Ugoth smiled. “You’re being inane.”
“It’s better than being a snivelling wreck!”
“Vehre?” Ugoth called.
“Yes, Majesty?”
“I want Herfod’s gang back on guard. They are to protect Vik.”
“What about my old gang?” Vik asked.
“Them too. Vehre! See Samel about it now. Marun will make an attempt on Vik. When he does, we must be ready to repel it.”
“You don’t think our wards will be enough to keep him away from Vik?” Vehre asked.
“No. We were stupid with Herfod. Remember? Get them, Vehre! I should never have let them be reassigned. Herfod might still be here if not for that. We aren’t going to make that mistake with Vik.”
“Yes, Majesty,” Vehre acknowledged. Ugoth heard him stomp off.
Vik lowered the spyglass. “What are you planning? To sit here and stare at Marun until he makes a play for me?”
“I plan on harrying him, Vik. I plan on taunting him and winnowing down his forces. Let’s see if he’ll break the promise and attack despite your presence. Let’s see if it breaks his hold on Herfod.”
“Yes,” Vik agreed. “Let him break his oath.” He handed the spyglass back. He’d seen enough of his brother to know he was physically unharmed. He had to be satisfied with that.
“Vik? Will Herfod see them? The traps?”
“What do you mean?”
“The auras, Vik,” Ugoth reminded tersely.
“Yes, I’d forgotten. The auras …. I don’t know.”
“I’ve been worrying about it,” Ugoth said. “But I doubt Marun will send him out there. I just hope the auras aren’t strong enough for Herfod to read at that distance.”
“We will know soon enough, I suppose.”
Ugoth nodded and raised the glass again. He focused on Herfod. “Marten! Call the order for the ballistae to fire. Tell them to use the altered missiles. And tell King Olent he had better not hit Brother Herfod’s position or I will have his head!”
“Yes, Majesty!” Marten shouted. Listening to the young man rush off, Ugoth smiled.
Vik stared at him. Such a ferocious smile, but it was the snarl of a beast in pain. “I’m leaving my unit!” he said to the king. “I’m staying with you from now on! Do you hear me? I will be at your side!”
“I heard you. Are you hoping your presence will protect me from Herfod?” Ugoth inquired.
“Yes,” Vik said. “I don’t want you to die. If you die, Kehfrey will become a shadow of himself. He’ll be a shell that no longer wants to live.”
“One gets used to it,” Ugoth responded calmly.
Vik tried not to weep, but a small noise escaped from his gritted teeth.
Ugoth lowered the spyglass and looked at him. His gaze was emotionless. “Say the dirge. Say it, Vik. You were correct. It’s all that keeps me calm.”
The tears spilled down. Vik uttered the Pek battle dirge for both of them. Ugoth lifted the glass and watched the first of the missiles hit a target.
***
“Gods!” King Quei shouted. “They can’t hit that distance!”
“But they just did!” Marun snarled. “Order the tents pulled down. Move them back!”
Quei hurried off.
“Quei! The mirror first! Move it to safety!”
Quei nodded and sent soldiers into the pavilion. A second giant arrow whistled into the sky. Marun turned to trace its trajectory. A trail of red and blue sparks scintillated in the air behind the bolt. The missile struck another tent and exploded. Flames engulfed objects and men. Marun watched the injured break free of the conflagration, screaming in agony.
“He’s spelled the missiles,” he breathed.
He was brilliant. The Ulmeniran king was brilliant. Marun looked toward the black standard on the mount. He knew without raising his glass that Ugoth observed even now and witnessed the astonishment of his enemy. Damn him!
A third missile struck. It was nearer their position. Kehfrey took off toward the inferno it had created.
“Kehfrey! Stop!”
He ignored the command. Marun raised shadow at his feet and sent him tumbling. The sorcerer rushed down the small knoll. The screams of the newest victims split the air. They pleaded for help, those who could still speak.
“Let me go!” Kehfrey shouted. “I have to help them!”
“You have to help ward the remaining army,” the sorcerer countered sharply. He pulled Kehfrey up and dragged him back. “Hags!” he roared.
They filtered out from the tents, a reluctant knot of dirty bodies and rags. Cowardly bitches. Of them all, only the water witch stood firm on the knoll.
“Start a warding spell!” he snapped.
They formed a circle. From their belts, they withdrew bladders made of animal stomachs and splashed blood upon the earth. From their mouths, words commenced to flow, without rhythm and not all of the same language. Marun marched into the middle of the coven, thankful Kehfrey knew nothing of the origin of the blood.
Last night …. Last night had been a near failure when Kehfrey had seen the blood and understood that only one flavour would suffice, that which had bled from a man’s throat. They’d quarrelled over it. The argument had ended only when Marun had shouted that the sacrifice had been willing.
The truth. The simple truth. A man had been willing to go to the goddess. Kehfrey had frozen in horror and then vomited in the centre of the circle. He remembered none of that now, neither the argument, nor the source of the blood, and this was just as well. They had no time for a repeat of last night’s acrimony.
“Pray, Kehfrey!”
Kehfrey didn’t respond.
“Kehfrey! Pray!”
“What?” Kehfrey mumbled, his gaze caught on the mesmerizing arc of blood spraying into the air. There was something perfectly horrific about the sight, and yet he couldn’t look away. “Pray?”
“Yes! Pray! Call for a ward!”
Kehfrey gaped at the sorcerer. “What? How do I do that?”
Marun stared down at him in surprise. “You don’t remember even this? Oh, gods!”
What had she done to him? She had taken even that from him? How was he to call the power of the gods?
“Tell me what to do?” Kehfrey cried.
Tell me what to do? Marun echoed, but he directed the spiritual cry to the bowels of the earth. The answer whispered into his mind like the gentlest breeze, and it chilled him to his marrow. Having been asked to transgress against his love, now he was urged to violate him further.
Sufficient power resides within him. It is but for you to seduce its rise.
Almost as if he heard, Kehfrey shivered, and the hazel of his eyes darkened with presentiment. “What was that?”
He is a fount of power, Tehlm Sevet. He is a focus, a mirror, a lens. He is everything to power. Use him!
What are you saying? What is he? What?
USE HIM!
“What is that?” Kehfrey demanded. “Tell me what lurks under your skin?”
And were his eyes darker yet, the hazel grown so dim as to have become brown? And what did Kehfrey have lurking beneath his skin? What was this fount of power?
“Marun?”
“It is the goddess,” Marun answered.
“The one I displeased?”
“Yes.” Marun pulled him about so that he faced the mount. “Look up there! Those missiles are still raining down on our people! They could rain down on us next! Do you want that?”
“No!”
“Then be!” Marun whispered in his ear. “Be what you are! When you feel the power surge from the spell, give me yours. Give it to me, Kehfrey.”
“Yes,” Kehfrey said. “I will.”
Marun shut his eyes. He was aroused again. He had embarked upon the seduction of an innocent, for at this moment Kehfrey was that. With this wickedness fixed in his mind, he pressed hard against Kehfrey’s back and looked at the gryphon king’s position. He curled his arms around his recaptured lover
and slid one hand up within Kehfrey’s shirt until his palm rested on the flesh over the heart.
The hags had ceased marking the circle with human blood and the bladders sagged in their hands. Some of the drops had found their way on Kehfrey’s trousers, one on the back of his hand. He raised this limb and looked at the red fleck. A shudder ran through him. Marun pulled his hand down, but the shivering continued.
“Listen!” he urged.
“I don’t want to! My head hurts!”
“I know! I know. But you must listen.”
Even yet the witches did not speak in unison. None uttered the words of the spell exactly the same. Kehfrey winced from the cacophony, but the master of the coven smiled with burgeoning triumph. The power rose despite the disharmony. Marun felt it like misplayed chords of angry music. He knew what would happen soon. The notes would vibrate together, the dissonance would become resonance, and then the spell would fly.
Kehfrey knocked back into him. “My head!”
“Don’t fight it, Kehfrey,” Marun murmured in his ear. He kissed his neck, tasted salt, tasted something incredibly potent that only Kehfrey had ever given to his tongue and felt the shivering increase. “Let it wash over you. Let it, my love! The pain will leave you. You will feel nothing but pleasure.”
“I know this. I’ve done this before.”
“Yes. Last night. Do it again. Do it!” He slid a hand down over Kehfrey’s pubis and caressed him through the fabric. Kehfrey groaned. Marun looked at the mount and smiled.
Look, Ugoth of Ulmenir. Look at what is mine, what you never completely understood.
Shadows of power rose at their feet, a coiling mass of expectancy. Seconds later, the spell casting resonated.
Kehfrey erupted. Marun shouted in exaltation and flung the terrible burst of energy outward.
***
On the mount, the Ulmeniran king observed as the Shadow Master towed Herfod back up the knoll. Ugoth lifted his glass and spotted the witches converging before the pavilion. They carried bladders and from them poured red liquid on the trampled grass. A circle of dark ritual was in the making.
“Order Olent to hit the Shadow Master’s pavilion!” he shouted. A messenger acknowledged and rushed away, shouting the order ahead.
“Ugoth! Kehfrey!” Vik protested.
“Can’t die! He is before it, not inside.”
“But the risk? He could be injured!”
“The risk must be taken! The coven casts a spell. Marun has him in the centre of their circle.” He glared through the tube. Marun had just kissed Herfod’s neck. “That evil bastard! This is exciting him.”
Ugoth stiffened. The Shadow Master’s hand had lowered over Herfod’s crotch. The bastard touched him intimately before an entire army of witnesses while gloating and smiling up the mount. Damn him! Damn him! Damn him!
Ugoth heard the noise of another bolt shoot into the air. He waited expectantly.
Darkness curled at the sorcerer’s feet and gathered around Herfod. A mixed expression of unutterable dismay and longing washed over Herfod’s face. Suddenly he arched back against the Shadow Master.
Ugoth jerked the tube away, blinking from the sudden flash. The area over the pavilion was blindingly bright. With only one eye, he saw what might have been the missile sinking into a roiling, pulsing cloud of shadow and divine blue. The cloud expanded outward, racing to the front line of Marun’s army, where it snapped upward and winked out.
Another missile curved down, but it broke high in the air. The explosion was wasted. Marun’s ward had risen. An invisible barrier protected the opposing army.
“Cease fire!” Ugoth shouted.
A third messenger raced off, once more calling ahead to the next in the relay line. Ugoth set the spyglass to his good eye and sighted on the pavilion.
The first missile had hit. The pavilion was destroyed. Fire engulfed the remains of the structure. Before the target, one witch rolled on the grass, burning and slapping her arms about. It was a hellish spectacle, but of little concern to him. He scanned for the centre of the circle.
Kehfrey was there. He was unconscious. Given that he appeared unhurt physically, Ugoth suspected the spell of causing his collapse. The dismay he had witnessed beforehand could not be discounted. Whatever power had been leeched from Herfod, it hadn’t been extracted without a price.
The Shadow Master also appeared sound of limb and body. He knelt on the grass with Herfod while shouting orders to Stohar warriors. As Ugoth observed, he glared up at the mount. Ugoth smiled.
“There, bastard. Now you can make do without your books and tools of the trade.” He lowered the glass. “Marten?”
“Yes, Majesty?”
“Good. You’re back. Go to Lord Berholt and tell him to roll out the bait.”
“Yes, Majesty.” Marten descended the steep slope, sliding more than walking.
“Bait?” Vik asked.
“I set up a little something for the dragon. Herfod told me they ate earth magic. I had the witches spell a few barrels. I thought this might be easier than waiting to toss chemical fire in their mouths.”
“Are the barrels also spelled to explode?”
Ugoth grinned a most evil grin. “No. I added a little something to spice up the taste.”
Vik wasn’t stupid and understood the hint. “Will the poison kill it?”
Ugoth shrugged. “I have no idea. But if this works, we may incapacitate it enough to let us harry the enemy while they’re disorganized from this relocation.”
“I think you’ll find that Marun will send the ghouls to deal with a strike.”
Ugoth nodded. He’d been wondering. He turned his head to scrutinize the ghoul army. The dead host stood alone on a low hill to the side of the living counterpart. Ugoth remembered well the fear he had experienced upon first seeing the multitude of unliving faces. It was a mere hour later. The morning sun had yet to warm the air, and he still wanted to shiver with dread.
Deliberating the abominations, a frown narrowed his eyes to hard glints of sapphire. After a few seconds, his malicious grin returned full force. “Messenger! Have King Olent fire on the ghoul army! I don’t think Marun warded it.”
He added the last for Vik. Ugoth couldn’t believe that Herfod would give the Shadow Master the power to protect the army of abominations. If there were any part of him free to fight the sorcerer’s control, those ghouls would be undefended.
The next messenger in line for the duty ran off. A minute later, a spelled bolt hit the ghoul army dead centre. Bodies flew in the air. Lifeless already, there was absolutely no screaming from the victims. The neighbouring ghouls, however, sent up a horrifying clamour. Ugoth lifted his glass and observed the undamaged close on the broken and burning bodies. Withered and rotting hands grabbed. Mouths opened. Teeth bit into dead flesh. Ugoth lowered the telescope hurriedly.
“They eat the broken ones,” he said in revulsion.
“They seem to be catching on fire themselves,” Vik commented.
Ugoth handed him the glass. He didn’t really want to look at them any longer.
Vik grimaced and did the task for Ugoth despite his long-time horror of the undead. The king’s horror was too recent to suffer the sight of the atrocities for long.
“Yes. They’re catching fire,” he confirmed. “Stupid. They’re spreading the flames everywhere.”
Ugoth laughed. “Tell Olent to speed up the volleys!” he shouted. “Have the other teams fire as well!”
Several messengers acknowledged and ran in different directions.
Vik focused the glass on the destroyed pavilion. “Kehfrey is looking up here.”
“He’s awake?” Ugoth snatched the glass back and directed it toward Herfod’s position. Herfod was gazing up in his direction, frowning as if in confusion. His head turned to watch a missile race toward the ghoul army.
Ugoth stared down at his profile and felt a hunger strong enough to spread an ache from guts to bones. Herfod had grown a short beard and
moustache in the time he’d been missing. His unshaven face made him look older, colder. Ugoth would have given anything to touch that beard just once before tugging it hard and demanding that it come off.
“Why did he put that on his face?”
“He’s always hated how he seems younger than he is,” Vik said.
“Has he? I didn’t know.”
“He’s not much for complaining.”
Ugoth lowered the glass to stare disbelief at Vik.
Vik laughed. “He’s not! Not about anything personal to him. You know that. The grumbling is all show.” Vik looked down the mount at the figure topped by crimson, and the amusement faded. From his earlier observation, Vik had noted that his brother’s beard was darker than the crown of curls on his head. The colour was almost human, but for the burnished gleam at every bend, a gleam that challenged spun metal.
A hint of Vik’s humour returned, just a brightness in the blue of his eyes. He gave the reason for it to the king. “He’s asked for a dispensation to grow a beard every year since he started shaving. Abbot Anselm always refuses. Says the colour would be too outrageous.”
“As well he should,” Ugoth said. “Aside from the fact that the abbot is right, an honest monk doesn’t hide behind a beard.” He raised the glass and peered down at Herfod. “I’m going to rip that out of his cheeks.”
Vik smiled. “Yes. Do that. It is outrageous. But it’s odd, isn’t it? That he looks good with it despite the pale skin. I’d like to see him in bright colours for a change. I think he’d look good in green, once that beard is gone. Why’d Marun put him brown? The man never had any sense of style.”
Having his eyes fixed on his brother, Vik didn’t see the explosive anger firing the skin of Ugoth’s face red. Ugoth didn’t appreciate useless babbling, not when it pointed to the fact that he agreed with the Shadow Master and especially not when that agreement concerned Herfod. But yes, Herfod was bright enough as he was.
“Shut up, Vik! Shut up before I throw you down the mount!”
Vik blushed redder than his king. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”
Ugoth averted his gaze, and they were silent for a time, each of them pondering their respective opinions on grooming and murder, when Vik noted that the army of undead were no longer milling about ineffectively. “The ghouls are moving. They’re backing off.”
Bound in Stone 3 Page 37
