"I'm not getting to him ... "
Starhawk's voice? Or only one that sounded like hers, as the demons used the voices of friends? Clouded, twisted with pain and horror and dream-sugar, he half remembered her wind-burned face framed in the darkness of the doorway, damp, fair hair sticking all ways like an urchin child's; he remembered flinging the ax at her heart. He didn't remember whether it had struck or not.
There were too many other memories, too many other men he had seen, shoulders bowing forward, heads snapping down as that flower of blood burst from around the thrown ax's blade. It was too easy to see her face on them, to see the shock in those wide gray eyes ...
The pain tightened on him again, dragging at him, hurting in a way he had no name for, and he curled himself tighter against it. A measure of his power had come back, like earth-water seeping into a dry well. But it wasn't enough, wasn't nearly enough. His mind was clouded, a fragmented chaos of pictures: Ari's shocked eyes when they had met face-to-face before the torchlit bulk of the Armory, cutting the throats of Rubberface, the gate guard, and that harmless militiaman in Wrynde who used to sell mules to the troop, horrified and trying to stop himself, as he'd tried to stop his hand from taking Purcell's dagger and raising it to his own neck. But clearest of all was the memory of Purcell's will forcing its way past his defenses, of the breathless paralysis of his limbs, the agony compressing and burning all his organs, the horror of watching his own hands move without his volition, in spite of his desperate efforts to stop them ...
His whole being felt befouled by this rape, and he understood why women killed themselves after they'd been passed around among the troop. And he understood, for the first time, the hatred they bore afterward to any who had the power to do that to them again.
He squeezed his mind shut, trying to sink down further into darkness, where the voices would not reach. But always there were those silver threads of power tangling his mind, pulling and twisting, murmuring to him that there was no hope of escape.
"Don't go down, Chief," the Hawk's voice said. "Come up." Then there was an aside: "Is that right?"
"Yes." That voice barely impinged on his consciousness, vaguely familiar, but he pushed it aside. Purcell's?
All voices sounded a little like Purcell's.
Fearing that it was, he tried to sink down still further, but her voice followed him, echoing in the blackness of his fogged mind. "Follow my voice, Chief. Try to-to see light if you can, but follow my voice. Come up, don't go down. You can make a shelter for yourself, make it out of the-" Indistinct muttering ... "-the second and seventh signs of the Sishak Rites. They're written here-open your eye, look ... "
He'd never heard of the Sishak Rites and didn't want to. He wanted only darkness, and peace where gnawing pain and the blind horror of remorse couldn't touch him. It was a trick, he thought bitterly, a trick to trap him, to make him do things still worse than he had done ...
"Open your eye, pox rot you, and look at the goddam signs, you barbarian ape!"
Starhawk?
His tongue felt thick and swollen upon the word. "Starhawk?" He was conscious of her touch on his wrists.
"Open your pox-festering eye, Chief, or I'll damn well poke that one out, too, damn you!"
He opened his eye. He saw her face, weirdly distinct, as if in some new and beautiful angle of light, but meaningless as something dreamed. And perhaps it was all only dreamed. He thought he should know the man with her ... thought he should be wearing a black scholar's robe with a shagged silk collar, not that vaguely familiar, mud-crusted black coat ... younger ... his hair should be black, not gray ... he didn't know why. As in a dream, he had no sense of heat or cold, though the Hawk's breath made a faint steam in the dim glow of the tiny fire. A rude shelter of elm poles and heather caught the flickering light, inches beyond the tips of her cropped hair. Looking down, he saw incomprehensible signs scratched in the muddy dirt before his knees.
The other man-the man he didn't recognize-said something he barely heard, a vague distorted murmuring, as most voices were. Hesitantly, Starhawk said, "Can you see the signs, Chief? Their names are Enyas and Ssa-the Nothing-Cloak and the Strength of Air. You can make a shelter of them, you can protect yourself with them against the runes, but you have to put your magic into them. Can you do that?"
Magic. The geas made it hard for him to remember that he had magic. His mind moved toward them and at once the pain of the geas tightened, crushing his brain, his heart, his genitals. He gasped, dropping back for the darkness within him, but her hands closed hard on his collar and she jerked him into a brutal slap across the face.
"Come on, you gutless weakling, there were nuns at the pox-festering Convent tougher than you! Look at them, damn you!"
Bands of iron were crushing him, swords ripping into his lungs. He gasped, tried to cry out, impotent rage filling him, rage at Purcell, at Starhawk, at his father ... He saw how the signs could be linked together into a shield, how the sounds of them could be used. Twisting, scraping inwardly at the marrow of his bones, he traced them with his fingers, and they glowed to life with a shivering plasmic fight in the smoky gloom. The ghostly glow seemed to feed back into his fingers, drawing out more. The silver runes within his mind stuck and pulled, like a badly healed wound, cutting, crushing ...
With a sob he woke, and opened his eye. He didn't know when he'd shut it again, or if it had ever been open.
He was in a shelter built in a sort of dip in the ground near boulders he recognized from their striations of quartz as those on Pulvren Tor-a shelter built of elm poles and heather, just as he'd dreamed. It was freezing cold, even with the tiny fire, and outside it would be killing cold. Through the blinding smoke-he wondered that it hadn't stung like this before-he could dimly make out Starhawk and Moggin crouched before him, and the wide scratch-work of signs crisscrossing the damp dirt. His arm hurt like the devil; he was unshaven and stank like a civet cat in heat.
"Purcell," he whispered, his lips feeling as if he'd borrowed them from Gully. "It's Purcell. Those mines north of the village ... "
"Alum, we know," the Hawk said, with her old, fleet grin. "Old news. Purcell must have found the ancient records of it somewhere, though back in those days they must have kept it as much a secret as they would now. He figured all he had to do was get rid of the troop. He didn't count on you."
"I'm sorry." And for a moment it seemed to him that the shame of what he had done-tried to kill her, betrayed his friends, given over the village to Zane's men-was beyond what he could endure and live.
"I'll beat the innards out of you when we've got time," she promised.
Then they embraced, crushing one another, the shudder of her breath going through his body like lightning.
"Ari and some of his boys got out," she said, after several minutes during which Moggin politely pretended he wasn't there-not easy in a shelter five feet by five feet. "I saw you in the Armory and thought there was something weird about you-Ari was rousting up the men already when the trouble hit. It's my guess they'll be regrouping at the mines, since those are the only places that could be held, now Zane's taken the village."
"Huh." Sun Wolf scratched a corner of his filthy mustache. For the first time he realized that the Hawk must have gotten out of the camp dressed as one of the whores. Kohl smudged her eyes as if she'd been slugged, and the cloak over her shoulders was a color he'd never seen her wear in his life, the few bits of tawdry jewelry still clinging to it incongruous against the cropped bristle of her skull and the jagged red X of the scar over her left ear. "Whether he knows it or not, he'll be damn safe there-Purcell will never cave those in. I guessed what was going on and went out there to have a look at those things we always thought were smelting furnaces. They were really kilns to bake the raw stone into alum for shipping."
"How'd you guess it was him?"
"I found the Eyes. They were written on the front money he paid Ari-and more on the final payment, the stingy bastard. As treasurer he was the o
nly one, beside Renaeka Strata, who had access to the money for long enough to mark it-and Renaeka had no reason to get rid of us and no need to use a curse if she did. From the money, the hex spread all over camp like a case of the clap."
"Proving that Sister Kentannis was right when she told me that money is a curse." The Hawk grinned. "Bastard must have been a wizard all the way along."
"Looking back, I'm astounded I never guessed." Moggin edged nearer to them, holding out grimy hands to the feeble warmth of the fire. "I did occasionally suspect Drosis might have had another student he never told me about, from fear of Altiokis. I remember his saying once how he felt obliged-compelled, almost-to pass his skills on to another mageborn so they would not die with him ... "He broke off, fighting hard not to cough, his face turning an unhealthy gray with the strain. The spasm, when it came, was bad, leaving him retching and weak.
After a long minute he continued, "And thinking about it, the House of Cronesme, which was quite minor fifteen years ago, has had some fairly consistent strokes of luck-like a rival's ship springing a plank and letting Purcell's cargo reach the markets first, which is really the sort of thing that can happen to anyone-or that time the entire season's dye lots of the Greambii turned sour in the vats and nearly ruined them. Purcell's brother always had the reputation as the ruthless one. Until the brother's death, Purcell himself was just the head clerk at the Vorsal branch."
"Where he met Drosis," Sun Wolf said thoughtfully. "And I've got a feeling what happened to his brother." A merchant of sedentary habit, as old as Purcell's older brother would have to have been, would never have the reflexes to save himself. "Wonder if he was beginning to suspect? After Purcell returned to Kwest Mralwe, he could have kept up the connection easy enough. Since they burn witches in Kwest Mralwe, he wouldn't have dared take Drosis' books, not if his trade rivals were keeping spies in his house. But my guess is he made coded copies over the years, long before Drosis bought it. I would have, anyway."
He fell silent then, staring into the grimy seed of the fire and listening to the screaming of the wind in the rocks. He felt queerly lightheaded, as if he had a fever. Holding the makeshift protection which the Signs of Sishak afforded drained and pulled at what power he had, and he sensed they'd give him no protection against a determined attempt to reassert the geas' strength. Maybe they would, if he knew the entire Rite, or how the Signs worked ... He didn't know. The geas was still inside him, curled like leeches around the fabric of his mind, the deadly net of runes dark now but still waiting, still binding him to Purcell.
"Given what things would be like in the Middle Kingdoms, if our pal the King could hire tame hookums," Starhawk remarked, adding another chunk of elm wood to the fire, "I can see why they'd have a down on the mageborn. It makes sense even that they burned Renaeka's mother. I don't blame Purcell for hiding behind that rabbit facade all these years."
"I expect Drosis kept an eye on him, too," Moggin said softly. "Purcell went very carefully while Drosis lived-partly from fear of Altiokis, who certainly killed Drosis' other student, but partly from fear of Drosis himself. Drosis couldn't have been his teacher without guessing at least somewhat the kind of man he would turn into, if he weren't watched. The real power of the Cronesmae has only showed itself in the five years since Drosis' death. At the time, I didn't connect the two events, but looking back, I wonder that I was so blind."
"What a hell of a thing," Sun Wolf said softly. "To have the power and the learning that could only be passed on to the mageborn, only understood by one who had the power ... and to have that one be a greedy whore. Wonder where he got the djerkas?" His curling eyebrows pulled down into a frown as a disjointed image floated back to him from the patchy dark of his mind, an image of Starhawk with a pole in her hand, slamming it into a nightmare tangle of metal claws. There were bruises on her face, but in their fighting days she'd always had those. She did not appear to have been hurt in the taking of the camp, and he knew better than to ask how she had fared with a third party present. "Did it come after us?" he asked uncertainly. "You blindfolded me ... "
She nodded. "We pulverized the crystal that motivated it," she said. "The body was too heavy to haul, and we had to get out of that cellar fast, since Zane knows all the good hiding places as well as we do. But we unhitched all its leg cables, threw them in the streams, and flattened out all those little joints with rocks. Even if Purcell has a spare crystal, it'll take awhile to fix."
Sun Wolf sighed and ran big, clumsy hands through his stringy hair. Somewhere inside him, the geas shifted, pulled. He put forth his strength, almost afraid to try for fear of the pain, and it darkened away once again. But he knew it was still there.
"You know how many boys got out with Ari?"
She shook her head. "I know Purcell will be hunting the moors for 'em, though. Even if there aren't enough loose to make real trouble, they'll need all the slaves they can get to start the mines running. But I warn you, Chief-they know it was you who betrayed them."
"I know." The shame of it stabbed him again, searing and soul-deep, and for an instant he wanted to kill himself, to cauterize it out of his memory as he'd once burned the burrowing fire of a gaum out of his eye ...
And the next instant, as the shame and helpless anger broke his concentration, the cold crystal grip of the geas clutched at his mind, dragging it toward easy darkness. With a gasp, he fought free of it, but the pain shocked him, zipping like a burning trail of blasting powder along his nerves ...
"Chief?" He opened his eye to see Starhawk and Moggin close beside him, concern in their faces. He shook his head, trying to force aside the memory of the pain, the dark hurt of the shame that made him vulnerable again.
"I'm all right," he whispered, aware that his lips, his fingers, and feet were icy cold with shock. "It's just ... It can't wait. Not for them-not for me. We've got to retake the camp-we've got to kill Purcell. Now, soon. Or it's death for all of us."
"And you expect us to believe this?" Arms folded under the ragged cloak of his black bearskin, Ari regarded Sun Wolf with bitter fury in his hazel eyes.
Sun Wolf, who would have infinitely preferred being sold naked on the eunuch's block of the Genshan slave market to facing his friends again, said quietly, "Not really."
If Starhawk hadn't been with him, standing unobtrusively in the background with Moggin at her side, he doubted he'd have had the courage to enter the dripping dark of the mine shaft at all. He also doubted that any of the men gathered around the tiny fires in the old pit-head chamber would have listened to him, had not the Hawk had her usual quiet air of being ready to rip off the head of the first man who spoke and spit down his neck.
Penpusher said, "C-can Purcell see through your eyes? See where we are, how few of us there are?"
"No," said the Wolf. Of that, at least, he was sure.
Ari asked, "Can you prove that?"
"No." The pain of seeing what was in their eyes and on their faces was like a spear blade in his guts. But as a warrior, he'd gone on fighting with weapons in him and only let himself hurt afterward.
Dogbreath spoke up. "Does he know you've pulled free of him?"
"If he's pulled free of him," growled the Goddess under her breath, patting her palm with a naked sword.
"Yeah," the Wolf said, ignoring her. "He'll try to bring me under his will again when we meet. He may succeed. If that happens while we're fighting for the camp I want the nearest person to kill me. That includes you, Hawk."
"Don't worry about that," someone else muttered, unseen in the inky shadows. The pit-head chamber was large, hewn from the hill and several inches deep in a revolting stew of dirt, foxes' mess, old leaves, and seeped water that ran down the walls from above. They'd had to pile rocks to build a heather fire a man could have covered with his cupped hands. The flickering blaze splashed random patches of gilding on the haggard faces of the troopers grouped around them, the brass buckles of Penpusher's sheepskin jacket, and the jeweled rings snagged in the tangled jun
gle of Dogbreath's hair; it outlined in shadow the Goddess' scars and gleamed with a silvery shine in Curly Bear's eyes. All together there were, the Wolf guessed, ninety warriors who had fled with Ari and taken his side-eighty-three men and seven women, not counting himself and the Hawk.
"Considering he knows you can break away from him," Ari said, his voice calm despite the gall in his eyes, "he'll probably kill you himself."
The Wolf said steadily, "I know he will. But I'd rather have it from friends."
"Join the club, pook," muttered someone. "We already got it from a friend."
Ari moved his head a little, eyes glinting dangerously under the curtain of his tangled black hair, and the man silenced. Bitter wind moaned across the shaft entrance nearby, calling up a deeper groan from the black depths, where the seam of alum-bearing rock plunged downward into the hill. There was no other sound. "Anyone who wants to is welcome to leave," Ari said quietly into that hush. "If you think you can keep away from Purcell and Zane and if you've got someplace else to go."
He scanned them, meeting now one man's eyes, now another's, challenging them to speak. "Let me point out to you that Purcell isn't just out to catch all the slaves he can and that he knows as well as we do that the best way to keep a mine slave from running is to hack off one foot. He's not gonna let anyone out of the wastelands who'll peach to the King-Council about him being a hoodoo." After a moment he turned back to Sun Wolf, his eyes, behind the hard wariness and the desperation of twenty-four hours of sleepless fatigue, saying plainly, Hurt me again and I'll kill you.
Around them, the men gathered in, the raw smells of drying blood, filth, sweat, and dirty hair rank in the unventilated room, smells Sun Wolf knew from a childhood in the camps of war. Like a dog in his pack, he felt warmed by them, aware of the support once more of those iron bonds that looked so casual to those who had never felt them-bonds that didn't ask questions and didn't care and didn't think what a man thought or felt, only that he was one of the pack and was there when needed.
Hambly, Barbara - Sun Wolf 3 - Dark hand of magic.txt Page 28
