know what I’m doing here?” I asked, watching our mouth move in the reflection.

He didn’t respond, but splashed water on his face again, wiping away the last of the mud.

It seemed, however this had been done, I could speak through him, but he did not notice.

Why did Rev, my Rev , send me here to this memory of his? This must be the village of Mire in the Hallow Marshes. This must be a time when Revich was very young. I’d guess no older than six or seven.

What was he trying to show me, and why? Why would he put me here, and how was I supposed to return home?

Frustrated and curious, I said nothing more as he straightened and turned toward the house. I wondered if I could stop the movement. If I was able to use my own thoughts to speak, perhaps I could move his body as well.

Our short legs stopped, and we moved backward.

So, controlling his body was possible.

I decided to let this memory take place, carefully watching for any sign of what I was supposed to do here. At least my knee no longer throbbed.

If I was supposed to just observe, why was I able to speak and move?

He wiped his feet on the step up into the house and opened the door, the scent of bacon frying hitting his nose and he sniffed again.

“Did your father find anything this morning?” Rev’s mother was at a small fire, flipping thin slices of fatty bacon over a black pan.

He moved to the small table in the room, standing behind a chair, holding his arms out in front of him. Bits of blue tendrils left his fingers, weak and broken, but he managed to use magic to pull the chair toward him, shakily with short, jerky movements.

He climbed into the seat and answered, “No. Father’s talking with the warden about the order.”

She stiffened, her back still turned, nursing the bacon and watching carefully as it cooked.

I had heard the words of his reply, but I did not know the meaning of them.

Revich eyed the stack of three metal plates across the table, lowered his head and opened his hands, pulling the top plate with his magic, lifting it high in the air and jerking it toward him.

He let go too soon and it clattered to the tabletop.

His mother turned and stood, hand over her heart. “Rev, don’t dawdle. Your father will be back any minute.”

She brought the pan to the table, setting a soiled rag underneath, forking two slices of bacon and setting them on Revich’s plate. She then added a single piece to the other two.

She turned to the loaf of bread near the oven and Revich tore at one of his pieces, splitting it in half and giving the other to his mother.

I knew his little face held a wide grin, because I was also grinning. Even as a child, Rev loved with gifts.

Bringing three slices of bread to the table, his mother sat, eyeing the gifted piece of bacon and winking at her son, gobbling it up at the same time he did.

“I’m coming with you today to help fill the order as fast as we can. So, eat up.” She sighed, looking out the dingy window. “It’s going to be a long day, Little Love.”

Rev scarfed down his food, filling his empty belly.

I decided to speak, trying to gain some knowledge of why this memory as I lived it with him. “How will you help fill the order?”

She cocked her head to the side. “I’ve mined before. You know that.”

I nodded, thinking of what else I could ask to understand what was happening this day. “For rhyzolm? We’re filling an order to…to the people of the isle?”

She bent forward and felt my head. “Are you feeling alright, Revich? Maybe you should stay home and rest. Though I’ll have a difficult time convincing your father unless you start vomiting now.”

Right on cue, the door burst open and a man strode in, pulling off his boots and tossing them by the door.

The weight in the room shifted suddenly. I could feel the tension in Rev’s body and see it in his mother’s.

I took the opportunity to look Rev’s father over. He wore his hair short, cut almost to the very skin of his scalp, the color difficult to really discern, but somewhere lighter than black. His eyes were blue, but held an icy a coldness to them, none of the warmth of Rev’s.

He was about Revich’s height and build, strong arms and broad shouldered, likely from his work mining rhyzolm.

Revich had told me he didn’t remember much about his parents. I knew they had both died when he was very young, and he became a ward of the village, families taking turns with each of the many orphans.

He had told me once it had kept him fed, but did not keep him loved, and I wondered now if he remembered he had been loved. Very much loved by his mother.

Revich eyed his father in silence, and I with him as he sat, picking up his single piece of bacon and frowning. “Just the one?” he gruffed, glancing at Revich’s plate.

His mother spoke quickly, “If we can help fill part of the order today, you’ll have more tomorrow. I’m coming with you.”

He huffed in reply, chewing the fatty meat before diving into his meager bread.

“What did the warden have to say?” his mother asked, taking Revich’s plate and hers, bringing them to a small basin to wash in water I was certain was not fresh.

“The usual,” he rumbled, his voice eerily like Revich’s. “Since the order is for the Spire, we need the biggest pieces we can find. Showy bastards,” he finished. Revich watched him carefully as if looking for any sudden movements.

“Today’s the day, son.” His father’s gaze turned from his empty plate to Revich. He pointed, saying, “I can feel it in my bones. You’ll find your first today. We’ll head back to that same tree. Something was there. I can feel it.”

He sat back in his chair, poking around his teeth. “You need to use that magic of yours and help us find more rhyzolm. You want more bacon for your father, don’t you?”

His mother continued to scrub, taking the pan from the table and beginning her work again. “Of course he does. But his power isn’t developed, Byn. Give him time. He practices every day, don’t you, Rev?”

He nodded, smiling at his mother before locking his gaze back on his father. Byn eyed his son as well, giving him a slight nod before rising from the table with his plate. He handed it to his companion and murmured low, “I missed you this morning, Heirah.”

I didn’t mistake it.

The clench of her jaw, the tension in her spine as he bent down and kissed her shoulder. She swallowed and shifted away from him. The movement was slight, but stiff, and Byn grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at him.

No, I knew exactly what was going on in this house, and it seemed Revich did too as he suddenly sprinted from his chair, almost shouting, “Should we go, father? Mama can meet us there soon, right?”

Heirah nodded, giving a weak smile. “Right, Little Love. I’ll follow your trail.”

Byn turned to his son with narrowed eyes.

Helping Revich along, I sprang for his father’s boots by the door, picking them up and handing them over.

He sighed and took them, headed to the door, pulling them on as he went. It opened with unnecessary force and Rev smiled back at his mother, forming a ball of blue light in his hands, tiny as a pebble. He backed up toward the door after his father while a scattered trail of his magic followed him. She laughed, grinning beautifully, and I recognized Revich’s unburdened smile on her face.

I knew it well. I knew it often.

Rhyzolm mining was difficult.

Not only was the labor hard on the body, it seemed to be on the soul as well. Little Revich surveyed the miners we passed, his trail of light breaking at points before forming again, staying lit and hovering to lead his mother our way.

He followed his father closely, his boots squelching through the mud that came up to his knees.

I kept turning Revich’s head as he tried to follow his father. We passed at least two dozen miners in the marshes, each one using a variety of tools to wedge underneath the exposed roots of the trees covered in green moss.

I knew that in order to mine for rhyzolm, you had to dig underneath the tree, finding the rocks imbued with the magic of Felgren that washed this way from the forest.

Revich had explained to me the difficulty in getting underneath the root system, and I saw it here, in this memory, as miners worked to pull roots apart, gaining access underneath.

“Why can’t we just cut down the trees and dig for rhyzolm underneath?” I asked.

The backhand came quick, sending me, us, to the mud.

“Don’t ask questions when you already know the answer. You know the marsh trees have not grown in hundreds of years. And you know these are all we have.” He gestured around, glaring at his son, who picked himself up out of the muck and wiped his hands on his overcoat.

I hated this man.

I hated him before, but now, now this was me, glad he was out of Revich’s life at a young age. He deserved to rot here in these marshes where no one would find or mourn him.

I thought again about what I was really doing here, in this memory, on this day, as I felt the sting on Revich’s cheek.

He had hit him after the question I had asked, but I knew by Rev’s reaction, this was certainly not the first time.

It would be the fucking last if I could do anything about it.

Perhaps that’s what Rev had meant when I left for the trials. He’d reminded me I held a darkness inside, and I saw it now, blooming before me in a display of his father’s skull smashed among the roots of these trees.

I had no tolerance for this.

And I knew at least one thing; Byn Schayel was not going to make it out of this marsh alive.

But was that really what I was doing here? I was supposed to plot the murder of Revich’s father?

I highly doubted it.

I must be missing something.

The conduit trials were four.

This was a fifth, something different entirely.

Rev sent me here to do something. To prove something.

Each trial had been proof of magic—iumenta, lapis, medicus, and agricola.

What other magic was there for me to prove?

The answer hit like lightning, striking me to the core. I stopped following Rev’s father, stuck in place, my mind in the body of my companion when he was a child as I came to the only conclusion.

This was a trial for the only other magic a person could wield on this isle.

This was a trial for a Baron.