This, he supposed, was what it was to be a wizard.
He ate little, for the exertion made him sick. In spite of his weariness, he forced himself to exercise, hacking at a striking post he'd set up in the overgrown garden or throwing the knife or the ax, right-handed, then left-handed, at the far wall of the empty upstairs gallery. He meditated in the crumbling summer house, the thick stillness of the air prickling at his skin, or catnapped on top of the bed's coverlet at Starhawk's side, prey to uneasy dreams.
He had abandoned Ari to face the Vorsal mage alone. Protection from the killing storms was the least he could offer by way of amends. There were times when, knees aching from the uneven tiles of the floor, back aching from bending to call forth in chalk and silver and auligar powder the great sweeping lines of strength, the stars of defense, and the closing rings of the vortex of power, he was obliged to remind himself of this fact at intervals of five minutes or less.
On the seventh night, he let the rains begin. Sitting in the window embrasure with Starhawk, their arms locked around one another's waists, he felt the cold ferocity of the air beat his face and listened to the waters pouring down in the blackness outside. The great bedroom where they sat was in the front of the house, its windows looking out into the street; by the glimmer of oil lamps in scores of windows up and down the rocky hill, they watched the waters churn over the cobblestones in a hurly-burly of brown silk, the air alive with blown rain.
Starhawk's voice was barely audible in the darkness. "You gave me this night. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't be here. Thank you."
"If it wasn't for you," the Wolf replied in his rusted growl, "I wouldn't have the brains to be here either."
Ari would be somewhere in the Silver Hills by this time, he thought, staring out into the storm; backside-deep in any of the hundred streams and sour ponds that pockmarked that broken land. The memory of the bitter north returned like the recollection of a voice or a face: eroded valleys that had once held the Empire's farms, now black with standing pines; hillsides that would support nothing but heather; reefs of lichened granite and basalt and rotting lava; and here and there a broken farmhouse, or the crumbling subsidences that marked where ancient mine-workings had been. And back of it all, on the crest of a harsh gray hill that dominated the countryside for a hundred miles around, lay the walled and broken fortress that had once ruled the north.
He wondered if Ari was up to it.
Probably, he thought. If he could hold that band of bastards together through the siege, when every mother's son of 'em was scared spitless, waiting to see where the curse would land next, he's sure as hell got the juice to lead them back to Wrynde alive.
And despite what had been said the night before the assault, he smiled, loving that man who was the closest thing to a son he'd ever known.
After that he and the Hawk took some days to explore the city: the wealthier quarters up the mountain where the rain murmured on the pink-tiled roofs just visible above the high walls; the moneyed bustle of the Wool Market and the dye yards behind; and street after steep street of markets under sheets of oiled canvas-whole lanes devoted to silversmiths, or jewelers, or merchants of silk, rare viands, and wine. Sun Wolf bought the Hawk a moonstone earring that stunned her to stammering silence; what she bought for him, in a discreet shop whose clientele was mostly expensive courtesans, delighted and disconcerted him even more. One day they spent wandering the city produce market amid piles of shining melons or fruit imported by caravan from the south, eating buns hot from the baker's ovens with colorless winter butter dripping down their ringers. On another day, they rode out to the ancient tombs that lay in the hills to the northeast, tombs dating from the years when Gwenth was still the capital of most of the world and not a schism-haunted religious snake pit where a titular emperor's courtiers engaged in blossom-viewing expeditions in the imperial garden mazes, comparing poems about the moon. Some of the antique tombs had been looted years ago, their melting sandstone doorways gaping like sad mouths. Others, open also, showed the bright chips of recent damage.
"Could that have been it?" the Hawk wondered, picking her way through lakes of gray puddles to the eroded lintel of a small door into the hill. "At a guess some of our boys did this. Here where the chisels went it hasn't been weathered at all." She touched with gloved fingers the bright broken place on the lintel and glanced back at the Wolf, holding the horses in the little valley among the crowding barrows, bronze-roofed shrines, and faceless statues of saints. "I've heard some emperors used to keep court hoodoos, and gave them tombs in the teeth of the Church. If Zane or Dogbreath were brainless enough to loot one, might they have taken something into the camp that had an ancient curse?"
Sun Wolf frowned, coming to her side to touch the stone, feeling through it for whatever resonances might linger-old griefs, old pride, old hate. But he felt nothing, though whether this was due to lack of skill on his part, the lingering exhaustion of working the weather, or because there was nothing to feel, he could not tell. "It's a chance," he said thoughtfully. "The shadow hand I saw might have been an ancient curse, but the voice sure as hell wasn't. And Moggin was worried enough about the Duke's suspicion to risk me escaping while he stashed his books."
Starhawk raised her dark, level brows. "Doesn't seem to have worked," she said mildly, "does it?"
On the day after the breaking of Vorsal, before the job of working the weather had turned into an all-devouring vocation, Sun Wolf rode out to the shattered town with a packhorse and empty saddlebags to see what was left of Moggin's house and in particular Moggin's library. The house had been burned. In the garden he saw the remains of the child Dannah, her throat cut to the neck-bone, and, on what had been the brick terrace, her mother's nude and battered body sprawled, squirming with rats. The other bodies in the house-Moggin's, Sun Wolf guessed, and the older daughter as well as the servants-had been burned beyond recognition. Of that old-fashioned frescoed study, with its tufted blue-and-red rugs and the smudgy lines of the half-finished circles of unholy power, only ashes remained.
Why? he wondered, picking his way through the still-warm piles of blackened brick to where he guessed the kitchen wing lay. Moggin was a wizard, dammit! By the way the soldiers of the watch had acted, everyone in town guessed it. Even given the Trinitarians' well-known antipathy, stupid and useless as the King might be, his offer of protection was something no father would have turned down.
What had Moggin feared that much ?
Gingerly, Sun Wolf picked his way down the wet, dirt-smelling flight of what had been the cellar steps to their turning, and stopped. In the darkness, a sheet of filthy brown water lay beneath him, bobbing with wet, shapeless things-pieces of broken chests, rotted apples from the bottom of some storage bin, and the swollen body of a servant with his nose eaten off. The water shuddered with swimming rats, and Sun Wolf backed up hastily, nauseated by the smell, guessing that the sewer had broken. Disgust and disappointment filled him ... and at that moment he heard his horse in the garden let out a whinny of fear. There was a rushing overhead-turning, he saw all the crows and ravens that had been clustered over the bodies burst wildly into the air.
He ran up a few steps and looked around. The rats, too, were forsaking their meal, streaming in a gray-brown carpet toward the shadows of the ruined house.
Among the piled shadows of the broken grain-store next door something moved. He wasn't sure, but thought he saw the cold glint of daylight on dark metal.
He didn't wait to see more. He made a dash down the garden, hands fumbling with the reins as he untied the horses, glancing repeatedly over his shoulder toward the black carcass of the house. Remembering the deadly speed with which the djerkas moved, he urged the horse to as fast a canter as possible down the winding streets of the stinking town, trampling corpses in the narrow ways, leaping the half-burned barricades of broken furniture and fallen house beams where the street fighting had been, and brushing past startled looters and those who sought for who knew what among t
he ruins.
Once he hit the open ground, he spurred to a gallop. He glanced behind him seven or eight times on his way back to Kwest Mralwe, but never saw anything.
But that fact made it no easier for him to fall asleep after he had worked the weather that night.
"You gonna tell me what the problem is, Chief, or you going to worry yourself bald-headed on your own?"
"Worry doesn't make you bald," Sun Wolf retorted defensively, running a hand unconsciously over the increasing acreage of open pasture at the crown of his head. "And, anyway, it's not something I can do anything about."
Starhawk shoved herself away from where she leaned in the study door and came across to the desk where he sat, put her arms around his shoulders and bent to kiss the three-inch circle of bare pink skin. He cocked his one eye up at her suspiciously as she pushed aside the moldering books and perched tailor-fashion on a corner of the desk. "What isn't?"
"The djerkas." He sighed, and leaned back in the great pickled-oak chair. He had been at the desk since after dinner, reading the books of the Witches, as he had every night since the rains began. His hoarse voice was weary. "Moggin. The hex. The fact that even though Moggin's dead I'm not sure I'm out of danger."
"From the djerkas?" She leaned an elbow on the stack of books, her white hands lying lightly on the smooth black wool of her gentlemanly hose. A dressing still covered the X-shaped wound and the healing skull beneath it; her cropped-off hair was growing back, a glitter of pale stubble, fine as silk velvet in the alabaster lamplight. "Sounds like it's just wandering around the city like a stray dog. Nobody took the paper out of its mouth, or however those things are motivated. It senses you and says, 'Hmmm ... I remember something about him ... ' Obviously there's some kind of thaumaturgical spancel keeping it around Vorsal, which should make for a pretty entertaining spring once Renaeka Strata's engineers start building their new wharves."
"Maybe." The Wolf's fingers toyed with tarnished gold on the bindings of a crumbling grimoire. "But the more I think about it, the harder it is to believe old Moggy would sit there and let the King's bravos skrag his little girl, rather than admit he was a wizard. He was afraid of something, so afraid that at the suggestion his cover was blown, he wouldn't even carry through the final phase of the curse and turn his magic against the army when it hit the walls. I think there was a second wizard in Vorsal."
"The one who tried to enslave you?"
"Yeah. There's times I feel I'm being watched ... "
"You are," Starhawk pointed out reasonably. "The cook sends reports regularly to Renaeka, and I think that new scullery maid is a double agent for the Bishop."
He laughed briefly. "I hope they all enjoyed the report about what we did last night. But no, it's more than that. Old Master Drosis could have had more than one student in Vorsal. If that wasn't Moggin trying to enslave me-and at this point I don't think it was-I can't blame the poor bastard for being scared. I'm not sure what I'd do, rather than put myself back in that power."
"You think our Hoodoo Secundus might have been behind the curse as well?"
"N-No," he said slowly. "For the simple reason that if the curse was the work of a second hoodoo, he'd have gone through stitch with it and the assault would never have succeeded. I don't think the djerkas was Moggin's-if it had been, it would have come to the rescue that last day ... "
"If it could," the Hawk put in. "He might have locked it up or put it to sleep when you blew him to the Duke."
"Maybe." The Wolf grunted. "But remember that according to Purcell, Moggin wasn't the only man in the city suspected of witchery. There was the woman Skinshab, and there might have been others. They were interested enough in keeping anyone from sneaking into Vorsal, but obviously didn't give two hoots about their neighbors-and considering how wizards get treated in these parts, I don't blame 'em. Wizards have a way of surviving sacks, if they keep their heads down, and coming out of them damn rich, if they're smart."
"So it wasn't your blowing Moggy to the Duke that kept him from fighting off the final assault," the Hawk said thoughtfully. "It was fear of this other wizard, whoever it was."
Sun Wolf nodded, chewing on the comer of his mustache. "I think so, yeah. If the shadow hand can find you, trap you, when you work in deep trance, it could account for why he'd just slap a curse on the troop and hope for the best ... And it damn near worked, at that. You know Krayth of Kilpithie's men mutinied the night before the assault? Krayth was killed ... "
"Damn," the Hawk said briefly. She, too, had known and liked the cynical Easterner. "So this second wizard-that woman Skinshab or somebody else-is still out there someplace with the djerkas?
Sun Wolf nodded. Outside the rain made a soft, steady rushing against the plastered house walls, and purled faintly in the garden streams. A chill draft made the lamp flames curtsy in their bowls, and the flicker of it danced like chain lightning down the small silver buckles of Starhawk's doublet. "Why do you think I spent half my time putting every spell and circle of guard around me before I touched the weather?" he asked softly. "Why do you think for the last two weeks I've kept damn close to town?"
"Hence the books?" she asked, waving at the stack beneath her elbow, and the others strewn around the tabletop at her back.
He whispered, "Yeah." He touched the grimoires and demonaries beside his hand, crumbling tomes he had stolen from the wizard Kaletha's snake pit, books which she had stolen in her turn. Like the heat of banked coals, he could feel the spells within them, a shimmering mixture of power, beauty, and evil whose stink turned his stomach. Starhawk, seated casually among them, didn't seem to notice.
"Some of the things in those books are evil, Hawk-medicine of the worst possible kind." He used the word from the barbarian tongue of his childhood, which translated equally as medicine, magic, spirit, God, and madness. "And there's some spells in them ... I don't understand them as I should. I don't know if they're safe to work or not. Safe for me, for my spirit, my mind. And there's nobody to tell me whether I'm being a wise man or a coward. I know that difference in battle, in a fight, and in a siege. I know what's safe and what's stupid. I don't know it here."
"And I take it," she said, two steps ahead of him as usual, "that the spell you've found that'll show you this wizard is one of those?"
He sighed resignedly. "Yeah, pox rot it."
They had to wait three days, for the dark of the moon, which in itself made the Wolf vaguely uneasy, for several of the moon-spells Yirth had taught him had contained warnings of hidden peril. The ritual was an odd one, from the most ancient of the Wenshar grimoires, its faded instructions jotted in a curious book hand characteristic of the court of that accursed matriarchy which lay open to several interpretations. All the magic in that volume had a different feel to it from those of the other books, different as the "hand" of silk is different from that of wool, and it required some odd things, including straw plaited in certain ways and the skulls of seven children, though two hours' ride and a little searching were all that were needed for that. In eighteen days the rats and ravens had done their work. Setting those pitiful bones in place on the ritually cleansed and protected tiles of the long summer dining room, Sun Wolf felt an obscure desire to apologize to their parents for what he had done.
Starhawk settled herself, drawn sword across her knees, in the center of the small Circle of Protection at the far end of the hall, the tiny lamp beside her casting its upside-down shadows over the gaunt bones of her face. Sun Wolf, book open in his hand, knelt before the empty divining bowl and took himself carefully down into the state of dark and moving meditation in which magic begins, reaching with his mind for the signs of power visible only in the moon's veiled dark.
But in the bowl's darkness he saw nothing, and felt no magic touch him.
It took them four tries before they got any result at all.
"Dammit, it's one of those spells that works from assumptions they don't bother to tell you!" the Wolf raged, scrubbing out all the laboriously writ
ten signs. "It could be one of those spells that won't work if you're not a virgin, or won't work if you're a man ... "
"Well," Starhawk said promptly, "I vote against doing anything about that right now. Why don't we get rid of all the iron in the room and try again?"
Cursing his own lack of training-cursing the dead Wizard-King, for murdering anyone who could have taught him things like this-Sun Wolf began the ritual again, again with no result. Next Starhawk left, much against Sun Wolf's better judgment-he felt an obscure sense of danger in the night, and wanted her firstly in his sight, so he could protect her, and secondly at his back, so she could protect him. But the result was again nil.
It was not until he had ritually cleansed the room again, and set up the skull circle without tracing the glimmering hedges of the runes of ward and guard around the room, that the empty bowl before him seemed to fill with darkness, that strange, clear darkness in which his wizard's sight saw vividly as in day.
With a cry he struck the bowl aside. It skated across the floor, knocking one of the skulls spinning so that the stub of candle fell out of it and rolled. The other little skulls, candles still burning within, seemed to watch with intent demonic gaze. The clay bowl smashed against the wall with a shocking clatter; Sun Wolf whirled on his knees as a dark shadow loomed over him, then settled back as he realized it was Starhawk, drawn sword in her hand.
"What is it?" She set the candle upright again on the tiles. The dance of its light seemed to put eyes in the empty sockets of the little skull, where it lay on its side some distance away and caught a glint like a sword blade on the glassy red of the pottery shards. Beyond the archways, the garden lay invisible, the rain's steady growling filling the night. "What did you see?"
"Only the hand," he whispered, his breathing still unsteady.
Hambly, Barbara - Sun Wolf 3 - Dark hand of magic.txt Page 17
