“Yes! Yes!”
Mace leaned forward, and his eyes held mine. With my head turned away from Corlan I winked. Mace grinned and thrust his hand into the flame. A small tongue of fire leapt to his palm. It did not burn him, but then, it could not, for it was but an illusion. The flame danced upon his arm, moving to his chest and vanishing into his clothing above the heart. “I am no oath breaker,” said Mace softly.
“Nor am I!” insisted Corlan, kneeling before me and extending his hand. I could not resist adding a fraction of the warming spell to the fire, just strong enough to cause a little discomfort. Corlan tensed as the fire touched him, but he did not move as the flame glided along his arm. Silently, almost reverentially, each of the men accepted the flame until at last a young dark-haired warrior pushed out his arm. I saw that he was sweating heavily. The fire touched him, and he screamed, hurling himself back from me and slapping his hand against the grass. The fire slid over him. I increased the size of the flame and the power of the warming spell.
“Take it away!” he begged.
“Speak the truth and save yourself,” I said, though I knew not why.
“They made me do it! They have my wife!”
The flames disappeared, and the man rolled to his knees, facing Corlan. “I didn’t want to betray you, Corlan. But they told me they’d kill Norin. And it’s not you they want but the Morningstar!”
“I understand,” whispered Corlan. “I wondered why you spent so long in Ziraccu. How do you communicate with them?”
“I mark the trees. And they gave me this!” He opened his shirt, and I saw a black stone suspended from a length of twine. At the center of the stone was a small white crystal.
“The man who gave you this,” I said. “Was he tall and slender, dressed in flowing purple robes?”
“Yes, yes, that was him.”
“Give it to me!”
The man pulled it clear, tossing it across the clearing. Catching it by the string, I dashed it against a rock. The crystal shattered, the stone splitting in half.
“What was it?” asked Jarek Mace.
“A simple find stone. The sorcerer places a spell upon the crystal, and no matter where it is carried, he can always locate it.”
“I am sorry,” said the man, “but they have my …” Corlan moved behind him, and his words were cut off by a sharp knife slicing across his throat. Blood gushed from the wound, and the dying man’s eyes opened wide. Then he pitched forward to his face and lay twitching upon the grass. Corlan wiped his knife on the dead man’s tunic and rose.
“We will do as you say, sorcerer. We will close the roads. We will be the men of the Morningstar. But if you play us false, it will take more than a spell to save you.”
I ignored the threat. Fear had risen too fast in me to risk any speech.
“When do we meet, and where?” Corlan asked.
“When the time is right,” said Jarek Mace. “And we will find you.”
Corlan nodded and strode back into the forest, his men following. Wulf and Piercollo dragged the corpse back into the undergrowth and returned to the dying fire.
“That was impressive, Owen,” said Mace, squatting down beside me. I said nothing, for I could not pull my gaze from the blood upon the ground. “I don’t know how you knew he was a traitor,” he continued, patting my shoulder, “but you did well.”
I did not know what to say. Yes, I had suspected the man. Something in the eyes, perhaps, the sheen of sweat upon his brow, the trembling of his hand as he accepted the illusion of fire. But the truth was hard. His guilt had betrayed him, and the mere fact that he had felt guilt showed that he was at heart a good man. And I had seen him slain, probably dooming his family.
Did I do well?
I still recall his face and, worse, the look of relief that touched him as the knife released his soul.
For several weeks we journeyed through the high country, stopping at lonely hamlets or small villages, passing through more open areas where dry-stone walls dotted the hills like necklaces and crops grew on plowed fields.
Ilka traveled with us, though none, I think, invited her. She helped Piercollo with the cooking and stayed close to me as we walked. For a while her company disconcerted me, for whenever I looked at her, I found her eyes upon me, the gaze frank and open. But without language the meaning was lost, and I found myself hating anew the brutal men who had robbed her of both her childhood and her voice.
Sometimes in the night she would suffer tormented dreams and make sounds that were more animal than human, her mutilated tongue trying to form words. I went to her once in the night and stroked her hair to calm her. But she awoke and waved me back, her eyes full of fear.
I think she was content in our company. Piercollo liked her, and when he sang, she would sit close to him, hugging her knees and rocking gently to the music.
Slowly we worked our way northwest. We did not have any set destination that I can recall; we merely wandered, enjoying the sunshine, moving from town to village, village to town. Occasionally I entertained villagers, offering them the Dragon’s Egg, the Tower of Rabain, and various other well-known enchant tales. Often I would ask for requests from the audience. The farther north we traveled, the more the villagers asked for tales of the Elder Days, the great wars of the Vampyre kings, the heroism of Rabain, the enchantment of Horga.
These tales were not as popular in the south, where the Angostins wished to hear of their own heroes, but the Highlanders loved them. It took me time to learn to fashion the magick images of Rabain and Horga. I practiced nightly by our camp fire, with Wulf and Mace staring intently at the ghostly forms I created.
“Take away the beard,” suggested Wulf.
“The beard’s fine,” insisted Mace, “but he is too stocky. The man was a swordsman, long in the arm, well balanced. Make him taller.”
Horga, they agreed, was spectacular. I did not tell Mace that I based her on the image Megan had showed me of herself when young, glorious of face and slender of figure.
On the first performance, in a small river town in the shadow of the Rostin Peaks, I received a fine ovation, but the audience wanted to see the great battle that had destroyed the Vampyre kings. It irked me that I could not oblige them. Rarely have I been able to sustain more than a few distinct and moving images. Instead I chose to show Rabain’s fight in the forest with the undead assassins. I stumbled upon the best technique almost by accident; I believe it is still used by magickers today.
At first I had Rabain fighting a single opponent, a vile white-faced creature with long fangs and a black cloak. Mace found the scene risible.
“He doesn’t look undead, he looks half-dead,” he said, chuckling. “And so thin. Your audience will have sympathy only for the assassin.”
I was deeply irritated by this observation. But he was quite correct.
“Have more attackers, six or seven,” he advised.
I tried—I thought unsuccessfully. But the reaction from Wulf and Mace was extraordinary. They were transfixed by the scene. What had happened was that I could not retain detail in all six assassins, and therefore they became blurred and indistinct, their cloaks swirling like black smoke, unearthly and unreal. This in turn made them demonic and terrifying.
Mace schooled me in the sword-fighting techniques my Rabain figure could use against his attackers, spinning on his heel, reversing his sword, diving and rolling to hamstring an opponent. All in all it was a fine fight scene, and I used it to conclude all my performances.
I earned more coin during our few weeks in the north than in all my time in Ziraccu. And I almost forgot Azrek and Cataplas …
But of course they had not forgotten us.
One morning, just after dawn, as we lay sleeping in our beds in a small hut on the edge of the village of Kasel, a young boy ran inside, shaking Mace by the shoulder.
“Soldiers!” he screamed. Mace rolled to his knees and fell, then staggered upright. He had downed enough ale the previous night to drow
n an ox. Shaking his head, he kicked out at the still-sleeping Wulf; the hunchback swore but soon roused himself. Piercollo, Ilka, and I were already awake, and we gathered our belongings and followed Mace out into the trees.
The thunder of hooves came from behind us, but we darted into the undergrowth and slid down a long bank out of sight. The twenty or so soldiers left their mounts in the village and set off after us on foot. Wulf was contemptuous of them at first, leading us deeper into the trees along rocky slopes that would leave little sign for our pursuers. But as the day wore on, they remained doggedly on our trail. We splashed along streams, climbed over boulders, zigzagged our way through dense undergrowth. But nothing could shake the soldiers.
“Are they using sorcery?” asked Wulf as dusk fell.
“I do not know,” I answered him, “but I do not think so. If there was an enchanter with them, they would have caught us by now. I think they must be accompanied by a skilled tracker.”
“He is certainly good,” grunted Wulf grudgingly. “Let’s be moving!”
On we traveled, coming at last to a steep slope curving down into a dark valley. Wulf traversed it, then made as if to lead us back the way we had come. Mace ran alongside him.
“Where are you going? That’s where they are!”
“I know that!” snapped Wulf. “I’m going back to kill their scout.”
“Let’s just get down into the valley,” said Mace. “There will be plenty of hiding places there.”
“No! I’m not running any farther.”
“What the devil’s the matter with you?” roared Mace. “We can’t take on twenty men.”
“I’m not going down there.”
“Why? It’s just a valley.”
“I’m not going there, and that’s all there is to it,” answered Wulf.
“Listen to me,” said Mace, his voice soothing. “If we stay here, we’re going to die. Now, that’s fine for an ugly little man like you who has nothing to live for. But for someone like me—tall, handsome, and charming—it’s a galling thought. Now, you wouldn’t want to be responsible for the tears of a thousand women, would you?”
Wulf’s answer was short, to the point, and utterly disgusting. But he laughed, and the tension eased.
Slowly we made our way down into the valley. It was cold, the night breeze chilling as it whispered through the trees.
“What is this place?” I asked Wulf.
“You perform it often enough, Owen,” he replied. “This is where Rabain fought the assassins. We just entered the realm of the Vampyre kings.”
The valley floor was lit by moonlight that turned the streams to ribbons of silver, the grass on the hillside to shards of shining iron. I shivered when Wulf spoke, the cold wind blowing around my back and legs. He laughed at my fear, but I could see his own in the gleam of his eyes and the wary way he glanced around at the shadowed trees.
The Vampyre kings! Dread creatures, the fabric of nightmare, but dead now for a thousand years, I told myself, seeking comfort in the thought.
How could I be frightened?
Yet I was. Rabain had killed the Three on the fabled Night of the Seventh Star, after the Battle of Coulin. He and his men had stormed the gray castle, dousing the great gates with oil and setting them ablaze, fighting their way through the courtyards and alleyways into the palace keep. Jerain the archer had slain the first of the kings, a shaft of silver piercing his eye. Boras the Cyclops had killed the second, catching him upon the battlements and hurling him to oblivion on the rocks below. But it was Rabain who had slain the last and greatest of the Vampyre kings. Golgoleth had taken refuge in his throne room, surrounded by demons sharp-fanged and armed with serrated swords. Rabain and the enchantress Horga had come upon them as they were in the midst of creating a dark enchantment that might have turned the battle. Horga’s spells sundered the demons while Rabain and Golgoleth did battle.
It was a fine story, incorporating trolls and elven princes, vicious sorcerers and cunning demons. And very popular in the northlands, where they take their fables seriously.
Yet here was Owen Odell, Angostin by birth and temperament, trembling with terror in a dark valley, victim to barbarous superstition.
“Why is it so cold?” I asked Wulf as we walked deeper into the darkness.
“Sorcery,” he whispered.
“Horse dung!” declared Jarek Mace. “The valley is deep. Cold air falls; hot air rises. Cast a warming spell, Owen. You’ll feel better.”
“Piercollo does not like this place,” stated the Tuscanian. “It has the smell of decay.”
“Mildew,” said Mace. “You can see it on the bushes.”
We crossed the valley floor, and Wulf glanced back to the crest of the valley. He pointed at the soldiers lined up there, small as children’s toys in the distance. They made no attempt to follow us.
“More sense than we have,” Wulf muttered.
Their lack of movement troubled me, and I spoke to Mace about it, but he merely shrugged. “Superstition. It is just a valley, Owen, leading to the troll reaches. About sixty miles from here is the source of the Deeway River, and beyond that the cities of Casley and Keras. No demons, just thick forest and a few trolls. The trolls will not bother us. They fear men—and rightly so.”
Looking back, I saw that the soldiers had gone. I spoke to Wulf as we walked on. “Why did we come here?”
“Mace’s idea,” he answered. “Don’t blame me!”
“No, I meant why did we move in this direction at all?”
“No choice. The soldiers were behind us all the way.”
“But we could have cut to the east or the west.”
“I tried that, but they were circling behind. I couldn’t be sure where they were.”
“Then perhaps we were steered this way.”
Wulf halted, then turned to me. “You could be right, bard.”
“No, he is not!” hissed Mace, looming out of the dark. “You are like two children trying to frighten one another. We chose which way to run; they merely followed us. And now they are too cowardly to follow further. And if I hear one more word about Vampyre kings, ghosts, spirits, or trolls, I shall crack a skull or two!”
We trudged on in silence, Ilka staying close to the huge form of Piercollo, Mace leading. Wulf, his bow strung, walked just behind me.
The clouds gathered, and it began to rain—thin, icy needles, driven by the wind, instantly soaking through cur clothes. Lightning forked across the northern sky, and soon the ground below our feet became sodden and we walked ankle-deep in mud.
After about an hour we finally crossed the valley floor and began the long climb through wooded hills until we reached the far crest and gazed down on a second valley and a small lake, black as jet. Beside it was a ruined keep, its wall crumbling, its gates sagging and rotten. The style was ancient, the towers square-built, not round as with Angostin architecture.
“You know who built that keep?” asked Wulf.
“Don’t say it!” warned Jarek Mace. “All I know is that we are going to be warm and dry for the night. And I don’t care if it was built by the devil himself. I’m soaked through, cold, and in an evil temper. So keep your mouth shut and let’s get in there and start a fire.”
“It’ll be haunted,” whispered Wulf to me as we followed Mace down into the valley. “Mark my words.”
But at that moment Wulf slipped in the mud and slid down the hillside past Jarek Mace. For a moment we watched in stunned silence, then Mace’s laughter roared out above the rain. “Give my regards to the Vampyre kings!” he yelled as the hunchback hurtled toward the keep.
The sight was so ludicrous that all fear fled from me, and I bent double, laughing fit to burst. Even Ilka was smiling as we followed the hunchback down, finding him sitting at the foot of the hill staring at his broken bow.
“We’ll buy a new one at the next town,” said Jarek Mace, but Wulf was inconsolable.
“Best I’ve ever had,” he muttered. “Had it blessed
by the abbess. It’s never let me down before. Witchcraft, that’s what it is!”
“You fell on it!” said Mace. “That’s not witchcraft; that’s just clumsiness.”
Wulf shook his head. “It was blessed,” he repeated. “Nothing blessed can survive in this place. That’s why no one lives here, no crops grow. Even the trees are covered with mildew, and most are rotten.”
“I’m not listening to any more of this,” snapped Mace, walking through the stone gates.
We followed him across a paved courtyard. The stones were uneven, grass pushing up between them. The rain hissed down, the castle walls gleaming in the faint light that pierced the clouds. Lightning flashed across the sky, sending dancing shadows behind the broken columns to our left.
Jarek Mace climbed the steps leading to the hall of the keep and kicked the rotted doors, the wood splintering and falling to the thick dust beyond, which rose like smoke around his boots. A rat scurried for shelter, and then we were inside.
“Make light, Owen,” ordered Mace.
I sent a small shining sphere floating into the hall.
The floor was wooden, and I stepped gingerly upon it, but it seemed solid enough.
For me it was—but not for Piercollo.
Advancing into the middle of the hall, he let fall his pack, which hit the floor with a resounding thud. This was followed by a sudden creaking, then a series of explosive cracks—and the Tuscanian disappeared from sight.
7
WITH GREAT CARE Mace, Wulf, and I eased our way across the floor to the jagged hole. I brought the sphere of light closer, and we lay on our bellies gazing down into a pit some twelve feet deep. Piercollo lay stunned, his pack beside him. The light did not penetrate far, and I could see little more save that one of the joists had given way, leaving the timbers with no support where Piercollo had fallen.
“There must be another way down,” said Mace.
“I’ll find it,” Wulf told him, moving back from the hole.
“He might be dead,” I whispered.
“More likely a broken leg,” Mace told me. “We’ll soon know. Stay here and call me if he wakes.”