The walls of Wrynde, looming above her against a wasted sky, looked pathetic and ineffectual. Ari’s men could have taken them for sport in an afternoon. He remembered building those shabby turrets and gates, strengthening them and pointing out to the mayor where the weak spots were. Scorn them though they might, the Wolf had always known the value to the troop of the farmers and townsmen—the need for mules, for food, and for a place to go that wasn’t the camp. It was he who’d ordered the worst of the ruins that surrounded the walls to be razed, to preclude just what the Hawk was doing now—sneaking up through the stones, stream cuts, and weeds unseen.
The Hawk looked different, seen this way, through the lying medium of the water and the pounding blackness of the fire within—as if he could see both the scarred bony beauty of her, and the cool opal glints of her soul. Later he saw her again, in the earth-smelling lockup under the town hall, with the blood of two different guards—he didn’t know how he knew that—splattering the garish flounces of her dress and bodice. He saw the townsmen locked in the cells reaching through the bars to touch her hands, and the stink of their rage that came to him from them, eyen through the water, was overwhelming, like the crackle of new flames. The vision was silent, but he knew she spoke to them, calm and reasonable; in other days it had always been the Hawk rather than Ari who’d dealt with the Town Council in their endless squabbles with the troop. He saw her reach down to take the key from the body of a dead guard. The men were arming themselves as the image faded to darkness.
He became more aware of Purcell’s strength, the geas swelling black and fat in his brain; the grip of the dark hand pulled tighter. The earth magic’s colorless wildness filled him, holding Purcell’s will at bay as he stumbled to his feet. His numb knees gave, the pain of the blood rushing back to circulate again in an unexpected hammer blow. Moggin caught him as he stumbled, but after a moment, with a queer, slow deliberation which seemed to take minutes, he shook loose those steadying hands.
Painfully, slowly, fighting to control the frenzy of madness on the one hand and the agonizing drag of the geas on the other, he began to scrape from the wet earth of the floor all the marks of power and protection that he had drawn. The magic flowing into the new circles of power that he drew, the Circles of Light and Darkness, the curves of strength and guard, and the clean powers of the air, frightened him. He felt the momentum of the earth magic behind everything he did, like swinging a weighted weapon only barely within his control. Yet he felt exultant, filled with a wild rage and madness held barely in check; he laughed, and saw Moggin draw back from the staring gold of his eye.
It was just before sunrise when word reached the camp that the men of Wrynde whom they had taken for slaves had broken loose and were slaughtering their guards. Sun Wolf couldn’t see it clearly, meditating again on the black waters of the pool, for nothing he could do would enable him to see into the camp itself. As if he stood on a distant hill, he could see the gates and the road that led to them, a twisted skein of yellow-gray mud and glittering silver. He could see the man riding along it full tilt, though it seemed to him no faster than a walk, could see the blood splattered on his hands and clothing and hair. He had been more and more aware of Purcell’s strength, dragging at him as the hours had passed. Now it slacked, the relief from the pain as intense as pain itself. He smiled. Someone must have called the mage and broken his concentration. Time, he thought grimly. All I need is time...
In time, he saw the relief party emerge from the gates.
Louth was leading them, huge and chunky on a galled and unkempt bay gelding. They were more numerous than he’d expected, and heavily armed. Evidently Zane wasn’t yet aware of how many of the men who’d pledged their loyalty to him had vanished in the ensuing twenty-four hours. Nor, apparently, had it occurred to him that a riot in Wrynde might be a diversion to draw troops into just such a sortie. It would make more work for Ari, he thought distantly, watching as the horses pounded through the churned muck of the road. But it meant less men holding the gates.
Then he turned his mind away. From the bottom of his soul—hollowed, screaming, a black and billowing universe of wildness—he called up the memory of the glowing sign he’d seen written on the money paid for Vorsal’s ruin, and gave his whole being to the magic of ill.
Like silk streaming through his hands he felt the power of it, and his ability to turn it here and there as he willed. Not small things this time, he thought. Not a matter of bread unrisen, of a thrown horseshoe or a snapped lute string. There was no time for the slow grinding of a thousand little misfortunes. He saw now, or felt through his skin, that what was needed was the great ills, rising wherever the money was or whatever it had touched within the walls of the camp: fire in straw, in bedding, in roof thatch; a healthy man’s bowels loosening in agonizing flux; doors jamming tight; floors that had formerly only creaked collapsing in splintering shards; beams and posts and overhead shelves giving way; horses spooked and running wild; the rage and accusation engendered by one final straw, one last indignity or insult or fancied slight, breaking loose in murder...
Curse you, he thought, remembering the fair-haired girl dead in the barren garden, Starhawk and the child on her back falling under the crumbling of the burning wall, that boy Miris whom he hadn’t even known screaming as he pitched off his frantic horse’s back into the seething red-black carpet of ants. Curse you, curse you, curse you... Like a falcon riding the thermals, he saw from high above the uneven stone circle of the camp, a piebald blot of color in the colorless hills, no bigger than a piece of money. He reached with his hand into the water and picked it up like a piece of money. And on that circle, that piece, he traced the mark he had seen.
As a warrior he had never fought in hate, but he hated now.
The pressure of the geas slacked and eased. Purcell, for the moment, had other things to think about.
He got stiffly to his feet. The agony of madness eased for a moment, allowing him to speak, his words thick as a drunkard’s.
“Let’s go,” he said.
Chapter 17
HE MET ARI on the stony ruin of road that ran between Wrynde and the camp, rising from the heather before them like the mad ghost of a demon bear. The men sent up a cheer when they saw him, the noise of it tearing him, kindling rage again and berserker wildness in the madness of the magic that gripped him, even as did the colorless glare of the overcast daylight and the clawed gash of the wind. He held enough control over his own mind to raise his fist to them in his old gesture of triumph and shut his eye in pain as their cheering redoubled. Only Ari, in the black-painted mailshirt of one of the bandit mercs, looked askance at the mad gold eye staring from its bruised hollow beneath the tattered hair; and Starhawk, now in hauberk and breeches again and looking as if she’d been skinning men for her living from the age of five, began to dismount, shocked concern in her face.
He could not speak, but waved her violently back. Between the savagery of the earth magic and the brutal drag of the geas in him, he dared not try to speak to her, dared not remember that he was glad to see she’d done her part in freeing Wrynde without getting killed. He felt like a man holding two maddened stallions on leading reins, who, at a false step or a break in attention, would rend him to pieces. He tried not to think about how long there was of this yet to go.
Dogbreath brought a horse for him and with Starhawk helped him mount. As in the water and as when he had looked at Moggin in the firelight, neither of them looked quite as they had, as if he could see their bones, their viscera, all surrounded by pale colored fire. Deep down, part of him hoped they’d understand when he did not acknowledge them, hoped they’d all live long enough for him to apologize and explain. He managed to wave to Moggin, left in the desolation of wet bracken and stone, coughing as if his lungs would shred within him as the cavalcade spurred away. Before them, above the hills which hid the camp, white smoke had already begun to rise.
As they passed the broken foundations of the watch-towers whic
h had once guarded the gap in those hills, the Wolf became aware of Ari’s men, lying stretched in the heather all around them and waiting the signal to storm the walls. They were hidden, invisible in the landscape as he had taught them to make themselves invisible, but now he smelled them like a beast, the fetid stench of them choking him, and saw the foxfire of their thoughts dancing above the heather which hid their bodies.
And at the same time, as Ari’s riders mounted the little rise and saw the stumpy granite knoll with its ragged wall and boxlike turrets, he felt the earth magic in him give and shift, its madness slacking as deep down in the bowels of his soul he felt pain begin.
Some instinct told him that this was the beginning of its end.
God’s Grandmother, not NOW!
The camp gates were shut when they reached them. Hog—who, without his beard and in Louth’s armor, actually did look a little like the now-deceased Louth—bellowed, “Open the goddam gates!”
The man in the turret above yelled back, “The motherless counterweight’s jammed! You’ll have to come in through the postern!”
“Nice hex,” Ari snarled as they dismounted and crowded forward.
The small man-door in the gates was flung open; the guard there said, “By the Queen of Hell’s corset, it seems like everything’s gone...” His face changed as he registered who was in the gateway with him, but he hadn’t time to make a sound before Ari cut his throat with a backhand slash that nearly took off the head. Blood sprayed everyone in the narrow way, and suddenly men were converging on them from all over the square beyond.
With an inarticulate bellow of desperation and rage, Sun Wolf jerked the gate guard’s sword free of its scabbard and plunged into the ensuing fray.
Behind him he could hear yelling, as the narrowness of the postern door trapped the attackers or tripped them over its high sill. Ari and Hog drove in after the Wolf, trying to clear the narrow passage of the gate before reinforcements could arrive, but more and more men crowded in from the open square of the camp, all yelling wildly for help. The low stone ceiling groins picked up the roar of the seething, shouting, hacking mob and amplified it to a skull-splitting bellow. The smell of opened flesh and spilled blood, of confusion and rage and fright, flayed Sun Wolf’s mind as the dark magic within him transmuted slowly to agony, as if the power in him were clawing holes in his flesh in its efforts to get out. He fought desperately to clear a way into the camp before the earth magic deserted him, howling his battle yell and yet fighting coldly, instinctively, with all the long training and skill of his life.
From beyond the squat arch of the gate toward which he struggled, he could smell burning and hear a chaos of shouts. He had the impression of horses rushing here and there beyond the packed mob that now filled the gate passage, of men breaking off their pursuit of them to get weapons and join the fighting, of other fights everywhere in the camp, and of furious yelling and the crash of falling wood. Even as he parried, thrust, severed hands, and opened the shrieking faces before him, he sensed a vast, boiling chaos all around them in the camp, and his stripped senses, above the immediate storm of fear and stress and battle rage, picked up such a confusion of blind hate and resentful violence that his mind felt torn to pieces, and he found himself screaming like a madman as he fought.
One minute they were being pushed back and trapped. The next, half a dozen men from within the camp itself fell upon the defenders from the rear, all bellowing Ari’s name, and through surging confusion the attackers burst out of the choked gateway and into the open spaces of the muddy square. Arrows spattered them, mostly shot at random from the walls and mostly missing, since both bows and arrows were still warped and splitting; a mule raced past, eyes white with spooked terror, scattering men before it. Ari was yelling, “Take the gatehouse! Take the gatehouse!” as more defenders came swarming down the walls.
Then Sun Wolf felt the geas clamp on him with killing pain. The cold wrenching in his guts made him think for a moment he had taken a mortal sword thrust; the next second, it was only Dogbreath’s fast work that kept him from doing just that, as his arm went limp and a defender’s blade drove in on him. He fell back against the wall, breathless and sweating, his vision graying out. For a wild instant, he felt the overwhelming compulsion to turn and begin hacking at those nearest him, Dogbreath, Ari, Penpusher. He clutched at the dimming earth magic, pain now instead of madness, but the agony of the geas did not lessen; it was like two crossed ropes straining at one another, with his own flesh caught in between.
He screamed an oath, a hoarse shriek like a disemboweled animal, and his mind cleared a little. The madness was lifting, bit by bit, and the wild dark of the power with it—soon it would be gone. More men shoved past him out of the shadows of the gateway and into the square, swords clashing, the reek of blood and smoke like a knife blade driven up his nose and into his brain. He heard others running along the top of the wall, and saw a body pitch over; the rest of Ari’s men, fleshed out with as many fighters as Wrynde was able to field, would be trying to scale the walls. Then the geas hit him again, the silver runes swimming visibly in his darkening sight and the rage, the need, to kill Ari and the others almost smothering him. Purcell, he thought blindly. Now, quickly...
Heedless of whether any followed him or not, he plunged across the square toward Ari’s house.
There were fear-spells all around the old governor’s quarters, lurking like ghosts in the shadows between the chipped caryatids of the colonnade. Though the Wolf sensed their power objectively, the earth magic still in him brushed them aside like cobwebs. He smelled Purcell before he saw him, smelled the sterile, soapy flabbiness of his flesh and felt the metallic cold of his mind—felt by the pull of the geas where he must be found. He turned his head, and caught the flicker of shadow heading across the waste ground toward the Armory.
With a hoarse cry he turned, pointed—only just becoming aware that Dogbreath and Starhawk had followed him and were standing gray-faced with shock just outside the colonnade’s protective spells. But when they turned their heads it was clear they didn’t see. Still unable to speak, he flung himself in pursuit once more.
The square all around them was a scene of the most appalling chaos, of Zane’s men fighting Ari’s, Zane’s men fighting each other, sutlers frenziedly looting soldiers’ quarters, and wranglers wildly chasing horses and mules, which plunged back and forth through the confusion with white-rimmed, staring eyes. Near the barracks row, two camp followers were tearing one anothers’ hair and screaming in a circle of their watching sisters, oblivious to the pandemonium around them. Men were fighting along the tops of the walls, without concert or purpose; others were simply running to and fro in unarmed panic.
This had better be fast, Sun Wolf thought with the corner of his mind that had once commanded men. Once Zone rallies them, Ari’s going to be swept away.
Where the hell was Zane, anyway?
A squad of guards intercepted them at the Armory door, led by the woman Nails. She was armed with a five-foot halberd, which far outreached Sun Wolf’s own sword, and moreover stood above him on the steps. The madness within him and his own desperation drove him forward; he wanted nothing but to end this, finish it or the before his borrowed power waned. Screaming wordlessly, he cut, feinted, and ducked in under her guard, crowding her before she could turn the pole on him as a weapon to knock him off the steps. He killed her when her dagger had half cleared leather; behind him, Starhawk and Dogbreath had turned to guard his back against the half-dozen men pounding up the steps behind.
He flung Nails’ body over the edge, ten feet down to the mud of the square, turned, and threw his weight on the door. By the way it jerked, he could tell it had been latched but not bolted. Maybe the bolt’s jammed, he thought dizzily, slamming his shoulder to the door again. This is the last goddam time I mess around with a hex. You just can’t aim the bastards.
It might, he reflected through a haze of pain and madness, be the last goddam time he did anything.
Smoke burned his eyes. It was drifting everywhere, thick and white in the damp air; his head was pounding, the raw magic burning up his flesh. Finish it, he screamed within himself. Finish this before it finishes you! He braced his feet and slammed against the door, which gave at the same moment the rickety staircase under his feet creaked, swayed, and collapsed.
It went down like a sharecropper’s shack in a gale, taking them all with it—Starhawk, Dogbreath, their attackers. Sun Wolf, halfway through the narrow door, had the breath knocked out of him as his belly hit the doorsill, but managed to drag himself up and inside. The dark maze of the Armory was filled with smoke, choking and blinding him even as the geas filled his brain with a thin, whispering darkness. Pain ate his flesh and clouded his vision. He felt the blind compulsion rising in him again with the urgency of insanity to turn his sword, not on his friends this time, but on himself. He tried to scream again, but only a thin, strangled wailing came from his mouth, like a child trying to make noises in a dream. When he moved forward, drawing on all the earth magic in his crumbling flesh to put one foot before the other, it was like wading through glue.
One dark room—two. He knew the Armory as he knew his own house, but for an instant he felt lost, disoriented, trapped in an unknown place. Black doors and endless voids of empty space yawned on all sides of him, and behind each door silver runes seemed to hang like glowing curtains in the air. Stumbling into the main gallery he could see smoke hanging in the air, bluish in the sickly light that fell through the room’s high windows, and across the planks of the floor a sprawling spiral of Circles of Power, curves and patterns he had never seen before, like the galactic wheel drawing all things into its lambent heart.
The Dark Hand of Magic Page 31
