The Wizard Hunters Read Free Page B

to support, especially boys. He and Gil didn’t look much like blood brothers either, since Ilias’s ancestors had come from further inland, where people were smaller with lighter hair and skin, and Gil’s people came from the bigger, darker strain that had been planted here on the coast since before the first boat was built.
    Giliead snorted. Ilias could hear him shifting around uncomfortably again. Finally Giliead added, “He understands that I just want to be sure.”
    Ilias finished the unspoken thought hanging over both their heads. “That Ixion’s not back.” It was the first time either one of them had said it aloud, though Ilias knew they had both been thinking it since earlier this season when the rumors had started. Stories of smoke from the island again, of the bodies of curselings like those Ixion had bred washing up on isolated beaches. It wasn’t just talk, either; in the past few months fishing boats had gone missing far more often than they should, with no survivors and no signs of wreckage in any of the places where small boats usually came to grief. Then a trading fleet of six ships from Argot had failed to arrive and two small coastal villages of gleaners had been found deserted, the huts burned and the boats broken into kindling. Nicanor, lawgiver of Cineth, and his wife, Visolela, had asked Giliead to return to the island to see if another wizard had taken Ixion’s place here.
    “He can’t be back,” Giliead pointed out reasonably. “I cut his head off. Nobody comes back from that.”
    Ilias remembered that part, in a hazy way. Lying across Giliead’s lap in the sinking gig, the water in the bottom red with blood, he had a clear picture of Ixion’s head under the rowing bench. They had never talked about that, either. “Dyani told me you threw it to the pigs.”
    “The pigs we eat?” Giliead sounded dubious.
    Ilias didn’t take the bait and after a moment his friend said quietly, “Three days after we got back I took it to the cave and the god told me to bury it at the place where the coast road met the road to Estri. That’s when you started to get better.”
    “Oh.” Ilias scratched the curse mark on his cheek. He remembered Giliead being gone then and everyone refusing to tell him why. Even after all this time, the memory of Ixion’s malice and power gave him a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. That the man could be dead and in at least two pieces and still be trying to hate him to death.
    As soon as Ilias’s fever had abated enough for him to get up, he had walked to Cineth to turn himself in and get the curse mark, the silver finger-width brand given to anyone who had been cursed by a wizard. Giliead had caught up with him halfway there and tried to stop him, but Ilias had refused to listen. He hadn’t meant to make himself a walking symbol of their failure but maybe it had turned out that way; it still seemed like something he had had to do, though Ilias couldn’t say why even to himself.
    He shook his head, trying to drive off the uncomfortable reflections. At least the curse mark had stopped Visolela from trying to convince the family to sell him off into marriage somewhere inland. “Crossroads, huh,” he said thoughtfully, keeping his tone light. “I guess the god figured the bastard’s shade would get confused and wander around in circles.”
    “Shades can’t cross running water anyway.”
    Ilias heard Giliead’s boots grate on the stone as he shifted, ready to start the climb again. Giliead hadn’t meant for Ilias to come with him this time. He had, in fact, invented a story about a dull trip along the coast to Ancyra, which would have been more convincing if Giliead wasn’t such a lousy liar. Cornered and forced to admit the truth, Giliead had still maintained adamantly that Ilias shouldn’t come with him. Ilias had spent the last few days countering arguments, calling bluffs, topping dire threats with even more dire threats, ignoring pleas, and