Will Shetterly - Witch Blood

by Witch Blood (v1. 0)

  “Perhaps,” I said.

  “Where are you from?”

  “The Ladizhar,” I answered.

  “The isles?”

  “No. The coast.”

  “Hmm. And why do you travel north?”

  “Wanderlust.”

  “That’s all?”

  I dismissed the matter with a tossing gesture. “I haven’t a home to hold me anywhere.”

  “Tell me more, southerner. I can kill you with a lightning bolt, if I decide you’re too dangerous to keep. Or too boring.”

  I set my hand on the pommel of my short sword as though I rested it there. Count Gromandiel laughed. “You think steel will help you? It may disperse most spells, but I’ve learned that it only attracts lightning.”

  Naiji nodded when I frowned. “That’s true, Rifkin. Had the more powerful of our people known that earlier, the old Empire might still stand.”

  This interested me. If the Gromandiels were right about the existence of one exception to the laws of iron and magic, there might be others. I asked, “Can you use your lightning against the Duke’s soldiers?”

  Talivane glanced at Naiji. “Did you tell—”

  She nodded. “If he’s a spy, he knows already.”

  The Count said to me, “Yes, southerner. We’ll use lightning against your master’s forces. But you won’t live to tell him that.”

  “If I have a master,” I said, “it’s your sister.”

  “What’s this?” Surprise seemed to make him quieter and more cautious. He glanced from me to Naiji.

  She put her palm against his cheek. ‘True. Rifkin swore to serve me.“

  “Why?”

  She spoke dismissingly. “Avo had wounded him. I healed him. I thought he might prove useful.”

  Talivane stroked his beard as he watched me. “So you’re our man, eh, southerner?”

  “No,” I said. “I’m hers.”

  He sighed and looked away. “Perhaps I should kill him,” he told Naiji. “It would be safer. And far, far simpler.”

  “No, dear brother. Rifkin may have a lawyer’s obsession with details, but he’s honest.”

  His eyes, green but flecked with more grey than hers, flicked back to me. “Will you fight to protect my sister and her property?”

  I nodded. “If that’s the only way to protect her.”

  “Her enemies are your enemies?”

  “Yes. Just as mine are hers.”

  “Excellent.” He snapped his fingers and the curtains at one end of the room drew themselves back. A man and a woman, both young and blond and dressed all in black, were tied on the floor in the far alcove.

  Naiji clapped her hand to her mouth. “No!”

  Gags prevented the prisoners from speaking, but their eyes glared in fear or anger. I recognized them for what they were, and wondered why they had come to Castle Gromandiel, and whom they sought.

  “Visitors,” said Talivane with theatrical pleasure. “From the Duke.”

  Naiji said coldly, “He hires Spirits, now. What next?”

  Her brother shrugged and quoted, “All’s fair in war with witches.”

  The prisoners’ clothing was that of Moon Isle’s assassins, who called themselves by many names: the Spirits of Death, the Spirits of Freedom... If, as it is said, the Spirits began as a force to overthrow the Witches’ Empire, it was logical that they should be employed by the Gromandiels’ foe. I hoped that Duke Komaki had only hired a few, that there was no pact between him and the Spirits’ entire clan. If such a pact existed, we might as well slay ourselves now. No one could protect Naiji from a thousand silent killers.

  “What happened?” Naiji asked.

  Talivane pursed his lips, then said, “I was here, studying. Somehow, the Spirits slipped past Avarineo and the others.” He glanced at me and smiled. “Most witches can’t tell when iron is near. I can sense it around me, almost smell it. It gives me headaches. Though the Spirits only carried small steel daggers, that alerted me. There were seven of them, so I hid myself in a darkness spell until my captain and her guards arrived. We killed one Spirit. The rest are in the dungeons.”

  “What do you want with these two?” I asked.

  “Knowledge, originally, but they guard their thoughts well. Now I’ve a second use for them. Prove your loyalty, southerner.”

  I suspected his meaning, but I said, “How?”

  “Kill them.”

  “They’re no threat, so long as they’re bound.”

  “They’re a threat so long as they live.” He looked at Naiji and then away, and his voice was sad. “My sister is their second target, after me. I learned that much from them.”

  Naiji’s nostrils flared, but she said nothing.

  “Kill them, Rifkin,” the Count repeated.

  I looked at Naiji. She nodded.

  “It’s not my way,” I said. When neither answered, I added, “What would it prove? If I came here to win your confidence, I wouldn’t hesitate to kill allies as replaceable as those.”

  “I didn’t ask for a debate,” said Talivane. “Only for a deed.”

  The male assassin writhed against the stone wall, trying to free himself from his bonds. The woman seemed to have fainted, or to be in shock. She sat perfectly still, breathing deeply, with her eyes half-closed.

  “My vow—” I said.

  “A deed,” said the Count. “Now.” He raised one pale hand as though he would throw something. I expected to learn then whether lightning was truly his to command.

  I stood there, weighing factors. The matter wasn’t as simple as slay the Spirits or be slain by Talivane. The assassins’ vow demanded that they keep trying to kill the Gromandiels until success or their own deaths stopped them. Though Talivane and I might disagree on the nature of my bond, my first concern was for Naiji’s safety. Yet she was safe while the killers were trapped. Talivane had alluded to dungeons where the rest of the Spirits were held. These two could be interred there. That might not ensure Naiji’s perfect safety, but nothing could ever do that. Or did Talivane think my vow meant I should also slay the other captured assassins?

  My hesitation took all questions of choice from me. The female Spirit, whom I had thought in shock, snapped her bonds in a smooth movement as she rose from the floor.

  I had no time to curse myself for failing to recognize what she had done. I knew that certain mystics could tap their bodies‘ resources at will, and I knew all too well that certain Spirits had similar abilities. Yet I had seen them bound, and had assumed their bonds were sufficient.

  The Spirit snatched a wooden stool from the floor and hurled it at Talivane’s head. His hand rose to block the stool, which glanced from his arm to his skull. Talivane fell, obviously senseless, into his chair.

  The Spirit turned immediately to her companion. His ropes parted before her unnatural strength as though they were made of seaweed. “Slay the Count,” she told him in the tongue of Istviar. Her sentence was a barked command so quick and so high-pitched, that it would have been ludicrous at any other time.

  The telling takes longer than the deed. My short sword and my dagger were in my hands before I realized why. I wanted to grab Naiji to drag her from the room, but she had snatched up a silver dagger from a writing table and darted between the male Spirit and Talivane.

  The male, apparently an apprentice in the assassin’s art, was the lesser threat, but to be killed by a student was still to die. Naiji might have a dagger and he nothing, but his movements told me that his studies at Moon Isle had been similar to mine on the White Mountain.

  My own reactions told the female Spirit as much about me. She shifted to guard her fellow Spirit. For one moment we formed a tight square before Talivane’s armchair. Naiji and the apprentice were farther from the door than the Master Spirit and I, and I could think of no way to distract the Spirits so Naiji could flee. I doubted she would leave her brother, even if a chance arose.

  I told the Master Spirit in Kondish, “Go. No alarm will be given.”


  I sensed Naiji stiffen in surprise at my words, but apparently she gave the apprentice no opportunity to attack her.

  The older Spirit said, also in Kondish, “On what promise?” Her voice was still faster than it should be, yet it held no emotion.

  “On my word as one who understands the Warrior-Saint’s Art.”

  There was only one thing the Spirit could do. “I accept,” she said.

  I let my knife drop a fraction, as though I believed her. Her fingers lashed for my throat. I twisted my body and let my knife and sword arms thrust out at right angles to each other, one toward the Spirit and one toward her apprentice.

  I was more clever than I was capable. Though my sword caught the apprentice in the chest, my knife passed by the Spirit as though I had aimed at air. Her striking fingers grazed my neck painfully. Her second attack, meant to rip open my chest if I had not turned, paralyzed my left arm. My knife clattered onto the floor.

  The apprentice was wounded, but not stopped. I had no idea how to slow the Spirit, so I threw myself against her companion, knocking him down while I kicked to the side with my heel and grunted “Naiji! Run!” The effort made my battered throat hurt worse.

  The sole of my boot caught the Spirit’s temple. The credit goes to my luck rather than my skill. I was aiming for her ribs while she was ducking to lunge for Talivane or Naiji.

  Naiji still tried to keep the apprentice away from her brother. Her silver dagger had been lost in the skirmish. The younger Spirit wielded the knife that had fallen from my numb left hand, but Naiji held the man by his wrists and they wrestled. Though the apprentice was taller than she, I knew something of Naiji’s rope-climbing strength. The added factor of the wound I had given her opponent might have let her win, but I dared not leave this to chance. I stabbed the apprentice in the back with my short sword. “Get help!” I shouted as loudly as I could. My voice came out as a croak.

  The other Spirit was already standing. Blood trickled from her temple and a bestial snarl came to her face. “If you were not a witch,” she told me, “you might have lived. Not now. He was my lover.”

  “He may still live,” I said quickly. “And the woman you wish to slay could heal him. Would you bargain with us for his life?”

  Doubt flickered over her face like a cloud across the sun.

  “Why hesitate?” I said. “Is the death of a stranger worth more than the life of someone you love?”

  I feel sometimes as if my fate is directed by a vindictive god. The Spirit’s doubt was sincere, but her apprentice, dying on the floor, gasped “No! Don’t let me be remembered as one who shamed us all!”

  The Spirit’s foot buried itself in my stomach, and I fell, swinging my short sword as I collapsed. The Spirit leaped over it and raced toward Tali vane. Naiji ‘s silver dagger hurtled through the air, but the Spirit, only a step from her victim, turned on one heel to dodge it. The blade embedded itself in the oak paneling of the far wall.

  Talivane’s eyes snapped open at the sound and his mouth curled in a vicious smile. Spirits are trained from infancy to continue any action without faltering, yet I would swear the assassin slowed for the briefest instant on seeing so incongruous an expression on someone who was about to die. Tali vane shouted a foreign word and lightning leaped from his cupped hands to bathe the Spirit.

  She twitched as if answering to an epileptic puppeteer. The smell of roasting meat came to my nostrils, and my bruised throat constricted to gag my nausea. The woman’s skin blackened and cracked under the lightning’s blinding glow. An ugly corpse dropped to lie near me.

  I scrambled to my feet. Talivane held Naiji with one arm while he peered at the Spirit and then at her apprentice. The man was also dead. “Interesting,” said Talivane. “I wonder if he willed his death, or if your sword stroke slew him?”

  I could not speak yet, nor did I care to.

  “You’re all right?” Naiji asked her brother, obviously, concerned for him, and at that moment, nothing else.

  He nodded.

  “I was afraid for you...”

  “ He caressed her cheek. ”I’m sorry. Forgive me. I thought it... necessary.“

  “Necessary?” I gasped, disbelieving.

  He glanced at me, then said calmly, “Yes.”

  “I’m glad...” My breath came slowly.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m glad I’m not bound to you.”

  He laughed. “But you are! Obviously my sister’s safety is your first concern.” He smiled. “And obviously I can protect her better than you. And so, to guard her, you must guard me. Isn’t that so?”

  I could only cough then, which was probably best.

  Naiji stepped away from the Count. “Was this a test?” she asked.

  “I didn’t plan it, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “You could have ended it sooner.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “But I watched closely. You wouldn’t have been hurt. Not badly, anyway.”

  She seemed to stifle anger, then said, “What of Rifkin?”

  Talivane shrugged. “He proved himself. You certainly may keep him, if you wish.”

  “I will!” she said.

  He laughed. “Ah, Naiji. You think I acted irresponsibly in waiting?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I would have acted irresponsibly had I accepted Rifkin without testing him. Our people are more important to me than any foreigner, no matter how exotic his appearance.”

  She snapped, “I didn’t—”

  “I’m sorry. A jest. I believe you brought Rifkin because you thought he could aid us. Perhaps he can. You’ll grant that we learned more about him than he was inclined to tell.” He studied me. “What is this ‘art’ you share with the Spirits?”

  I rubbed my throat. “The elder of them had a far greater share than I.”

  “Speak, Rifkin.”

  “I do,” I said. “Will you ask me to fetch, next? Or roll over and play dead? That’d be easiest, now.”

  Talivane grinned. “Perhaps we’ll paint your face like a jester’s, Rifkin. Come, let’s seek dinner. Someone else will clean this mess.” He held out a ringed hand for Naiji. She nodded and took it, and they went out the door.

  I looked at the charred corpse of the Spirit and remembered what skill and dedication had resided there. Then I looked at the pained face of her companion. Whatever else they had been, they had loved each other.

  I left the room to follow Naiji. As I walked through the dark and drafty halls, I chanted the death song under my breath for the two Spirits and the bear called Avo. It seemed as if the Black Shark had decided to swim with me this evening. I wondered if he still followed in my wake.

  * * *

  7

  CASTLE GROMANDIEL

  IN THE HALL far ahead of me Talivane spoke to someone in a bronze helmet. The soldier saluted with a quick touch of his hand to his forehead and hurried off. The Gromandiels’ library would probably be found unsullied when the Count returned to it.

  “Come, Rifkin,” Talivane said. “Walk with us.”

  I took a position beside Naiji.

  “I’m still curious about the ‘art’ you mentioned earlier,” he said.

  Only my annoyance had kept me from answering him before. Truth should never be hoarded. “There’s a popular discipline in the cities along the Ladizhar Sea. It translates into your language as, perhaps, the Path, or the Route. Originally it was a means of training the mind and the body through exercise and meditation in order to transcend the world around us.”

  “An old idea,” said Talivane. “I prefer to improve the world.”

  “A second old idea,” said Naiji.

  Talivane grimaced in annoyance, but only said to me, “What do assassins and mercenaries have to do with spiritual aspirations?”

  “There was one long ago known as the Warrior-Saint. Some say she fell from the Path, some say she strode farthest upon it. Whatever the truth, she took what she had learned in a discipline of den
ial and used it to build a kingdom.”

  “This was along the Ladizhar?” Naiji asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “When the Witches’ Empire fell, or so our legends have it. Istviar sprang from the Warrior-Saint’s capital.”

  “Her teachings are still known there?” Talivane said.

  “There are many schools, old and new. Each insists it is the only true Path.”

  Talivane’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve walked this Path?”

  “I’ve tripped over it a few times in my wanderings.”

  “Will you teach my people what you know?”

  “If your sister studies with them, yes.”

  He nodded. “She will.”

  “You might ask me,” Naiji suggested.

  “Will you?” Talivane asked her kindly. “Our people—”

  “I might,” she answered, turning her head away so quickly that her white hair swirled about her.

  Talivane smiled. “Good.” He touched a pale strand that rested on her shoulder, then let his hand drop to his side. “I’m not only concerned for our folk, you know. It would be good for you.”

  “For you too,” she said.

  He seemed surprised. “Me?”

  “The Spirit would have killed you if you’d been alone tonight.”

  “Maybe.” He laughed. “Very well. We’ll all become students to your foreign friend.”

  Light from many candles bathed the hall from the next room. Like the library, it had been kept in a style appropriate to this castle’s history, though the decorations were fewer. The oak dining table could have held fifty guests or more in comfort. Portraits lined the wall above the wainscoting. All were of white-haired folk who watched disdainfully from the places where they had posed so many centuries ago.

  The woman at the table was darker than most people I had seen since leaving Istviar, though she would have been thought fair among southerners. Her hair was chestnut and her eyes were violet. Her long dress was a vivid red. When we entered, she stood. She was little taller than a child, but her hips and full bosom and delicate features all proclaimed her maturity.