Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi)

by Ann Marston

  “Aye. You walked funny. If you want to masquerade believably as a man, you have to walk as if you’re carrying something valuable between your legs.” She opened her mouth to make a suitably caustic retort, but I cut her off. “Like a Maeduni soldier would believe in his crass arrogance.” I turned to gather in the horses. “The sword leads south. Shall we follow?”

  XXXI

  We descended into the foothills, then moved out onto the rolling grasslands of the Isgardian central plain. Patrols of Isgardian soldiers swarmed everywhere along the roads. This close to the Maeduni border, they were hostile and belligerently suspicious of all travellers. Kerri and I lost a lot of time being stopped constantly, and thoroughly questioned, before we stumbled onto the ideal disguise. We travelled under the semblance of couriers, bearing the blazon of the Ephir himself. It not only prevented our being taken aside at every turn for interrogation, it earned us the unquestioned right to deference and every assistance to speed us on our way. In only a day or two, my ability to cast and hold a masking spell was, by sheer force of necessity, almost as good as Kerri’s.

  We rode from dawn to dusk, stopping often enough to rest the horses, then commanded the best accommodation available for the night. The horses received preferential care, too. They needed it more than Kerri or I.

  Straight as the flight of an arrow, the sword led us south. It hummed and vibrated on my back like an anxious shepherd, pushing us to the limits of the horses’ endurance. The landscape around us became only an unchanging blur of endless seas of prairie grass and gentle hills.

  The farther south we progressed, the more urgent the sword’s insistence on haste became. We came to the River Shena and commandeered a ferry to take us to the south bank. Once we had crossed the river, I realized the sword was leading us straight to Frendor where the charred and gutted remains of Balkan’s manse stood on the bluff overlooking the city.

  By the time we reached the locked and guarded gates to the city late in the afternoon on the eve of Lammas, the sword fairly danced with excitement and tension on my back. It wasn’t until we were inside the city, and safely settled for the night that the sword finally subsided a little.

  We stood by the narrow window in the tiny sleeping room of the inn looking out at the nearly deserted streets of the city. Only the occasional person moved out there. Those who weren’t soldiers slipped furtively from shadow to shadow, spending the least time possible on the street if their business took them there for any reason.

  “What now?” Kerri asked wearily.

  “A good night’s sleep first, I think,” I said. “The sword isn’t kicking up such a fuss now. I’m fairly sure this is where it wants us to be.”

  She stepped back from the window so there was no chance she might be seen from the street. “The General is out there somewhere,” she said. “That man gives me chills.”

  I smiled ruefully. “He has that happy faculty, does he no?” I stretched to ease the kinks out of my back. “The streets should be thronging with people for tomorrow’s celebration. Two strangers won’t be so conspicuous then. We’ll let the sword show us where he is and spy out the lay of the land.”

  “And come up with a plan?”

  “One of us is bound to, don’t you think?”

  ***

  The celebrations began shortly after dawn. The sun was barely above the horizon when the streets began to fill with people. Women dressed in flowing robes of gold, red, orange and russet, their hair twined with garlands of grain and flowers trailing bright ribbons, wound their way through circle dances, catching up men in the centre until a small forfeit was paid. The men, even more brightly dressed than the women, carried staves decorated with garlands and ribbons, representing the sickles and scythes of the harvest. Harpers and pipers strolled among the crowds while hawkers cried sweetmeats, ale, meat pastries and fruit. Children darted everywhere, laughing and screeching with excitement. Most of them already appeared to have sticky hands and faces from the sweetmeats.

  Kerri and I ventured out after breaking our fast. My sword wore the semblance of a harvest staff. Kerri’s hair, trailing ribbons and garlands, completely hid the slight shimmer in the air above her left shoulder masking the hilt of her sword.

  We drifted with the crowds, but always following the gentle guidance of the sword. We didn’t hurry. That would have made us stand out in the festive throng like wolves in a sheep pen. But in only a short time, it became apparent the sword led straight to the section of the city where the houses of the wealthier merchants stood surrounded by their formal gardens and high walls. With sudden certainty, I thought I even knew which house.

  A man spun out of the swirl of celebrants and caught Kerri, his arms to either side of her, his staff clasped behind her back. “Forfeit for the harvest,” he cried, pulling on the staff that was hard against the small of her back. For a moment, Kerri resisted, startled. Then she laughed and put her hands to the man’s cheeks and gave him his ransom. He obviously wanted more from the kiss than she gave, but he released her and danced off to find a more willing hostage. A few moments later, we were caught in the centre of a winding circle of men and women who wouldn’t let us go until each of us had paid forfeit to everyone else.

  “They celebrate enthusiastically here, don’t they,” Kerri said breathlessly as we made our escape.

  “Not quite the way we celebrate First Fruits in Tyra,” I said and laughed. “But yes. Enthusiastic.”

  The house we sought no longer bore the name of Grandal the merchant above its gate. The house, similar to the other houses on the street, sat in the centre of its broad gardens. In the front, formal plantings of hedges, shrubs and flowers. In the back, the kitchen gardens of herbs and vegetables. The back of the house contained the kitchens, the laundry shed and the servant quarters, a separate bake house set behind the kitchens. The family quarters were in the front.

  The crowd was a little less thick in this district, and more expensively dressed if not quite as gaudily coloured. We moved from group to group, always keeping the house in sight. The gates were closed tight and locked, but no guards stood behind them. We saw no movement at all from inside the house. Except for the thin thread of smoke coming from the kitchen chimney, it looked deserted.

  A little before midday two servants left the house, dressed in their carnival finery. They were swirled up into the crowd and disappeared in moments.

  As midday approached, Kerri circulated among the groups of dancers, exchanging forfeits for snippets of gossip. She came back to me, hands laden with a thick meat pie, fruit, sweetmeats and a flask of pale wine. We settled into the shade of a topiary hedge to eat. The merchant’s house was just across the street and down two houses. We had a good view of the front gate and the top half of the house above the walls.

  “The merchant is gone,” Kerri said. “In fact, everybody could hardly wait to tell me gleefully that he had chosen the wrong side in a disagreement between Lord Balkan and the Ephir. For a while, his head graced a pole near the south gate to the city.”

  “Not a well-liked man, then,” I said, reaching for another slice of the meat pie. It was stuffed full of tender chunks of meat, seasoned vegetables and herbs. Definitely better fare than we would have found in the commercial section of the city.

  “Not well-liked at all,” Kerri agreed. “I was told he dabbled in everything from light magic to the sacrifice of children. At any rate, nobody misses him.”

  “Who lives there now?”

  She smiled and licked her fingers. “A cousin of the merchant, they said. One man, his son and two servants.”

  “No guards?”

  “No obvious guards.” Kerri shook her head. “The new tenant is not well-liked, either, it seems,” she said. She picked up a pear and rubbed it on the sleeve of her robe. “I was told he was of the same ilk as his ill-fortuned cousin. There are a lot of stories about terrible things happening in that house. Screams in the night. That sort of thing.”

  I looked at the ho
use. “That sounds like the General,” I said. “But I can’t believe there are no guards.”

  “The General has a dog,” she said. She made a wry face. “The woman who told me said it frightened the children half to death. They’re terrified of it. They won’t go near the place.”

  “A dog? We should be able to handle a dog.”

  “I should have found some goblets or cups for this wine,” she said, unstoppering the flask and taking a sip. “Do you want to go in there? Or do you want to try to lure him out?”

  “I think I should go in,” I said. I reached for the flask, still watching the house, then looked at her when she didn’t release her grip on the flask.

  “What do you mean, you should go in,” she said. She had that look in her eye again. “We are going in, or nobody is going in.”

  This was neither the time nor the place for an argument. “We’ll go in, then,” I said.

  She smiled and handed me the flask. “Look at the house next door,” she said. “Fruit trees all along the wall between the two houses, and they didn’t lock the gate when they left the house. How long is it since you fell out of an apple tree?”

  “Too many years,” I said. The trees looked close enough to the wall. Some of the limbs overhung into the General’s yard, but they were flimsy branches. I didn’t think they would take my weight. But I might manage the leap from the tree to the wall without killing myself. Once on the wall, it was only a drop of three metres to the ground on the other side. Not a difficult drop. It had the advantage of putting us into the rear garden where there was less chance of the General seeing us.

  Getting out again might be a little more difficult, but we would have less need for stealth then. We should be able to walk out the front gate.

  “When it gets dark?” Kerri asked.

  I nodded. “They’ll light the bonfire in the square at sunset. Most of these people will be gone by dark.”

  She rubbed her arms, watching the General’s house. “I wish there was another way,” she said softly. “I don’t like this.” She looked at me, her eyes troubled. “He knows who you are, doesn’t he?”

  “He commanded the bandits who killed my parents,” I said. “He knows. But I don’t think he realizes I know, too.”

  ***

  Evening came slowly. Light faded gradually, bleaching the sky to pale turquoise in the west. As the twilight deepened, the glow of the bonfire in the main square lit the sky. The crowd began to thin as one by one, or in couples or small groups, people slipped away to the fire. They carried with them the first fruits of the harvest to offer in thanks. Before long, the street of merchants’ houses was deserted. The only people not at the fire were the ill and the infirm. Everyone else, from infants to the eldest, was now at the bonfire.

  Kerri slipped out of the brightly coloured robe and stripped the garland from her hair while I freed my sword of its decoration and fastened it to the harness on my back. We kept to the shadows as much as possible as we made our way to the house next to the General’s. Kerri was right. The gate was unlocked.

  It was a simple matter to climb one of the fruit trees against the wall. The leap to the top of the wall wasn’t as far as I thought. Quickly, I slid over the edge, hung by my hands for a moment, then dropped to the grass on the other side. An instant later, Kerri landed beside me with a muffled thud.

  “All right?” I whispered.

  “Yes.”

  We crouched in the shelter afforded by the wall, watching the house for signs of movement. The sudden stench of blood magic close by caught me by surprise. Not the General. A different magic. Foetid and evil. Not human.

  Claws scrabbling madly on the grass, the dog appeared out of the shadows. Blacker than the shadows. Blacker than the night itself. Eyes glowing red in its midnight face. Fangs gleaming phosphorescent green, long and deadly as knives. It came in a lethal rush. In an eerie and appalling silence, purposeful as a slung spear, huge as a half-grown pony.

  Before I could move, before I could even speak to warn Kerri, the dog leaped. Sensing the movement, Kerri reacted instinctively, throwing up her left arm to protect her throat. The dreadful jaws clamped down on her arm. They tumbled backward into a heap against the stone wall. The fabric of Kerri’s sleeve shredded and tore in the terrible jaws, then the skin and flesh of her arm. The dog shook her like a terrier shakes a rat, still in that ghastly, unnatural silence.

  For half a heartbeat, I crouched in the grass, frozen and stunned, staring blankly. Then I held my dagger in my fist without any recollection of drawing it. I flung myself on the monster, encircled its throat with one arm. Again and again, I plunged the blade into it, trying to find a vulnerable spot in the throat, until I lost count of how many times I stabbed it. Stinking blood poured out over my hands and arms. Scalding blood like molten lead.

  Kerri had gone limp, her lacerated arm still in the grip of those terrible jaws. The dog let go of her arm and snapped at my leg, its eyes glittering madly, bloody foam dripping from its jaws.

  Sobbing with effort, I rolled clear and scrambled to my feet. The dog lunged for Kerri’s vulnerable throat. The jaws snapped shut a finger’s-breadth short of the hollow of her throat. The dog struggled forward, snarling, intent.

  The stench of putrefaction rising from my bloody hands nearly made me gag. My gorge rose even as I pulled my sword, then desperately swung it at the dog’s head. The blow had to be exact, perfectly timed. If I miscalculated by even a fraction, I would kill Kerri, too.

  The blade began to glow as I swung it. It sliced cleanly into the stiff fur behind the abomination’s ears with a sound like an axe biting into a tree trunk. The force of the blow sent the head spinning off into the dark. It hit the wall behind Kerri with a wet splat, and the body collapsed into a tangled heap, the legs still twitching wildly. The body began to sizzle and spit, steaming and bubbling like a roasting pig.

  I dragged Kerri away from the seething carcass, my breath coming in harsh, gasping sobs. She rolled into a huddle, cradling her ruined arm against her belly, a dark trickle of blood spilling from her lip where she had bitten through it in the effort not to cry out.

  “Give me your arm.” My whisper sounded as loud as a shriek in the stillness.

  She looked up at me blankly, eyes wide with shock in her chalk-pale face. She either didn’t hear me, or didn’t understand in her shock. She trembled like a woman dying of exposure and cold. I reached out and took hold of her arm. She whimpered faintly and huddled closer around it.

  “Please, love,” I said gently. “I have to see it.”

  The tension drained suddenly from her body. She extended the arm, still shuddering violently. My belly contracted in a spasm of nausea as I looked at the torn and shredded flesh exposing the stark white of the bone beneath. But I placed my hands over the tattered skin and muscle and closed my eyes.

  I knew her patterns now. Carefully, meticulously, I gathered together the rags of tissue and set them in their proper place. It took a long time. The damage was so great, I feared I might not be able to repair it. But gradually, the flesh grew together, then the skin drew closed over it. Then, before I released her, I went deep, deep into the fabric of her patterns and calmed the quivering terror. I saw her relax as first the pain left her, then the shock. Lastly, I reached up and drew my finger across the bitten lip and watched as the injury vanished.

  “What was it?” Kerri asked, still pale and shaken, but no longer gripped by the mindless shock. “What in the name of the seven gods and goddesses was it?”

  I looked behind her. The dog was gone. In its place lay a putrefying, gelatinous mass, still bubbling occasionally and releasing the stench of a charnel house. I shuddered and looked away, back at Kerri.

  “Some magical construct the General put together to welcome guests,” I said. My head ached abominably and I had barely enough strength to stand. “Are you all right?”

  “I feel a bit as if I might want to start screaming any second,” she said breathlessly, a slig
ht tremor still in her voice. “But yes. I’m all right. But you look terrible.”

  I managed a smile. “Thank you, my lady,” I said. “It’s compliments like that which makes you such a pleasure to be with. I think it’s time to make our valiant assault on the house.”

  She got to her feet. She was a little steadier than I, but not much. “Let’s hope there are no more reception committees like that accursed dog,” she muttered. “That was enough to last me a lifetime.”

  XXXII

  From the corner of the house where we crouched against the timber and plaster wall, we could see light gleaming in the windows of one of the front rooms, throwing shadows of plantings toward the street. We made a quick circuit around the house. The rest of it was dark.

  “Kitchen entrance?” I asked softly.

  Kerri nodded. “I think so.”

  The servants had left the door unlocked. I lifted the latch carefully and nudged the door open a few inches. Only darkness and silence inside. I slipped through the door, beckoning for Kerri to follow. We waited for a moment or two while our eyes adjusted to the complete blackness inside the room. The characteristic stench of the General’s blood magic was faint but unmistakable in the house.

  After a minute or two, vague shapes appeared out of the gloom—blocky worktables, low benches, cupboards. I stepped carefully around a worktable laden with pots and pans, groping in front of me for the door leading to the rest of the house. I found it, but only because it was made of dark wood and showed up faintly against the whitewashed wall.

  Someone had paid meticulous attention to the hinges of the door, and kept them well oiled. The door opened smoothly and soundlessly. I started to step out into the hall, then stopped so suddenly, Kerri trod on my heel.

  A huge, manlike shape crouched in the hall some three metres from the kitchen, its back to us. Its misshapen head nearly scraped the lofty ceiling, and its shoulders nudged the walls on either side of the hall. Greenish, scaly skin radiated the same pallid glow as fungus in a thick, dank forest. Even crouched, the monster was twice my height and three times my width. Scythe-like claws hung from the ends of massive fingers longer than my hand.