Beyond the Shadows - Brent Weeks [181]
“She made me swear not to tell you,” Vi said.
“What the fuck have you—”
“What have I done?” Vi shouted. “What have you done? Breaking in here and treating my Sisters like this? How dare you!” Kylar opened his mouth, but Vi cut him off. “No! Sit down and shut up!”
The words hit him like a whip through their earrings’ bond. The compulsion made Kylar’s mouth snap closed, and he sat instantly. There was no chair: he sat on the ground.
Vi was as stunned as he was. He tried to open his mouth, but it wouldn’t budge. He couldn’t move. Vi had told him that the rings broke her compulsion to Garoth because its bond superseded Garoth’s magic, but Kylar hadn’t appreciated what that meant until now. The earrings’ bond was compulsive—one way. Vi could make him do anything she wanted, and she had known all along, Kylar saw from her expression. She simply hadn’t invoked her power before.
The Sisters stared round-eyed at Vi. A moment before, they all had been terrified of this man who had violated the Chantry and broken the chains their most powerful Sister had laid on him. In the next, Vi had defended her Sisters, and he obeyed her command as if he had no choice. Whatever other repercussions Kylar’s foolishness was going to have, he had certainly increased Vi’s cachet with her Sisters.
A riot of emotions flooded through the bond, but Vi mastered herself quickly. “She went to join Logan’s army,” she said. “She was afraid you wouldn’t fight otherwise.” Aware of the other women listening to her conversation with her “husband,” Vi said nothing more. She handed him a note. “You can stand now, and speak.”
Kylar stood and took the note, but he had no words.
The door on the far side of the classroom banged open, and dozens of Sisters began pouring in, with Sister Ariel at their head. Almost all of them, Kylar realized, were magae who’d trained with Vi.
One of them threw something like a spear of coruscating red and silver light. It flew straight at Kylar’s chest—then dissolved in midair.
Around the room, Sisters began kneeling, mouths dropping open once more. Kylar turned to see who had saved him. The Seraph walked into the room, glowing gold. “I’m sorry if my friend frightened you,” the Seraph said. “Forgive him. We needed to speak about a threat that faces us all. If he fails, all our fighting will be for naught.” The awed Sisters parted. With one last glance at Vi, Kylar left.
78
I won’t watch you kill yourself,” Durzo said. For the last three days, Kylar and Durzo had been traveling west. Durzo was traveling to Cenaria, to see Momma K at last, so he’d joined Kylar. The pass had been muddy and snowy, so they were setting up camp only a few hours from Torras Bend and a few hundred paces from Ezra’s Wood.
Kylar spread his heavy saddle blanket on a fallen log next to the fire and sat. “I don’t plan to die,” he said.
“Oh, so there is a plan? I thought you were making it up as you went. It’s getting dark. Our little stalker will be along within the hour.” They’d been followed, clumsily, since they left the Chantry. Today they’d ridden hard, trying to make it to Torras Bend, and their pursuer hadn’t been able to keep up.
“I don’t think Khali exists,” Kylar said.
“I didn’t realize you were in the habit of having religious epiphanies.”
“I mean, it exists, but I don’t think she’s a goddess.”
“Oh?” Durzo asked.
“She—it—is a repository of magic. The Wolf said magic is strongest when it’s attached to emotions. Khali is filled by the Khalidorans’ worship. As they hurt people for her, they chant a prayer. But it’s not a prayer. It’s a spell. It empties their glore vyrden into the repository. And it’s from that repository that the meisters and Vürdmeisters and Godkings draw their power. Because the talents for drawing in magic from the world and using magic are different,