by Sarah Remy
“Water, to ease her throat,” Mal ordered as she crossed to his side. “Keep her from tearing off her splints; I expect she’ll become violent once she realizes what we’re about. She’ll need calming. Can you do that?”
He could do it himself with a word and a twitch of magic, Avani knew, spelling the spy immobile as he woke her. He didn’t need anyone’s help. He intended only to distract Avani before her face gave them both away.
“Nay,” he said quietly but plainly. “I am better with you by my side.” It sounded like an apology, but they both knew it was too late for regret. “Are you ready?”
“Almost.” She looked past the crowd in the room to the two veteran soldiers standing on the threshold and beckoned them in. Solemn, they took up their stations again on either side of the mattress, braced to keep their patient still. “Now,” she said.
Mal shed his gloves and laid them neatly aside. The magus ring on his hand warmed to amber. He set his bare palms to either side of the spy’s face, cupping her cheeks as he might a lover’s. He spoke softly. Avani recognized the cant for summoning sorcery, meant to call a departed spirit into attendance. She hadn’t seen it worked on the living. On the dead, it was coercion, on the living it was grisly anathema.
When Mal finished speaking, the woman’s eyes snapped wide. It was a harrowing thing to witness, a body ripped from healing sleep and made at once awake and aware. Her pupils swelled and then shrunk again at an alarming rate, going from black pinpricks to near as large as her yellow irises and then back again. Her muscles protested, shaking her on the mattress. The Kingsmen held her arms immobile while she thrashed. Her teeth rattled as she shuddered.
“Ai, watch her tongue!” But as she’d suspected, Mal knew what he was doing. He pressed the woman’s jaw closed as she shook, preventing her from bloodying tongue or lip, until the seizure passed.
Avani saw the moment the agony of forced consciousness brought the woman around. The spy groaned and sat up off the pillows. Mal shifted his grip to her bare shoulders, restraining. Realization chased awareness across her face; she blinked and her pupils returned to normal. She was awake, but without her body’s consent.
“Galenos!” Her voice cracked. She struggled briefly against constraining hands then slumped, panting. Sweat sheened her brow. She shivered.
“There is a reason the body retreats to sleep when pushed past all limits,” Avani warned Renault. She reached for water, filled a small tumbler, held it to the desert woman’s mouth. “Drink,” she said. The woman took a grudging sip, enough to wet chapped lips, then turned her head away.
“It cannot be helped,” the king replied. “My scouts are returning with word of more desert wolves come over the mountain, singly or in twos and threes. They are testing our borders, learning the land. A first foray toward war, much earlier than anticipated. So you see, it is not just for the Masterhealer’s honor we must use her thusly. I need to hear what she knows. Believe you me, I take no pleasure in her suffering.” He joined Avani and Mal on the dais. “What is Galenos?”
The spy twisted her mouth in keen disgust. She looked as if she intended to spit in Renault’s face, or at Mal. But Mal’s spell was still within her, compelling, an irresistible force. Instead of spewing the vitriol as she so clearly desired, the desert woman opened her mouth and told Wilhaiim’s king what he desired to know.
“Galenos was my brother.” She spoke heavily accented king’s lingua.
“And what are you called?”
“Desma, daughter of the sand guard.”
“Where is Galenos now?”
“Dead,” she replied. Fury drained color from her face, leaving behind the hectic red spots of returning fever. “Killed and eaten by the same who brought me to you.”
“Mal,” chastened Renault.
“She speaks her truth,” Mal replied mildly. The jewel on his finger continued to glow, a merry accompaniment to the ugly magic holding Desma in thrall.
“Ask her,” prompted Tillion from the foot of the dais. “What does she know of the temple?”
Desma stared past Renault at the priest. Her breathing quickened again, becoming shallow. Then her eyes rolled up in her head and she fell back, limp. Alarmed, Avani reached for the pulse in her neck, but the Kingsmen were faster, shouldering Avani to one side just as Desma came off the mattress. Mute, muscles coiled until they stood taut under her tattooed flesh, she fought the soldiers forcing her prone her even as she battled Mal’s mastery.
“Have a care!” Orat shouted at the Kingsmen. “We need her whole!”
Whole, thought Avani, was exactly what Desma would never be again. The woman beat her broken hands against the mattress despite the soldiers’ attempts to keep her from harm. Desma welcomed the pain, embraced it as a harbinger of death, as an escape from violation.
“Stop!” Avani told Mal, dodging past the Kingsmen. She grabbed Mal’s wrists, tried to wrest his hands from Desma’s face. But a third Kingsman dragged her away, apologizing as he pulled her back. Avani brought up her knee but the soldier blocked her strike. Catching her arm up behind her back, he forced her still. It was the first time Renault’s soldiers had treated her with anything but respect, and the shock of it rendered her breathless.
“If you die,” Mal told Desma, ignoring the commotion in the room, “I am duty bound to bring your shade back. Again and again, until you have answered His Majesty’s questions. Living or dead, you will not win this.”
“Monster,” Desma whispered. She collapsed again onto the mattress, beaten. Avani’s dressing had come loose from her hands. The cooper’s boards were broken. One of the old soldiers lay across her thighs. The second held his forearm against her windpipe. Mal, implacable, cupped her chin.
“I am,” Mal agreed, “a fine honed weapon, and one far beyond your ken. Now speak.”
“It was a sham,” she replied hoarsely. “Your priest wanted mercy for his temple in return for his service.” Her grin was a rictus, savagery directed past Mal and Renault at the theists behind. “It was the work of a summer, his diplomacy. Pretty words and pretty gifts sent up the mountain, all for the sake of sparing his robed brothers.”
“What service?” Orat demanded.
“Living so long amongst farmers has made you soft,” she accused the theist. “You have forgotten the courage of your desert forefathers.” She took a halting breath. “We meant to kill you anyway. Mercy is a flatlander concept. We will kill you, and when we take the white city we’ll have the priest’s gold as our own.”
Renault turned abruptly away. Orat braced as if he’d suffered a physical blow. Tillion’s whispers had grown to mutterings, he gripped his staff with both hands as he called on the one god for forgiveness. The Kingsman’s breath stuttered in Avani’s ear. Her arm, twisted back and up against her spine, was beginning to go numb. The sickness that had struck her when the king’s party first entered Mal’s chambers threatened again. She thought she might vomit.
“Desma,” Mal said, “tell me. What service did the Masterhealer do the desert?”
Desma fought him as best she could. She was sand stock, born to wind and sun, scorning compassion and unafraid of death. Had it been a fair fight, she might have won. But Mal didn’t skirmish with sword or spear. He took her mind, flaying knowledge from hidden places, exposing truths irrelevant and pertinent. Desma, who had no experience with sorcery, couldn’t conceive of how to keep him back. Avani felt the woman’s shame and despair as she failed beneath his onslaught, gave up everything to his demand.
“Smashed like your bowl, turned over until there’s nothing left worth saving,” Cleena had said of the damage done to Halwn’s kin. “At least we kill your people cleanly.”
“Mal?” Renault barked, impatient.
“Horses,” Desma said, throat working. Green sparks fell from the tips of Mal’s fingers. The soldiers, pale-faced, snuffed the sparks one at a time before they could set bedcovers alight. Tillion crossed himself shoulder-to-shoulder and throat to groin before f
alling on his knees in supplication. Orat stood amongst his slack-jawed priests, hunched.
“Strings and strings of ponies, led over the pass by this priest or that. Supplies, so we would not starve. Water, so we would not thirst.” She gasped, groaned, and gasped again. “And the key! They gave us the key! The key to open the demon gates kept locked against invasion. We will rise up and—”
Mal silenced her with a twist of magic. She sagged on the mattress, eyes rolling in her head. Brother Orat had put his hand on the wall to keep from falling.
“We’re doomed,” he said. “May Paul rot; he’s doomed us all for the sake of his pride.”
Chapter 9
Three sturdy coastal ponies of the sort the sidhe had stolen from Galenos and his small party crested the west side of the cauldron near the tower. Four riders sat astride the ponies, looking as unsuited to their stout mounts as Everin had been. Horses of any sort were almost unheard of east of the mountain divide. Horses could not tolerate the desert’s extreme temperatures or paucity of water. Instead tribes domesticated large, three-toed animals they called camels. Everin had ridden his share of camels in travel and during battle. He’d also seen a fine flatland stallion slaughtered for meat when the warrior who had won the animal in a game of dice decided the beautiful, high-strung beast was not worth the cost of upkeep.
“Desma!” The foremost rider, a lithe young woman with a bow strapped to her back and a long, fringed veil over her nose and mouth, whooped as she kicked her pony down into the bowl, racing along the lakeshore toward Everin and Drem. A lad no older than five or six rode behind her, clutching the back of her kilt for balance. The child was naked but for a loin-wrap and sandals. “You’re alive! Bless!”
“Of a certain I am,” Drem replied in the desert tongue. Drem’s spear dug painfully into Everin’s side, an admonishment. The magic that turned the lesser sidhe into the desert woman’s twin through the bit of cord and stolen hair would provide Drem some insight into its role as doppelganger, but aside from language and a few, hazy, stolen memories, Drem’s success relied on Drem’s wits.
A lucky thing, Everin thought, as his own seemed to have fled in the face of a few desert snakes on fat coastal ponies, and he was unable to do more than stare at the approaching riders. But also concerning, for although the sidhe made regular study of mortals, the desert was outside their province.
The riders pulled up in front of Drem. The ponies’ hooves scattered scree. Their leader wore a look of exasperated concern. Her grown companions, two men of—from the scant feathers in their hair and on their vests—low rank, watched impassively from the backs of their mounts. Spears and curved blades they had in plenty. Flaccid water skins hung from their saddles. One of the ponies had a twig of flatland scrub tangled in its blond tail.
A scouting party in truth, Everin thought.
“We were concerned when we found only corpses at the gathering place. What has happened?” The warrior and her small companion leaned forward, eyeing Everin through identical yellow eyes. “And what have you got there?”
“It went wrong.” Drem twisted its spear until Everin grunted. “Galenos is dead, murdered. And the others.”
There was silence, but for the wind above the edge of the cauldron whistling against the guard tower. The sky was growing dark. In the lake, something splashed. The lad stuck a fist in his mouth. The riders stared at Drem, mute.
“I killed them all,” the sidhe continued calmly. “The priests, for their betrayal. It was a fine blood sacrifice. The ground ran red. Galenos would be pleased. I killed all but this one, he who dared end Galenos.”
“The priests?” One of the men sputtered. “The priests killed Biton and Deon? Iros? The priests carry no weapons—they are cowards.”
The Aug’s sword still hung on Everin’s belt, stuck now beneath his hip. He thought he could reach it in time to unhorse the closest rider. Mayhap the closest two. But the sand snakes were armed and wary. And the lad, now grinning toothlessly, was problematic. Everin wasn’t a child-killer. Drem might be.
“Disguised as priests, but not all priests in truth,” lied Drem. Any other time, Everin might have appreciated the irony. “Underneath their robes, some were like this one. Dangerous.” Drem kicked Everin forcefully in the thigh.
The second silence weighed heavier than the first. The child gurgled. Everin counted weapons: three scimitars, two spears, and the small but powerful-looking bow on the woman’s back.
“We found the remains of a demon on the trail. One of the sidhe beasts.” The man could not quite make his mouth fit Tuath vowels. “Trampled into the mud like so much dung.”
Drem said nothing.
“What weapon is that,” asked the woman, “in your hand, Desma? Where is your sword?”
Shit, thought Everin. Drem’s spear was pointed bronze on a wooden shaft, clear even in the fading light. It was not a desert weapon, nor even a flatlander’s iron pike. He braced himself.
“Mine was lost,” Drem replied, unmoved. “In the slaughter.”
“Lydus,” snapped the leader. On her order one of the warriors stretched forward, offering his own curved sword to Drem. Steel glinted. It was a lovely piece of craftsmanship: embroidered horses ran the length of the silk wrapped pommel and, engraved, onto the blade.
Even Faolan’s magic could not protect Drem from the threat of iron.
Drem refused the blade.
“Flatlander sorcery. Kill them,” the warrior said, triumphant. She plucked free her bow and nocked an arrow with a speed that rivaled sidhe haste. The child clutched her middle. Her arrow struck the rocky ground where an instant before Drem had been standing. She snarled at the bounding sidhe. “Desma and Galenos pledged to die as they were born: together. She would never walk away from his corpse. Whatever you are, you are not our Desma.”
By the time Everin rolled to his feet, sword drawn, the one called Lydus was already unhorsed, Drem’s spear through his chest, heart’s blood running along the slope toward the lake. Drem, weaponless, dodged the second man’s attack, ducking down and around the startled pony, which snorted affront but did not spook.
Iridescent fletching whistled through the air. Everin rolled in time to avoid a volley of arrows. He came up in front of the snake and her lad, grabbing at the thin saddle. She rode the pony in the way she might a camel, without stirrups for balance. She kicked at him as he clung, dropping her bow and reaching for the gleam of steel on her belt. The child began to cry. Everin could not make himself cut her down; the Aug’s sword was useless in his hand.
“Tá sí ár n-namhaid,” Drem shouted. She is our enemy. The lesser sidhe moved on the edge of Everin’s vision, inhuman speed turning the Desma masquerade grotesque. “Bhaint amach a ceann!” Strike off her head!
The warrior looked into Everin’s face as he clung to her stocky mount. She laughed. “Fool,” she said, and brought her dirk down.
He let go at the last second, sliding in scree. The pony, stumbling, struck him a glancing blow on the thigh where Drem had so recently kicked him. He swore. When he sat upright, the woman and her child were galloping away down the mountain, the pony’s tail flagging as it maneuvered the steep trail.
“You,” said Drem, coming to squat at his side, bloodied spear again in hand, “would have made a laughable king. Faolan did the flatlanders a favor in negotiating your exile.”
Everin looked at the two men who now lay dead on the rocks in the gathering shadow. Their mounts, nonchalant, nosed dangerously close to the necromancers’ black vine.
“She’s gone for aid,” he guessed, rising and sheathing his sword. “Time to move.” Limping, he approached one of the dead men. “Help me strip him.”
Everin rolled the warrior’s kilt and vest and sandals into a bundle and tucked it under his arm. He retrieved the heavy veil from around the man’s neck then grabbed the horse-etched scimitar from the ground.
“You’ll need that.” He indicated a feather-hung spear. “Your own won’t do once we’
re below. I’ll carry it for the nonce. And also the lens, and the veil, there, from her head. We’ll want it all, I think.”
Drem complied without comment, snatching up the steel-tipped spear and tossing it Everin’s way. Thus laden, Everin stepped over the eastern edge of Skerrit’s Pass and onto the mountain. Drem followed. The trailhead had not changed since last Everin stepped upon it. Wide enough for a single horse pulling a tinker’s cart, a camel hauling a bundled tent, or two men side by side, it pitched straight down the side of the mountain. An uninformed traveler might balk at the precarious course and look for a more gradual way down the cliff face but Everin knew better. Repeated use over time had culled loose rock and pitfalls from the path; scorpions, serpents, and boar tended to avoid places regularly tainted with human spoor. And the mountain to either side of the trail was unreliable, subject to rockslides and hidden fissures.
The dullahan had not been wrong. Any wayfarer so foolish as to step off the trail was likely to meet a precipitous end.
“And when she returns with companions?” asked Drem. “What then?”
“It will be full dark very soon.” Already Everin had to step warily. The worn path was becoming a stripe of silver in flat black. “Time is on our side. Even once the moon rises, they won’t dare the mountain. We’re not worth the risk. A man on these cliffs after sunset? He risks reliable death.”
“Reliable death,” echoed Drem, dry. “Have you no fear of falling, yourself?”
“Unless I have forgotten: sun or moon, it makes no difference to the people of the mounds.”
“You have not forgotten,” replied the sidhe. “We prefer the dark to the light, and blame the flatlanders for it.”
“Blame can be shifted.” Everin waved a hand. “Go on ahead, then. I’m trusting you to keep me safe.”
