Shadows of the Scriptures

SEVEN: Judgment Rope

"How do you know I'm not converted?"

"You, my friend? Throwing yourself at the House Of Ations like some countryside whore at a lordling? No. The Shadneer may rise and drown us all ere that happen."

"But you're a minstrel!" said Addie.

"I am," Gryphik countered easily.

"Then - I just find it hard to believe you have the Skill." Imagining the man making scraps of metal clash with his mind was not dissimilar to the image of a hill bending to kiss a meadow.

"I don't. I am a Tester, not a Skiller."

"No, you're not."

"But I am, truly and really."

It made sense: Testers were mages who could alter your bodily functions. Make you sweat your armpits or piss your pants. Rush your adrenaline or render you lethargic. Heal you or break you. Pedgram's spewing up now made sense. He hadn't fallen sick suddenly because food poisoning symptoms had kicked in. And the audience's captivation . . . Addie had felt her heartrate dampen, her muscles loosen, as she heard his flute.

"You don't look one," she said outwardly.

"Why, thank you. That's just the look I'm going for, then. If fellow mages dip their toes in a pond, others will fall in it, hook, line and sinker."

"Prove it," Addie said even as Master Harl grimaced.

Gryphik looked her in the eye, crossing his arms beneath his chest. His cheeks puffed up like blowfish. "As you wish . . .?"

"Addie. Castele - " But her lips froze in place, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth like iron on lodestone. She felt herself swallow invisible icy thorns as the moisture from her mouth rapidly evaporated. She tried to fish for the knife in her duffel, to lunge for the man, but it was as if a solidified layer of pewter restricted every inch of her body.

"Wrrgh," she managed somehow.

Her eyeballs could move, thankfully. They fixated themselves on Gryphik's face, which was divided neatly by a wide grin.

White smoke rising up to your chest as you inhale . . .

Teeth rattled in her jaw. Her eyes popped. Her thumbs twitched.

. . . turning into pure stark energy as you exhale.

"Ah!" The pewter layer broke, and Addie faltered forward at Gryphik as though she had been released from someone's clutch. They both fell, crunching leaves as they did. Addie landed on his top, her hands a blur as she held her argonz knife to his throat, breathing hard.

"Tilda's bane! Calm down, girl!"

"Let him go, shren." Addie looked up at Master Harl, his bristly brows an arc, and got up reluctantly. "You asked him to display his power, so he did it."

Groaning, the Tester got to his feet. "Spoiled my shirt," he bleated as he wiped dirt and leaves off it. He checked nimbly a contraption-belt under his shirt - a vessel for his flute. It was intact. "Silly girl. Who taught you how to defend against a Bactract? Some priest from Craycht?"

"I did, Zer," said Master Harl.

"That explains how hostile it was," said Gryphik.

"No, it doesn't. I taught her as Marner taught us. She is . . . different. Special."

Gryphik stared at Addie. Addie stared at Master Harl; he had never said this before. He had always attributed the aggressiveness of her defense and Skill to her lack of control over her emotions. In the initial stages of her training, he had numbed her nails to insensitivity with a strange thaumaturgic balm and cleaved them half off so she could not harness a major portion of her ability for many a maes.