"Katran!" she called. A moment later Myria's companion appeared; quite nonplussed to see the sorceress covered with dust beside the seneschal's bed.
"Get the priest," Kethry told her, before she had a chance to ask any question. "I know who the murderer is—and I know how he did it, and why."
Tarma was facing her first real opponent of the day; a lean, saturnine fellow who used twin swords like extensions of himself. He was just as fast on his feet as she was—and he was fresher. The priest had vanished just before the beginning of this bout, and Tarma was fervently hoping this meant Kethry had found something. Otherwise, this fight bid fair to be her last.
Thank the Goddess this one was an honest warrior; if she went down, it would be to an honorable opponent. Not too bad, really, if it came to it. Not even many Sword Sworn could boast to having defeated twelve opponents in a single morning.
Even if some of them had been mere babes.
She had a stitch in her side that she was doing her best to ignore, and her breath was coming in harsh pants. The sun was punishing hard on someone wearing head-to-toe black; sweat was trickling down her back and sides. She danced aside, avoiding a blur of sword, only to find she was moving right into the path of his second blade.
Damn!
At the last second she managed to drop and roll, and came up to find him practically on top of her again. She managed to get to one knee and trap his first blade between dagger and sword—but the second was coming in—
From the side of the field, came a voice like a trumpet call.
"Hold!"
And miracle of miracles, the blade stopped mere inches from her unprotected neck.
The priest strode onto the field, robes flapping. "The sorceress has found the true murderer of our lord and proved it to my satisfaction," he announced to the waiting crowd. "She wishes to prove it to yours."
Then he began naming off interested parties as Tarma sagged to her knees in the dirt, limp with relief, and just about ready to pass out with exhaustion. Her opponent dropped both his blades in the dust at her side, and ran off to his side of the field, returning in a moment with a cup of water.
And before handing it to her, he smiled sardonically, saluted her with it and took a tiny sip himself.
She shook sweat-sodden hair out of her eyes, and accepted the cup with a nod of thanks. She downed the lukewarm water, and sagged back onto her heels with a sigh.
"Sword Sworn, shall I find someone to take you to your pavilion?"
The priest was bending over her in concern. Tarma managed to find one tiny bit of unexpended energy.
"Not on your life, priest. I want to see this myself!"
There were perhaps a dozen nobles in the group that the priest escorted to the lord's chamber. Foremost among them was the seneschal; the priest most attentive on him. Tarma was too tired to wonder about that; she saved what little energy she had to get her into the room and safely leaning up against the wall within.
"I trust you all will forgive me if I am a bit dramatic, but I wanted you all to see exactly how this deed was done."
Kethry was standing behind the chair that was placed next to the desk; in that chair was an older woman in buff and gray. "Katran has kindly agreed to play the part of Lord Corbie; I am the murderer. The lord has just come into this chamber; in the next is his lady. She has taken a potion to relieve pain, and the accustomed sound of his footstep is not likely to awaken her."
She held up a wineglass. "Some of that same potion was mixed in with the wine that was in this glass, but it did not come from the batch Lady Myria was using. Here is Myria's bottle," she placed the wineglass on the desk, and Myria brought a bottle to stand beside it. "Here," she produced a second bottle, "is the bottle I found. The priest knows where, and can vouch for the fact that until he came, no hand but the owner's and mine touched it."
The priest nodded. Tarma noticed with a preternatural sensitivity that made it seem as if her every nerve was on the alert that the seneschal was beginning to sweat.
"The spell I am going to cast now—as your priest can vouch, since he is no mean student of magic himself—will cause the wineglass and the bottle that contained the potion that was poured into it glow."
Kethry dusted something over the glass and the two bottles. As they watched, the residue in the glass and the fraction of potion in Kethry's bottle began to glow with an odd, greenish light.
"Is this a true casting, priest?" Tarma heard one of the nobles ask in an undertone.
He nodded. "As true as ever I've seen."
"Huh," the man replied, frowning with thoughts he kept to himself.
"Now—Lord Corbie has just come in; he is working on the ledgers. I give him a glass of wine," Kethry handed the glass to Katran. "He is grateful; he thinks nothing of the courtesy, I am an old and trusted friend. He drinks it, I leave the room, presently he is asleep."
Katran allowed her head to sag down on her arms.
"I take the key from beneath his hand, and quietly lock the door to the hall. I replace the key. I know he will not stir, not even cry out, because of the strength of the potion. I take Lady Myria's dagger, which I obtained earlier. I stab him." Kethry mimed the murder; Katran did not move, though Tarma could see she was smiling sardonically. "I take the dagger and plant it beneath Lady Myria's bed—and I know that because of the potion she has been taking—and which I recommended, since we have no Healer—she will not wake either."
Kethry went into Myria's chamber, and returned empty-handed.
"I've been careless—got some blood on my tunic, I've never killed a man before and I didn't know that the wound would spurt. No matter, I will hide it where I plan to hide the bottle. By the way, the priest has that bloody tunic, and he knows that his hands alone removed it from its hiding place, just like the bottle. Now comes the important part—"
She took an enormous fishhook on a double length of twine out of her belt pouch.
"The priest knows where I found this—rest assured that it was not in Myria's possession. Now, on the top of this door, caught on a rough place in the wood, is another scrap of hemp. I am going to get it now. Then I shall cast another spell—and if that bit of hemp came from this twine, it shall return to the place it came from."
She went to the door and jerked loose a bit of fiber, taking it back to the desk. Once again she dusted something over the twine on the hook and the scrap, this time she also chanted as well. A golden glow drifted down from her hands to touch first the twine, then the scrap.
And the bit of fiber shot across to the twine like an arrow loosed from a bow.
"Now you will see the key to entering a locked room, now that I have proved that this was the mechanism by which the trick was accomplished."
She went over to the door to the seneschal's chamber. She wedged the hook under the bar on the door, and lowered the bar so that it was only held in place by the hook; the hook was kept where it was by the length of twine going over the door itself. The other length of twine Kethry threaded under the door. Then she closed the door.
The second piece of twine jerked; the hook came free, and the bar thudded into place. And the whole contrivance was pulled up over the door and through the upper crack by the first piece.
All eyes turned toward the seneschal—whose white face was confession enough.
* * *
"Lady Myria was certainly grateful enough."
"If we'd let her, she'd have stripped the treasury bare," Kethry replied, waving at the distant figures on the keep wall. "I'm glad you talked her out of it."
"Greeneyes, they don't have it to spare, and we both know it. As it is, she'll have to spend most of the seneschal's hoard in making up for the shortfalls among the hirelings that his skimmings caused in the first place."
"Will she be all right, do you think?"
"Now that her brother's here I don't think she has a thing to worry about. She's gotten back all the loyalty of her lord's people and more besides. All she needed was a
strong right arm to beat off unwelcome suitors, and she's got that now! Warrior's Oath, I'm glad that young monster wasn't one of the challengers. I'd never have lasted past the first round!"
"Tarma—"
The swordswoman raised an eyebrow at Kethry's unwontedly serious tone.
"If you—did all that because you think you owe me—"
"I 'did all that' because we're she'enedran," she replied, a slight smile warming her otherwise forbidding expression. "No other reason is needed."
"But—"
"No 'buts,' Greeneyes." Tarma looked back at the waving motes on the wall. "Hell, we've just accomplished something we really needed to do. This little job is going to give us a real boost on our reputation. Besides, you know I'd do whatever I needed to do to keep you safe."
Kethry did not reply to that last; not that she wasn't dead certain that it was true. That was the problem.
Tarma had been stepping between Kethry and possible danger on a regular basis, often when such intercession wasn't needed. At all other times, she treated Kethry as a strict equal, but when danger threatened—
She tried to keep the sorceress wrapped in a protective cocoon spun of herself and her blades.
She probably doesn't even realize she's doing it—but she's keeping me so safe, she's putting herself in more risk than she needs to. She knows I can take care of myself—
Then the answer occurred to her.
Without me, there will never be a Tale'sedrin. She's protecting, not just me, but her hopes for a new Clan! But she's stifling me—and she's going to get herself killed!
She glanced over at Tarma, at the distant, brooding expression she wore.
I can't tell her. She might not believe me. Or worse, she might believe, and choke when she needs to act. I wonder if Warrl has figured out what she's doing? I hope so—
She glanced again at her partner.
—or she's going to end up killing all three of us. Or driving me mad.
Seven
The sorcerer was young, thin, and sweating nervously, despite the cold of the musty cellar chamber that served as his living area and workroom. His secondhand robe was clammy with chill and soaked through with his own perspiration.
He had every reason to be nervous. This was the first time he and his apprentice (who was now huddled out of the way in the corner) had ever attempted to bind an imp to his service. The summoning of a spirit from the Abyssal Planes is no small task, even if the spirit one hopes to summon is of the very least and lowliest of the demonic varietals. Demons and their ilk are always watching for a chance misstep—and some are more eager to take advantage of a mistake than others.
The torches on the walls wavered and smoked, their odor of hot pitch nearly overwhelming the acrid tang of the incense he was burning. Mice squeaked and scuttled along the rafters overhead. Perhaps they were the cause of his distraction, for he was distracted for a crucial moment. And one of those that watched and waited seized the unhoped-for opportunity when the sorcerer thrice chanted, not the name "Talhkarsh"—the true-name of the imp he meant to bind—but "Thalhkarsh."
Incandescent ruby smoke rose and filled the interior of the diagram the mage had so carefully chalked upon the floor of his cluttered, dank, high-ceilinged stone chamber. It completely hid whatever was forming within the bespelled hexacle.
But there was something there; he could see shadows moving within the veiling smoke. He waited, dry-mouthed in anticipation, for the smoke to clear, so that he could intone his second incantation, one that would coerce the imp he'd summoned into the bottle that waited within the exact center of the hexacle.
Then the smoke vanished as quickly as it had been conjured—and the young mage nearly fainted, as he looked up at what stood there. And looked higher. And his sallow, bearded visage assumed the same lack of color as his chalk when the occupant, head just brushing the rafters, calmly stepped across the spell-bound lines, bent slightly at the waist, and seized him none-too-gently by the throat.
Thinking quickly, he summoned everything he knew in the way of arcane protections, spending magical energy with what in other circumstances might have been reckless wastefulness. There was a brief flare of light around him, and the demon dropped him as a human would something that had unexpectedly scorched his hand. The mage cringed where he had fallen, squeezing his eyes shut.
"Oh, fool," the voice was like brazen gongs just slightly out of tune with each other, and held no trace of pity. "Look at me."
The mage opened one eye, well aware of the duplicity of demons, yet unable to resist the command. His knowledge did him little good; his face went slack-jawed with bemusement at the serpentine beauty of the creature that stood over him. It had shrunk to the size of a very tall human and its—his—eyes glowed from within, a rich ruby color reminiscent of wine catching sunlight. He was—wonderful.
He was the very image of everything the mage had ever dreamed of in a lover. The face was that of a fallen angel, the nude body that of a god. The ruby eyes promised and beckoned, and were filled with an overwhelming and terribly masculine power.
The magician's shields did not include those meant to ward off beglamoring. He threw every pitiful protection he'd erected to the four winds in an onslaught of delirious devotion. The demon laughed, and took him into his arms.
When he was finished amusing himself, he tore the whimpering creature that remained to shreds... slowly.
It was only then, only after he'd destroyed the mage past any hope of resurrection, and when he was sated with the emanations of the mage's torment and death, that he paused to think—and, thinking, to regret his hasty action.
There had been opportunity there, opportunity to be free forever of the Abyssal Planes, and more, a potential for an unlimited supply of those delights he'd just indulged in. If only he'd thought before he'd acted!
But even as he was mentally cursing his own impulsiveness, his attention was caught by a hint of movement in the far corner.
He grew to his full size, and reached out lazily with one blood-smeared claw to pull the shivering, wretched creature that cowered there into the torchlight. It had soiled itself with fear, but by the torque around its throat and the cabalistic signs on its shabby robe, this pitiful thing must have been the departed mage's apprentice.
Thalhkarsh chuckled, and the apprentice tried to shrink into insignificance. All was not yet lost. In fact, this terror-stricken youth was an even better candidate for what he had in mind than his master would have been.
Thalhkarsh bent his will upon the boy's mind; it was easy to read. The defenses his master had placed about him were few and weak, and fading with the master's death. Satisfied by what he read there, the demon assumed his most attractive aspect and spoke.
"Boy, would you live? More, would you prosper?"
The apprentice trembled and nodded slightly, his eyes glazed with horror, a fear that was rapidly being subsumed by the power the demon was exerting on his mind.
"See you this?" the demon hefted the imp-bottle that had been in the diagram with him. Plain, reddish glass before, it now glowed from within like the demon's eyes. "Do you know what it is?"
"The—imp-bottle," the boy whispered, after two attempts to get words out that failed. "The one Leland meant to—to—"
"To confine me in—or rather, the imp he meant to call. It is a worthless bottle no more; thanks to having been within the magic confines of the diagram when I was summoned instead of the imp, it has become my focus. Did your master tell you what a demonic focus is?"
"It—" the boy stared in petrified fascination at the bottle in the demon's hand, "it lets you keep yourself here of your own will. If you have enough power."
The demon smiled. "But I want more than freedom, boy. I want more than power. I have greater ambitions. And if you want to live, you'll help me achieve them."
It was plain from the boy's eyes that he was more than willing to do just about anything to ensure his continued survival. "How—what do you want?"<
br />
Thalhkarsh laughed, and his eyes narrowed. "Never mind, child. I have plans—and if you succeed in what I set out for you, you will have a life privileged beyond anything you can now imagine. You will become great—and I, I will become—greater than your poor mind can dream. For now, child, this is how you can serve me...."
"Here?" Tarma asked her mage-partner. "You're sure?"
The sunset bathed her in a blood-red glow as they approached the trade-gate of the city of Delton, and a warm spring breeze stirred a lock of coarse black hair that had escaped the confines of her short braids; her hair had grown almost magically the past few months, as if it had resented being shorn. The last light dyed her brown leather tunic and breeches a red that was nearly black.
Kethry's softly attractive face wore lines of strain, and there was worry in her emerald eyes. "I'm sure. It's here—and it's bad, whatever it is. This is the worst Need's ever pulled on me that I can remember. It's worse than that business with Lady Myria, even." She pushed the hood of her traveling robe back from an aching forehead and rubbed her temples a little.
"Huh. Well, I hope that damn blade of yours hasn't managed to get us knee-deep into more than we can handle. Only one way to find out, though."
The swordswoman kneed her horse into the lead, and the pair rode in through the gates after passing the cursory inspection of a somewhat nervous Gate Guard. He seemed oddly disinclined to climb down from his gatehouse post, being content to pass them through after a scant few moment's scrutiny.
Tarma's ice-blue eyes scanned the area just inside the gate for signs of trouble, and found none. Her brow puckered in puzzlement. "She'enedra, I find it hard to believe you're wrong, but this is the quietest town I've ever seen. I was expecting blood and rapine in the streets."
"I'm not mistaken," Kethry replied in a low, tense voice. "And there's something very wrong here—the very quiet is wrong. It's too quiet. There's no one at all on the streets—no beggars, no whores, no nothing."
Tarma looked about her with increased alertness. Now that Keth had mentioned it, this looked like an empty town. There were no loiterers to be seen in the vicinity of the trade gate or the inns that clustered about the square just inside it, and that was very odd indeed. No beggars, no thieves, no whores, no strollers, no street musicians—just the few stable hands and inn servants that had to be outside, leading in the beasts of fellow travelers, lighting lanterns and torches. And those few betook themselves back inside as quickly as was possible. The square of the trade inns was ominously deserted.
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