Upon reflection, Cathala had made a serious mistake by being so honest with the Keeper. She had thought that Calliande might be a woman like herself, a woman wise in the ways of power and hard enough to do what was necessary. Perhaps she had even been cunning enough to seduce the Shield Knight and use him as her strong right arm. Instead, Calliande was like all the other women that Cathala despised. There were stars in her eyes as she looked at her husband, and she missed the useless burden of her children. No doubt she even cried herself to sleep thinking of them.
Cathala’s lip twisted in disgust at the thought, but she smoothed her expression back to calm at once.
Calliande would be a problem. The Shield Knight would be another. Soldiers were always oafs, of course, but some of them were far more dangerous than others. Ridmark Arban might be one such man. He had the same hardness in his eyes that Cathala had seen in Justin and Kothlaric, and he reminded her of a graying, cunning old wolf that watched its prey with deadly intensity. The logical approach would be to seduce Ridmark as she had seduced Justin, but Cathala suspected that might be an extraordinarily bad idea. It might even end worse than Cathala’s seduction of Justin, which had saddled her with a useless son and imprisoned her as a statue for fourteen years.
Selene and Third would be another challenge. The two women had watched Cathala with unnerving focus, and something about the former urdhracosi made her skin crawl. Had Cathala been able to work her will, such abominations would be put to death.
She considered all the obstacles to her goal.
Namely, how to get Tamara away from the fools that she considered her friends.
Cathala had to do it as soon as possible, before Tamara and the others rejoined Hektor Pendragon. Once Tamara came into Hektor’s reach, Cathala would never get control of her.
She had to act now.
Which meant…
Cathala took a long breath, clearing her mind.
Which meant it was time to take some calculated risks.
She descended from the wall and walked to the western end of the courtyard, to the ruins of the monks’ church. Cathala had little use for religion of any sort and thought that God, if he existed, rewarded those who looked after themselves. Nevertheless, she had to concede that the monks had built a beautiful church. It had been a soaring space with windows of brilliant stained glass, the beams of the roof polished. Now it was a roofless stone shell, the windows empty gashes in the wall. It made her sad to see the once-beautiful place reduced to a ruin.
Well, Cathala had never liked monks, but she would avenge them when she destroyed the Seven Swords.
She walked down the roofless nave and to the dais that held the stone block of the altar. Once a wooden trapdoor had been on the left of the dais, but it had burned in the fire that had destroyed the church. Now Cathala saw a flight of stone steps descending into the darkness below the earth. She glanced over her shoulder, saw no one moving in the ruined church, and then took a deep breath and descended into the gloom.
Two-thirds of the way down the stairs, once she was far enough that the light would not reach to the nave, she cast a spell. A pale sphere of blue light whirled to life over her palm, throwing back the darkness. Cathala went the rest of the way down the stairs and stepped into the church’s crypt. It was a large space with thick, squat pillars supporting the vaulted ceilings. Hundreds of stone urns lined the walls, inscribed with the dates and names of generations of long-dead monks. The monks of the Monastery of St. James had originally founded their cloister to avoid cremating their dead, but the sheer risk of the necromancy wielded by the Sovereign’s servants had forced them to change their mind. The monks had given way and burned their dead like everyone else in Owyllain.
But the first generation of monks had buried their dead, and Cathala headed for that section of the crypt.
It lay in ruins. The ancient sarcophagi had burst open, and pale shafts of moonlight leaked through the ceiling. The Maledictus of Life had called forth the dead monks, animating their bones with a hideous parody of life, and the Shield Knight and his companions had destroyed them. Consequently, the crypt had been shattered.
At least, most of the crypt had been shattered. The section that Cathala needed was still intact.
She walked to the central sarcophagus that had once held the bones of the monastery’s first abbot. The lid had been carved with a stone likeness of the abbot’s stern features, but it had been shattered when the Immortal One’s twisted magic had reached into the earth and infused the abbot’s remains with a corrupted form of life. No doubt the abbot’s bones had crumbled away with the pools of black slime left by the destroyed creatures. All that remained was an empty stone box.
Much as nothing would remain of Owyllain but ruins unless Cathala acted.
She knelt and ran her fingers over the base of the sarcophagus. Yes – it was still there. Cathala pressed hard, and the concealed latch clicked open. A stone panel slid aside, revealing a hidden compartment beneath the sarcophagus. Cathala didn’t know why the first abbot had ordered the compartment installed, and she didn’t care. Perhaps the abbot had thought to conceal the monastery’s most valuable treasures there but had died before he could pass on the secret. Regardless, Cathala had found the compartment during her initial explorations of the monastery, and she had used it to hold a few valuable things.
Things she could never, ever let the monks see.
There was a sheathed dagger of dark elven steel. There were a dozen small crystalline vials holding poisons and drugs. Cathala had found such tools useful for removing enemies in the past, though she supposed the passage of fourteen years might have rendered some of the poisons inert.
But the most valuable and dangerous item lay in the center of the compartment, and Cathala ran a finger along the cool metal of its curved surface.
It was a collar forged of black dvargirish steel, connected to a chain leash about six feet long. The dvargir were skilled blacksmiths, and they did a brisk trade in slaves. Sometimes those slaves possessed magical abilities, and the ever-practical dvargir had worked out a way to control powerful captives. When a user of magical force wore this collar, any attempt to summon arcane power would result in excruciating pain. The dvargir had also worked a spell of controlling into the collar, allowing whoever held the leash to issue commands. A captive of sufficient willpower could overcome the compulsion, but it would be difficult.
Cathala gazed at the collar, her mind sorting through the possibilities.
She had never intended to use it, of course. Well, she had never wanted to use it, but one’s intentions were often irrelevant in the face of reality, were they not? Cathala had intended to raise Tysia as an obedient extension of her will, but suppose the girl rebelled when she came to womanhood? Suppose she followed some foolish and reckless impulse?
Like marrying some oaf of an Arcanius Knight, for example?
Talitha had been destined to save Owyllain, and Cathala was going to make sure that she fulfilled that destiny, no matter what the cost.
But how?
It was clear that Cathala had to do something. Tamara had married Tamlin, and Tamara was going to listen to Cathala’s idiot son and the foolish Keeper of Andomhaim, no matter what Cathala said to her. Drastic action was required. The collar, once it was around Tamara’s neck, would ensure her obedience to Cathala’s wisdom, and Cathala could slip away with her. But Tamlin would pursue her, and so would the rest of his friends.
Could Cathala poison them in their sleep? She considered the matter in an abstracted way. The church of Owyllain liked to cite the example of Cain and Abel to say that God hated no one more than one who murdered those of their blood, and a mother who killed her children was especially accursed. Cathala was free of such superstitions…but the bald fact was that poison was an impractical plan. The Keeper could likely heal any poisonings, and Cathala knew that she had aroused the suspicion of those cold-eyed former urdhracosi. They would watch her, and if she did anything suspi
cious, they would probably try to kill her.
For that matter, once Cathala activated the collar, she would have to move in haste. The Keeper had the power of the Sight, and Cathala knew something of how the Sight worked. High King Kothlaric had once possessed the Sight, part of the mantle of power passed down from High King to High King over the generations. So long as Cathala did not use the collar, it would remain inert, and the Keeper wouldn’t detect it. But once it was around someone’s neck, the collar would activate, shining like a beacon of dark magic, and the Keeper would notice it at once.
Cathala wouldn’t survive that.
Yet she dared not wait. With every step they took towards Aenesium, Cathala's odds of getting Tamara away from the bad influences around her decreased.
She had to act now.
Cathala wasn’t worried. She knew without false pride or false modesty that she was far smarter than most people, and her mind would think of a plan.
But what?
###
In the gloom of the monastery’s crypt, the Maledictus of Shadows watched Cathala.
She hadn’t seen him. She would never notice him, not unless he wished it. He was wrapped in the memory-warping mist drawn from the Sword of Shadows, and he could stand right in front of Cathala and she would never see him.
The Keeper would, though. Calliande Arban possessed the Sight, and more dangerously, she had a cold hatred of the Maledicti in general and the Maledictus of Shadows in particular. That had been one of the regrettable consequences of the failure at Kalimnos and the Tower of Nightmares. Fueled by her anger, the Keeper’s Sight, in time, would pierce even the mist cloaking the Maledictus of Shadows from observation.
That would be bad. Very bad.
But Cathala, though…Cathala would not see him.
And she could make a marvelous weapon.
Save for the loss of the Scythe to the side of the Shield Knight and Keeper, the plan had so far gone smoothly. The Immortal One’s attacks had lured in the Shield Knight and the Keeper, convincing them that the Maledicti wanted them kept far away from the Monastery of St. James. They were suspicious, of course. They were not fools.
But they had yet to realize that Cathala herself would be the weapon the Maledictus of Shadows would use against them.
The Maledictus glided behind the kneeling woman and peered into the hidden compartment. His undead vision pierced the gloom of the crypt, and he saw the dvargir slave collar resting there.
A flicker of pleasure spun through the calculating wheels of his mist-shrouded mind.
Perfect. It was perfect. It was even better than he had hoped. Some of the other Maledicti enjoyed battle, enjoyed confronting their foes directly. The Maledictus of Shadows was wiser and preferred to act indirectly.
After all, look what had happened to Qazaldhar.
But tonight’s work, most likely, would free Qazaldhar and return the Sword of Death to their control.
The Maledictus of Shadows raised a hand and cast a spell, his will looking through Cathala’s thoughts as plans turned through her mind.
Yes. Cathala had exactly what he needed. Her father and her mother were both long in their graves, but still, Cathala seethed with contempt for them. She boiled with the need to prove herself more self-controlled than her father and more powerful than her mother. All other considerations drowned before that, and Cathala herself had not realized how enslaved she had become to her resentments. Even her desire to use Tamara to destroy the Seven Swords and save Owyllain was simply an outgrowth of her wish to surpass her parents.
She was powerful and clever, but not nearly as powerful or as clever as she believed.
Confronting the Shield Knight and the Keeper, in the Maledictus of Shadows’ opinion, was foolish. In such a battle, the Maledicti might win…but they might just as easily lose.
No, better to turn the Shield Knight’s companions against each other and let them destroy one another.
The Maledictus of Shadows raised his skeletal hand over Cathala’s head, and a single tendril of mist uncoiled from his fingers and sank into Cathala’s temple.
He had just placed knowledge into her thoughts, and he glided back to watch the results.
###
Cathala scowled at the dvargir collar, sorting through plan after plan and discarding them as unworkable.
Then, all at once, an idea came to her, stark in its simplicity.
Sir Calem.
He was the key.
Based on what the others had said, the Masked One of Xenorium had bound him with spells of dark magic, using him as an enslaved bearer of the Sword of Air. That was cleverer than Cathala would have expected from Cavilius, but perhaps the bumbler had gained wisdom in the past fourteen years. The Keeper had been able to suppress the spells upon Calem, but she hadn’t yet worked out a way to break them entirely.
Which meant that Cathala could take control of those spells herself.
And that, in turn, meant she would have full control of the bearer of the Sword of Air.
A shiver of excitement went through her at the thought. By God, think of the things she could accomplish with one of the Seven Swords! She could have become a power in her own right, carving a realm of her own and bringing the War of the Seven Swords to its end. She could have conquered Urd Maelwyn, destroyed the Seven Swords, and freed Kothlaric, serving as his right hand as the High King brought a new age of peace and prosperity to Owyllain…
Cathala forced back the thoughts. No, she would get one chance to use Calem, and she would have to make it count. Calliande had suppressed the control spells once before, and she could do it again. Therefore, Cathala would direct Calem to kill the Keeper of Andomhaim and the Shield Knight, and as many of their friends as he could manage. While that attack was underway, Cathala would put the collar on Tamara and make her escape. Calem would probably take down the Keeper and the Shield Knight and several of their companions before he was killed, but by then Cathala would be far away with Tamara.
And without the Keeper and her Sight, the survivors would not be able to follow Cathala. If any survivors managed to escape the Serpent Marshes and make their way back to Owyllain, well…by then Cathala and Tamara would have destroyed the Seven Swords and freed High King Kothlaric. And who would Kothlaric believe? The woman who had campaigned at his side during the war against the Sovereign, who had saved the realm from the New God, and had released him from his imprisonment in Cathair Animus? Or some renegades who had followed a foreign knight and his sorceress wife?
She nodded to herself, the plan coming together. It would be simple, surprisingly simple in the end. All she needed to do was to take control of Calem, and that would be easy, so easy. Calem would kill the Keeper and probably the Shield Knight, and in the chaos, Cathala would bind Tamara with the collar and escape.
No one would remember them. But history would remember Cathala, the woman who had guided Talitha to her final victory over the Seven Swords and the New God, the woman who had been the architect of Kothlaric Pendragon’s return to the high kingship of Owyllain.
Smiling to herself, she took the collar and hid it beneath her skirts. She searched through the vials and bottles and lifted a small crystal bottle. Opening the stopper, she gave the contents a quick, cautious sniff, and nodded in satisfaction when her nose went numb. The substance within was still potent and would serve her needs well.
She slipped the vial into her sleeve, closed the secret compartment, and stood, pleased with herself.
The plan had come to her so easily.
###
The Maledictus of Shadows watched Cathala leave the crypt and climb the stairs back to the ruined church.
That had gone even better than he had expected.
He had pointed Cathala at the Shield Knight and the Keeper.
Now it was time to see how effective of a weapon she would be.
Chapter 19: Better Uses
As darkness fell and the others slept, Ridmark sat near the sphere of magical
fire that Kalussa had conjured.
As tired as he felt, as weary as he was from the past weeks of hard journeying and fighting, he found that sleep was the farthest thing from his mind. A sense of foreboding gnawed at him, and he could not shake the sense of impending disaster from his mind. Another man might have called it paranoia or chalked it up to the exhaustion from the past few months. But Ridmark had been in many battles that he should not have survived, and he had learned long ago to listen to his instincts.
He could not shake the feeling that he had missed something important, perhaps even something vital, but he could not figure out what it was.
His uneasiness centered on Cathala. Tamlin and Calem were keeping watch on the gate, but Ridmark felt that he needed to keep watch himself. Part of his mind wondered if his uneasiness was ridiculous. Cathala might have been unpleasant and calculating, but surely she wouldn’t try to knife them in their sleep. As arrogant was the woman was, she wasn’t stupid, and she had to know that trying to challenge so many powerful fighters at once would lead to her death. She claimed to be on Tamara’s side, had promised to help Tamara.
And Third and Selene were watching Cathala. No matter how powerful her magic, Ridmark doubted that Cathala had any experience being stalked by two huntresses as skilled as Third and Selene. If she attempted treachery, Third and Selene would notice, and they would tell Ridmark at once.
No, as far as Ridmark could tell, they were safe, at least for now.
Yet he could not escape the overwhelming feeling that he had missed something important.
As if his thoughts had conjured her, he saw Cathala appear out of the gloom of the northern courtyard, her lovely features illuminated in the glow of a pale sphere of blue light. She paused just at the edge of the light from Kalussa’s sphere, saw Ridmark staring at her, and beckoned, her expression grave. Ridmark’s fingers itched to grasp Oathshield’s hilt. Instead, he settled for gripping his staff and walking to join her.
Sevenfold Sword: Sorceress Page 27
