by Mark Anthony
Aryn, if you can hear me, you must come at once to Lady Melia’s chamber.
It was Lirith. Aryn gathered her will and tried to answer. Last night, before the coven, she had finally discovered how to speak across the Weirding at will. Like so many things, it was easier than she had thought. It was as if the ability had been there all along, only concealed. Just like her arm. However, there was so much yet to learn, and she was still clumsy at the skill. She could not glimpse Lirith’s thread; it was too far away.
I’m coming! she called, even though she knew Lirith could not hear her. Aryn dashed from the room. What could have caused terror to sharpen Lirith’s usually calm voice? Perhaps Melia had fallen ill again; Lirith had mentioned that the lady had been acting in a peculiar manner of late.
Aryn was nearly to Melia and Falken’s room when a spindly form sprang from an alcove, landing before her in a twisted knot. She let out a muffled cry. The thing untangled long, bony limbs, stretching upward into the shape of a man. Bells chimed like the sound of laughter.
“Master Tharkis,” Aryn breathed, only half-relieved. This was not a distraction she needed. “What do you want?”
“What?” the fool said. “Have you forgotten, sweet. We yet have our contest of poems to complete.”
She lifted her left hand to her chest. “What do you mean?”
He prowled toward her on pointed boots; dust and cobwebs clung to his motley. Where had he been lurking to get so filthy? “A rhyme you spoke, for my name. Now for your own I’ll do the same.”
There was something odd about his voice. It was quieter than usual, more sibilant. A sly light glinted in his crossed eyes. Aryn could only watch as he spread his arms and spoke in a low, singsong voice:
“Sweet Lady Aryn
Must marry a baron,
But none shall take her as wife.
Blessed with one arm,
And power to harm—
The price of her love is a life.
“Her beautiful sisters
All have dismissed her,
But one day they’ll sorrow the deed.
With a sword in her hand,
She’ll ride ’cross the land—
And trample them all ’neath her steed.”
Aryn’s blood turned to ice. Had the fool seen what she had done to Belira and the others? But the last part of his rhyme was even more troubling; it reminded her of the card she had drawn from the old Mournish woman’s deck. But there was no way the fool could possibly have known about that … was there?
Tharkis grinned, displaying pointed, yellow teeth. “I can see I have won by the look in your eyes. And now, my sweet, you must grant me a prize.”
The fool sidled close to her, and a sour scent filled her nostrils. His grin spread, stretching his face into a grotesque mask of lumps and furrows. Bells jangled, then were muffled by blue cloth as he pressed himself against her.
Anger rose inside Aryn: pure, white, and hot.
“Get away from me, dog,” she said in a voice she barely recognized as her own. As if of its own volition, her right arm rose from the sling.
Tharkis sprang back. The fool’s grin was gone, and his expression was one of terror. His eyes were no longer crossed and seemed to gaze right through her.
“Don’t speak like that, sweet,” he said, his words hoarse and trembling. “All hard and cold your voice is. It sounds like hers, it does. And your eyes, so sharp. They pierce me just like hers do.”
Aryn forgot her anger. Tharkis cowered now, hugging himself, and made small whimpering sounds.
“Whom do you speak of?” she said.
“The shadow in the trees!” All traces of rhyme had vanished from his voice. “The one with many eyes. She sees everything. I cannot hide … even when I sleep she finds me. But she is not the only one who sees.” Laughter fell from his mouth like pieces of broken glass. “I have seen things as well.”
Aryn hesitated, then reached out her left hand. “It’s all right, Master Tharkis. It’s just—”
She halted as his wild eyes locked on hers. “She will come for you, too. You cannot escape. She spins a web for the spinners … and in it she will catch them all.”
A shiver crept up Aryn’s back. “Who are you talking about? Who is she trying to catch?”
“She will … she sees, but she is not alive. Watch for her, spinner. Her web closes in on us even now. And she will eat all who are captured in it.” He clutched shaking hands to his head and squeezed. “She thinks I … don’t remember. But sometimes I almost do. I almost … it’s in the trees … I must ride. Not fast enough … it comes. Obey me, for I am the king. Oh, by all the gods, it comes.…”
Tharkis was shaking violently, snot running down his face. In his eyes was a look of stark and empty terror. Yet his words seemed strangely lucid. She opened her mouth, unsure what she should say.
“Aryn?” a voice called from down the corridor. “Aryn, is that you?”
Like a puppet jerked by the strings, Tharkis leaped to his feet. His eyes were crossed once more. “Fear the one alive and dead,” he hissed, “for you cannot escape her web.”
With weird speed, the fool scrambled up the wall, then vanished in the shadow between two rafters above. Aryn craned her neck, searching the ceiling, but she knew it was no use; she would not find him.
“Aryn, there you are! I thought I sensed your thread.”
A silhouette moved toward her, then resolved into Lirith. Her ebon face was paler than usual, as if dusted by ashes.
“Did you hear my call, sister?”
“I did.”
“I thought you had, but I wasn’t certain. You must come at once.”
“What’s happened?”
“I don’t think I can explain.” Lirith took Aryn’s left hand. “Come, you will see.”
Thoughts of Tharkis vanished from Aryn’s mind as Lirith pulled her down the corridor. They reached the door of Melia and Falken’s chamber and slipped through. Aryn didn’t know what she had expected to see, but certainly it had not been this.
Durge pressed himself against the far wall, as if trying to retreat into solid stone, his brown eyes wide. Falken knelt not far from the door, gazing upward, an expression of sorrow on his weathered face. In the very center of the room, Melia was weeping. Wails of grief escaped her, rising and falling with the cadence of a chant. She tore at her blue-black hair, and tears streamed from her amber eyes. However, it was not this that made Aryn stare, her breath caught in her lungs. Rather, it was the fact that Melia floated in midair.
The small woman hovered in the center of the room, several feet above the floor, curled in a tight ball. She spun slowly as she wept, bobbing up and down as if tossed on a stormswept sea. She seemed oblivious to the others in her grief.
At last air rushed into Aryn’s lungs. She must have stumbled, for Lirith caught her arm, then Falken was there, steadying her. Durge edged around the room to join them.
“She’s in mourning,” Falken said, his voice quiet, in answer to Aryn’s unspoken question. “I’m not certain how long it’s going to last.”
Aryn shook her head. “Mourning? For whom?”
“For one of her brothers.”
Fear shot through Aryn, and she clutched the bard’s arm. “Is it Tome?”
Although she had met him only once, it had been more than enough to grow fond of the gentle old man with golden eyes. Like Melia, Tome was one of the Nine who had forsaken godhood long ago to walk the face of Eldh and work against the Pale King’s Necromancers. In the time since, most of the Nine had grown weary and had faded from the world.
“No, it is not Tome,” Falken said. “It is a god of Tarras she weeps for.”
Aryn fought for understanding. “But Mandu is the Everdying. Will he not simply rise again?”
“It’s not Mandu either,” Lirith said in a clipped voice.
Aryn looked to the witch, then to Falken. At last the bard spoke in a grim voice.
“A god is dead.”
Aryn liste
ned in growing shock as Falken told her what he had already explained to Lirith and Durge. That morning, just before dawn, Melia had awakened with a scream, and Falken had rushed to her side. He is gone! she had cried. I can feel it—like a wound filled with nothing! Before she was consumed by her grief, Falken had managed to get a few words from her. The god’s name was Ondo, and he was a minor deity of Tarras—not one of the Seven who were worshiped in the Dominions. Ondo had been revered primarily by the Tarrasian guild of goldsmiths.
“I still don’t understand,” Durge said, stroking his mustaches repeatedly. “To be sure, I know scant of the ways of gods, and what I do know holds little logic. Yet I have heard the gods are immortal. So how then can a god die?”
Falken opened his mouth, but it was another who answered.
“Because he was murdered.”
As one, they turned and stared. Melia stretched her legs downward, until her small, bare feet touched the carpet. Her coppery cheeks were still stained by tears, and her hair was wild with snarls, but her eyes shone with a fierce light.
“I have spoken with my brothers and sisters in the south,” she said. “And they tell me that Ondo was murdered. More than murdered. There is no trace left of him. He has been utterly destroyed.” Now sorrow returned to her visage, mingled with fury. “Poor Ondo. He was far from perfection, but he harmed no one. He wished only to play with his gold.”
Aryn still struggled to comprehend. “But who would have the power to murder a god?”
Melia clenched a hand. “That is what I intend to find out. Ever has there been competition and plotting among the gods of Tarras. Some gain in position, others lose—that has always been the way. But never, in all the eons since the founding of Tarras, has one god directly harmed another. And it is not just the gods. Worshipers have been murdered as well, and not only those of Ondo. Blood flows in the temples of Tarras.” Melia hugged her fist to her chest, her eyes growing distant with thought. “Yet if there is a pattern to it all, none of us can see it. All my brothers and sisters are afraid.”
Aryn had never imagined that a god could be afraid. But then, she had never imagined that a god could be killed, either.
Lirith tightened her arms over the bodice of her gown. “None of this makes sense. How can everything just unravel like this?”
Aryn glanced at her. There seemed more to the witch’s words than just a comment on Melia’s news. Was there something else Lirith knew?
Melia smoothed her hair back over her shoulders. “One thing is certain—something has changed in Tarras. And I intend to find out what it is.”
“What do you mean?” Falken said, raising an eyebrow.
Melia regarded the bard, her expression resolute. “I leave for Tarras at once. If you would come with me, Falken, I should be glad.”
The bard opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment a shrill scream sounded—muffled but distinct—through the chamber’s door.
The five exchanged startled glances, then they were moving. Durge led the way, flinging open the door and charging down the corridor even as a second scream rang out. The others ran after, hard pressed to keep up with the Embarran’s sturdy legs. The corridor widened into a larger space—the castle’s lesser hall, where some of the smaller feasts and revels were held.
The source of the screams was plain to see. Elthre the serving maid crouched in the center of the hall, hands to her cheeks, a tray of smashed crockery on the floor. She gazed up, her eyes circles of horror. A gasp escaped Lirith, and Falken let out a low oath.
A gangly form clad in green dangled from one of the hall’s high galleries, bells jangling dissonantly as he swung back and forth.
Lirith moved to the serving maid to comfort her. Aryn clamped a hand to her mouth, lest she scream like Elthre had. A length of cloth had been wrapped around Master Tharkis’s neck—one of the dozen green-and-yellow banners of Toloria that hung from the hall’s galleries—and it was by this he had been hanged. His bony limbs jutted at odd angles, and his teeth were bared in what seemed a mad grin, as if he had been frozen in the act of one last jest. However, the illusion was dispelled by the crimson streams that still seeped from the two empty pits where his crossed eyes had been.
A sigh escaped Melia. “Poor Tharkis. This was not the end he deserved. But how can this be?”
“It is clear enough from the evidence,” Durge rumbled. “The fool could stand his madness no longer. He gouged out his own eyes and hanged himself from the gallery.”
Aryn shuddered. She remembered what Tharkis had said to her only minutes ago, about the eyes who saw everything.
I have seen things as well …
Tharkis had seemed so terrified. At the time she hadn’t understood. Maybe now it made sense. She started to speak, knowing she had to tell the others of her encounter, but Falken spoke first.
“Are you so certain of your judgment, Durge?”
The knight scowled. “What do you mean?”
Falken pointed upward with his black-gloved hand. “If Tharkis plucked out his own eyes, why is there no blood on his hands?”
17.
The moon sailed through a sea of silver clouds. Below, deep green shadows filled the garden, and a cool wind slipped among the branches, like a voice whispering forgotten secrets. Midnight had come and gone.
The wind faded, and for a time the garden was still. Then the shadows parted, and a figure stepped through. Pale moonlight washed her red-gold hair to steel as she turned her head from side to side, searching. She hugged her heavy cape around her. While the days were warm still, the nights were already growing chilly. But then, she knew it was not only the night that made her shiver, but also the one she sought.
“Show yourself, blast you,” she muttered. “Must you play these games, even now?”
A patch of darkness separated itself from a tree and drifted forward. The woman clutched a hand to her breast, a gasp frozen in her lungs.
“What is the matter, sister?” a shimmering voice said. “Did I startle you?”
Anger replaced fear as the woman regained her breath. “Of course you startled me, Shemal, as was surely your intent.”
The shadow drifted closer, resolving itself into a slender, feminine figure. Here and there a shard of ice-white skin glinted in the moonlight, but for the most part the night cloaked her. A fragment of a mouth turned upward in a smile.
“Why be so cross with me, dearest? Did not all go exactly as I said it would?”
The woman tightened her fingers on her cape. “I still do not see why she should remain Matron.”
“Tut, tut,” the other clucked. “Do not be too greedy too quickly, sister. A greater change takes greater time. Now what of the others—that shambling corpse of a bard and the amber-eyed bitch from the south?”
The woman smiled despite her anger. “They are leaving Ar-tolor. I understand she has received ill news from Tarras. She leaves on the morrow, and he will go with her.”
“Excellent,” the shadow said. “I do loathe it when she is near, for I must take care she does not sense my presence. Limited as she is, she has abilities that must not be underestimated. It is well they are leaving. Yet they must be watched.”
“How?”
“Are not two of your sisters their companions?”
The golden-haired woman curled her lip. “Yes, but they can hardly be trusted. They were among those who came last to the Pattern.”
“And yet come to it they did,” the other snapped, “and they are bound to the Pattern even as you are. It is they who must go, for they are close to Melindora Nightsilver and Falken Blackhand. And to him as well.”
She breathed the word without thinking. “Runebreaker.”
The other was staring at her from the darkness; she caught a glint of a hard, colorless eye. She shivered again. How she hated this damp air.
“I do not understand,” the woman said. “If they are close to him, will not they betray us for him in the end?”
Cruel laughter
drifted on the air. “It seems you have much yet to learn, sister. One cannot betray those whom one despises. One can only betray those whom one loves.”
The woman nodded, although she was less than convinced. All the same, she could see no other way. “And how am I to assure they accompany Nightsilver and Blackhand?”
“Bid your dear Matron send them. She cannot refuse your advice—not now.”
The woman smiled. It was true. Ivalaine would have to listen to her; the Pattern required it. There was only one last, small matter. “What of the boy?” she said.
She could not see, but somehow she sensed a smile within the shadows. “Concern yourself not with the boy. I will watch over him myself. And when the time is right, I shall make myself known to him.”
“And then what?”
“And then he will lead us in our battle against the Warriors of Vathris, and with him before us we will crush them all.” A slender hand clenched into a fist. “So is his destiny—a male witch, first in a century, full-blooded in his power as any of your sisters. More so, in fact, save one. And I do not mean you, sister.”
The woman winced, then let the slight pass. It was not from her ability with the Touch that her power and position came, she knew that well enough and had accepted it. Warmth replaced the coldness in her. It was happening then. After so many years of whispers and promises, of waiting on the edges while others stood in the center, it was truly happening.
“I will leave you then,” the woman said, only too happy to be done with this conversation. She knew she needed Shemal, but she did not like her. From the first, she had always come in shadows.
“Wait,” the other said. “There is something else. I have felt something … strange of late. A weakness in the fabric that binds all things together. Have you sensed it?”
The woman frowned, shaking her head.
“But I am foolish to have asked you,” the other said. “Of course, your power is far too weak. Yet if you learn anything, you will tell me.”
“Of course,” she said, but once again annoyance rose in her. Why must Shemal always mock her ability with the Touch? That one-armed runt was said to be the strongest of them all, and what good did it do her, the pathetic little thing? There were other, better sorts of power.
