“Perhaps the rat is a pet,” she said, with a grin.
“Perhaps. More likely the vermin have found a way into the grain store, which I ordered sealed tight.”
Sirano pushed open the double doors and they entered a large circular room, ablaze with the light of twenty lanterns. Three sorcerers in robes of velvet stood around a flat table to which a naked young girl was strapped by her arms and legs. Just beyond the altar, set on an upturned eagle’s claw of bronze, rested the Eldarin Pearl. Karis had never seen the jewel, and was stunned by its beauty. It seemed to pulse with living colour, and she could feel warmth emanating from it.
“Oh, please, my lord, save me!” wailed the girl tied to the altar table. Karis swung to look at her. She was no more than fourteen.
“Be silent, child,” ordered Sirano. Swinging to the tall bald sorcerer, he asked, “Why has the ritual not yet been completed?”
“It has, my lord. That is, what is of interest.”
“Spare me the riddles, Calizar.”
“Observe, lord.” The tall man raised his left hand and began to chant. Red smoke flowed from his fingers, oozing out towards the milky beauty of the Pearl. As it came closer the smoke shifted, forming what appeared to Karis to be a large four-taloned claw which descended towards the Pearl. Just as the red smoke was about to touch the globe, a jagged spark of lightning lanced up. Blue fire exploded within the smoke, flaring in an intricate web of light. The red claw disappeared.
As the smoke faded, the sorcerer raised his right hand. The curved dagger he held flashed down, plunging into the young girl’s heart. Her slender body arched up, and a strangled cry was torn from her lips. Calizar dragged the knife clear. A white cloud billowed from the Pearl and swept out over the murdered girl, masking her completely. The huge room filled with the scent of roses. Sirano watched with interest. Karis stood by, her distaste for the attempted sacrifice washed away by a sudden feeling of prescience as she stared intently at the child on the altar.
After several seconds, the white cloud rose from the girl and flowed back into the Pearl.
“No more, please!” wailed the child. Sirano stepped in close, his hand pressing down on the white flesh of her small breasts. There was not a mark, nor a speck of blood to show where the knife tore into her heart.
“How many times has this happened?” asked Sirano.
“This was the fourth, my lord. The Pearl will not, it seems, allow a human sacrifice.”
“Fascinating! What do you make of it, Calizar?”
“It is quite beyond me, Lord Sirano.”
“Give me the dagger and cast the talon-smoke.” Calizar handed him the blade, then began to chant. The girl on the altar started to cry. Sirano smiled at her, and stroked her hair.
“Don’t hurt me!” she begged him.
He did not reply. The red smoke closed around the Pearl, lightning and blue sparks came out once more in response.
“Now!” whispered Calizar.
Sirano turned . . . and slammed the dagger into the wizard’s chest, driving in the blade up to the hilt. Calizar staggered back and then fell to his knees, his long upper body slumping forward until his brow thudded against the cold stone of the floor.
The white cloud issued from the Pearl, sweeping over the wizard. But as it touched him it recoiled and returned instantly to the globe, seeping through the multicoloured outer layer.
Sirano knelt by the corpse and pushed it to its back. “I have no time,” he said, “for wizards who find new magic beyond them.” Rising, he turned to the other two sorcerers. “Do you find this utterly beyond you?”
“Not at all, my lord. But it will require a great deal of study,” replied the first. His colleague nodded agreement.
“Good,” said Sirano. “So what have we learned today?”
“The Pearl is sentient,” said the first sorcerer, a small man with close-set eyes and a long pointed beard.
“What else?”
“That we can establish some kind of control over it. We made it heal the child. But if you will forgive me for saying so, lord, I do not—yet,” he added swiftly, “understand why it brought the girl back to life and not my brother Calizar.”
“Ah, but I do,” said Sirano. “Continue your work.”
“What about the girl, lord?”
“No more sacrifices for the moment. Give her ten gold crowns and send her home.”
Swinging away from them he led Karis back to the upper study.
“Well?” she asked him. “Are you going to tell me why it saved the girl.”
“She was innocent,” he said.
“How does that help you unlock the Pearl’s secrets?”
“It made a choice, my beauty. Don’t you see? It is sentient. So we will offer it more choices. And very soon I will have more power than any man who ever walked this land.”
For six days Karis saw no sign of Sirano. At midnight on the seventh day a tremor ran through the castle. Karis, who was lying in bed nursing a goblet of wine in her hands, leapt to her feet and ran to the balcony. Bright lights were blazing from the highest rooms of the keep, and lightning forked up from the top turret. Blocks of stone cascaded down to the courtyard below, some smashing through the stable roof.
The naked man who moments before had been lying alongside Karis moved out onto the balcony. “His magic will kill us all,” he said, gripping the bronze balcony rail. Darkly handsome, his strong face now showed signs of fear. It was not an attractive sight, thought Karis.
“He says he is close to the secrets of the Pearl,” Karis told him.
Giriak swore. “You told me that a week ago. Yesterday a section of the main wall came crashing down—killed three of my men. He’ll wreck the entire city if this goes on much longer. Have you seen the columns of refugees? They’re leaving the city in droves.”
Karis shrugged. “What do you care?” she asked him. “He gives you gold.”
“I’d like to live to spend it.”
Another tremor struck, and a small crack appeared on the facing wall of the balcony. “Son of a whore!” hissed Giriak, leaping back into the main room. Karis grinned as she turned to face him. Holding out her arms, she gestured to him.
“Come!” she called. “Make love to me on the balcony, before it falls.”
“Don’t be foolish,” he urged her. Karis let fall the green robe she wore, her naked body glistening in the moon-light. Another tremor struck and the crack in the stone opened wider, tracing a thick black line all the way to the wall. “Come in!” yelled Giriak.
“Come out,” she taunted. “Show me you are a man.”
“You are mad, woman! Do you want to die?”
“Collect your clothes and get out,” she said, contemptuously turning from him and climbing to the bronze rail. Balanced delicately, she walked along it, feeling the cold, smooth metal beneath her feet. One more tremor and she would fall. She knew it, and a delicious sense of excitement swept through her. This was life! For some moments she stood there with arms raised.
Lightning swept up from the turret, followed by a clap of thunder that shook the foundations of the building. Karis lost her balance, then spun and launched herself back into the bedchamber, landing on her shoulder and rolling to her feet. Behind her the balcony sheared away and crashed to the courtyard below.
Karis shivered, then glanced around the room. Giriak had gone.
Gathering the wine jug and a goblet, she sat down on the round embroidered rug at the centre of the room. Giriak was a disappointment. Like all the men she had known. Is it a fault in men themselves, she wondered, or merely a flaw in the kind of men I find exciting? Indeed, is the flaw in me?
Her father had maintained that it was. He claimed she was devil-possessed, and tried for years to thrash the devil from her. He would drag her from the cabin and tie her to a post in the barn. The words that followed were always the same. “Recant! Open your heart to the Source. Beg for forgiveness.” Karis had tried all that, but it made no differen
ce. If she proclaimed her innocence, he would beat her. If she admitted guilt and called upon the Source to forgive her, her father’s rage would grow incandescent. “You lie and mock me!” he would shout. Then he would beat her legs and buttocks with the birch until she bled. So she learned to stay silent through it all, head twisted, her deep brown eyes holding to his insane gaze.
There was no knight at hand to rescue the child, no hero to stride through the forest and pluck her away. Just her and her world-weary mother, a woman old before her time, beaten down by the years and the cold fists of her husband.
One day I will go back and kill him, she thought, swilling down the last of the wine. Lying on her back, she stared up at the ornate, painted ceiling. Cracks were showing here too. Giriak was right, Sirano was destroying his own city. “It is nothing to me,” she said.
Does anything matter to you? she asked herself. Or does life have nothing more to offer than a stunning victory in battle or a sweaty rut with a powerful man?
“Both are one and the same thing,” she said aloud. The ceiling shifted and swam. At first she thought it was another tremor, but then, as her stomach lurched, she realized it was the effect of the wine. Rolling to her knees, she forced herself upright. Taking a deep drink from a pitcher of water, she moved to the bed and sat down. As always her powerful constitution began to override the alcohol in her system.
Weariness flowed over her, and she wished now that she had not sent Giriak away. It would have been pleasant to lie close, feeling the warmth of his body as she drifted into sleep.
The bedroom door opened and she felt the touch of a cool breeze. Opening her eyes, she sat up. But it was not Giriak who entered.
Sirano stood in the doorway, and Karis was surprised by the change in the man. His handsome face was thin and drawn, his cheeks covered by black stubble, his eyes dark-rimmed and weary. His clothes, so beautifully fashioned from black silk, were sweat-stained and creased, and his black hair was lank and dark with sweat. Moving to the bedside, he gave a tired smile.
“You are beautiful naked, Karis,” he said. The words were forced, no more than echoes of what would only a few days before have been genuine emotion.
“You look dreadful,” she told him. “How long since you slept?”
“Days. I swear I am close though. The Pearl’s defences are thin. If I had the energy, I would have stayed for the breakthrough tonight. The Spell of Seven almost made it. It could not save all the victims. That’s when I knew.”
“How many did you kill, Saro?”
“Kill? Oh, the girls . . . two. Five survived. But I am almost there, Karis.”
“You will ruin your city and destroy yourself in the process. Do you know the quakes are spreading further? A rider came in today. He said Corduin was struck three times in the last month. Is this your doing?”
He nodded. “Do not concern yourself. With the power of the Pearl, I can rebuild and Morgallis will be a hundred times more beautiful than before. And we will have eternity to make it even better. Immortality lies within that sphere.”
“We?” she countered.
“Why not, Karis? You and I. Young for ever.”
“Perhaps I do not want to be young for ever,” she told him.
“You say that only because you have not yet felt the winter fingers of the grave upon your skin.” His eyes were bright and feverish. Karis rose from the bed and filled a goblet with water, which she offered to him. “Wine,” he said. “Give me wine.”
Hurling the water to the floor, she poured the last of the wine into the goblet. He took it from her with a trembling hand and drank deeply. “I am so tired.”
“Then go to your room and sleep.”
For a moment he was silent, his expression thoughtful. “I am not a vain man,” he said at last. “I know that you find me attractive. And I truly believe you are the most divine of women. Why then do we never sleep together?”
“This is not the time to talk of it, Saro,” she told him.
He smiled. “I know the answer—but I wanted to hear you say it. You are a mercenary. When your contract is finished, you move to the highest bidder. It would complicate matters if you were emotionally involved with one of the four Dukes. Not so?”
“Exactly so,” she agreed. “Knowing this, why do you persist?”
“I yearn for the unattainable,” he said. His expression softened. “Do you trust my word, Karis?”
“I have no reason to doubt it.”
“Then grant me permission to stay until dawn. I have the need to feel the warmth of human skin against my own. I shall not make any attempt to seduce you—that I swear.”
“What of your mistress? Is her skin not soft and warm?”
“May I stay?” he said.
She looked at him, then sighed. “You may stay—until dawn.”
Sirano rose and slowly stripped away his clothes before stumbling to the bed. When Karis pulled back the coverlet and slipped in beside him his body was cold to the touch. Putting her arms around him, she drew him close.
“She is dead, Karis,” he whispered. “Her body is no longer soft and warm.”
“You sacrificed her?”
“With my own hand.”
Karis did not speak. His breathing deepened and soon he was asleep in her arms. But no sleep came to Karis. The girl had been no more than eighteen, and was besotted with Sirano, her doe-eyes never leaving his face. She lived to please him. Now she had died to please him.
Karis lay still for some time, then eased herself away from the sleeping man. Rising silently, she moved to where her clothes lay discarded on the floor. Slipping her dagger from its sheath, she returned to the bed. One thrust was all it would take.
In the lantern light his face looked very young, boyish and innocent. You are not innocent, she thought. You are a killer, succumbing to evil.
A brilliant light shone down upon the bed, illuminating his face, and Karis swung round. The western wall was glowing bright, as if lit from within. A tall figure emerged from it; his face was slender, and framed with white fur save around the eyes and nose. Karis flipped the dagger, then hurled it. It sailed through the figure and clattered against the far wall.
“You have nothing to fear, child,” whispered a voice inside her head.
“Who are you?” she asked, aloud. Beside her Sirano stirred and woke.
“I am Ranaloth,” said the apparition.
“The spirit of the Pearl,” said Sirano. “Are you ready to give me what I want?”
“I cannot. Nor should you make any more attempts to steal it.”
“I will beat you, Eldarin. Just as I destroyed your people. You cannot stop me.”
“You are not quite correct. I could stop you. I could kill you, child. Instead I appeal to you, Sirano, not to continue. The Pearl is more important than your ambition. And should you succeed, you will unleash a terror you cannot control.”
“Empty words,” sneered Sirano.
“The Eldarin do not lie, Duke of Romark; we put that behind us a thousand years ago. You see the Pearl as a weapon, as an aid to your dreams of conquest and immortality. But it is not a weapon. And it will not, even if pierced, give you what you desire.”
“Do not seek to fool me, old man,” said Sirano. “I am a Master of Spells. I can feel the power within the Pearl, and soon I will draw it to me.”
The figure stood silently for a moment, then Ranaloth spoke again. “A long time ago the Eldarin faced another evil,” he said. “We contained it, removed it from the world. The Pearl holds that evil at bay. Do not . . .” Suddenly the light around the apparition flickered and the old man staggered. “Your sorcerers continue to attack us,” he said. His shoulders slumped, and he spread his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. “Now,” he said, an infinite sadness in his voice, “it is too late.” Turning to Karis, he told her, “Leave this city and take to the high places. Your world is finished. Desolation and horror await you.”
The light dimmed and the figure di
sappeared. The two humans sat in silence for several moments, then Karis rose from the bed. “What have you done, Saro? What has your evil brought us to?”
“Evil?” he sneered. “What is evil? All men of power are called evil by their enemies. It means nothing, it is just a word.”
“The Eldarin said our world is finished. He promised desolation and horror.”
“He lied!”
“Why would he lie? What would be his purpose?” Karis shook her head. “No, Sirano, his words rang with the truth. You destroyed the Eldarin. You plunged the world into war. And now you have unleashed an evil force that might destroy us all.”
“What evil force? I tell you he lied, and I’ll tell you why. It was because he knew I had him! And I will have his power!”
“I don’t think so,” said Karis. “And you no longer have me.”
“We have a contract!”
“The unearned monies will be returned to you. My men and I will leave with the dawn.”
“As you will,” he said. “Perhaps when you come back to me on bended knee I will forgive you, Karis.”
She laughed at him. “You will need to be immortal, Saro, to live long enough to see that day. Now be so kind as to leave me in peace. I need some sleep.”
The door closed behind Sirano and Karis stood silently, listening as the sound of his footsteps receded. Once sure he was not coming back, she moved swiftly to the large wardrobe and took from it her riding clothes: breeches of brown oiled leather and a shirt of thick, cream-coloured wool, knee-length boots with a two-inch heel, and a sleeveless leather jerkin, the shoulders and upper back reinforced by a delicately wrought cape and hood of tiny mail rings. Moving to the mirror by the bedside she brushed back her shoulder-length black hair, drawing it tightly into a ponytail which she tied at the nape of her neck. Without the softening effect of her hair hanging loose Karis looked older, and she stared hard at her reflection. The dark eyes had seen too much pain, and it showed in the guarded gaze. Leaning forward, she lifted her hand to her temple. A single grey hair shone there. Angrily she plucked it out. Twenty-eight is not so old, she reminded herself.
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