“Will you stay inside, sweetling? I’ll give you a signal.”
“Wait.” She clutched at him. “He may be a fool, but he controls a drogger. It’s sitting under us.”
“Under us?” He checked the bane witch who was scanning his wards. When Mannemous nodded, Sverr ground his teeth. “He’s not playing fair. When did you sense it?”
“Not long before you came in. It’s just hunched in on itself, waiting.”
“You can sense that much?” His grip on her arms tightened.
“I can talk to him. Not ‘talk’, but—.”
“I get it. How tightly is he leashed?”
“He’s impatient. He’s straining at it.”
“So, I was wrong,” the old man said. “I’ve new tricks to learn yet. We can’t attack, Norther. He’ll unleash the drogger.”
“Corrie, sweetling, my Lyse Oyne, can you take control from him? Keep it from attacking? It will throw them off just enough.”
“What are you thinking?” the bane witch asked.
“We can use this troop. They may be our way into Hardraste. An official escort.”
Mannemous snorted again. “If they don’t kill us.”
“What are you saying?”
The ground-troll heaved, and they stumbled as the dirt floor shifted beneath him. No go. Stay. Wait. Wizard told me.
“The drogger,” she said faintly. “I have it, not him.”
“Good. Our first shift, to unbalance them. We’ll use this troop to get to Hardraste and into the castle. We won’t have to fight our way in. We’ll walk into the Prime’s domain with official sanction.”
“But I’ll be a prisoner.”
“They will think you’re a prisoner, just as we planned, Corrie. You were going to be my prisoner to exchange for Brom. This way, we don’t have to negotiate an exchange and then try to find a way back inside. We go in, wanting the bounty for you.”
“The Prime will kill you first, if this troop doesn’t.”
“No, this will work, sweetling.”
“We’ll make it work,” Mannemous chimed in, “even if they refuse the exchange. Between Sverr and myself, we can locate Brom and free him.”
“You still must remove any seal. That’s hours I will be in Enstigorr’s hands.” When Sverr cupped her face, she thought he would see the bright fear in her eyes.
“It was going to be hours to begin with, Corrie. Exchange you for Brom, remove his seal, then go in to get you. This way we’re in. The Prime has no reason not to pay us.”
Reach up now.
No. Wait. On my word, not that other.
“Corrie—.”
“What will you say when the Prime asks how you caught me when his troops could not? How will you explain that his seal on me is gone?”
Mannemous cleared his throat. “We’ll claim to know nothing about a seal. And catching you was easy. Sverr followed you after you burned the inn. With my help he got the binding cords on you.”
“Enough of the truth so it hides the lie.”
“The Prime will not care,” she warned. “If he doesn’t kill you outright, he will chuck you into a cell to deal with later. After he’s finished with me.”
The bane witch huffed. “Credit me with some sense, lass. I have a way with locks.”
From outside came a shout. “Ho! You in the cabin. By order of Lord Hardraste, come out.”
Reach up now.
No, Corrie snapped, wait. You attack now, and trouble you’ll cause. Wait for my word. Did I not tell you?
She said wait. She says go now.
I am stronger.
The troll pushed at her then subsided. Stronger, yes. Wait.
“Time to move,” Sverr said.
“I don’t like this plan,” she said hurriedly.
“You didn’t like the other one either, sweetling. Being the bait is never easy.”
“What if you can’t find Brom? What if you find him, but you can’t remove the seal and thus Enstigorr’s influence?”
“Hardraste does not wait!” came the shout. “Come out now!”
“It’s a fluid plan,” Sverr reassured her. “We’ll change it as we need to. Now, be ready,” and he stepped onto the threshold.
Mannemous gripped her arm. “You must look firmly in our control, Corrie. They must think you completely defeated by the cords you wear.”
They could hear Sverr talking, but Corrie couldn’t concentrate on his words. The drogger wanted its destruction. On a level so deep it reached into instinct, she battled with the troll, bargained with it, promising destruction but not now, not here. A castle. Stout stone walls. A challenge.
No. Now, and it reached.
She hauled him back, power as her leash. No. Later. Stone walls. A square keep. A tower with many cells below. A challenge worthy of you. And you will have the name of pulling it down. You will be known for pulling this castle down.
She had him; she could feel it flex, like a youth’s display of muscle. Then its eagerness faded. No name.
What?
Drogger no name. Just Drogger. Troll.
She stood, stumped stupid, as Mannemous and Sverr bargained with the troop. The drogger had no name? No one had ever thought it needed a name? It had never realized it needed a name?
“We deserve the bounty,” Mannemous claimed. “We don’t need your help to get her back to Hardraste.”
“Our find. Our reward—unless you can pay us now,” Sverr said stubbornly.
“Back off, Norther. You think the Prime wizard will pay you? Corrie!” a young woman called. “Come here! I can help you.”
She turned her head to listen to the ground troll. It waited on her.
I will give you a name, she said, as recklessly as she had offered Hardraste Castle for its destruction. You are Drogger Stone Destroyer, for you will tear down the castle that the fragile humans built of stone.
Drogger Stone-Destroyer, it tasted the words.
I command you to do this, this castle and no other, Drogger Stone Destroyer.
Go now.
Not yet. You must wait for me, for my signal.
More wait. Dissatisfaction layered the grinding thoughts.
There are wizards there. They guard the place. I must distract them while you do your work. Do you agree?
It grunted.
You partner with a wizard, Stone Destroyer. I am the wizard Corrie. You are not leashed by me. We work together.
It thought about that offer as long as she had over its name. The emotion that pulsed back became a surging satisfaction. Drogger Stone Destroyer works with Wizard Corrie. Together.
And it rolled from beneath her feet, a massive force as big as a boulder and just as deadly.
When she drew back to focus in the upper world, she realized the argument was over. One of the guards, dismounted, led their horses and Mannemous’ mule toward them. A brass-buttoned officer and a heavily cloaked woman crunched over the snow toward them.
“Can we trust this bargain?” Mannemous muttered.
“Don’t turn your back on them. We’ll take turns at watch.” Sverr hooked her elbow and dragged her forward as if she were a reluctant prisoner.
Which I am supposed to be, she reminded herself.
“Have you drugged her, Norther? The Corrie I knew was never this quiet.”
“A calming sedative in her tea,” the bane witch said mildly.
The young woman dragged off a glove then snapped her fingers in Corrie’s face. “Corrie. Corrie! Focus.”
She made herself blink again, more slowly, after the betraying flinch at the fingersnap. “Do I know you?” she asked dully, as if she didn’t remember her one-time cellmate in Enstigorr’s prison.
“We were together at Hardraste last spring. I’m Katya.”
“Katya,” she murmured. “We escaped. From the Prime. Greiss died.”
The younger wizard shoved her hand back into her glove. “You will not give her anymore of that tea. She is as drugged as a pappasoom smoker. Enstigorr is righ
t. We are all stronger when we are linked with him. We go,” she said to the officer and stalked back to their horses.
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
They treated Corrie like glass, evidence of how Enstigorr valued her, and she had the difficult task of pretending to wake form the drugged tea. She began the pretended fight against the cords at noon and kept at it until Mannemous rode up beside her and snapped, “Stop it. No one is going to take those cords off you.”
She gave him her best scowl and pretended not to see the captain watching her closely.
Sverr had no conversation with her, but he was first there to help her dismount.
“You can let the guards help her,” Katya told him when they stopped in the early afternoon. She had ridden beside him since mid-morning. Chatting him up, Corrie realized and burned with unexpected and unrepentant jealousy.
“My investment,” Sverr countered. “Don’t want her injured before we get paid.”
And tracking with them was the drogger. It stayed miles distant, sometimes to the west with its cold steppe, a few times ahead of them, but usually behind them. It had no liking for Katya and wanted to stay beyond her range of power. How it knew Katya’s range Corrie didn’t know and didn’t think the drogger had the words to explain. It kept contact with her, though, occasionally reaching out with a curiously gentle nudge when she had not sent it a thought for a while.
She learned it had no concept of day and night, just light and dark. It knew the moon but not the sun. It had no numbers. Repeatedly telling it to hold up a finger was the only way to give it the number of days before they reached Hardraste Castle.
It responded to that information slowly. Long away, it finally said.
You need a challenge. Farmers’ houses are too easy.
It grumbled.
Corrie gratefully sank onto a rocky outcropping as the guards moved without orders to set up camp. Katya flirted with Sverr. Mannemous argued with the captain.
She had a few rare moments when no one’s attention was on her, and she tried to spell a little warmth into her chosen rock. Just as she basked in the success, the drogger grumbled again.
You need a challenge, she repeated. Stone walls are much harder to destroy than huts of mud and wood. You must plan how to take down stone walls.
Push up, it retorted.
Aye. But these walls go far and are spread apart. The castle is not like a farmer’s house. There will be many walls.
It rumbled without words, or perhaps she didn’t have those troll words. Then it said, Much work.
You must have a deed worthy of your name. An act that many will speak of for a long while.
Get help. More droggers.
The last thing she wanted was more ground-trolls attacking. Then they will share your name, she countered. You will not be the only Stone Destroyer. There will be many with that name.
Many have that name?
If you get help from them, aye.
Stone Destroyer. Be only Stone Destroyer.
To be the only Stone Destroyer, you must do it alone. I will prevent the wizards from attacking you. If you stay underground, the fragile humans cannot attack you with their swords and arrows.
Pointy metals. Hurts. Drogger bleeds.
Destroy the walls from underground, and they cannot hurt you with their pointy metals. Destroy this alone, and be worthy of a name.
Stone Destroyer.
It liked its name, that was certain.
Stone Destroyer, it repeated. She could swear that sound of skittering of rocks was the ground-troll’s version of excitement. Go feed now.
Aye. Build up your strength. Wait, what are you going to eat?
Its sound could only be a snort. Not humans. Taste bad. Sheeps near. Good roots. ‘Shrooms.
Good.
It rolled away with several more snorts. Corrie shook her head and looked around.
Camp had been set up. A fire burned. Some kind of stew steamed in a large pot suspended over the fire. The pack mule’s bulky load suddenly became clear. She saw no sign of Sverr’s brew and missed it. A Norther drink that these Milstreigoners sneered at.
Off to her left, Sverr hunched beside Mannemous. The guards sat or milled around, talking, laughing, as if this night was the same as all others. For them it was.
While she had communed with a ground-troll and slipped power past the binding cords, she had tried to sort the remaining twelve guards into ranks. The captain, easy to spot with his brass buttons on his heavy cloak. One cornet, a stripling youth who tried to imitate the captain but still looked scruffy. The captain directed his orders at the cornet, but a grizzled veteran saw the orders fulfilled. The sergeant held himself a little distant from his lesser guards. The remainder had ignored her, so Corrie had ignored them.
The packmaster tended the fire and stirred the pot and eyed her like he didn’t want to feed her.
Corrie stood, and instantly four men were on their feet, one of them the captain. “Sit down,” he ordered. “You got no need to be moving about.”
“I need to relieve myself.”
He huffed. Sverr stood. “I’ll watch her.”
She glared at him, and it worked. The guards sniggered and settled back.
Sverr followed her into the modicum of privacy the trees offered. “Seriously?” she asked him but got only the flash of his teeth. Over and standing again, now chilled under her skirts, the day’s alarms erupted in a snarl. “Is this doing it for you?”
He snatched her to him. A rough hand pressed her against him. He nuzzled her neck then bit one of the tendons until she whimpered. Only then did he draw back. “No. Nothing will do it for me until I’ve got you under me and hours to spend.”
Chapter 14
The stew warmed her internally. Coupled with the hot tisane the packmaster served, Corrie began to drowse.
Someone settled beside her and cleared a throat. She roused enough to inhale deeply . . . and caught a feminine scent under the mask of trail grime and horse.
She lifted her eyelids and glared at Katya. She must have done it wrong, for the young wizard smiled at her.
“I see you’ve got your senses back.”
She lifted her chin out of the warm scarf. “Apparently you don’t. You’ve given your loyalty to Enstigorr.”
“There’s the Corrie I know.”
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“Was a question in there?”
She clenched cold fingers inside her mittens. “What happened, Katya? Did you willingly walk back into Hardraste? Did you kneel at the tower entrance and beg them to open the door? Did you bare your throat to Enstigorr’s knife?”
“I am not a foolish lamb.”
“Yet here you are, back in his crook.” A quick glance around saw avid eyes watching them. “Did you hesitate at all when you offered yourself up?”
“That is not what happened. I didn’t last a month. They trailed me back to my family.”
“Foolish.” Katya reared back at Corrie’s judgment, and she knew the younger wizard would not let that judge stand. She tried to leaven the word by explaining, “Omonte drew out all our pasts. You should not have returned to any person you know.”
“Do you know how hard that is? I nearly starved.”
“I do know,” Corrie said quietly. “I’ve lived that way since my escape.”
“Foolish, you say.” Her scowl could have burned ice. “All I know is they tracked me and caught me and hauled me back. Omonte interrogated me. He wanted to know who helped me on the road. He wanted to know who had helped us escape. He wanted to know how many spells we had to cast to open the cells. He wanted to know how Greiss had died. Most of all, he wanted to know where the rest of us had gone.”
“You could not answer the most of those questions. He should have realized that fairly quickly.”
“Not quickly enough. Omonte didn’t trust my answers. None of them did, and after the first day all of them came to ask me.”
“You held o
ut longer than most.” Corrie offered cold comfort and knew it. She knew what the cells were like; she knew what Omonte’s interrogation entailed. Nothing could ease that memory.
“I held out because, for once, I knew I had a bargaining chip.”
“What does that mean?”
“They all thought we escaped the cells because we combined our powers. The Prime wrested the truth from me rather quickly, but not before I wrangled my bargain. Aye, a bargain that benefitted me. I asked that they turn me over to Arne so he could teach me to hunt wizards.”
She hissed. “Have you no kinship with your fellow wizards? You know what will happen to them? The weakest are prey for Omonte. Only the best go to Enstigorr. Snossi and Raicha cull the rest. And none of them will last a season in that tower before they are drained.”
“We lasted more than a season.”
“Barely. Because Enstigorr focused on me,” she snarled, a feral anger building, all the stronger because she could do nothing about Katya’s bargain and the lives lost because of it. “You saw how many came into the cells alive but left it nothing but a hollowed shell. And you bargained with them to go to this Arne, to track your fellow wizards and witches, to turn them over to the Prime and his hand. Are you his thrall?”
“I am not his slave. I am not anyone’s slave.”
“You say this, but you do their bidding. Did he impress his seal into your flesh?”
“I welcomed it. It gives me his protection.”
“It is poison, Katya.”
At her raised words, several guards stood up, fingering their weapons. Their movement caught Corrie’s attention, and she realized that the whole camp watched her and Katya. Even Sverr and the bane witch watched. They had heard a good bit since neither wizard had lowered her voice.
Katya either hadn’t noticed the attention or ignored it. “The seal is a sign of my connection to the Prime. He contacts us through it.”
“It is a leash! You can run loose but only so far. Only as far as Enstigorr allows.”
“I am alive,” she retorted. “Dreilldah is not. Greiss is not.”
“Greiss died because his time in the cells depleted him too much.”
“Dreilldah died,” the young woman countered, “because she fought the wizard when she returned. When she resisted, he killed her. I was still training then. I saw.”
More than a Wizard Page 18
