by Barb Hendee
Leesil hissed under his breath. He, Magiere, and Chap should have taken these guards down in two breaths, and with far less racket. The only fortune was that neither guard had been able to draw a sword. From his crouch, he swerved around behind the maid. When she opened her mouth wide to shout, he had no choice and struck the back of her head with the butt of his stiletto. The tray clattered out of her grip to the floor, and he caught the maid under the arms and lowered her down.
Chap had one guard pinned. Magiere had pulled her hair free and now grappled with the other.
"Leesil, go!" she called to him. "Get to Darmouth. I'll find you."
Leaving her in this or all places wasn't something he'd ever imagined doing. But it was his only choice.
The corridor was open before him, and he ran cautiously in a half-crouch. He knew part of the main floor well enough, and there would be few places to hide. When he reached the end of the long south corridor and entered the alcove, he crawled forward to scan the wide entryway. There was no one about, and he hurried to the nearer archway. Flic meal hall was empty, and he ducked inside.
His thoughts drifted for an instant to what Emel had said.
He'd called his mother "Lady Nein'a," seen with nobles and officers here in this keep. Leesil had wondered in his youth why she was required at Darmouth's few evening events. Had his father known all along? Only a naive boy wouldn't have imagined…
"What-Lady Progae is gone? And what breach? Make sense!"
Lees saw no one in the entryway, but Darmouth's deep voice carried from inside the council hall across the way. His grip tightened on the stiletto.
For all the years since he'd heard that voice, it sank him into all the shadows of his past. He closed his eyes tight, then snapped them open again when memories leaped at him from the dark in his own mind.
He would do this. He would save Darmouth from the Anmaglahk.
"Where is Faris?" Darmouth boomed. "Where is that useless trash? Find him!"
As if to answer this question, Leesil heard the entryway's doors swing open. He glanced around the archway's side.
Faris entered, wild-eyed and half-mad with anger, and behind him was a woman who resembled him closely. She panted, looking panicked. The two hurried toward the council hall, and Leesil stayed low, still watching. Faris paused short of the archway, seeming to prepare himself to face Lord Darmouth.
A distant shout echoed from the south corridor, and Faris turned.
Leesil ducked back. If these two followed that sound… He looked back carefully.
Faris and Ventina were gone. Leesil heard running footsteps fade down the south corridor, headed straight for Magiere and Chap.
All Leesil's instincts screamed at him to go back to them.
"I want the mongrel Mondyalitko and his bitch found!
Darmouth's voice echoed across the entryway, and Leesil pulled back into hiding.
The only way Chap could silence his adversary was to rip the man's throat out, but he hesitated. Killing made the predator instincts of his animal body rise up. It was unsettling, and he needed to remain aware of all around him. The soldier he had pinned kept swearing and swinging, and Chap ducked and snapped at the man's face.
Emel appeared at Chap's side, and smashed the hilt of his straight saber down on the soldier's forehead. The man dropped unconscious, and Chap wheeled away toward Magiere.
He grew anxious the instant he saw her.
Her irises were black, and it seemed her nails had lengthened. The soldier she fought looked openly horrified. Magiere sank her fingernails into his hauberk and slung him sideways into the corridor wall. Before he could right himself, she rushed in. She punched him so hard in the face that his head slammed back into the stone wall. The shortsword toppled from his grip as he slumped down to the floor.
"Magiere?" Emel said, stepping toward her. "Are you all right?"
Chap advanced quickly as Emel looked into Magiere's face. The baron had seen her change at the lake while diving in the icy water. But here, up close, she was a disturbing sight to anyone who did not know what she was.
Magiere breathed hard, and Chap wished he had time to give her calming memories he had gathered from her thoughts over the years. He heard footsteps down the corridor and looked.
Faris appeared with Ventina on his heels.
"You?" Faris snapped at the sight of Magiere.
Chap growled. These two had expected to find someone else here. Faris eyed Emel, and his expression filled with contempt.
"I knew your head would end up on a spike," he said. "No one sincere can grovel that well. Where has your consort taken my daughter?"
Ventina stepped close behind Paris, and her voice cracked with hysteria. "Where is she, Emel?"
"I do not know," Emel answered. "I came for Hedi."
Faris shook his head slowly. Your lord and master will clear that foggy memory. Move toward the counsel hall!"
"I don't think so," Magiere said.
Chap sidestepped in front of Magiere, hearing her breath coming hard. She was fighting for self-control, and there was nothing he could do to help her. He kept his eyes on Darmouth's servants. Anyone unarmed who gave orders so easily made him wary.
The first ripple passed through Ventina's flesh.
Her face darkened as short brown-black hairs sprouted across it. She dropped to all fours. Hands and feet swelled, and fingers shortened into heavy paws with sharp claws. Her shoulders arched, filling out until her shirt and dress split. Faris writhed and changed beside her.
Chap heard Magiere's falchion slide from its sheath. He now faced two great predator cats taller than himself. They were black in color, but wherever the hallways brazier light touched them, their fur shimmered a deep brown. Their large eyes were the same hue as their fur, and the only way Chap could tell them apart was by Faris's one missing ear. For an instant, they stood like two sentinel statues blocking the passage, then Faris snarled, exposing yellow-white teeth and long fangs. A yowl of rage rolled out of his throat and reverberated off the stone walls. It struck Chap's ear like the combined roll of thunder and the crack of lightning splitting the air.
"Into the stairwell!" Emel shouted, backing up. "Get behind the door."
Ventina roared, and Chap whirled, trying to shove Magiere back. Magiere ran for the door. She shot through it, and Chap followed.
Emel tried to slam the door closed. It bucked against him before he finished, and Chap ducked aside as the baron pitched backward, nearly knocking Magiere down the stairs.
"Down! Down!" Emel yelled.
Magiere descended, taking the steps three at a time. As they rushed into the lower corridor, Chap ducked into an archway along the passage and whirled about, looking for Emel.
The baron ran down the corridor toward Chap, and then he pitched sharply forward to sprawl on the stone floor.
Faris crouched atop him. Out of the dark passage, Ventina leaped over her mate. Her front paws touched down, and she swerved through the first archway toward Magiere.
Chap let his canine nature take hold. He bared his teeth and lunged forward into Faris's snarling face.
Darmouth couldn't remember a night of so much stupidity. Even Omasta had failed him, and he was one of the few to whom Darmouth gave his full trust. The raid on Byrd's inn found the place empty. Now some lack-beard guard from the bridge burst in with a muddled message of escaped prisoners and a breach of the keep.
"What-Lady Progae is gone?" Darmouth shouted. "And what breach? Make sense!"
The young man cowered, lowering his eyes. "Faris came running out to see if we'd admitted or released anyone. I told him Devid brought in that count and his manservant, but they never came back out. When Devid came out, he rushed off into the city, saying that you'd sent for him.
"How, if I'm still here?" Darmouth asked, and his voice grew louder in frustration, "Where is Faris? Where is that useless trash? Find him!"
Omasta stepped to the hall's archway, looking out. "My lord, if the keep i
s breached, we must get you to safety."
"No-I want Andraso," Darmouth growled. "That outlander and his servant are the only breach here. Andraso must be working with the hunter, and Emel will answer for it. And Devid will be crows' food on the city wall!"
Darmouth pushed past Omasta toward the archway. A bestial roar and hiss echoed through the keep from the south corridor.
Omasta raised his arm in front of Darmouth. "My lord, please. If Faris… He wouldn't take such action inside the keep, in plain sight, without great need. We must get you to safety."
Omasta's concern did move Darmouth. It was the reason he'd never punished his lieutenant, even when the man faltered. And his bastard son's failures were rare. Omasta was sensible and skilled, like his sire.
"Take six more men oft" the keep walls," Darmouth said. "You'll need them."
"And you will let me secure you away?" Omasta insisted. "In time! Now call those guards."
When Westiel felt certain he was safe from discovery, he silently stepped down the stairway behind the counsel hall's tapestry. The wolfhounds followed.
At the bottom was an opening covered by a heavy cloth. He touched it, realized it was the backside of another tapestry, and let his senses reach beyond the fabric. He detected nothing living beyond and lifted the tapestry aside. The hounds trotted out ahead of him.
Welstiel stood in an empty room with a door in the far wail. I here was only an old wooden chair and a table strewn with broken quills. The tapestry was too faded and worn to make out anything but the oak-leaf pattern along its border. Then he heard snarls and cries, and the roar of a predator.
Welstiel reached the door and slid open its metal peephole shutter to look out. He tensed at the scream of a raging cat. It took two blinks to truly grasp what he saw.
Magiere rolled across a stone floor between stacked crates and barrels, tangled with an enormous brown-black cat. Lees was nowhere in sight, but to the right through a set of archways, Chap lunged into a second feline. The two animals tumbled off the back of Baron Milea.
Welstiel looked back to Magiere.
She snarled as savagely as the beast that grappled with her. One upper arm bled through claw tears in her wool sleeve beneath the hauberk. She had abandoned her sword and stabbed at the cat with a dagger. The cat thrashed so rapidly it countered every swing of her blade.
The baron regained his feet but looked unsteady.
Welstiel could lose Magiere here and now, but he could not allow himself to be seen. He looked about the room for anything he might use, and his gaze fell upon the wolfhounds.
They might not last, but they could give Magiere time and advantage.
Welstiel focused, calling upon the dogs' dormant predator nature. That latent ancestry lay suppressed beneath generations of domestication, but some spark of the beast buried within them was necessary for his effort to work.
He built an image of the great cats in his own mind. One hound bared its teeth with a growl, and the other quivered as it inched toward him.
Welstiel ducked behind the door as he pulled it open, and the hounds rushed through.
Hunger burned strength into Magiere, and instinct was all that kept her dodging Ventina's quick and fluid strikes. Each time Magiere lashed out with the dagger, Ventina's muscles shifted rapidly, and the cat aimed another slash of her claws.
Magiere heard Chap's snarls, but Paris yowled with equal rage from beyond the storage room's archways.
She twisted right on the floor, as Ventina slammed a large paw down toward her face, then whipped back and stabbed for the cat's throat. Her dagger sank into Ventina's shoulder, and the cat squalled in pain. Magiere rolled free, scrambling to her knees with the dagger poised. Ventina tried to lunge, but her foreleg wouldn't hold, and she stumbled.
Growls rang out behind Magiere, and she glanced toward the sound.
Two wolfhounds rushed between stacked crates, and despair crippled Magiere's rage. She heaved herself backward to her feet.
Emel was up again, and Magiere shouted, "Watch Chap's back!"
She steeled herself as the lead hound charged toward her. It barreled straight into Ventina, and the second dog leaped to the top of a wide crate. As Ventina roared and twisted about at her new attacker, the second hound leaped from the crate toward Paris.
Magiere hesitated in confusion.
Ventina's hindquarters became exposed when she turned on the hound, and Emel stepped in, straight saber gripped two-handed. He rammed the blade through her back.
Its point came out the bottom of her rib cage. She squalled and crumpled to thrash wildly upon the floor.
Magiere rushed out the nearest archway into the passage. Faris faced both Chap and the second wolfhound, but Magiere saw no way to join in the narrow space. Chap looked as feral as he had the day at the Stravinan border. He snapped like a wild animal.
The wolfhound had landed behind Faris, and the cat was boxed between the two dogs. It clamped its jaws on Faris's hind leg. As the cat twisted back to snap at the hound, Chap lunged in. His teeth closed on Faris's throat just below his jaw, and Chap thrashed his head wildly.
Blood spattered the wall and floor as Faris's throat tore away. Chap leaped to the side, the silver fur of his face stained red and dripping.
Faris's panicked yowl ended in strangled choking. He collapsed, squirming, with the wolfhound still tearing at his leg.
Magiere saw Faris's fur begin to recede.
His body writhed within his skin as if another form hid within it and struggled to emerge. Fur on his head grew to dark hair as his one ear slipped down the side of his elongating head. The more he changed, the feebler his movements became.
Faris's naked body lay dead before Magiere, with the torn muscle and sinew of his throat still leaking blood across the stone floor.
"Stop," Magiere shouted at the wolfhound.
Her voice sounded clear to her own ears, and her teeth had shifted halfway back to normal. With the change came returning fatigue and a burning ache in her left arm where she'd been clawed.
Someone coughed.
Magiere stepped through the archway toward the strangled weeping among the crates and barrels. Ventina had changed as well and lay naked with Emel's blade through her back. She tried to gasp air while tears ran down her face.
This wasn't what Magiere had wanted, and she knelt down at Ventina's side. These people were slaves just as Leesil had been. Emel knelt beside her, his expression troubled.
Ventina grabbed Magiere's forearm, glaring up with a strange mix of panic and lingering hate. "Korey…" she choked out, and her eyes shifted to Emel. "You know what he'll do to her."
Emel sagged with a slow sigh. "I will protect your daughter, as best I can."
Ventina's breathing slowed as she stared wide-eyed up at Emel. When her breath stopped altogether, her eyes remained open. Her grip was still tight on Magiere's arm, and Magiere went numb, peeling the dead fingers away.
"Are you badly hurt?" Emel asked.
"I'm all right." The slashes were bleeding but not deep, and she would heal quickly enough.
"Look away," he said. "I have to free my sword."
If he had any idea what horrors Magiere had witnessed in her life, he would never have said such a thing to her. Magiere found his strange chivalry curious. He jerked the blade free of Ventina's body with a sickening wet sound.
Something nudged Magiere's side. She looked around 10 Chap's blood-soaked face. The sight no longer bothered her as it once had, and she stood up.
"We have to find Leesil."
Chap barked once.
"Hide the bodies first," Emel said. "Even with the blood here, it's best their deaths are not discovered too soon."
For the first time Magiere could remember, a sweet coppery scent filled her head. Her gaze shifted to the red pool spreading around Ventina's corpse. The sight made the smell even sharper, but there was no time to ponder why this new awareness plagued her now.
Both wolfhounds had ceased
growling and trotted back toward the far end of the storage area. Magiere ignored them and helped Emel drag Faris and Ventina through the last of the three doors at the room's back. She sheathed her dagger, picked up her falchion, and followed Chap to the south stairway with Emel close behind.
Welstiel put a hand to his face in quiet relief. Magiere's injuries were minimal. There was nothing more he could do at the moment to drive her from this place. He watched quietly until he was certain that she and her companions were gone, then slipped out to follow. He ignored the wolfhounds and crept up the south staircase.
The door at the top was closed, and he crouched upon the landing. With his senses fully open, he picked up voices as far away as the keep's wide entryway. This was as good a place as any to wait for opportunity. He had yet to drive Magiere from this land.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hedi stared at the pale man crouched over Wynn, his hands wet with the soldier's blood. Her stomach still lurched from what she had seen him do. She tried not to shake as she held the dagger out at him.
He looked familiar, but she could not think of where she had seen him. The cloak he wore was well-made, and his even features were distorted in a feral expression. He might have been handsome, if not for the predator's crouch on all fours. Hedi did not trust handsome men.
"Do you still wish to live?" he rasped.
His words were little more than a harsh whisper, as if injury or illness had crippled his voice.
"Who are you?" she whispered back, trying to be both quiet and forceful. "What do you want with her?"
He glanced down at Wynn. When he looked up again, Hedi' felt cold. His strangely beautiful eyes were like crystallized ice.
"You are Lady Hedi Progae," he rasped, merely stating a fact. "You seek to escape from the lower level of this keep. An innkeeper named Byrd is to wait for you on the lake's far side. I suspect you assume Baron Milea will be there as well."
Hedi' lowered the dagger only an inch. "Are you with Byrd? Did he send you?"
Such contempt crossed the man's face that her hope died instantly. She backstepped, trying to keep fear from overcoming her wits.
