Crossing her arms under her breasts, Annia eyed him but gave a short nod.
Darilan took a deep breath and willed away the urge to scratch his arm furiously. “I’m hunting someone,” he said. “The General appointed me Crimson Hunter but the prey slipped into Gold territory and was caught. I’ve been told he was transferred to Thynbell, to the Hawk’s Pride. It is imperative to the General’s plans that he be returned to the Crimson Army. I was sent to you for aid in brokering a deal.”
Annia tapped fingers on her cheek idly, one brow still arched. Her nails were long and gilded. “What sort of prey?”
“A young man. Kerrindrixi. Branded on the left shoulder, KRD1184.”
“A runaway slave? Surely that does not merit a Hunter’s intervention.”
“I do not question the General’s will.”
“Unless that runaway slave happened to be capable of healing himself.”
Darilan blinked and sat forward. “You know of him?”
“Why yes, darling. The Hawk’s Pride reports directly to my king. And my king was so interested,” she said, smiling, “that he had the prisoner transferred to our own arcane detainment. Would you like to see?”
*****
A short time later, they were upstairs, at the entry of a small chamber frescoed wall-to-wall with arcane symbols. A padded table stood in the center.
Cob lay bound to it with a cloth draped across his thighs. His eyes were closed, and with each faint rise and fall of his chest, the silver needles stuck into his flesh shivered. Small pots and glasses and cages lined the edge of the table, full of odd things: plants, colored liquids, trapped birds and insects.
Darilan crossed the threshold and felt the tingle of warding magic rush through him. He schooled his expression and clenched his hands to keep from grabbing at his bracer. Since Annia’s prodding, it had not ceased to itch, and the magic added a sting to the sensation.
Worse was the sting in his heart. The three Gold-robed mages arrayed around the table looked up as he approached, and had Annia and her guards not been right behind him, Darilan would have leapt upon the first mage and torn his throat out. As it was, he felt Serindas calling to his temper through the dampening leather of the blade’s sheath.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.
“Exactly as they’ve been ordered,” said Annia behind him.
He did not stop to glare at her, just stormed up to the table. The mage stepped aside warily, but when Darilan moved to sweep the cages off, he made a fearful sound and grabbed for Darilan’s arm.
Darilan had him on the ground by the throat in an instant.
“Don’t you dare cause trouble here!” Annia said sharply. Darilan glanced up to see her hand outstretched, warning off the other mages who had already begun to sketch sigils in the air.
Darilan considered it. He could kill the mage in his grip with one good twist of the wrist, then leap the table and crash down on another mage before any spells went off. Kill that one and go for the third, probably getting a blast from point-blank range. Lose a lot of mobility, maybe manage to finish the third mage, then try to kill Cob before Annia’s thralls got him.
Or he could stand up and pretend to behave. Get close and kill Cob before anyone could react.
He stood, and with great reluctance held out his hand to the downed mage. Wild-eyed, the man recoiled from him and clambered up on his own.
“Sorry. Bad idea to grab me,” Darilan said flatly.
“You need to learn some self-control,” said Annia, moving next to him. He met her narrow gaze, then looked to the table again. As his hand slid to the hilt of the dagger, he felt her thralls position themselves at his elbows.
Pikes. The best opportunity, and I’m surrounded.
“So what is all this for?” he said, forcing himself to abandon the attack and instead gesture at the array of cages.
“Experiments,” said a mage across the table. “The subject was brought in close to death, practically eviscerated, but as you can see, he has mended.” He pointed to Cob’s bare stomach, the only mark on it the familiar shiny scar of the wraith arrow. “He had many wounds, some of them mortal, but they’ve all sealed up. We think it must be some sort of spirit-magic because we can’t sense it, and it has persisted even though his mind has all but fled.”
“What do you mean, ‘all but fled’?”
The mage looked to Annia for permission, and she nodded slightly. “Well,” he said, “when he was first taken to the Hawk’s Pride, he was simply unconscious. Passed out. The mentalists there tried to bring him up and found that he was psychically bound but the bonds were fraying. So they tried to reinforce those, but he fought it. The Inquisitor Archmagus showed up to help, but—“
“Inquisitor Archmagus Enkhaelen?”
“Yes. He’s not a mentalist but we can’t deny the Inquisition. I heard he piggybacked on a mind-probe, but in the end the subject just slid deeper. Now he’s comatose, but his mending still works. It's some sort of aura.”
The mage pointed to the silver needles. “We realized he wasn’t just mending himself when one of the observers cut her hand. It healed immediately. Suddenly we couldn’t keep anyone out—everyone had an experiment they wanted to run—so it’s just as well we were moved here. So far we’ve found that it only happens when he’s injured, thus the needles. But we’ve healed animals, revived plants, purified water, detoxified poisons and wine—just by putting them near him.”
I’ll stick those needles in your eyes, thought Darilan. Out loud, he said, “So you plan to keep him hurt and unconscious until you finish your little tests?”
“It’s not our fault he’s comatose,” said the third mage. “His Majesty wants him woken up so that he can be brought to banquets. For the poisons, you know. His Majesty has gone through quite a few poison-tasters. It wouldn’t be a bad life for a slave.”
“With needles stuck in him the whole time?”
“If necessary.”
The anger twisted to black amusement. The Guardian was not awake; Darilan knew that because he would feel it, and so would Annia. If it was, he thought, you fools would be screaming for mercy.
Maybe I should wake it up.
Stupid idea, he knew. He was here to kill its vessel, and it already knew him as an enemy. It would go right for him. This was the only good chance he had at killing Cob without spiritist help, and he did not know if Lark had made it to the Corvish, let alone if they would aid him.
But unleashing the Guardian upon these rational torturers…
It was tempting.
“Hunter Trevere claims that the boy belongs to the Crimson Army,” said Annia archly. “However, we did catch him first. If the Crimson presses its claim to the Emperor, we may have to relinquish him, but until then… Darilan, dear, why don’t you tell our friends what you know?”
All the mages’ attention snapped to him, and he felt the tickle in the back of his mind that told him a mentalist sought entry. The anger returned in a heady rush. The mentalist would not get in—Darilan’s maker had seen to that—but the very act lit the flame of spite in Darilan’s heart.
He smiled. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll wake him up.”
The mages murmured with excitement as he stepped forward. He felt Annia’s gaze upon him, suspicious. She knew him too well to believe any sudden cooperation. But she did not object, and her thralls stayed back as he moved to the head of the table to look down at Cob’s face.
Cob looked young in sleep, and far too thin. For a moment Darilan was inundated by the memory of watching over him in the infirmary—his hands clutched around those limp, callused fingers, his thoughts turning constantly to prayers he could not say. Would not say.
He shook it off with great effort, mouth dry. The silver needles made a six-pointed figure on Cob’s chest, each twitching in slightly off-set time as his heartbeat moved them, and Darilan knew that even if he had drawn Serindas, he could not have brought the blade down. Not here, not lik
e this.
Not without a fight.
So be it, he thought.
“White Herald, acknowledge.”
Cob’s eyes snapped open. Rolled back in his head, they showed only a sliver of dark iris. “Acknowledged,” he said in a small, soft voice. “Awaiting instruction.”
As always, it chilled Darilan to see him in that state, but it was necessary. When Cob had first been rigged to trap the Guardian spirit, additional mental safeguards had been set in place to make sure that his handler—Darilan—or the plan’s originators could take control of him by suppressing his mind. Overmastering it with a construct. Between that and the conditioning-draught Darilan had been dosing Cob with in the form of sweet water, the young man should have remained entirely biddable.
It seemed they had underestimated the Guardian, handler and mages alike.
Now, though, Darilan suspected that Cob’s suffering suppressed the Guardian enough for the mentalist webs to finally work as they should, allowing these mages free rein with their experiments. Unfortunately for them, Darilan held the key.
“White Herald, disengage Protocol One.”
“Disengaging…”
The body jerked in its bonds. Darilan stepped back as one silver needle popped straight out of Cob’s chest, followed an instant later by the others. The aura hit him like a tidal wave, crushing the breath from his lungs and drawing him toward the floor in its undertow, and as he started to crumple he saw Cob’s head turn slightly to fix coal-black eyes on him.
Then the eyes closed, and the aura vanished.
Darilan steadied himself with the edge of the table, staring in bewilderment. It’s a spellbreaker, he thought. I saw it rip apart its bonds in the tavern. So why did it just give up?
Armored hands yanked him away and spun him around. He was too disoriented to shake them off. Annia glared at him from the support of two thralls, her faux-youthful face red with fury. “Tell me what that was!” she snapped.
“A spirit. Just like your mages guessed.”
“Not good enough!” By the hard glitter of her eyes and the strengthening of her poisoned honey scent, Darilan knew he could not shrug this off. The maker had not protected him from others of his kind.
“It’s a Palace issue,” he said. “We should speak in private.”
He felt the prying interest of the mentalist again, but Annia’s murderous glare slackened, exposing fear. Then her mask of insulted nobility returned and she shook herself free of her thralls and stood tall, staring down her nose at Darilan as if he was a servant who had fallen at her feet.
“Very well,” she said coldly. “We shall. Once I have had a moment to convince myself not to simply order your execution. Boys, take him away. He needs a bath.”
The thralls at his arms hauled him toward the door. He glanced back but there were people in the way, blocking his view of Cob. Fists clenched, he let them drag him out, thinking venomous thoughts as Serindas pulsed in counterpoint against his spine.
Chapter 21 – Crows
As they crested the lip of the ledge, Lark stretched her legs out then hung loose. In unison, the crows that held her by the shoulders and waist let go, and she hit the rock in an easy crouch. Straightening, pleased with herself, she looked back to see Radha arrive the same way.
The crows flew past them to perch on the limbs of the spindly, leafless trees that crowned this small plateau. Old and black and petrified, the trees made a half-circle around two ten-foot-tall obsidian statues carved in the shape of attentive foxes. A Black Corvish skinchanger sat between the ears of each—androgynous and naked but for jewelry, tattoos and feathers, with talons for feet and gleaming amber eyes.
Radha smoothed her hair and gave Lark an encouraging smile. Lark tried to return it. They had just been flown hundreds of feet up from the forested foothills, and Lark knew that if she pissed the crows off, she would be going down much faster.
“Well, kem on then,” called one skinchanger in a raucous voice. “We don’t got all day.”
Radha took Lark by the arm and pulled her forward to stand in a triangle with the two stone statues. All around them, the crows in the trees—big piebald crows, definitely skinchangers—turned their heads to watch, with quiet yawks and mutters passed between them.
“This Kheri called Lark,” said Radha, looking up at the skinchangers on the statues. “She kem here lookin’ fer help fer Aesangat, but not the normal kinda help. She say Aesangat caught in a trap, Imperial trap, an’ to get out Aesangat need her vessel killed. Right now we think the vessel gone to Thynbell. She ask fer help in findin’ an’ killin’ it, so to set Aesangat free.”
At ‘Thynbell’, an ugly chitter went through the gathered crows, and the two skinchangers on the statues sneered.
“How d’she know?” said the skinchanger on the right. Lark thought it was male.
Radha glanced up at Lark and let go of her arm. By her suddenly flat expression, Lark knew that she did not want to be the one to mention abominations.
“I traveled with someone who used to watch over the vessel. An Imperial abomination,” Lark said bluntly. In the trees, the crows hissed. “He told me about the trap, and I know it’s true because I met the vessel too. He didn’t know what was going on or why he had Aesangat’s powers; he’s just a little Imperial lapdog who accidentally got loose.” She took a deep breath, reminding herself of the massacre brought on by Cob’s arrival. “He needs to die.”
“An’ yeh think we gonna kill him fer yeh,” said the one on the left. Maybe a female, though under the strings of bone and stone beads she was as flat-chested as the other.
“No. I’m not asking you to be assassins. The Imperial abomination is, but he sent me here because he knows he can’t do it on his own. He has personal reasons for wanting the vessel dead and he’s ready to die himself—I believe that—but I saw Aesangat beat the crap out of him, and we both know he can’t carry out the kill without someone convincing Aesangat not to fight.”
“What make yeh think he don’t plan t’ kill Aesangat too?” said the possible male.
“I don’t know. Is it that easy to kill a Great Spirit right under the nose of a bunch of skinchangers?”
A rather human gust of snickers came from the crows in the trees, and the Black Corvishman snapped his teeth at them in warning. The female eyed Lark thoughtfully, tapping a claw on her chin. “Our spy say yeh got nothin’ t’help find this abomination. Not a hair, not a scrap a’ cloth.”
“No,” Lark said, ducking her head. “Nothing that was actually his. He should be in Thynbell now, and I could give you a description, but…”
“All yeh humans look the same from above,” sneered the male.
Lark sighed. To come all this way, to actually get an audience with the Black Corvish, then to be stymied by a lack of forethought. “So there’s no way to find him?”
The male shook his head, but the female kept tapping her chin.
“Yeh smell of wolf,” she said finally.
Lark blinked and looked down at herself. She was not wearing her coat, since sliding out of it on the flight would have been disastrous. Instead she wore several shirts, a vest, and leggings with a long skirt over them.
Caught on the cloth were a few pewter hairs.
Lark plucked one off and considered it. She had never dared to get close to the wolf, but Rian had. That one morning, he had actually snuggled with it. And then he had clung to her for the whole northward ride.
“There was a wolf following us,” she said, looking up at the Black Corvish. “A skinchanger like you. It must have followed the abomination, because I haven’t seen it since we parted.”
The female pursed her thin lips and leaned forward. “Dangerous, wolves,” she said. “Madness in ‘em. The first wolf-pack split the Great Spirit, made us ourselves, an’ once Zolvin T’okiel flew wi’ them. Not so much, anymore. He an’ Raun the Wolf fell out.”
Lark frowned. “The one that followed us seemed all right.”
Th
e female cocked her head at a painful-looking angle, yellow eyes boring into Lark. Then she shrugged bony shoulders and sat back on her perch. “True. Yeh not eaten, anyhow.”
“Not even a nibble.”
Looking to the crow-filled trees, the female made a horrible hurking sound and a screech, and suddenly the gathered birds erupted in harsh chatter. Lark winced and put her hands over her ears. Beside her, Radha’s face scrunched in annoyance, but she gave Lark a tentative nod of approval.
The squalling and screeching continued for so long that jumping off the plateau started to seem like a valid method of escape, but finally, one by one, the huge crows settled into silence, though a few kept muttering to their closer brethren. Feathered hackles smoothed down, and preening resumed.
The skinchangers looked down at the waiting women, the male with his feathered arms crossed and the female grinning unpleasantly. “We say yes,” said the female. “But fer investigation first. Give here a wolf-hair.”
Lark checked her shirt and found one stuck in the weave, a long guard-hair. She held it up and the Black Corvishwoman gestured obliquely. Out of nowhere, a small crow swept down to snap the hair from Lark’s fingers, making her squeal and step back, and the crows in the trees gave another cawing chuckle. The small crow winged back to the female to perch on her thin forearm.
“We seek yeh wolf,” said the female, watching Lark keenly. “We speak. Then seek fer yeh abomination. If we like what we find, then we help. No guarantees.”
“Understood. Um. Thank you.”
“An’ if we do help, yeh talk t’yeh big Shadow spirit fer us. Long, long time we been wantin’ a chat.”
Lark swallowed, trying to keep down the surge of anxiety and glee. “Of course,” she said. “Perhaps even if you don’t.”
“Perhaps,” said the female through her razor teeth.
Then she tossed the crow into the air and it spiraled away on the cold currents.
*****
Fast as the wind, the seeker-crow soared over the hills, its wings making only fleeting shadows on the snow. Down from the heights, down toward the valley cut by the Imperial Road, swinging wide around the crystal ruins that tormented earth and air. Down, down, down, skimming the treetops to keep out of sight of the broad black shapes that patrolled the sky.
The Light of Kerrindryr (The War of Memory Cycle Book 1) Page 49
