Now the night rained crows. They thumped onto roofs.
A shout went up as the night watchman clanged his bell and his old hound woofed tiredly.
Divested of her coal and with her head fogged with pain, Swan hopped to the edge of the roof. A savant in a black cassock ran out of the shrine. He had a long white beard.
Swan recognized old Ran of Cathal Village. He had headed the delegation against Leng the Scholar, the foreigner she had accused of sorcery. Ran had also argued against the baron’s counter-charge against her of witchery. The savant waved his arms as villagers fled screaming out of their pitiful huts. Dried reed roofs smoked and burned as demented crows swooped upon the people. The mad birds used talons and beaks to grasp and peck.
The vile compulsion tried to make Swan attack the savant. She cawed wildly. She grasped her talons around a reed roof, fighting the summons. Nausea filled her. Dizziness disoriented her. She gathered her resolve like a shredded coat, clutching it as if to garb nakedness. She sensed a weakening of the evil, that it had too many things to control at once, that it had spent itself this dreadful night. Therefore, Swan tried once again to leave the crow, to exit this foul dream.
In that moment, Swan realized this was no dream. Her spirit eased out of the crow. That bewildered her. It was frightening. She looked around, and a beacon of light flared with brilliance. The beacon drew her spirit hard, fast, and she slammed back toward the castle.
A turret rushed near. Guards there rattled dice in an ivory cup. They hunkered under a lantern. Swan wanted to vomit, but as a spirit, she had no stomach. In the yard, gory-handed boys wrung chicken necks for the baron’s supper. A hound barked wildly. Then the Earth gulped her. She sank. In a vault, the wine steward selected a cask. Swan scratched and clawed for purchase, trying to halt her terrible descent deeper underground. Small, subterranean cells held men, or what had once been men. Many of the creatures hooted forlornly. Others snarled more savagely than wolves.
On a lower level, Swan’s spirit came upon the baron in his frock coat, a lanky, yellow-haired man. He set his lantern onto a pile of rubble. Moisture pooled on the low ceiling, dripping into puddles. His eyes were wide and wild, his features twisted into a frozen snarl. The sight shocked her. Swan had always known the baron as an urbane nobleman who read arcane literature and collected ancient artifacts. He often referred to past events that no one else understood. The baron dropped to his knees and clawed at the rubble. His fingernails bled, and his strange intensity…
Something lurched below the baron. It was under the rubble and deeper in the ground. It was evil. It slept in a crypt, and it stirred.
Swan recoiled in horror. She fled this wicked place. She hurled herself toward a last cell in a corridor, the source of the beacon, her own body. Through the heavy, barred door and into the moaning girl she went.
Swan’s eyes flew open in the darkness. She shivered and drew a thin blanket to her chin. She lay on damp straw, and from the cell’s corners rustled cockroaches. She moaned. It had happened again. She hated…had Hosar the Lord of Light sent her a vision? She shook her head. Hosar had surely begun the vision and then something—the thing deep in the crypt—had taken over. Yet this had been more than just a vision, a feverish dream. What she had seen through the crow’s eyes had happened. Her spirit had broken free of her dying body—what had been her dying body down here in the dungeon.
Iron hinges groaned and interrupted her thoughts. The grim sound came from down the corridor. Stone grated against stone. Hooting erupted, barking and snarling.
Swan shuddered. Once those had been cries from pitch sellers, horse traders, eel-fishers and pilgrims. Once they had begged for release and proffered coin, service and then any oath Leng cared to name. She swallowed hard. Kerold the Carpenter—is that what had happened to him?
Boots scraped and stamped along the corridor. Metal jangled. Harshly spoken orders for silence stilled the barking. In its place ruled a cringing quiet. Crackling torches became audible and the flickering light grew. Swan breathed deeply and was amazed that didn’t hurt her lungs. She struggled up and squinted at the painful torchlight. Yet that didn’t make sense. She had just seen through the crow’s eyes, had witnessed the sun’s last rays of daylight. That didn’t seem to matter to her own body, however, to her own eyes.
The torches brought revealing light. Slime clung to her cell’s walls. White cockroaches scurried under straw and through cracks in the bricks.
From the other side of the door, steel slid from scabbards. Visors clicked shut. Someone rattled keys, inserted one and twisted the door’s tumblers.
“You will have to step back, milord.” The jailor grunted, swinging open the door.
There was a shuffle of feet, the clink of mail and the banging of shields. Two knights entered. Each wore a helmet with the visor down and each aimed his sword at her. By their size, these two could only be Sir Durren and Sir Kergan, the baron’s hardiest knights and cousins. Behind followed the stump-footed jailor, with his stubby fingers curled around a torch. Leng stepped in last. He was tall, lean and wore a brown robe like a priest, with a cowl thrown around his head. His eyes were inky pools and he had a beak of a nose. In one pigskin-gloved hand, he held a torch. The other hung onto a chain with a golden pendant that bore a woman’s portrait, the image bringing a curl to Swan’s lips.
“What have you done?” Leng asked. “Tell me. I command it.”
Swan frowned, perplexed by the question. They had incarcerated her here for months. What did he mean, ‘what had she done?’
“Do not play the innocent with me, witch,” Leng said.
Both knights turned toward him.
“Keep watch of her, you fools,” Leng snarled.
Swan chuckled, even though the effort made her shiver. “They are as bemused as I at your charge of witchery against me.”
Leng dared approach and thrust his torch nearer as he held up the golden pendant like a shield.
The heat felt wonderful upon Swan’s cheeks. It had been so long since she had truly been warm.
“Look at her lips,” Leng said, his lean, remote face full of wonder. “They’re smooth. And her skin is no longer splotched, nor does she spew the noxious fumes as before.”
“Kill her,” grunted the biggest knight, a massive man.
Calculation entered Leng’s dark eyes. “She wields power, sir. That is obvious, for otherwise she would have already been dead. It is seldom wise to throw away such power.”
“She is no witch,” the second knight said.
“Perhaps not,” Leng admitted. “But it is clear that she is a mystic.”
“You say this of Swan?” asked the second knight.
“Look at her,” said Leng.
The knight shrugged.
“Can’t you see it?” asked Leng.
“You keep hounds in the dungeon and marvel at a girl’s skin,” said the knight. “What you need is a wench instead of your dusty volumes.”
Swan was amazed. Did Sir Kergan think those howling creatures in the nearby cells were hounds? Didn’t he realize they had once been men?
“Yes,” muttered Leng, who watched her closely. “Your eyes have been opened. What did you just do, eh? Oh, don’t think that I don’t know. None here can practice their mystic arts without my knowing.”
“Then you are a sorcerer,” she said.
Leng stepped back, and he glanced at the two knights sidelong. “See how she plies her subtle words? She is filled with guile, with trickery.”
Swan turned to the knights. “Stop the baron,” she pleaded. “You’ve no idea what he tries to unearth. It is evil beyond calculation.”
Leng laughed in a brittle manner. “Still spewing the same old lies, eh, witch?”
Inspiration struck Swan. “Examine the baron’s fingernails. They will have grown cracked and bloodstained. Tell me, sirs. Why does your learned cousin scratch at the earth like a maniac?”
Leng retreated out of the cell. “She practices her spe
lls. Hurry, get out!”
The jailor almost tripped over his feet in his haste to follow. The knights glanced at one another. Sir Durren shuffled out backward, his sword and shield aimed at her. Sir Kergan touched her throat with the tip of his sword.
“What are you doing?” cried Leng. “You have no idea of the danger you are in.”
Sir Kergan leaned his visor-hidden face closer to her. His words were low-voiced. “Why does our scholar fear you? What can you do to him? Tell me truly, lass.”
Swan reached out a hand.
“Don’t let her touch you!” shouted Leng.
Sir Kergan flinched, his sword point pressing against her throat.
Swan touched the blade as her gaze deepened. “You will meet a knight,” she whispered. “But for you, Sir Kergan, that will not be as dangerous as the knight’s woman.”
“What’s this?” growled Kergan low under his breath. “Are you hexing me?”
Swan tried to peer past his visor, to see his eyes. “Beware of Leng,” she whispered. “He will betray you soon, to your everlasting horror.”
“I’ll gut that weasel at the first sign of treachery,” Sir Kergan said.
“You will not, sir, if the baron digs any deeper into the crypt,” whispered Swan.
“If she bewitches you,” called Leng, “we’ll have to lock you in with her.”
Sir Kergan backed away. Then he turned and strode out of the cell, jostling Leng. “If you ever threaten me again, you Muscovite swine, I’ll gut you like a hog.”
“Shut the door,” said Leng.
The jailor strained, pushing it closed it with a thud and a click.
“Stop the baron!” called Swan. “Don’t let him dig up the evil. We’re all doomed if he does. If you don’t believe me, Sir Kergan, examine the creatures in these cells that you think are hounds. Look at them closely and remember that once they were men.”
“Silence, witch!” shouted Leng. “By the Moon Lady you will not cast your spells on us.” He spoke to the others. “The mystic is sly. She casts enchantments upon your sight. Beware of whatever you see while in the dungeon and remember that it was your cousin who ordered her here.”
Then Leng, the two knights and the jailor hurried down the corridor, the sounds growing fainter and the torchlight dimmer. Soon it was dark again, and the distant stone door shut with a final grate of noise. Only then did the cockroaches scurry back into her cell, and Swan wondered how long until she too was possessed by evil and turned in a hideous creature like Kerold the Carpenter.
The Dragon Horn Page 25
