Chapter 460: I Do Not Ask (Castle Bonus 4/5)

Tam’s lips moved around it as if it were a stone he had found in his food, and he turned to the warband behind him, saw the same confusion in all their eyes, and turned back to me. "I don’t know that word."

"No," I sighed. "I didn’t think you would."

I looked past him at the others. They kept their faces blank, but they were still on their knees. I rubbed my brows. Since I had decided to reveal who I was, I would be going all the way.

"I am not surprised that none of you have heard this word. Watch, and I’ll show you," I said.

I reached for Tam’s hand. He was startled, but he did not take it back, and I turned him to the side so the rest of the warband could see.

His hands were still bleeding, both palms cut to ribbons by the glass, and the moment I turned them up to look, the smell of the blood came up to meet me, and the hunger turned over in my chest... this desire for blood was becoming irritating. It should not be a side effect of the Law of Blood. It came from something else, perhaps something left behind by the god.

This thought was a bit worrying, but as long as it was a part of me, I would find a way to sort it out. I ruled my abilities, not the other way around.

I could have asked Ogg to heal the boy’s hands, but I did not. Most times, actions spoke louder than words.

I lifted the glowing pen, and Tam went very still, and so did everyone else. They had not seen what this pen had done to a god, but the glow from it was familiar, and their senses could tell that this was the god weapon I carried at my waist, the one that had once been a sword and was now a pen.

Now that I was not in the midst of battle, I could easily tell that this pen still carried all the aura of sharpness of a sword. In fact, its aura was even greater now, after it had been used to slay a god.

Sweat broke out on Tam’s brow, and his heart began to race, but to his credit, he did not run, even though I could tell that his body wanted nothing more than to flee from my side.

"This won’t hurt," I chuckled. "Probably."

"Probably," Tam repeated faintly, before his eyes flew to my face. "Probably?"

"I’ve never done it on anyone else before. Relax, you are in good hands."

I set the nib against the edge of the first cut on his left palm.

The blood touched it, and the hunger rose up through me so fast and hard that for an instant the valley went red at the edges. I could feel the Law of Blood in my veins lean towards that cut. It would have been so simple. One thought, and every drop in him would come to me.

I froze, and analysed this longing inside me. It had not increased in intensity, but it was there, and I breathed slowly through my mouth. I thought about my sister, of all things, and the way she used to hold out her hands to me when she fell in the garden, and I held on to that until the red went away from the edge of the world.

Power needed to be controlled, to be channelled into the right places. I would rather gnaw off my arm than drain my sister of her blood, and the same was true of everyone who was my ally.

The hunger in me pulled back. It was still there, but it knew that there was no way I would allow it to emerge.

All of this took barely a second, and I began to draw on Tam’s hand.

It was a very small Script, and to those without great perception, it would seem as if I was just drawing a straight line. As a Grandmaster Engraver, the language of magic was open to me. What I wrote could not even be called a complete Script, and it meant, roughly, that what had been opened would close.

I drew it along the cut, and the cut closed.

This was not healing, because in a sense I did not truly understand healing magic, but I was familiar with the way the Law of Flesh brought my flesh together, and I could borrow from that understanding.

The skin drew together along the line of the nib and sealed, leaving only a thin pale mark shaped like the Script itself.

A small smile touched my face, because what I did seemed simple on the surface, but inscribing on living flesh was impossible without specific materials that could be injected into the flesh like a tattoo. At least, that was what I knew of it, but it seemed my Inscription at the Sovereign Tier had changed many things.

I did the next cut, and the next. Tam watched each one close with his mouth slightly open. When I was done, I let go of his wrists and stepped back, and closed my fist at my side, and waited for my heart to slow down.

∞

There was silence for a while before the Troll stepped forward and took up Tam’s hand in astonishment. Then he turned to the rest of the warband and shook his head. "I cannot sense the touch of divinity in these hands."

He turned to me, and seeing the question in my eyes, explained, "The vitality of a Troll gives us the ability to tell when healing powers are used. It does not matter from which god. What did you do?"

I thought about how to explain it. There are a great many ways to explain magic, and most of them are wrong in interesting ways, and there were the restrictions I had imposed on myself about how much I could reveal.

"The world has rules," I said at last. "Everything does." I glanced at the ground. "The stones under your feet have rules about how they break. Flesh has rules about how it mends. Lightning has rules about where it goes. Most people, as far as I can tell, get their power by asking. They ask a god, or they ask the stone, or they ask the... Great Fitting, and if the answer is yes, they’re given something." I held up the pen. "I do not ask!"

The silence was absolute, and I looked each of them in the eyes until I stopped at Coin. "A Mage like me studies the rules until he understands them well enough to write in them."

"And the power?" Coin said. "If not from a god, where does it come from?"

I tapped my own chest, just over my heart. "From here," I said. "It’s mine. Nobody gave it to me, and nobody can take it back."

That was not entirely true anymore, given the seal, but it was true enough, and it was the most important part.

Ruggah looked at me for a long time with his one eye. Then he stood up, slowly, with a hand on Battle’s shoulder, and his knee left the glass.

One by one, the others followed.

The pressure on my skin eased as they rose. It did not go away completely. It thinned, until there was only a faint thread of it left, coming from one direction. I did not look at my Status Screen to see which direction. I already knew.