by Dave Gross
Lady Shamur's evening shawl.
Cale had never stopped listening for intruders, and he held his lamp high to spot further signs of a struggle. One of the fallen objects glittered in the dark.
It was a gray crystal sphere slightly larger than his fist. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of points reflected the lamplight through the globe's translucent body. Many of them glittered like silver filings, while others were luminous spots of color. At its center was a tiny dark sphere, its details invisible in the orange light.
Cale wasn't certain, but he thought he might have glimpsed the object among the astrological oddities his master had recently acquired. Still, there was something interesting about the sphere. Whatever it was, it probably wasn't urgent or relevant to the immediate problem. He dropped it into the side pocket of his coat.
He lifted Lady Shamur's shawl from beneath the painting. Oil had stained its edge, but Cale was relieved to see no further mark of violence upon it. Cale set it on the desk and carefully lifted the painting. There was nothing else beneath it, and it seemed undamaged. He propped it against the side of the desk and crouched for a closer look.
While Cale hadn't enjoyed the privileged upbringing of the Uskevren, he considered himself educated and not entirely untouched by culture. Still, he couldn't imagine anyone who could appreciate this unsettling landscape. The artist had skill and energy, but he must have been the very caricature of the tortured artist to produce a vision of such striking ugliness.
Still, the work was oddly compelling. Cale found himself examining its vague details for some clue… about what, he couldn't say. It was foolish to think the painting would reveal where his lord and lady had gone.
Too late, Cale sensed the danger. It was the painting that had taken Shamur and Thamalon, and it was planting some obsession in his own mind. He tried to look away, but all he could manage was to turn his chin while his eyes remained locked to the image, which began to sway.
He should have armed himself immediately upon hearing the first thunderbolt, he realized. Without his dagger in hand, he struck out at the painting with the continual flame lamp. The glass broke upon the picture frame, and Cale slashed at the canvas with the broken shards. A black line appeared on the painting, and for an instant Cale thought he'd broken its spell.
Then lightning flashed for the third time that night in Stormweather Towers, and Cale fell helplessly out of the world.
CHAPTER 5
TRANSFORMATIONS
Tamlin moaned as he awoke.
"Bleeding dark blasted damned bloody, bloody, bloody!" he croaked. He was still in the disgusting cell, and he'd been much happier about his predicament while asleep.
He'd been dreaming again, this time more pleasantly. He remembered squinting into the morning light reflected off a thousand burnished shields. He admired the deep red glow of his soldier's armor from a high palanquin, where he reclined with three fragrant maidens veiled in gossamer-thin silks. A cool breeze thrilled his skin, lifting the fine hairs on his naked legs.
In the waking world, his throat was rough and dry, and the memory of sipping cool nectar from an ivory cup did nothing to assuage his thirst.
"You wouldn't happen to have a wee little flask stashed somewhere, would you, Ratty?"
The rat had crept outside the cage. Tamlin watched as the animal sniffed cautiously at the chalk circle before recoiling. Tamlin's eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, or else the ring's faint luminescence had increased. Either way, he could make out the edges of a few barrels on one side of the chamber, as well as the outlines of what might have been a garbage chute before it was boarded shut.
The rat rose up on its hind legs, crouched, and leaped nimbly over the chalk line. Safely on the other side, the rodent scurried away.
"Clever lad," said Tamlin.
He mused for a while on the rat's powers of perception. Was the creature the familiar of his kidnapper? Was it a polymorphed incarnation of the mage himself?
Or herself, Tamlin amended.
Apart from the recently deceased Stormweather house mage, Brom Selwyn, the first three wizards Tamlin could name were all women: Helara, and the albino sisters, Ophelia and Magdon, of the Wizards' Guild. Any of them might devise a spell-or in Magdon's case, a magical gadget-that could free him from his prison for a price.
Hiring a wizard was no small expense. On the other hand, kidnapping was cheap enough and often quite profitable.
Tamlin had been kidnapped twice before. The first kidnappers lost their nerve while debating who would deliver the ransom demand to Stormweather Towers, leaving the teenaged Tamlin to be rescued a few hours later. The second group held out until the ransom arrived, then they released their captive. The villains enjoyed two nights and a day spending their coin before the Uskevren House Guard and a furious Vox caught up to them. Those who survived arrest were still rotting in the dungeons of Selgaunt's prison.
Neither of those groups had enjoyed the advantage of magic, and Tamlin imagined the expense would compound their ransom demand many times over. Despite his father's great wealth, he feared the Old Owl would think twice before paying for Tamlin's return, especially considering the terms on which they'd parted.
"Mother will make him pay," Tamlin reassured himself.
Shamur Uskevren had always doted on her children, and where Thamalon deplored his indolence, his mother adored her firstborn's easy charm and social grace. While she didn't play favorites-not obviously, anyway-Tamlin was certain she'd always loved him best of her three children.
Tamlin rose and immediately planted his elbow in a bowl of something lukewarm and wet. He tasted it on his fingers-a bland gruel bolstered with chunks of salt pork-and realized why the rodent had fled upon his waking.
Tamlin hesitated only briefly to weigh hunger against his disdain for peasant fare. Worse still, Tamlin hated to eat anything Escevar hadn't tasted for him. It was a habit born as much from superstition as from fear of poison. He'd read somewhere that wizards often cast spells on the food of their enemies.
"To the hells with it."
Tamlin spooned up the glob with two fingers. The stuff didn't taste as bad as he'd feared, but Tamlin cringed to imagine how he must look in his miserable cell with his fine clothes soiled, slurping from a bowl like some beggar. If the six dozen young women vying for his attentions in the spring socials could see him in such a state, they might prefer to marry a Baerent, a Foxmantle, or-gods help them-even a Toemalar.
Tamlin thought of the rat's whiskered snout rooting around in the food before him. While that wasn't enough to quell his famished stomach, it did give him an idea.
"Psst, Ratty," he hissed, scraping the bottom of the bowl against the stone floor.
He clicked his tongue as he used to do to summon his gyrfalcon, Honeylass. The beautiful creature had perished almost a year earlier in yet another attack on the Uskevren family.
Like Honeylass, the rat seemed more perceptive than the rest of his kind. Unlike the loyal bird, though, the rat had not been trained to trust a human master. It remained warily outside the magic circle.
Tamlin set the remains of his meal aside. If he could lure the rat back to the cage, he thought he might be able to tie a note to the creature. Assuming he emerged to scavenge on the streets at night, perhaps a passerby might spot the message and take it to Stormweather-
"What am I thinking?"
The absurdity of his plan struck Tamlin like a splash of cold water. Even if he could manage to capture the suspicious rodent, somehow manufacture writing materials, and tie a message to the squirming beast, the thought that someone would actually find it was-
"Preposterous," he muttered.
He shook his head in despair. Moments later, he brightened under a variation of his wretched plan. If he could attach a bit of the meat from his gruel to a string, then toss it across the magic circle, maybe he could erase a span and break the spell.
He tried tearing a strip of fabric from his blouse, but it was toughe
r than it appeared.
"I shall have to thank my tailor," he sneered. "If I ever get out of here."
He plucked the fertility fetish from his collar, hoping it could serve as a crude knife. Unfortunately, one glance at the ornament confirmed what he had feared. It was as dull as a spoon.
If it would not serve as a cutting edge, then perhaps the pin could become a lockpick. The silver charm consisted of a pair of blunt arrows-or what Tamlin called arrows when his more respectable acquaintances inquired. He carefully bent them apart, leaving them attached at the base and straightening them to form a more slender and fragile length of silver.
He felt outside the cage for a keyhole, then grinned when he discovered he could insert his little finger almost to the first knuckle into the opening.
"This will be easy."
Probing the lock was indeed no great challenge, but Tamlin soon discovered four different places where his makeshift pick could move some mechanism inside the lock. The problem was in moving more than one at a time.
Briefly he wished his sister were present. Since childhood, Tazi had had a talent for escaping her bedroom despite the vigilance of the staff. Tamlin had always been jealous of her ability to scale a seemingly sheer garden wall or to tease open a drawing room lock with a few hairpins.
Within a few years, Tazi gained notoriety among the household for her "wildings," nights on which she would escape the confines of Stormweather Towers for the dangerous freedom of the Oxblood Quarter or the docks. In the beginning, Tamlin would try to follow her with Vox and Escevar in tow. Even then, it didn't take Tazi long to shake her hecklers, and it had been years since they could follow her trail.
When Shamur Uskevren revealed her own secret past as a daring burglar, the rest of the family nodded and sighed, as if heredity explained it all. What it didn't explain was Tazi's sudden disappearance months earlier. At first frantic, Shamur and Thamalon calmed themselves after Songmaster Ammhaddan assured them that their daughter remained alive and free, if beyond their protection. Thamalon had wanted to launch an expedition to recover his wayward child-and Tamlin had hoped for command of the venture-before a long, private discussion between husband and wife concluded that Tazi would return on her own, when and if she willed.
Tamlin felt another pang of jealousy at his sister's freedom. If only he'd been similarly bold and had struck out on his own, he wouldn't be in his predicament.
He worked at the lock for what felt like an hour. Even on such a dull tool, he somehow managed to prick a thumb and two fingers, and his neck throbbed painfully. His cage door remained smugly fast.
Tamlin sighed heavily. He was too tired to muster a good curse. Instead, he lay back on the floor for a rest. Soon his eyes fluttered, and he teetered on the edge of sleep before a faint clicking arrested his attention.
The rat was creeping toward his cage again.
Tamlin feigned sleep. He had so much practice, he felt it was a special knack of his to keep his breathing slow and steady until a pesky servant finally gave up waking the young noble and left him dozing in his great bed. Tamlin hoped the rat wasn't much harder to trick.
When he heard the porridge bowl rock under the rat's weight, Tamlin rolled quickly over both rodent and dish. The rat wriggled and squealed, but Tamlin held it to the floor with his body while he snaked his hands under his chest to get a grip on some toothless and clawless region of the creature's body. Soon he had one hand firmly around the rat's throat and upper paws, while its lower claws made bloody stripes on his wrist.
"Loviatar's kisses!" hissed Tamlin.
Evoking the goddess of agonies made Tamlin wonder just how cruel his captors might be. He'd never understood the masochists who surrendered themselves to the Mistress of Pain, but those who inflicted her tortures on the unwilling seemed monstrous and unknowable.
He held the rat to the floor to keep it from attacking him. Though he had the thing, he wasn't quite sure what to do with it. He looked at the bowl and considered using it as a rat-sized version of his own prison. The rat might not even mind, if there was enough food left inside.
Before Tamlin decided, old iron hinges creaked, and the heavy door to the dark room opened. A pair of guards in shabby black tabards stood outside. Bits of thread curled at the outlines of emblems that had been torn from their breasts. One of them held a torch whose flame snapped like a flag. The breeze that shook the fire brought a sewer stench into the already noisome chamber.
A tall man in a long green cape swept past the guards, then gestured to them to shut the door. When they obeyed, the man unsheathed a brightly glowing glass wand.
Tamlin didn't recognize the man, but immediately knew he was a noble. He had the bearing of one who is accustomed to respect without asking for it. His golden-brown hair fell in ringlets to the shoulders of his fine linen cape, which was clasped with twin bronze raven medallions-a common icon among Selgaunt's merchants. Beneath the cape he wore a white linen doublet without ensign. The man's high boots and woolen hose were fashionable but not distinctive.
The visitor had dressed for anonymity, so Tamlin assumed his face was magically disguised as well. It wasn't unhandsome, lined by fifty years or more, and familiar to none of the famous Houses of Selgaunt. Even the man's amused smile gave Tamlin no clues as to his identity.
"My dear boy," he said with a nod toward the squirming rat. "If you are still hungry, I will have one of the men fetch you another bowl."
"Oh, do not trouble yourself," replied Tamlin. "It's just that it has been so long since I was last hunting…" He shrugged in lieu of a wittier riposte.
His captor laughed with surprising warmth. "You have always been such a charming guest, Young Master Thamalon. I hope you shall be my guest again soon, under more pleasant circumstances."
"I shall look forward to it," said Tamlin. "Yet perhaps next time I shall be your host."
"Perhaps," said the stranger. He gave Tamlin a curious look, as if suspecting his prisoner knew something more than he let on.
Tamlin wished he knew enough to take advantage of his captor's uncertainty. For lack of a clue on which to build a bluff, he asked the obvious question.
"As much as I appreciate your kind hospitality, may I inquire as to the length of my stay?"
"Ah, to the point then," said the man. "Therein lies the trouble."
At first, Tamlin didn't rise to the man's unspoken invitation to inquire. The rat spoiled his cool appearance by biting the fleshy web between his thumb and forefinger. Tamlin hissed in irritation.
"Don't tell me you sent the ransom demand to Argent Hall," he said. "Last time it took forever for my cousins to redirect the messenger."
"Droll," said the man.
He raised the glowing wand for a better look at his captive. Tamlin saw a green stone glitter on the man's finger. While nothing else about the man was familiar, Tamlin was certain he'd seen that ring before.
"Please," the stranger said, "do release that vermin. You are liable to catch some dreadful disease if it keeps biting you."
"If the Old Owl balks at your price, send your man to my mother."
Tamlin tried to smile to smooth over his hasty words. Like most of the Old Chauncel, he much preferred to talk around a subject than plunge into it, but he was sick, injured, hungry, disgusted, and disgraced beyond all tolerance. Even so, he kept his grasp on the increasingly frantic rat. If its screams annoyed his captor, so much the better.
A petty revenge is better than none, Tamlin thought. More importantly, irritation might prompt the man to reveal a clue.
No, he seems too clever for that sort of ploy. If nothing else, maybe I could throw the rat in his face.
The thought pleased him, though a fleeting pity for the animal gave him qualms.
"The ransom is considerable, but not unreasonable," said the man. His brow creased in irritation. He couldn't keep his gaze from Tamlin's hands and their unwilling occupant.
Tamlin felt relieved that his kidnapper wanted gold after all. Th
e Old Owl might balk at political extortion, but Tamlin was sure he wouldn't be niggardly with the safety of his heir.
"Perhaps my father is distracted by business matters," suggested Tamlin. "If you were to send a discreet inquiry to my-"
"I told you to let go of the Cyric-bedamned rat!" snapped his captor.
Stunned by the man's sudden hostility, Tamlin's mind raced for a disarming reply. Before one materialized, the man pulled an elaborate brass wand from his sleeve. Demonic bats and lizards crawled across its surface, and its head was an ivory skull of some tiny fanged mammal.
The man aimed the tip of the wand at the rat, and Tamlin knew better than to hold on to the struggling animal. He released the rodent and pushed as far away as the cage bars would let him. He moved just in time, as a crooked shaft of sickly yellow light shot through the bars to envelop the rat. The magical beam left a pale afterimage, like the path of lightning burned onto the eye for an instant after its strike.
The rat squealed louder than ever, writhing on the cell floor. Gleaming black buboes formed on its skin, bursting through its gray pelt to form new, wet appendages on its shoulders. Its head grew longer and thicker, and the new limbs spread wider to form translucent, batlike wings.
In seconds, Tamlin realized, the rat would be too big to escape the cage. His fear of remaining trapped with this transfigured vermin overcame his revulsion, and he lunged at the monster, pushing it out through the bars of the cage. The rat-thing screamed again, this time a deeper, more violent sound. Its black claws hooked the bars and pulled, trying to catch hold of Tamlin's flesh.
The man laughed heartily and returned the wand to its secret pocket. "We should perform this trick at the Soargyl's ball next month."
