28. Bridles

28

Bridles

Safira Chastain

I spent four days inside, avoiding windows. I went down into the deeps and tended mushrooms as if it was my greatest passion. When I ran out of work to do, I pretended to work, moving logs around and staring at mycelium as if by doing so I could make it grow faster. The sight of the quiet blue waters of the lake filled me with stabbing guilt, the knowledge of what Celyn faced flooding into me with every innocent gleam of sunlight off of waves and ice.

He hadn't known. He hadn't even asked. He'd made the decision uncaring of what awaited him on the other end of enslavement. It hadn't even mattered to him.

Nightmares and waking visions plagued me. All of the terror of the wizard hovered at the forefront of my mind, all the horrors that I had survived harrying me like wolves snapping at the flanks of a deer. More than once, I ended up curled up in a corner, shaking violently, memories rising so powerfully that they blinded me to the real world. The panic struck at me like a falcon hitting a dove, leaving me dazed and worn. My hands trembled, and I struggled to eat.

At last I couldn't bear it anymore, the way the lake haunted me and dragged me back into the horrors I'd escaped. I dressed for the weather, wrapping a heavy cloak around myself and going outside to face the water.

Light lanced off of the waves. I steeled myself as the terrors threatened. I was safe. The wizard was gone, and all the things he'd done to me didn't matter anymore. I set my teeth and marched down to the shore, holding myself together with nothing but willpower.

The water lapped at the shore, innocent. Ice clung to the stones and extended from the shore. I drove my heel into the ice, shattering it, and water pooled up on top of it. I stared down at it, the little puddle on top of the ice, and then abruptly dropped to my knees next to the lake.

I thrust my hand in through the floating pieces of ice and into the water.

Shock rolled through me as the cold water soaked my skin. It was icy , the bright clear cold of a winter lake, without any hint of warmth. I'd dived into this water only a few days before, and it had been chill but not frigid. I yanked my hand out and flung myself up, staring at the water as if it had bitten me.

I tried another spot, and then another, and another, growing frantic with each new pool of winter cold. He was Tsirisma Lake, the steaming lake, and he was cold. Standing there, water dripping off my fingers, I realized that he had always been cold. I knew where the hot springs were, and where the water steamed. I knew the patterns of the lake, because Celyn had shown them to me, giving me his secrets like gifts. I knew where the fish kept their nurseries and where the muskrats made their homes, where the rain sluiced down the hills and where the ancient people had made their offerings.

You have the invitation of the water-horse, and his promise that no harm will befall you.

I swallowed. The water had been comfortable to me because Celyn had made it that way for me. That he didn't do it now...

The ornate bridle on his face. The will of the wizard in a physical object that held a lake in bondage. Celyn was bound, really bound, the sort of binding that locked away all of who he was and subjugated it to the will of the man who had put that bridle on him. I thought that if I dove into his waters now, I could drown the same way as I could in any ordinary lake.

It didn't matter if it was only for one man's lifespan. It didn't matter at all. The wizard would do things to him, horrible things, and he would be helpless to resist. If the wizard thought to tell him to feel a certain way, or think a certain way, would Celyn have to obey? I thought the answer would be yes. He was bound . The lake was nothing but water, and Celyn was more powerless than a horse.

Steel settled into my spine. I lived in a Spire, and when Leyweaver returned... but, no. The wizard had made a fair bargain with Celyn, and she wouldn't be allowed to intervene. Even mages had to obey the laws. She couldn't force him to give up Celyn, and the wizard would never let such a prize slip between his fingers. As a sorcerer, the scrutiny of the world would be on her shoulders.

But I was a nobody, all but untrackable, and utterly unimportant. Nobody would be expecting me to go after Celyn, the wizard least of all. He knew how afraid I was of him. I'd spent more than a year running from him in desperation, leaving so many beloved things behind. I licked my lips, prodding at the edges of my resolve. Was I really going to do this thing? Go after Celyn, put myself in reach of the wizard again, and do whatever was necessary to free him from the bargain he'd made for me?

At the edges I found my memories of Celyn. His curiosity, innocence, and warmth. His bright spirit and the open delight at experiencing new things and emotions. The way he looked at me as if I was the dawning sun.

He'd never known betrayal before I'd gone to him with all my fears and accused him of trying to steal me away beneath his waves. Why had I ever expected him to know how to react to the pain of it? We'd hurt each other, horribly, and he'd still chosen to sacrifice himself for me.

The wizard was going to try to break Celyn. Maybe he would succeed. Even if he didn't, he would leave the sorts of scars that might never heal, on the heart of a creature who had never known pain, or anticipated it. In less than a year, he'd done so much damage to me that I had been ready to kill myself to end it, and only the chance of escape had let me live. I didn't want to imagine what he could do over a lifetime to someone who was completely powerless.

I closed my eyes. Was I going to do this?

Yes. Yes, I was.

When I opened my eyes again, my face settled into a grim mask. I made my way up to the Spire again, and went directly up to the mage library. Once, I'd used my access to search for stories of water-horses, to damn Celyn. Now I would do my best to save him.

I pulled texts on binding and unbinding. I had no power, but maybe such things could be broken without magical strength. The assistant Leyweaver had shown us how to use hunted through the books, looking for anything about bridles, water-horses, and elementals. Over the course of three hours, I found eighteen books that might help, and I had bookmarks in each of them to show what chapters I needed to search.

Then I sat down and read.

I'd spent my youth watching and listening to mages, as if I was a naturalist studying the lives of some rare creature. I knew how they talked, and I had enough stray snippets of information that I could more-or-less understand what the books were talking about. All the writers had different opinions about things, expressed in terse prose or stodgy ramblings, but some themes emerged as I read through lunch and dinner, and into the night.

Bindings were tricky things, and bindings on elemental powers were trickier still. The nature of the types of innate bindings on elemental powers were rooted in the patterns of stories, and the stories rose from the history of those bindings. Water-horses could be bound by bridles because horses were bound by bridles, and that pattern was deep enough that it spilled over onto the creatures who shared their shape. Selkies could be bound by the theft of their skins, naiads by wedding rings, and oreads by necklaces of bone.

But all of those bindings had counters. If a selkie found their skin, they were free to leave. If a naiad touched water from their spring, they could dissolve into water again, the ring falling from their finger. If blood touched the bone encircling an oread's neck, the binding broke, and woe betide the person who chose to enslave a mountain. A water-horse only needed someone to take off their bridle.

The wizard wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't have left the bridle without a spell locking it closed, and Celyn's power was bound. The touch of his skin wouldn't break a spell the way it had when he'd touched my pump. I couldn't ever hope to break such a spell, and I wasn't sure that the oath not to interact or interfere with me would extend to incidental interactions on the level of locking spells.

But I learned that bindings could also be superseded. It took power, and it took personal sacrifice, but it could be done. When I read the ways it could be done, long after midnight, I reached slowly up and touched my long hair.

There's an innate strength to your body. Using your own body for a spell will make it far more powerful than only using power, and while hair doesn't quite count as your body, if you wet it with your blood it carries far more force than blood alone.

You can't make a bridle out of blood. But you can make one out of hair.

I had no power of my own. But Celyn did.

Celyn, smiling, his face soft. You could see the years in their thousands if you stayed with me.

Celyn, snarling, hurt twisting every word. I would have given you everything I am. All you ever had to do was ask.

I swallowed, hard. I could save him. All it would cost was the rest of my life. But I'd already decided, hadn't I? Living for thousands of years tethered to a lake wasn't in the scope of what I'd imagined for a price, but... this was Celyn. And I...

I... loved him.

A tear fell and splashed onto the table. I swiped at my cheek. What he'd done to me was wrong, and the fact that I'd hurt him first didn't erase that damage. But when things had been at their worst, Celyn had come to me wounded, seen my fear, and protected me. He was wonderful, the sort of person I'd never imagined meeting, and he loved me, too. Celyn might not have words for it, and he might not even recognize it, but you don't condemn yourself to slavery to save someone you don't love. You don't offer yourself irrevocably to someone if you're not certain that you want them by your side for the rest of your life.

It terrified me to contemplate binding myself to someone far more thoroughly than I'd ever bound myself to the wizard, but I set against that fear the knowledge that Celyn had saved me from a fate worse than death. He always wanted me to ask him for things, but he hadn't needed me to ask. He'd sacrificed everything without hesitation, because he saw stark terror on my face and wouldn't make me face the monster.

If the worst happened, Barixeor could still be my refuge. Celyn wouldn't try to break in, and a sorcerer could protect me. The Spire itself, made by many sorcerers and fed by a powerful confluence, would protect me, too. I knew I wouldn't have to hide from him, but the knowledge of retreat gave me comfort nevertheless.

I closed the books and I put them away. I went up to my rooms, walked past the dinner Marin had left me, and I went into the little office. I opened the desk and I opened the secret drawer and I took out the black metal ring Celyn had given me. For one long moment I stared at it, before I put it on my finger. It fit on my index finger perfectly, the black gleam looking beautiful against my brown skin. I touched the ring to my lips, as if by doing so I might reach him somehow.

"I'm coming, Celyn," I whispered against the metal.

Then I went to the bathroom, found a pair of scissors, and started to cut my hair, my mouth set in a grim line. I set each long length of hair down on the counter as I went, keeping them aligned so that I wouldn't have to sort them out. I loved my hair, the weight of it and the way it looked when I moved. I liked how Celyn touched it, tangling his strong fingers through my curls and finger-combing out the tangles after I'd been swimming with him. It will grow back , I told myself, as the tears threatened at the sight I saw in the mirror. What were a few years compared to a lifetime?

I took my hair and I carried it to the table where I braided bracelets, and I used some of my supplies to tie off a thick section of hair. It was late, and tiredness tugged at me, but I wasn't interested in leaving Celyn with the wizard for any longer than I already had. Sleep or no sleep wouldn't improve my chances for what I was going to do. I swallowed my fear and exhaustion and I started braiding.

Around six in the morning I couldn't keep my eyes open, and I blearily fell into bed for a few hours. When I woke, Marin had left me breakfast, with the caffe still warm. I drank it down, grateful to her both for the kindness and the lack of questions, ate the food mechanically, and returned to my task. My fingers ached from the strength and lack of give in the hair, but I kept at it, making strong bands and joining them together until I had a bridle made of my own braided hair, with a bit made of twisted hair instead of braided.

Hair alone wouldn't be strong enough. I knew it. The books had been very clear. My hands still shook as I took the knife and cut open one of my wrists, biting down on a piece of leather so I wouldn't scream. Blood flowed into the bowl beneath my arm, thick and crimson. I bled myself with the same fortitude that had driven me all those many miles and nights of hunger, all the way to Barixeor. I had to cut myself two more times, pressing deeper each time, sweating from the pain of it.

When the blood stood more than an inch deep and I felt a little woozy, I bound my wounds and bandaged myself. I took the bridle I'd made and I put it in my blood, drenching it. The blood soaked into the braids, leaving the hair dark and gleaming, and I lifted it, dripping and gruesome, into the wan afternoon sunlight. It made me nauseous, looking at it. I couldn't imagine asking Celyn to give himself to me, and then to bow his head for me and take my bloody bit into his mouth. But I would do it, because I couldn't leave him to face the wizard for me.

The wizard. My lip curled as I rolled the bridle in waxed cloth, and placed it into a satchel. He didn't deserve a title. I'd given it to him for so long, walling myself away from the name, making him some figure from a story. Even in my escape I'd kept thinking of him by the title, afraid to call him by his name. He'd demanded I call him by endearments and honorifics, punishing me for every casual use of his name, and I hadn't shaken the fear of letting his name into my mind.

I ought to call him what he was. He was a man, petty and grasping, self-centered and cruel. He called himself Magus Drake Silvertongue, flaunting his skill at spoken enchantments, but his name was Kip Meyers. His childhood nickname had been Kippers. He wasn't anything special. All he had was power.

I knew where he lived, and where he spent his time. I knew how he carried himself, and the patterns of his life. I'd needed to know those things to survive, and I hadn't forgotten in the interim. Once I'd fled Kip like a cat fleeing a baying hound. But the cat had remembered she had claws, and the hound had been muzzled.

I put on unwrinkled clothing, pulling out a light blouse and loose knee-length skirt. Sandals would do for who I wanted to look like, and my curling hair hid the fact that it had been cut badly by someone who didn't know what she was doing. I put on a necklace and earrings, and swung the satchel over one shoulder. Fear and determination twined through me, a shuddering combination, and I welcomed it into my heart. There was nothing wrong with fear, I decided. Kip was scary. He was a spoiled brat who'd come into awesome power, and bent the world to suit him. Anyone reasonable would be frightened.

But through my window, Tsirisma Lake glimmered. A sorcerer could stand against him, but I doubted a wizard could. Even a sorcerer would be helpless once they touched him.

I filled my eyes with the sight of him, remembering who it was I was doing this for. With that image held in my heart, I turned and went down the Spire to the portal rooms, and stepped through the portal to Merrhenya Spire.