He froze like a deer at the sound of a snapping twig as the second man pushed the hood from his face, revealing pale bronze skin, dark brows and the smooth, sanded-off features characteristic of the Tarthian nobility.
Though still hidden in the web of his spell, the sight of a Tarthian caused Lorth’s life force to pound in the scar on his neck. Tarthians were common enough in Os, as Sourcesee bordered Tarth only five days’ journey south of the Strike River. But this man was no merchant, sailor or traveler. A lord’s blood ran in his veins. Furthermore, he accompanied a Keeper of the Eye, something no Tarthian would do for a casual reason: they hated and feared wizards.
The timing of this scraped at the hunter’s nerves. He had come here for shelter after having escaped an interrogation by the Eye, and here stood an Osprey asking questions—with a Tarthian lord, no less. Tarthians were notorious for holding grudges, a fact he had learned only after he had soiled his boots in the cesspool of their pointless war; however, he had walked away and it wouldn’t be beyond them to come after him. A Tarthian would stop at nothing to gain an advantage against the Angloreans, even if it meant dealing with the Eye.
By now, the Eagle at the gate would have discovered what kind of poison tipped the arrows in the Lorth’s quiver—poison only someone familiar with Tarth would know how to make or procure. Leaf had seen his spider scar, and he could only hope she had the sense to fly this place with the Tarthian royal coin he had given her. Och! he swore to himself. It never pays to soften.
I love in the shadows, the Shade of Need chimed in, as if to mock him.
The Faerin leaned back in his chair and tossed several small coins in an empty glass. After a moment, he stood, caught his balance as he dragged a cloak over his shoulders, and lumbered out the door. Outside, he moved by the window, glanced over his shoulder at the tavern and then quickened his pace, out of sight.
Lorth looked at the door to the street, then at the low cellar door near the hearth. He calculated the space between himself and potential escape paths, the angles of tables and chairs and the probable reactions of patrons.
His concentration rippled as the sailor with the hopping leg jumped up and slammed his fist on the table with a shout. He stood right between the bar and Lorth’s table, bringing the attention of the Keeper and the Tarthian at once in his direction.
A patron behind the sailor, a rock-shaped man with hair growing over too much of his face, turned and told him to shut up. The sailor spun around with a dramatic expression of outrage, lost his balance and fell onto his table, causing twigs to fly and tankards to slide and smash to the floor. This caused his drunken companions to clamber up and over the wreckage towards the rock man.
The resulting brawl drew in several more participants, including the man with the blue hat and the young lord chatting with the aged tavern wench. She screamed like a goose and ran behind the bar to hide. Lorth kept his seat, draped his cloak aside to save it from a spill and observed the fight, the Keeper and the Tarthian, and the people on the street outside. Something resembling a shackle sailed towards the bar, prompting the Keeper and his companion to leave.
Time to move. Lorth got up and threaded through the fray to the back of the tavern. As he neared the cellar door, it opened, and men came through to deal with the fight. Lorth caught the portal with the tip of his boot and slipped through. Against his better sense, he threw one last glance into the room.
The Osprey stood outside the window where Lorth had been sitting. The wizard gazed through the smoky glass, still and eerie as an apparition staring just beneath the tumult of the room, scanning the spaces between the lines with the rhythmic sound of a feline purr. He knew there was something to find.
Lorth withdrew with a start as their gazes touched.
Chapter 3
Shade of Attention: I am unseen.
Lorth slammed the cellar door of the Sea Serpent snarling a rugged invective as the ghostly image of the Keeper moving quickly for the tavern doors fled across his mind.
Imbecile! Never hesitate—
He didn’t bother with a sealing spell, as that wouldn’t work on a wizard. He dropped the wooden bar into place. It didn’t quite fit; he had to slam it into the iron bracket so the door would hold.
The air grew cold and musty as he descended the worn stone steps. He touched his solar plexus to calm the sick feeling beneath his ribs, which hadn’t left him since the Keeper’s mind had raked over his space. He leapt into the passage at the bottom of the stairs and whispered a string of words that cloaked him in moving impressions of confusion.
A splintering crash sounded above as he rounded a corner into another passage. The pressure in his gut built like an untended stewpot about to boil over. The walls around him had eyes and his glittering energy shield wavered as if something riddled it with holes. No spell would hide him from the Osprey this time.
He headed for an inconspicuous exit he had used years ago. He reached the alcove at the end of a passage and found a wooden door with a thick ring handle. He whispered a mindkey spell to trip the lock. The door didn’t move. Had they barred or enchanted it?
He whirled around and ran back the way he had come. Bootsteps echoed in the adjoining hall. He froze and spoke a word to hide in stillness.
Too late. The Osprey strode around the corner, raised his arm with five fingers splayed and uttered a terrible stream of words in Aenspeak. A scathing gust of wind struck Lorth in the solar plexus and knocked him clear off his feet. He hit the ground with a tuck and a roll and stood, staggering and shaking his head to clear the shock. His vision swam, and his thoughts scattered as if the wizard had entered his mind and kicked the structures apart.
Fire. This wizard liked fire, and knew how to wield it.
He recalled something Icaros had once told him: If you are under attack by a wizard, think nothing.
Think nothing. He dropped his pack and cloak, drew his sword and thought nothing—but one word. Cool, clear water flowed into his body, his sword hand. A sheath of liquid energy shimmered from the surrounding space and encased him.
The Osprey strode up to him and sang something in Aenspeak that invoked a wave of heat like an explosion from a fire contained in a room. It fell, dispersed and cooled under Lorth’s shield. As he held his blade ready, his guard became a tight fist of water and earth, impenetrable. And he thought nothing.
The wizard’s expression chilled the air. As he drew his blade, a thin smile curled on his lips as if to say, If I can’t get you one way, I’ll get you another.
Nothing. Fire, air, earth, water—nothing. The Raptor attacked him with astonishing grace. Though Lorth’s own prowess with a blade rarely failed him, he felt a moment of doubt.
Think nothing.
The singing of blades filled the narrow passage. Lorth’s guard formed itself with every step, every subtle shift of his weight and turn of his mind. He held it closed and the wizard’s sword did not pass.
Getting past the guard of his opponent proved more difficult, however. No space, there, only walls and it felt more imagined than real, as if the wizard thought for him when he moved his blade. Again, the boundaries of Lorth’s mind, his stance and the movement of his body around his sword wavered with uncertainty. This man mastered him.
The hunter leapt back as the wizard’s blade sliced the edge of his shirt, opening a leaf-shaped hole in the fabric on his forearm. He felt the damp sting of a cut.
Think nothing.
The wizard put three more cuts on him, drawing blood on both his arms and legs to mark the weakness of his guard on every quarter. Under a relentless assault on both his body and mind, the hunter’s concentration finally broke apart.
Then, in the space between the crumbling lines, something shifted. In the formless dark, where knowing nothing meant knowing everything, a woman appeared in a night-black cloak. She rose up lifting a lily hand, the towering force of seasons, cycles, life and death, a deep river, flowing ceaselessly. She turned from the dying brush, red, gold
and purple as a healing wound, kissed by frost, a scant glint of green hanging on against a coming winter. Beneath the shadow of her hood stared the face of a wolf.
“Mothct,” Lorth breathed in the voice of the Destroyer, the darkest aspect of the Old One.
His movements changed. At once, he entered the Keeper’s guard, not by knowing where the openings were, but by becoming the emptiness between the swing of his blade from one point in time-space to another.
The Keeper spat something in Aenspeak that sounded like a curse.
Lorth’s sword made contact. The wizard twisted out from under it, but the wolf had bitten him. Lorth stepped back, sword raised, blood on the tip. He knew with the eyes of the Old One that he must not kill this man.
Clutching at the gash in his side, the Keeper sank slowly to his knees. Lorth wiped his blade on his new cloak and sheathed it. Gritting his teeth, he grasped the wizard under his shoulders and dragged him down the hall, ignoring the man’s gasps of pain. Near the end of the corridor, Lorth found a small room that had once served as a weapons store. It had long since been pillaged. He pulled the Osprey inside, eased the blue cloak from his body and leaned him against the wall. Then he wrapped up the cloak and tied it onto his pack.
The Osprey looked up with pale incredulity and breathed, “Who are you?”
I am the Destroyer, said the Shade of One.
The hunter said nothing. He ducked through the door and latched it from the outside.
~ * ~
Lorth stepped into the passage that led to the antechamber of the Hunter’s Sanctuary. He had managed to tend the wounds the Osprey put on him before the passages filled with men. Some of them were Faerins, most likely brought by the unkempt soldier who had left the tavern earlier, though for what reason Lorth neglected to speculate. It didn’t matter. They stood between him and the way out, and in his dark state of mind, he needed no other reason to dispatch them.
The Osprey would call for aid in the inner space, over which he undoubtedly possessed as much mastery as he did with a sword. Locking him in the weapons closet would only buy Lorth enough time to get out of here. Then his troubles would truly begin. Bad enough he had defied the Eye, but taking a Keeper’s cloak would mark him. The Keepers strongly forbade anyone but their own to wear one of their cloaks. Sparing the wizard’s life wouldn’t clear Lorth of that crime. But the cloak would get him out of the city and that was his singular goal, now. He would worry about the repercussions later.
The door to the antechamber stood open. As he neared it, Lorth heard shouting. “I’ll too do it!” a woman cried. Leaf. Something crashed, as if she had thrown something across the room. Then she kicked aside the remains of the door and stomped out.
“Little whore!” her father roared. He emerged on her heels, caught her by the shoulder and knocked her to the ground. She rolled over and tried to kick him, to no effect. He unbuckled his belt and ripped it from around his waist.
Leaf looked up and shrieked as Lorth entered the room. He smelled of earth and blood, his mood a raven-dark sky hanging low upon the slain. The warden spun around, belt in hand. A weird cloud hovered around him, like a silvery mist.
“Kill him!” Leaf said. She skittered out from under her father’s shadow and jumped to her feet. “Kill him now!”
Lorth stood there cloaked in his bad day and pondered the fruitful and fascinating collection of methods by which he might fulfill the girl’s request, free of charge. But the warden hadn’t gained his position by being slow or stupid. In the space left by Lorth’s bloodthirsty reflection, he threw the belt aside and fumbled for something at his throat. The silvery-cloud sensation intensified.
Leaf laughed like a magpie. “That charm ain’t nothin’! He got it in the Undersides!”
Lorth spun his blade, leveled it at the warden’s heart and breathed a word. A bolt of grayish fire spiraled from the tip of his sword and struck the charm. The warden staggered back from the blow, and the mist settled into the ground with a hiss. Lorth drew a sharp breath as vertigo whirled over his forehead.
Before he could regain his balance, Leaf cried out and charged her father. The warden struck her, wrested a knife from her fist and spun her around. The blade at her throat glinted dully. Lorth stepped forward and growled a rough command into the knife. But the blade didn’t turn as it should have. Nothing happened.
The warden laughed. “Fool! D’you think I’d be as daft as that? A wizard sold me this charm. Took your power, ay?” He tightened his grip on the knife, causing Leaf to squeak as the edge pressed harder against her throat. A thin sliver of blood crept along the edge. “Black rogue,” the warden sneered. “Tell me who you are, or I’ll kill her.”
“You’ll die either way.”
The warden looked down at her, and back. “You kill me, and you’ll be marked. Gimme your name and who hired you—or your little whore dies.”
I have no name. Lorth reached into his cloak and shook a coin from his purse, tossed it to the ground at the warden’s feet. “Tarthian royal coin. More than your life is worth. Release her and I’ll give you both.”
The warden spat. “Lying filth. Nothin’ means that much to you. Besides, no fool in this city would get caught with one o’ them.” He flashed a sour grin. “You just answered my question.”
“Little good it’ll do you, if you don’t release her.”
Leaf closed her eyes, as if she had given up pleading with them.
“Na, no good for me,” the man replied, his knuckles whitening on the hilt. “Worse for you.” Before Lorth realized his intention, the warden slit his daughter’s throat with no more hesitation than a dog stealing a scrap. He let her down and rolled her over, his eyes shining in challenge as he tossed the knife aside. “Wizards’ll be the least o’ your problems now. May you die by your own kind.”
The Void loves nothing.
Lorth’s mind went blank; no face, body or blood, not even hatred entered the feathery darkness that rose up in his heart and moved. His sword sang out with the rhythm of a sunrise, warm, sweet and perpetual. When he came to himself again, the warden’s body lay by the office door. His head lay halfway down the hall.
The silver naked-girl knife glinted on the floor beneath the office bars. Lorth picked it up, wiped it on his cloak and sheathed it into his boot. The warden’s charm lay in a puddle of blood. Lorth circled it once, and then struck it in the center with the tip of his blade, shattering it. A shuddering chill swept through him as the spell passed away.
Leaf lay in the fading light, her blue eyes staring at nothing. The hunter approached her, knelt and touched her eyes closed. A cobweb clung in her hair. He gently brushed it aside.
No death is mine.
He rose slowly, looked one last time at the girl he couldn’t love and moved into the stairwell. He opened the door with no more sound than a shadow in the arch and melted into the tumult of the alley, unseen. In the dark, the Rede continued to whisper.
I am not innocent.
As he strode away from the Hunter’s Sanctuary he thought, Leaf was.
~ * ~
In the dark, a hunter felt most at home. In the rain, Lorth might still have been in Tarth, even in the cold. It brought his instincts sharply into focus.
An assassin didn’t indulge in the luxury of regret; nor did he expect to sleep peacefully. Peace came in the space between orders and payment. But since his arrival to these shores, Lorth hadn’t made decisions based on assignment. Now he was involved, and as he fled from the ant bed he had just stomped on with his new boots and into a street that led generally northeast by a roundabout route, he did regret lingering in the Sanctuary, for all its fleeting comforts. He should have known from the welcome he got that it wouldn’t go well for him there.
He focused on his mental map of the city, seeing the three-river triangle and the bridge on each branch spaced equidistantly around the city’s perimeter. The bridges stood roughly twenty miles apart, and joined the city by wide roads. Wildlands, houses an
d farms dappled the peninsula around the city borders. The Hallowolf in the east would get him into the northern wilds he knew best. He would have preferred to slip out of the city through the Undersides, where he had once reigned. But since his visit to the Sanctuary, the word would be out against him. He moved through the murky streets and alleys, avoiding warriors, suspicious townsfolk, spies, archers and blockades.
As for the Osprey, Lorth didn’t know how to deal with that. Icaros would know. He lived a long day’s journey southeast of Eusiron. From the forest, the way there wouldn’t require that Lorth venture too close to the palace, which he didn’t want to do until he had asked his friend some questions. Summons or not, he didn’t feel confident that the Mistress’s allegiances included an assassin in the kind of trouble he had taken on.
He turned down a narrow, curved street that led from the main part of the city. The clop-clop of a horse’s hooves rattled the stones a short distance behind him. Windblown rain swept in from the sea; the air smelled of brine.
I sleep awake, whispered the Shade of Night.
He saw Leaf, lying pale and still in a pool of blood, a violet crushed on a battlefield. He still felt the cobweb in her hair, clinging to his fingertips.
Nothin’ means that much to you.
So much simpler, to kill for gold. It didn’t matter what anyone thought about that. The only rules he abided were those of the Old One, and she cared nothing for war beyond forcing mortals to consider the price of it.
Lying filth.
The hoofbeats drew closer. For the second time that day, Lorth sensed a non-human presence shadowing him. He turned around.
A pale horse trotted to him and stopped, tossed its head and stomped a hoof on the ground. It was the white mare with the black spots he had freed in his skirmish with the Faerins that morning. Like Sele, the captain’s cat, the mare must have found him through the bond he had made by merging with her. “Clever girl,” he soothed, taking the halter in one hand and stroking the side of her neck with the other. She nickered softly. “I suppose we can add horse theft to my growing list of punishable offenses. I’ll call you Freya.” He took the reins and led the mare into the shadows of an alley. “I hope you’ve had rest and food, my friend. It’ll be a long night for us.”
The Hunter's Rede Page 4
