by Nix, Garth
She was halfway across the courtyard when she heard him jump from the window of the loft, hobnailed boots shrieking on the pavers. He must have climbed up before, though it would not have been easy. Elinor didn’t pause to look. She accelerated instead, heading for the conservatory. She didn’t stop there to try to bolt the door, either. She knew her attacker would simply break the glass. Instead she went straight to the ancient oak coffer she used to store her stage weapons, flipped it open, and took out the two-handed sword she’d used to play the part of Ruhan Ard-Ruhan. Lifting it up, she turned to face the door, ignoring the stabbing pains in her wrists. They felt like they’d been burned where he’d held her.
The sword was blunt, but it was heavy, and she knew how to use it. Ham had always been careful to teach her both the stage-fighting techniques and the actual combat moves for the weapons they used in the plays. He said it was how he had been taught, that it was necessary to know both in order to orchestrate a believable-looking fight for an audience.
Elinor remembered something else, too. She could almost hear Ham telling her, “Now remember, Miss Elinor, if you do ever have to fight in earnest, don’t pull your punches—but don’t lose control neither. Strike hard, recover fast, and strike again.”
The iron-framed door screeched on stone as the man pulled it open, past the point where it caught on a slightly raised paver. Elinor and Ham never opened the door that far.
He didn’t come in. He stood there, in the rain, looking at her, and he didn’t have the revolver in his hand. He seemed ordinary enough. Thin and wiry, middle-aged, balding. Save for the writhing scar on his forehead, and the odor of hot, worked metal that rolled off him, as if somehow under his skin there was a forge.
There was a red glint in his eyes. It wasn’t a reflection.
“Were they both here?” he asked. His voice was scratchy and uneven, as if he had injured his throat. “I cannot see how else the plan would fail.”
“Who?” asked Elinor. She kept the sword high and ready, though her wrists felt as if they had been pierced through with hot needles, and it was hard to hold the weapon up. She was also starting to feel other hurts. Bruises down her side, perhaps a cracked rib or two. She had experienced those before. It hurt to draw breath.
“The Abhorsen and her apprentice,” said the man easily. He never stopped looking at her with those red eyes, he never looked away, and he never blinked. “We only wanted to take the lesser of the two. I think they were both here. Odd that she would come so far south of the Wall. She never has before.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Elinor. She felt the weight of the sword increasing and knew she could neither hold it nor wield it for long. So she stepped forward, intending to bring the fight to him.
“Yes, you do,” replied the man. He tapped his forehead, the roiling scar spreading like a squashed raisin, re-forming as his fingertip moved away. “But where do you fit in, I wonder? A great-niece or something of that nature?”
He smiled as if she had offered a gift.
“How useful if you should happen to have the blood—”
He didn’t finish his sentence, the revolver suddenly in his hand again, and he shot Elinor even as she lunged forward. Something scored her left side like fire but she kept going and swung at him. He ducked back and the sword struck the iron frame of the door with force enough to make it ring like a bell, and the six panes of glass all shattered at once.
Elinor fell back and tried to lift the sword to strike again, but the pain in her side was too great. She stumbled backward and almost fell, having to use the sword as a crutch to stay upright. All the time she expected the man to shoot again, to feel a moment of intense pain and then it would all be over.
But the man didn’t shoot. He put his revolver in the pocket of his coat and from the other pocket took out a length of rope and started toward her, muttering, apparently to himself.
“A chance made from a chance lost, helps me avoid a greater cost.”
Elinor made a supreme effort, standing as straight as she could with the pain in her middle trying to bend her in two, and raised the sword halfway to her shoulder.
The man stopped and turned his head. He hesitated for a moment, then sprinted away, out of the greenhouse and across the courtyard and over the fallen garden wall, into the obscuring rain.
For a moment Elinor thought he ran from her, but then she heard the jangled bell, the clatter of harness, and the drumbeat of hooves on the metaled road, and she saw the fire engine from Cornbridge come around the corner of the house, drawn by six horses, the pump boiler on it belching out gouts of steam and smoke. Behind the engine were several police officers on horseback, and behind them a bunch of breathless villagers who had run up the hill.
The pain in her wrists spread to her elbows, and Elinor found she really couldn’t take in a breath because something was quite wrong on the left side of her torso, more than just a cracked rib. She dropped the two-handed sword, doubled over, and took three staggering steps out to the courtyard, to fall down in front of Constable Goodwin, who was already feeling guilty he had delayed investigating until he was sure the wind was going to change.
Chapter Six
It was late autumn in Ancelstierre, cool but not cold, and the sun had not yet begun to set. But Terciel and Tizanael, with their companion, crossed the Wall to enter the tail end of winter and full night in the Old Kingdom. A matter of thirty paces to walk the Charter mark–infused tunnel through the ancient stone structure. Looking back, Terciel could still see sunshine, but when he tilted his head to look up here, there was no sun, only the black night leavened by a great swath of stars, for the night was clear and very cold.
Terciel shivered and pulled his fur-lined woolen cloak tighter. He was back in gethre scale armor again, and wore his bandolier of bells, with a sword at his side. The blue-and-silver tweed suit had been packed away in the big chest kept for the Abhorsens at Fort Entrance, the headquarters of the Crossing Point Scouts who patrolled the Ancelstierran side of the Wall. Most of them were Charter Mages, like Major Latimer, who accompanied them now, and those who were not were still very familiar with the nature of the border and the Old Kingdom beyond. Latimer was close to retirement, and had not stopped complaining to Tizanael about the changes that were coming, a topic that he had maintained all the way from the Fort to the Wall.
“They’ve never wanted to know before. They’ve let us ‘irregulars’ take care of everything,” he said. He had not left the tunnel, for he would almost immediately go back, and was surrounded with a golden nimbus from all the shining marks that lined the stones within, still active from the passage of three Charter Mages. “Now there’s talk of posting a regular division here and building a trench line from west to east to face the Wall, as if this was some sort of continental border! Can you imagine how ordinary troops will fare against the things that come over the Wall?”
“I can,” replied Tizanael. She did not look at the Ancelstierran officer, instead gazing off into the dark ahead of them. “But we have more immediate concerns.”
“It might seem a distant problem now,” said Latimer, not cowed by Tizanael’s stern response. He had known her for more than three decades, since he had come to Fort Entrance as a pink-cheeked subaltern. “But you know you can’t ignore things on our side. Take what’s just happened! The boy lured over here to finish him off.”
Terciel grimaced. He didn’t like being described as “the boy.”
“Yes,” admitted Tizanael. “It was a well-organized plan. And it would have succeeded if I had not been there.”
Terciel shuddered, thinking about what would have happened if he had been alone. Initially, she had said he should go alone. When the message-hawk had brought the word from Magistrix Tallowe saying help was needed so far south of the Wall, Tizanael had thought it would be good training for Terciel to go by himself, that he needed experience being separated from the Charter and they were overdue to liaise with the Cross
ing Point Scouts in any case.
But she had changed her mind, though she had not deigned to tell Terciel why, other than to say that her reluctance to cross the Wall might have become known, and an enemy could have planned to make use of this.
“Even so,” she said to Latimer. “I regret the diversion. That message-hawk who came to me at the Fort. It was from the Regent in Belisaere—”
“More Dead in the palace again?” asked Terciel eagerly. He had only been to Belisaere once, when he was sixteen, but the visit had been memorable, thanks to a young woman he had met. He had forgotten how troubled Tizanael and the Regent had been, for it should not have been possible for any Dead to be within the grounds of the palace, the whole city being kept safe by the swift-flowing waters of its massive aqueducts.
“Not this time,” said Tizanael, with a quelling glance. “A village has been attacked in the Upp river valley, to the north of Uppside. All the villagers slain or taken and the village’s Charter Stone broken—something not easily done, for it needs the fresh-spilled blood of a Charter Mage and a powerful Free Magic sorcerer to do it. There was only one survivor, a girl who hid on the butter shelf of the well. She said the attackers named themselves the Servants of Kerrigor.”
“Kerrigor?” asked Latimer. He frowned. “I vaguely recall the name. You and Prentice talked about him one time, when Prentice commanded the Scouts and I was still wondering what on earth I’d got into. Wasn’t Kerrigor some enemy you dealt with, oh, years ago—”
“So I thought,” said Tizanael grimly. “As other Abhorsens before me have also thought, and also been mistaken.”
“You’ve not mentioned this Kerrigor to me,” said Terciel indignantly. “Who is he?”
“Who or what. I am not sure—we have never been sure—exactly what he is. A Dead creature of great power, who was most likely once a Free Magic adept and necromancer, or some hybrid Free Magic entity. He is powerful and clever, and in the past at least, had many followers. Lesser necromancers and common bandits, border reavers and the like. They called themselves the Servants of Kerrigor. If they are abroad again, I must assume Kerrigor has also returned. He has always had allies south of the Wall. He was probably behind the plan to lure you to your death. Or to take you prisoner, use your blood to break a Charter Stone.”
Terciel grimaced. He didn’t like the sound of that at all.
“Allies on my side of the Wall, in Ancelstierre?” asked Latimer. “That’s all I need. These ‘Servants of Kerrigor,’ are they mortals? Dead? Free Magic creatures?”
“All of these. But I doubt any but the mortals could cross the Wall, or venture very far south. They would be trouble enough, of course. Lesser necromancers, Free Magic sorcerers, and the like. Disguised, and perhaps with long-established identities in your country. All of Kerrigor’s plans look far ahead.”
“This is very troubling,” said Latimer. He sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to look into the events at Coldhallow House more closely, which means stirring up some enemies of my own. By which I mean various bureaucrats in Corvere, who are expert at covering up and obfuscation and not much else. I would have liked to have been told about this before, Tizanael.”
“I had thought Kerrigor gone forever, the Servants dispersed,” said Tizanael. “Twenty-three years ago, I surprised Kerrigor in an attack upon a village near High Bridge. He fled, sending many Dead against me to slow my pursuit. But I destroyed them and found him in the body he then wore. I forced him from that flesh, and followed him into Death. Unlike most, he had no fear of going deeper, and we fought a running battle through to the Fifth Precinct. There, Saraneth took him and Kibeth made him walk from the dark bridge. He fell into the river and was taken, swept through to the Ninth Gate, to return no more to Life. Or so I presumed. The Clayr did warn me, but I discounted their visions. They see so many futures, and so often confuse themselves . . .”
Terciel began to say something but stopped himself. Tizanael did not welcome him supporting the Clayr. She had some long-held problem with the women who saw futures in the ice, up in their fortress town under the glacier, far to the north of the Old Kingdom.
“If these ‘Servants’ are about again, how can we identify them?” asked Latimer.
“They bear a brand upon their brows that mocks our Charter marks—an ugly, moving scar that proclaims their allegiance.”
“Oh good! That should make it—”
“The adept among them can disguise this, of course. Usually as a Charter mark.”
Latimer emitted something between a growl and a sigh of exasperation.
“How has Kerrigor returned from Death anyway? How is that possible?”
“He is clearly even more powerful than I suspected, or has some secret anchor in the living world,” said Tizanael. “But Terciel and I will hunt him down again.”
“We will?” asked Terciel, amazed. Tizanael usually kept him away from the most dangerous tasks and opponents the Abhorsens took on, venturing forth by herself.
“Yes,” said Tizanael. “I fear it will require both of us, and all our strength and cunning, to deal with Kerrigor. And something else, which I hope to learn more about when we reach the House.”
“We’re going home?” asked Terciel eagerly. He loved the Abhorsen’s House, not least for its safety from the Dead. The House occupied an island in the middle of a massive waterfall where the river Ratterlin went over the Long Cliffs, providing wide, deep, and very fast running water all around. He could relax there, climb the ancient fig as he always did, go fishing, soak in a hot bath supplied by the slightly sulfurous waters from the subterranean hot spring . . . it was the only place in the entire world where he didn’t have to be constantly on guard and ready for anything.
“We will go to the House first,” said Tizanael forbiddingly. “But as soon as we can, we will begin the hunt for Kerrigor.”
She paused, noted Terciel’s head hang lower in disappointment, and added without a change of expression, “I expect we will be in the House for a week or two.”
Terciel’s head came up and he smiled. Even one week at the House was a great luxury.
“Do you think this young woman, Elinor Hallett, had anything to do with the trap set for you?” asked Latimer, who had clearly been brooding on Tizanael’s comment about Kerrigor having agents in Ancelstierre.
“She wasn’t involved,” said Terciel quickly. “Her mother was paid to provide a situation where we might be asked for help, but I don’t think she understood what that really meant. For herself, or anyone else.”
He hesitated, then added, “If you do make inquiries, Major, can you tell Elinor I hope she is all right? And if she needs—”
“We cannot offer people on the other side of the Wall assistance willy-nilly,” interrupted Tizanael sharply. “Put the girl out of your mind, Terciel.”
“She’s not in my mind,” grumbled Terciel, but even as he said it, he knew he was lying. There was something about Elinor’s earnest face, those surprised brown eyes . . . They lingered.
“We must go,” continued Tizanael.
“Good hunting, then,” said Latimer. He gave Terciel a slightly quizzical glance, having seen the young man only a few times before and never having wondered about what kind of life he must lead. Now he did, a little. “I’d best go back before my patrol comes through, wondering where I’ve got to.”
He stood at attention and saluted, his mail coat jingling. His uniform was entirely usual for the Scouts, though it would attract stares of wonderment and official abuse from the regular army down south. In addition to a short mail coat over his green regimental tunic, he wore leather breeches and heavy, hobnailed, handmade boots rather than the striped trousers and shiny patent-leather ankle boots of the usual Ancelstierran officer. He had a sword at his side, a proper medieval-looking cross-hilted straight blade, not a ceremonial dress sword or sabre. He did have a holstered revolver on his other hip. Sometimes modern firearms would work in the vicinity of the Wall, even on the Old Kingdom
side. Mostly not, but it was always worth a try.
Terciel and Tizanael bowed in response. Latimer turned on his heel and strode back through the tunnel. Charter marks brightened further as he passed, merging with the sunshine still streaming through from the south, so it seemed that he disappeared into a doorway of pure light.
Unlike the Ancelstierran side, the region near the Wall in the Old Kingdom was mostly uninhabited and generally dangerous. Consequently, there was nowhere safe to leave a horse, nor any shelter to be had nearby. Terciel grimaced as he thought of the journey ahead.
“Moonrise soon. We will walk through the night,” said Tizanael. She looked up at the star-filled sky for a few seconds. “There is a need for haste, and it will not snow.”
Terciel nodded. He was already tired, and cold, but there was no point complaining. Though she was so much older, Tizanael was seemingly made of iron. She was also far more adept at the fine art of using Charter Magic to bolster her strength and endurance without wearing herself out from using the magic. Casting the spells was such an effort for Terciel that it hardly ever worked out positively. It usually took more out of him than he got back.
“You go ahead,” said Tizanael. “Take Uallus as your guide once the road turns to the northwest. I will follow a hundred paces behind.”
“So I am to be bait once more,” said Terciel. He looked up and fixed his eye on Uallus, the red star. It seemed to him to have a baleful aspect this night.
“Yes,” agreed Tizanael. She paused for a moment, thinking. “Be watchful, though if there is some danger, some prepared ambush, it will more likely come as we approach the Long Cliffs, when we are tired and close to home. Or even on the riverbank, though no Dead will go near the House save under great compulsion.”
“Which something like this Kerrigor you mentioned could provide,” said Terciel. He took two paces and touched the stones of the Wall, reveling in the connection to the Charter, fully restored now they were back in the Old Kingdom. He had not liked the absence of the Charter in Ancelstierre, or even the lessened presence that came when the wind blew in from the north.
