Now, as he hurriedly pulled on his midnight robes, he knew the day had come.
Torchlight stung his eyes when he threw open the door, and he flung up his arm, squinting as he strode down the passage outside. The walls glistened with moisture, and his breath plumed. He wondered if it was day or night, then decided he didn’t care. After seven years in the cold and dark, time had grown meaningless to him.
He heard the banging and howling as he neared the hall’s end. When he’d first come here, the noises—shrieks of agony, mindless snarls, the scrape of bony claws against stone—had driven him half-mad with terror, but since then Andras had learned to ignore the din. Today he paid it no mind even as he entered the place where it was loudest: a long room with a vaulted ceiling, lined with steel-barred cages. Within those cages lurked strange, misshapen forms, mercifully hidden by shadow. A pool of blood was spreading beneath one. A long, sucker-tipped tentacle reached through the bars of another, writhing like a dying snake.
These were the Accursed, Fistandantilus’s greatest failures. They had been born centuries ago, the Dark One said, in an ill-fated attempt to create living beings. Only a few had survived, half-alive and in constant pain: misshapen, gibbering things that begged for death in languages no sane man could speak. When he’d actually seen one for the first time—shone a light into the cage where the archmage kept his failures—he hadn’t slept for a week. The memory of that fleshy mass of viscera, twisted bones, and rheumy eyes still haunted his dreams.
One of the cages was open and empty. He grimaced. Fistandantilus was experimenting again.
The door at the far end of the Chamber of the Accursed was tall and strong, made of layers of lead, silver, and cold iron, engraved with hundreds of spidery sigils that pulsed with sickly green light. Anyone—human or otherwise—trying to enter through the door without the Dark One’s leave would be torn apart like so many red rags. Andras walked up to the door, lifted the latch, and pulled it open without fear, letting himself into the Dark One’s inner sanctum.
The laboratory was huge and dark, its shelves lined with thousands upon thousands of dark books and vials of every kind of putrescence imaginable. A broken, antique scrying orb sat on a pedestal in one corner. The mummified head of a giant was mounted on a bronze stake in another. Other things hung from the ceiling: dried flowers and herbs, enormous cocoons, and the flayed corpses of all manner of beasts—two elves and a dwarf among them. There were several wooden desks where black candles burned, and in the middle of it all a massive stone table surmounted by all manner of glasswork, some of it holding greasy fluid that bubbled over ghostly flames. Also on the table, in a pool of black blood, was the twitching body of the missing Accursed, its gnarled limbs affixed to a wooden rack with spikes, its belly cut open to leak out innards that looked like clusters of fish eggs. The stink from that offal was horrendous, like a corpse rotting in a sewer.
There, towering over the hideous corpse with a slime-drenched sickle in his hand, was the Dark One himself.
Fistandantilus had not changed at all in the past seven years. When one lived for centuries, as the archmage had, most of a decade made little difference. His hooded head, bent low over the vivisection, shook back and forth in disappointment. He reached inside the gash with a pair of tongs and pulled out some kind of many-lobed organ, covered with wet, bristly hair. Bile surged up Andras’s throat at the wretched sight, but Fistandantilus didn’t balk, cutting it free and dropping it into a jar of brownish brine. That done, he looked up, staring toward the door from the shadows of his cowl.
“Master,” said Andras, lowering his eyes. “It is time.”
Fistandantilus’s beard—the only part of his face Andras had ever seen—moved in a way the younger mage had come to recognize as a smile.
“Yes,” he said, then raised his head as if to sniff the air. He dropped his gore-streaked instruments on the table. “Yes. How did you know?”
“I’m not sure, Master. I just woke up and knew today was the day,” Andras said. His voice trembled with excitement.
“Excellent,” Fistandantilus replied. “Come, then. We’ll begin.”
In the five years that he’d studied under the Dark One, Andras had never gone past the laboratory. The glyphs upon the doors at its far end barred even him from passing through.
Now Fistandantilus strode up to those doors and, raising a withered hand, willed them to open. They swung outward without a sound, and the archmage stepped through. Quivering with anticipation, Andras followed.
Another passage stretched out into the gloom, lined with still more rune-encrusted doors, before giving way to a winding stairway that snaked even deeper into the earth. At the bottom, one more door opened to Fistandantilus, giving onto a little round room with rough-hewn walls and a ceiling where fat, pallid slugs left pearly trails of slime. Beneath, in the middle of the floor, was a circular pool filled with water that glowed red from something far beneath the surface. Andras peered into it but could not see the source of the light. The pool looked to be bottomless.
“The Pit of Summoning,” Fistandantilus said. “Your revenge begins here. You remember the spell?”
Andras nodded. He remembered every spell the archmage had taught him. He had practiced them, day after day, for years. He muttered the incantations in his sleep.
“Begin,” the Dark One said and stepped back.
Andras licked his lips, stepping close to the pool. Its surface was still, like a sheet of Micahi glass. His heart raced as he stared into its fathomless depths. He shut his eyes, concentrating, calling the spell to his mind. As he did, his right hand dropped to his belt, drawing out a long, wavy-bladed knife. Clenching it in his fist, he began to weave the fingers of his left hand through the air.
“Suvet kajanto asofik yabengis zo,” he chanted. “Daku faban harga, ben odu lamorai! ”
As he recited the incantation, the red glow beneath the water grew brighter, like metal pulled from a forge. The surface began to move as well, churning as some great heat welled up below. The water hissed where it splashed upon the rocky floor, evaporating into steam.
Andras smiled—the spell had begun to work. The rush of it through his body intoxicated him, but there was one thing he still had to do, to make it complete. With ritual slowness, he lifted the wavy-bladed knife, then placed its blade between the third and fourth fingers of his left hand. Clenching his teeth, he tightened his grip on the hilt, then drew it sharply down, toward the heel of his palm.
Blood sprayed. His little finger dropped into the pool with a splash.
The pain was so intense that he nearly vomited, spoiling the spell. At the last instant, however, he fought back his gorge and jammed his maimed hand into the crook of his other arm. The dagger dropped, clattering on the ground. Gnashing his teeth, he bent down over the water, watching, waiting …
The first body bobbed to the surface soon after. It was small, the size of a human baby, with long, spindly limbs tipped with hooked claws. Its skin was the pallid color of a serpent’s belly, shot through with writhing blue veins. Tiny, batlike wings drooped from its shoulder blades, and a bony tail snaked out from its backside, tipped with a stinger the size of a spearhead. A caul covered its oversized head, stretched tight over sunken eyes, upturned nose, and a mouth full of jagged fangs. The body floated on the surface of the pool, arms and legs flopping as the roiling water rolled it over and over.
Quasito, the bestiaries called it: an imp from the pits of the Abyss. Andras had brought it here.
Andras stared in horror. He had not known what would come out of the pit, only that something would. Now that he knew, part of him wanted to send the hideous thing back to whatever depths it had risen from.
He didn’t. Stooping down, he reached out over the pool and caught hold of one of its legs. The imp was clammy and rubbery and hung limp as he dragged it from the water.
Cringing, he reached out and pulled away the caul. It came off the quasito’s face with an awful sucking sound, an
d he flung it away.
As soon as it was off, the creature began to choke. Water sprayed from between its teeth, then it took a raspy breath, its arms and legs moving listlessly. Its eyes opened—cat’s eyes, glowing yellow in the gloom. They were eyes that hated and knew nothing else.
It will kill me, Andras thought, watching venom drip from the stinger as the tail twitched. It will kill me if I don’t do something.
He knew what that was. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he lowered his maimed hand to the quasito’ s mouth. It sniffed at the bleeding wound for a moment, then made an awful cooing sound, wrapped horny lips about it, and began to suckle.
Fistandantilus chuckled. “Well done. How does it feel to be a mother?”
Andras could make no reply. The sensation of the thing drinking his blood made it impossible to form a thought. All he managed was a low groan.
“I will leave you now,” said the Dark One. “I have my own work to do. You can see to the rest, when they come.”
When the archmage had gone, Andras pulled his hand away from the quasito’ s lips. It leered up at him, its face smeared with blood. Its eyes had changed—they still hated, but there was something else in them now. A connection—an ungodly bond had formed between him and the tiny monster.
A bubbling sound caught his attention. Another body had risen to the pool’s surface. As he watched, a third came up to join it. Looking down, he saw more pale shapes beneath the surface.
Andras picked up the first quasito and moved it away from the pit. Wearily, he turned back to the pool and began to fish out the others. The rest of his children.
CHAPTER 8
Leciane was in the Lordcity for less than a week before she departed again, accompanying the Kingpriest and the rest of his court. That suited her fine—she was glad to leave. Not that Istar wasn’t every bit the wonder she’d heard it was. Its citadels and gardens made mighty Daltigoth seem squalid by comparison. She could have gladly lived the rest of her life within its walls without tiring of it.
The problem was, if it were up to the good folk of Istar, the rest of her life would be decidedly short.
When she first realized the knight His Holiness had sent to her was to be her personal escort, she’d nearly laughed aloud at his paranoia. To think the Lightbringer was so worried she might be a danger that he had assigned a watcher to her … now, she knew different. Sir Cathan kept near her side not for others’ protection but for her own. Even with him present, folk glared at her and made warding signs wherever she went. Witch, they called her, and godless whore. Some even spat, and once, in a crowded marketplace, someone had hurled a rotten persimmon in her face. That worse hadn’t followed was more Sir Cathan’s doing than her own. The knight had been able to talk the people into backing down—just barely. That was good, because she could not defend herself. Using magic against the mob would turn Istarans against all sorcerers, no matter what color robes they wore. With persimmon juice stinging her eyes and dripping from her chin, however, it had taken an effort of will to hold her temper.
After that incident, she’d kept more to the Temple, but while no one there threw fruit, it was no more hospitable. The clerics, from the lowest acolyte to First Son Adsem, all looked nervous or suspicious whenever she was around. Quarath glowered at her practically every moment they were within eyesight of each other. The Divine Hammer were no better. In fact, only three in the Temple ever spoke to her directly: Sir Cathan, Grand Marshal Tavarre, and the Lightbringer himself. The rest tried to avoid her as much as possible.
Things didn’t improve much once they were on the road. The Kingpriest’s entourage were mostly the same priests and knights who had despised her in the Lordcity, and the people of the cities and towns they passed through thought no better of her than anyone else. In Bronze Kautilya they had turned her away from the towering bathhouses, and at one smaller village in the province of Gather she had woken in the middle of the night to find a straw effigy dressed in crimson swinging from a tree near her tent, a noose tight about its neck.
“It’s not even as if I’m a Black Robe,” she protested to Vincil the next night, staring at his image in a jade-framed mirror within the shelter of her tent.
The silvered glass shimmered, sparks dancing across its surface, just as his scrying bowl would be doing, back in his study at Wayreth. She reported to the Highmage every evening, focusing on the mirror until his image appeared. It was easy magic she knew well.
If the pious Istarans saw her doing it, though, she figured the next thing hanging from a noose would be her.
“They’ve truly come to despise everything that isn’t righteous,” she went on. “Just the other day, we passed the ruins of an old chapel. I asked what god it was to, and Sir Cathan said Zivilyn. Zivilyn, the Tree of Life! But they burned down his church because he isn’t their idea of goodness.”
Vincil’s mouth pinched at the corners. “Marwort never said anything to me about this.”
“Marwort never left the Lordcity,” she replied. “Even if he had, I don’t think he’d have mentioned it. He was too much the Kingpriest’s dog.”
“True,” the Highmage admitted. “At least they haven’t done you any harm yet.”
“Yet.”
He closed his eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way, Leciane. All I’m saying is watch yourself. Things are obviously worse than I thought.” He paused, running a hand over his scalp. “If you believe you have no real allies among these people, Leciane … perhaps you should find one. That knight they have nursemaiding you, perhaps.”
Leciane glanced toward the flap of her tent. Sir Cathan would be standing right outside it now, watching for trouble. Later on, when night came, his bedroll would lie in the same place.
“He’s not a friend, Vincil,” she said. “He’s the Twice-Born, the Lightbringer’s man. If the Kingpriest says to put his sword in me, he’ll do it.”
“Then you should make him your friend.”
Leciane scowled, a cold feeling running over her. Cathan spoke to her, yes, but he was still aloof, diffident. There were ways, though. “All right. I’ll consider it,” she said, and sighed. “What about the danger you spoke about? Have you learned any more?”
He shook his head. “Half the Conclave is reading omens, but we’ve found nothing. All we get is the same feeling—something awful is going to happen. Whoever’s behind it, they know how to hide themselves.”
Soon he bade her good night, and the mirror flashed bright as the spell of contact broke.
When the light died again, Leciane stared back at herself from the glass’s depths.
She turned away, her mind whirling. Whatever was going to happen, whatever Vincil’s fears were about, it was going to happen soon. She didn’t need magic to know that. She could feel it in her bones. Most likely, it was waiting for them at the end of their journey in Lattakay. All the more reason to heed Vincil’s words. If she was going to be of any help, she had to have someone she could trust. Surely, there was no harm in that?
She got up from where she’d been kneeling and went to the flap of her tent. She pushed it aside a little, just wide enough to look through. Sure enough, there he was, facing away from her, the hammer burning on his back. She let the flap fall back into place.
The preparations for the spell took time. She had to root through her pouches first, looking for the components—the right ones always seemed to be at the bottom, no matter how carefully she arranged them, and this was a spell she hadn’t cast since … she couldn’t remember. Finally, though, she found what she needed: half a dozen sticks of rosewood incense, a wooden case from which she produced a tiny silver bell, and a needle of ivory inlaid with gold. She lit the first of these, the scent of the incense quickly turning cloying in the closeness of her tent, then palmed the others, turning them over and over in her hand while she read the spell from her book, committing it to memory. That alone took an hour and a half, and she was yawning so her jaw cracked by the time she was ready.
Leciane knew enchantresses who swore by charm spells. Some even used them to find lovers. A man ensorcelled was always willing to come to bed when asked and, more impressively, only when asked. The White Robes frowned upon it, but the other orders—including her own—turned a blind eye. She had tried it once, at the urging of several fellow Red Robes. She’d found the experience distasteful in the extreme, and while the lovemaking was pleasant at the time, she’d felt like a slattern later. That had been years ago, and she could no longer remember the man’s name or his face, which was just as well. She had resisted using charms ever since.
There are times when they’re needed, she told herself. Quit being squeamish.
Again she opened the flap, staring at Sir Cathan’s back. He would never know. Once the spell was lifted, it would vanish from his memory. Carefully, focusing, she rang the bell. It seemed to make no sound, being pitched too high for the human ear. Somewhere nearby, a dog began to bark as she wove her hands through the air.
“Yasanth cai mowato, i shasson gamidr,” she whispered, drawing the power of the red moon to her. “Dolazjatran olo nedrufis.”
There it was, welling up, suffusing her—the sharp-sweet pleasure-pain of a spell ready to break loose. She held it as long as she could, savoring it, but the power would not stay where it was. It needed an outlet, or it would burn her. She reached out a finger, the magic humming, and pointed at Sir Cathan’s neck. With her other hand, she brought the needle up. Biting her lip, she plunged it into her fingertip.
It was the tiniest of wounds. At first, it didn’t even seem to be there. Then, slowly, a dark red bead formed, hanging. She looked at Cathan. All she had to do was prick the back of his neck and press her finger against it so their blood mingled. The magic would do the rest. She positioned the needle, tensing to strike. He would think it a mosquito, maybe a horsefly… .
A minute passed. She didn’t move. The drop of blood fell from her finger, staining his collar. Relentless, the magic tried to push free, battered against her mind. There was no more pleasure, not any more. Gods, it hurt—
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