by J. L. Doty
Rat neither replied, nor moved, nor tried to run. He simply fainted.
~~~
As the witchman stepped out of the alley, followed by a servant carrying the unconscious, young thief, a rat scurried out of the nearby rubbish, a small finger-length bone in its mouth. It lay the bone down carefully in the mud, and as it returned to the rubbish another rat scurried past it carrying another bone. The second rat lay the second bone down carefully next to the first. More rats appeared one after the other, each carrying a small bone and laying it down next to the others. Slowly, as the rats continued retrieving small bones the pattern they formed in the mud began to take on the shape of a man, though, since few, if any, of the bones were actually human, the man-shape was an undersized, twisted and deformed skeleton of bird, cat, dog and rat bones. The last bones that the rats placed were clearly in the shape of a crown about the little skeleton-man’s head. Then the rats all retreated to the rubbish and disappeared beneath it.
The air about the skeleton-king shimmered, and the bones of one hand moved. Then suddenly the skeleton-king’s chest heaved a sigh and he sat up. He climbed carefully to his feet, stood no taller than the small thief had stood. And while deformed and misshapen, he walked to the mouth of the alley with the bearing of a true king.
He was just in time to catch a last, fleeting glimpse of the wizard, accompanied by a servant carrying the young thief. He stayed hidden in the shadows of the alley and watched as they disappeared among the crowds in the street. He sighed sorrowfully, and with his not-eyes focused on the young thief, he whispered, “Now it begins, my child, and there’s no turning back. I do hope you can forgive me for setting you on this course.”
The skeleton king lowered his head, and without warning all of the bones tumbled to the ground in the alley and lay in a shapeless heap. The rats reappeared and quickly scattered the bones.
~~~
Rat awoke in someone’s arms; whose arms, he could not guess. He kept his eyes closed and remained motionless, feigning sleep. And he listened.
“Forgive me for saying so, my lord, but the stench is terrible.” That voice belonged to the one carrying him.
“You’re quite right, Avis,” the witchman laughed. “He does stink, doesn’t he? Place him on the table here.”
“On the table, my lord? Might the Lady Olivia object?”
The witchman hesitated. “Yes. I believe you’re right. Best place him on the floor then.”
The arms laid Rat gently on a stone floor. He took care not to move, and he continued to listen.
“Will that be all, my lord?”
“Yes. Thank you, Avis. You may go. But summon the Lady AnnaRail, please.”
“Certainly, my lord.”
Rat heard feet walk across the floor, then a door closed and all was silent. He waited for several seconds, and when he heard no further sounds he opened his good eye just the slightest bit. The witchman sat across the room at a table looking directly at him. Rat snapped his eye shut instantly.
“Come, child. I know you’re awake. Open your eyes and stand up.”
Rat kept his eye shut, not understanding most of the words. There was a pause, he heard more footsteps, then the toe of a boot nudged him gently in the ribs. “Do as I say, boy. I don’t have the time or the patience to put up with your games. Now stand up.”
The boot nudged him a little less gently. Rat still didn’t understand, but he realized he could no longer play dead. As the boot approached for another nudge, he bit it with all his might, discovering it was made of soft, supple leather, beneath which he could feel the witchman’s toes.
“Owe! Damn you,” the witchman bellowed, twisting his foot free. “That’s a new pair of boots you’ve bitten. You’d better not have marked the leather.” The witchman examined the boot carefully.
Rat squirmed to his feet, hissed and spit at the witchman, put his back to the wall, slid along its length to the nearest corner. The witchman stood near the only door.
The witchman finished examining his boot, apparently satisfied that no damage had been done. He returned to the table calmly, sat down. “I’m not going to hurt you, boy, so calm down.”
Rat’s eyes darted about the room suspiciously, though the witchman seemed to bear him no malice. But at that moment Rat became suddenly conscious of another presence nearby, a presence felt but not seen, sensed but not heard. This presence was not in the room with him and the witchman, but it was conscious of him, and it was coming for him. It was angry at him—he could sense that—angry with an evil, terrible hatred, and it was going to punish him. He began to sob openly, lowered himself slowly to the floor. He crammed several fingers in his mouth to silence the sobs, curled into a fetal position and couldn’t take his eyes from that single closed door through which he knew the evil would come.
The witchman stood from the table, his brows narrowed with concern, and in that moment the door burst open to reveal a wrinkled, old, demon witchwoman in long, flowing, black robes with the fires of magic burning about her. Her face was a mask of wrinkled fury as she pointed at Rat with a shaking finger and demanded, “And what, in the name of the Unnamed King, is that filth?”
In that instant Rat simultaneously fainted, winked into invisibility, and lost control of his bowels.
~~~
Still standing in the doorway the old woman’s finger stopped shaking and she paused in amazement. “Well now!” she said. “What do we have here?” She crossed the room to stand over Rat’s motionless form and answered her own question. “A young magician it seems. Now I understand. I sensed his power—raw and uncontrolled, but power nevertheless—and I assumed something had invaded our household. Are you responsible for this, Roland?”
The witchman nodded. “Yes, mother.”
At that moment another woman appeared in the open doorway. She also wore long stately robes, but was younger than the first. “Husband. Mother,” she greeted them formally. “Avis said you wished to see me.”
Roland looked at his wife and frowned. “Don’t you see him, AnnaRail?”
“See whom?” the younger woman asked.
“A boy child,” the old woman answered gruffly, “at my feet. An urchin of the streets, it appears. And it also appears that, unlike us, you cannot see through his invisibility.” The old woman nudged Rat with the tip of a slipper.
“Don’t stand too close, mother,” Roland said, chuckling. “He bites, and your soft slippers won’t protect you at all well.”
The old woman stepped back warily.
“And it’s not invisibility,” Roland added. “Just a shadow. He makes his own shadows and hides within them.”
AnnaRail frowned skeptically. “But the lights in here are too soft for such shadows.” She bent over Rat’s still form.
Roland shook his head. “He needs no light to make the shadows he makes.”
“I’m impressed,” AnnaRail said, running her hands carefully over the still form of the child she could not see.
Standing over her the old woman said, “Not a powerful spell but a subtle one. Who is he, Roland? And where did you find him?”
Roland gave a brief summary of the morning’s incident. “I questioned several of the merchants. No one seems to know who his parents were, or when he was born, or where he came from. They call him Rat, and he seems to have been living on his own somewhere in or around the market. A fruit monger remembers him as far back as two years ago. He appears to be about six or seven years old, though that might be because malnutrition has stunted his growth. She said he steals an occasional piece of fruit, but thinks he lives mostly on garbage and dead animals and worms and the like. Incredible as it seems, he’s apparently survived on his own. But I don’t think it could have lasted much longer. Look at his teeth. They’re so stained by gesh I doubt he’s eaten anything else for some time now.”
“I cannot see his teeth,” AnnaRail said. She frowned and her attention seemed to be elsewhere. She sat down on the floor unceremoniously beside Rat,
looked up at the old woman. “Something’s wrong here. Will you ward me?”
“Certainly,” the old woman said. She stood motionless over AnnaRail and began chanting words in a slow, soft voice, words incomprehensible to Roland whose own magic was so limited.
He looked on as AnnaRail bowed her head, cradling the bundle of filthy rags in her arms, ignoring the child’s stench and conscious only of its needs. She was that way with all children, and Roland loved her for it. She was one of the most powerful witches he had ever met, and yet she was happiest with her sons and daughters nearby.
In contrast stood Olivia, Roland’s own mother: never loving, never gentle, content to allow servants to raise her two sons while she plotted their greatness, fiercely loyal, a she-cat who would defend any member of her family to the death, she demanded perfection from herself and those around her, a perfection her sons could never achieve. Yet he knew she would die as readily for him as for his older brother Malka.
Olivia stopped chanting. AnnaRail’s eyes lost that faraway look. “It’s hopeless,” the younger woman said. “He’s gone into some sort of recession. Very severe. So much fear! What could cause such fear in one so small, I wonder. It will kill him, I think. Soon his soul will be beyond our reach.”
Something deep within Roland’s soul told him he could not allow that. “Then we must act quickly.”
“Hold,” Olivia commanded sharply. “You have yet to convince me we must act at all.”
“But we must,” Roland pleaded.
Olivia’s eyes narrowed. “Must we really? He is nothing to us, so let him die.”
“No,” Roland shouted.
“Yes,” the old woman growled in a low voice. “What has come over you? Has this bundle of filth enchanted you? It is definitely a thing of magic; that I can sense, even if you cannot. Have you lost your senses? Are you enspelled?”
Roland made a visible effort to calm himself. “No,” he said. “I am not enspelled. I am answering to my intuition, which cries out to me to save this child. To let it die, I sense . . . would be a grave mistake. To save it . . . to save it will somehow benefit us. It will somehow benefit House Elhiyne, though how I cannot say.”
Olivia nodded. “Very well. You are not enspelled. And I know the power of your intuition; even if you doubt its magic, I do not. But what you suggest will require powerful and dangerous spells. Besides we here, only Marjinell and MichaelOff are available. And MichaelOff is only just of age, and far too inexperienced. I’ll not endanger him so.”
“We must do something,” Roland begged.
Olivia looked carefully at AnnaRail. “What say you?”
AnnaRail looked at Roland as if she could see into his soul. “I sense strange forces at work here, subtle forces. This child is strongly tied to the arcane in some fashion I cannot fathom, and I trust my husband’s instincts. We can take precautions to protect MichaelOff. I say we at least try.”
Olivia did not reply immediately, but looked at each of them carefully, measuring them. “Are the two of you prepared to accept responsibility for this . . . this guttersnipe?”
Roland nodded instantly. AnnaRail hesitated, then agreed with less enthusiasm.
“Very well,” the old woman said. “AnnaRail. Prepare the child. Roland. Summon Marjinell and MichaelOff to the sanctum. I’ll go there directly and set the Wards.”
~~~
Olivia turned her back on them without another word, left the room so quickly they had no time to react. She rather enjoyed such dramatic exits, for it kept her offspring on their toes. And out in the halls the servants were careful to step aside as she strode past them.
The servants were another matter. They feared her, she knew, and they avoided her when they could, which was right and correct, for she was a woman to be feared.
Avis, the chief steward of the household, waited outside the sanctum when she arrived. It was not the first time he had anticipated her with almost clairvoyant accuracy, and it was not the first time she wondered if there wasn’t some small talent hidden within his soul.
She paused before entering the sanctum, though she kept her eyes straight ahead looking at the power within, and not at the servant standing to one side. “You know the procedure, Avis.”
“Yes, madam. I’ll seal the chamber and post guards.”
She nodded, then stepped forth into the sanctum, the servant already gone from her mind. This room, and others like it, always struck her as odd, even after all these years. Twelve walls and twelve corners. Almost round, but not quite. The servants would never enter such a room, not even in fear of their mortal lives, for rightly they feared for their immortal souls.
For a moment she stood without moving, looking at the ceiling and the twelve walls, her eyes narrowing into a look of intense concentration. Then she chose one of the twelve corners, though there was nothing to distinguish it from the rest. She approached it, stood motionless before it, and concentrated with every ounce of her will on the words of power she knew existed within her.
She spoke the words from memory, almost by rote, for as always they carried no meaning at first, as if they were not meant to be understood by a mere mortal such as she. But then slowly the power within them filled her soul with meaning, and the air about her began to shimmer without luminance, a wavering of the senses only there at the edge of vision. Then suddenly, as if her actions were controlled by something beyond her own will, her hand thrust upward high in the air. Her sleeve billowed about a leathery old wrist quivering with tension, and she cried out in a voice that echoed the power at her command: “Primus,” she called, “I bid you come.”
Pain shot through her arm as a spark of brilliant radiance flared within her upraised hand, and light that was not meant for mortal eyes splashed across the room. She wanted to look away; she wanted to wince at the pain that burned a hole into her soul, but she knew she dare not show such weakness to the life she had called forth from the nether reaches.
She stood for a long, motionless moment. And then, when certain she had achieved control, she lowered her hand slowly to the floor, left behind a pillar of such intensity that now she must look away. To the eyes it was a rod of golden light no wider than a finger, but to her soul it was something far more. It was power, the First Dominant Ward of Power, vibrating with a sound that hurt her ears, blistering her hand with heat, and torturing her soul with a life beyond what she could ever hope to comprehend.
She turned away from it almost arrogantly, walked to the next corner, raised her hand again and cried, “Secundus. I bid you come,” and there she drew forth another Ward. But where the first had been gold, the second was violet, and it sang a note higher and more shrill. “Tertius,” she cried at the third corner, and brought forth the white Ward. Quartus answered her summons at the fourth corner, and Quintus at the fifth. When Sextus finally occupied the sixth corner she paused, sweat beading on her brow, lines of strain added to those of age.
She passed the next two corners without filling them, for between them stood the only entrance to the room, a heavy stone door hanging on massive iron hinges. At the ninth corner she called upon Nonus, and at the tenth Decimus, then Undecimus, and Duodecimus. She completed the circuit of the room, and turned to look upon her work: ten Wards in ten corners, each flaring its own color, and sounding a note harsh and demanding.
AnnaRail entered the room cautiously, carrying Rat. She was followed by a woman her own age, and an adolescent boy. She placed Rat, still unconscious, though naked now and washed, on the stone floor at the center of the chamber. And about them all the air shimmered with power.
Olivia turned to the young boy. “I need your strong back, grandson.”
He appeared to know what was required of him without being told; he stepped to the heavy stone door, put a shoulder to it, and pushed. It swung silently on its hinges and closed with a thud to form the twelfth wall. He reached out, threw the bolt, sealed the chamber, and except for the hinges, handle, and locking bolt of the door, the twe
lve walls were now without feature. The boy joined the two younger women at the center of the room.
Olivia stepped up to the now clear seventh corner, and without hesitating she reached upward and cried, “Septimus. I bid you come.” And in her lowering hand she brought forth the black Ward, unique in its silence and lack of color.
She stepped to the last corner, the only corner that did not glow with the infinite power of a Ward, and her bearing changed, for now she was in command. Her back straightened; her chin thrust outward, and her sagging, old breasts stood out as if she were a young girl again. There was a sense of strength in her movements; her eyes alight with godfire, and about her hung the aura of a queen. “Octavus,” she commanded, “Ward of the power of the eighth tribe, Keeper of the House of Elhiyne, I command you . . . attend me.”
Instantly the eighth Ward appeared, red, angry, and powerful. She admired it for a moment, then turned her back on it arrogantly. “The circle is complete,” she said to the others. “None may enter. None may leave.”
Without speaking further she joined them at the center of the chamber and added her hands to the living circle they now formed about Rat. She looked at each of them closely, judging them. Her eyes—large black pools in the middle of white orbs—shown with an orange red glow, a manifestation of the power at her command. She knew that to the others her eyes gave her the appearance of near madness, and she was oddly proud of that. She stood wrapped within her power, dark, arrogant, dangerous.
She lifted her face to the gods and spoke. “We, of House Elhiyne, of Clan Elhiyne, of the eighth tribe of the Shahot, are here assembled in arcane rite. Let those whose magic is not ours . . . BE GONE.”
~~~
