Darkspell

  “Now, here,” Blaen said. “Since we’re practically kin, tell me honestly. You know more about this fellow than you’re willing to admit.”

  “I’ve never seen him before in my life, Your Grace. But that other man, the one Ogwern hired me to protect him from? I’ve seen him, all right. Your Grace is going to think me daft, but I’ll swear to you that he had dweomer. He came into the Red Dragon to cause trouble. When I tried to stop him, he looked in my eyes and nearly ensorcelled me. For a minute I could neither think nor move.”

  Behind them Cinvan swore aloud.

  “Begging your pardon, Your Grace,” he said. “Look at this.”

  The warden held up a medallion, dangling from a chain. It was a thin circle of lead, graved with a reversed pentagram, a Bardek word, and three strange sigils.

  “It was around this bastard’s neck. I doubt me if the lass’s talk of witchcraft is as daft as it sounds.”

  In his scrying fire Alastyr watched the Bardekian die, saw the corpse still drumming and twitching reflexively as the pale blue etheric double separated out and rose, floating over the dead matter below. He broke the vision, then sat back on his heels to think. Only a Hawk would carry poison such as that. The question now was, How many Hawks were there left? They never traveled alone, but the Old One might have hired only a pair—they didn’t come cheap, after all.

  For a change Jill had done him a favor, he supposed, for all the good it would do her. The Hawk’s body might have been dead, but no doubt he’d make her pay before he went onward to the Lands of Husks and Rinds. Alastyr laughed under his breath and stood up—too fast, much too fast.

  He gasped for breath, his head swimming, and a hazy golden fog crackled in front of his eyes. He had to exert all his trained will to push that fog away and keep from fainting. Crouched on the other side of the fire, Gan looked up and made a gurgling sound.

  “Stay where you are,” Alastyr muttered. “I merely need to rest.”

  Alastyr staggered to his blankets and sank to his knees, then flopped down with a groan. Much later he remembered that he’d forgotten to warn Sarcyn.

  Since Blaen insisted on treating Jill as if she were his cousin’s legal wife, his chamberlain gave her a large chamber with its own hearth, a lushly embroidered bed, and silver sconces set along the walls. After a page brought her hot water, she had a satisfying wash, set the bowl of dirty water outside for a page to take away, then barred the door from the inside. Since she had done very little all day, her brief sword fight had left her merely nervous, not tired. For a while she paced around, watching the flickering candlelight dance along the walls. The room, the broch, were utterly silent, but all at once she was certain that she wasn’t alone.

  No sound, not even that subtle difference in a room that means an extra body is soaking up sound—but she could feel someone watching her, a tangible presence. Feeling like an utter fool, she drew her silver dagger and prowled slowly around the chamber. She found not so much as a mouse in the corners and spun round to see nothing but candlelight and shadows. Yet something was there; she’d never been so sure of anything in her life, that someone was stalking her. For a moment, as she glanced round, she thought she saw a shadow fall twixt her and the candles burning in the wall sconce, but when she turned to look, there was nothing.

  One cautious step at a time, she went over to the windows and threw open the shutters. No one was climbing up the smooth stone tower; far below, the dark ward lay empty. When she glanced up, she could see the stars, the great spread of the Snowy Road far above her—light, but cold, indifferent to her or to any human being’s plight. All at once she felt despair, a black sorrow in her heart, as if nothing mattered, not her honor, not her life, not even her love for Rhodry, nothing, since all that human life could be was a little fleck of light against the all-embracing dark, like one of those pinprick stars, indifferent and cruel. She leaned on the windowsill and felt the despair spreading, leaching away her energy and her will. Why fight? she thought. The night always wins; why fight it?

  Far off on the horizon, beyond the sleeping city, the last quarter moon was rising, a pale glow against the black. Soon the moon too would slip into darkness and be gone. But she rises again, Jill thought, she rises full on her return. The moon was a promise in the sky, returning and growing into a great silver beacon, shedding her light on all, good men and evil alike, when her Darktime was done. “Only to fade yet once again.” The thought came in some other voice, not hers. Only then did she realize that she was fighting, battling an enemy she couldn’t see with weapons she’d never used.

  The realization snapped the despair, sending it breaking the way a rope stretched too tight snaps. She spun round, her eyes searching the chamber. In the smoky light from the candles she saw a human form, a pale and flickering blue thing, almost a glowing shadow, certainly not a solid body. The hair prickled on her arms and neck when she recognized the slender shape of the man who’d poisoned himself.

  “By the Goddess Herself,” Jill snarled, “the Light wins in the end!”

  He flickered like a candle flame in a draft, then disappeared, but for all she knew, he’d return to torment her, perhaps in her dreams, where she would be helpless against him. In a little flurry of tears, she sat down on the edge of the bed and pressed her shaking hands between her knees. None of her much-praised sword craft would help in this battle. Only dweomer could fight dweomer. She saw then that denying her dweomer-power had left her helpless, that continuing to deny it meant that she would constantly be drawn into contact with strange things beyond her power to influence or control, simply because she had no knowledge or training, just as anybody can pick up a sword, but only a trained fighter can strike down an opponent. It was then that she remembered Nevyn, and that he was on his way.

  Many a time she had seen the old man contact other dweomer-masters through a scrying fire. For all she knew, only a master could do such a thing, not some ignorant like her, but she rose and walked slowly over to the candles, massed in their sconce. At this, her first conscious attempt to use dweomer, she felt foolish, then embarrassed, and finally frightened, but she forced herself to stare into the flames and think of Nevyn. For a moment she was aware only of a blankness in her mind, then an odd sort of pressure, building against some unexplained thing, just as when a person temporarily forgets a name that he knows well and searches his mind in utter frustration at the lapse.

  Her fear built, fear of using dweomer, fear of whoever was stalking her, built and built until all at once she remembered what she had somehow always known, that the fear was her key, that some strong feeling will break down the walls in the mind.

  “Nevyn!” she cried out. “Help me!”

  And there, dancing over the candle flames, she saw his face, a clear image, his bushy eyebrows raised in surprise, his eyes troubled.

  “Thank every god you called to me,” his voice sounded in her mind. “I’ve been trying to reach you for days.”

  He sounded so matter-of-fact that she giggled in near hysteria.

  “Try to be calm or you’ll lose the vision,” he thought to her, and sharply. “Think of it like a sword fight, child. You know how to concentrate your will.”

  She realized that she did, now that he’d pointed it out. It was much the same as the cold, deadly concentration she summoned when she watched an opponent move.

  “I was scrying you earlier and saw that fellow poison himself,” Nevyn went on. “No wonder you’re so troubled. Now, listen, we seem to have more than one kind of enemy, but oddly enough, we can turn that to our advantage. Do you realize what they want?”

  “The opal I’m carrying, or at least, I think I have the opal. The arrogant little bastard keeps changing shape on me.”

  He chuckled with such humor that she felt her fear vanish.

  “It’s the opal, sure enough, and I’ll admit the spirits who tend it can be irritating at times. The thing is a talisman of the noble virtues, you see, and they take the virtue of pride a bi
t too seriously. But, here, has the shade of the dead man been troubling you?”

  “I don’t know. Someone was. I called to you because thoughts kept appearing in my mind, and I felt someone stalking me.”

  “Then it’s not him. Don’t worry. I’ll set a seal over you. Go to sleep and rest, child. I’m almost to Dun Hiraedd.”

  His image vanished. Although Jill did indeed lie down, she kept the candles burning and her silver dagger beside her on the pillow. She was sure that she would never sleep, but suddenly she woke to a room full of sunlight. Outside in the corridor she heard a page whistling, and that simple human sound seemed the most beautiful music she’d ever heard. She got up and went to look out the window. Sunlight poured down on the men who strolled about, laughing and talking. It seemed impossible to believe in dweomer-battles now, impossible that she would have summoned her will and spoken to Nevyn through the fire. With a shudder she left the window and hurried to get dressed. She wanted other people around her.

  Once she was down in the great hall, the memory of her fear slunk to the edge of her mind. At their tables the warband were eating breakfast and joking with one another, while servants hurried back and forth. Blaen himself was in a sunny mood, chatting with Jill as if he’d quite forgotten about poisoned strangers in his city. The high officials of his court, the chamberlain, the bard, the councillors, and the scribes, came and went, stopping to bid their lord a good morning and bowing gravely to Jill. Blaen broke up a load of sweet nut bread and handed Jill a chunk with a courtly gesture. She was pleased to see that his grace was drinking ale, not mead, with his breakfast.

  “Ah, it’s going to be good to see my cousin again,” the gwerbret said. “We had a lot of good times when we were lads. We were pages together in Dun Cantrae, you see, and the old gwerbret there was rather a stiff-necked sort, so we were always pulling one prank or another.” He paused, looking up as a page hurried over. “What is it, lad?”

  “There’s the strangest old man outside, Your Grace. He says he’s got to see you straightaway on a matter of the greatest urgency, but he looks like a beggar and he says his name is nobody.”

  “Nevyn, thanks be to every god!” Jill burst out.

  “You know this fellow?” Blaen said with some surprise.

  “I do, Your Grace, and for Rhodry’s sake as well as mine, I’ll beg you to speak to him.”

  “Done, then. Bring him in, lad, and remember to always be courteous to someone old, shabby or not.”

  As the page hurried away, Jill shuddered, feeling that the sunny, bustling hall had suddenly turned unreal. As if he’d picked up her mood, Blaen rose, watching the doorway with a small frown as Nevyn strode in, his tattered brown cloak thrown back from his shoulders and swirling behind him. He knelt to the gwerbret with an ease that many a young courtier would have envied.

  “Forgive me for demanding your attention, Your Grace,” Nevyn said. “But the matter’s very urgent indeed.”

  “Any man’s welcome to my justice upon demand. What troubles your heart, good sir?”

  “That fellow who poisoned himself last night.”

  “Ye gods!” Blaen said, amazed. “Has the tale spread as fast as all that?”

  “It has to those with the ears to hear it. Your Grace, I’ve come to spare you the expense of burying that fool. Does his lordship know where the corpse lies?”

  “Here, is he kin to you?”

  “Well, since every clan has its black sheep, you might say that he is.”

  Puzzled, the gwerbret glanced at Jill.

  “Please, Your Grace?” she said. “Please do what he asks.”

  “Well and good, then. Can’t be any harm in it.”

  Doubtless consumed by curiosity, Blaen personally escorted Nevyn and Jill out to the ward and hunted up a warden. It turned out that the corpse had been wrapped in a blanket and laid in a small shed usually used for storing firewood. Between them Nevyn and Jill dragged it outside onto the cobbles. Nevyn knelt down beside it and pulled the blanket back to study the corpse’s face.

  “A Bardek man, is he?” The old man sat back on his heels. “Now, that’s a peculiar thing!”

  He rested his hands on his thighs and looked at the corpse for a long time. From the slack way Nevyn sat and the drowsy look of his eyes, Jill suspected that he was in a trance. Every now and then his mouth moved soundlessly, as if he were speaking to someone. Finally he looked up with a toss of his head, and his eyes snapped fury.

  “What an ugly little soul! Well, we’ll send him to his rest whether he wants to go or not.”

  Motioning Jill and Blaen back out of the way, he stood at the head of the corpse and raised his arms high, as if he were praying to the sun. For a long while he merely stood, his face set in concentration; then slowly he lowered his hands, sweeping them down in a smooth arc until his fingertips pointed at the dead thing on the cobbles. Fire burst out in the corpse, an unnatural, ghastly fire, burning blue-silver in peaks and leaps. When Nevyn called out three incomprehensible words, the flames turned white-hot and leaped high, too bright to look upon. With an oath Blaen threw one arm over his face. Jill covered her eyes with both hands. She heard a tormented moan, a long sigh of terror, yet oddly enough, mingled with relief, just as when a wounded man knows that his death is near to free him from pain.

  “It is done!” Nevyn called out. “It is over!”

  Jill looked up in time to see him stamp three times on the ground. Where the corpse had been lay only a handful of white ash. When Nevyn snapped his fingers, a little breeze sprang up and scattered it, then died down as abruptly as it had come.

  “There,” the old man said. “His soul is freed from his body and on its way to the Otherlands.” He turned to the gwerbret. “There are strange things afoot in your rhan, Your Grace.”

  “No doubt,” Blaen stammered. “By the black hairy ass of the Lord of Hell, what is all this?”

  “Dweomer, of course. What did it look like?”

  Blaen took a step back, his face pale, his mouth working. Nevyn gave him a gentle, patient smile of the sort mothers give to children who’ve stumbled onto something they’re too young to understand.

  “It’s time that everyone in the kingdom learned the truth about the dweomer,” Nevyn said. “His grace may congratulate himself on being one of the first. Would his lordship allow me and Jill to take our leave of you for a little while? I have an urgent matter to attend to in the city.”

  Blaen looked at the cobbles, still shimmering with heat, and shuddered.

  “If my lord wishes.” The gwerbret abruptly elevated Nevyn’s rank. “I should be willing.”

  Nevyn caught Jill’s arm through his and led her firmly away.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” she said. “I’ve been so frightened.”

  “As well you might be. Now, here, child, the danger’s not over yet. You’ve got to understand that. Stay close to me and do exactly what I say.”

  Jill nearly wept in disappointment.

  “When I scryed, I saw you guarding Ogwern the thief,” he went on. “Take me to him. If you had a bad time last night, I’ll wager he did, too. That fellow was trying to suck the life force out of you so he could keep his—well, the blue shade you saw—together and alive for a little while.”

  “How do you know?”

  “He told me just now, of course. Since he’d been dead some time, he couldn’t tell me much more, because his shade was already beginning to break up and weaken. So I just sent him on to his judgment, much as I would have liked to squeeze some more information out of him.”

  Jill felt herself turn rigid with fear at this talk of ghosts.

  “Now, now,” Nevyn said. “It’s a perfectly ordinary thing, but it’s not the right time to explain it all to you. Let’s see what’s happened to Ogwern.”

  When they arrived at the Red Dragon Inn, they found out that Nevyn was quite right to be concerned. The frightened innkeep told them that Ogwern had been taken ill the night before and that he was in
his chambers. They hurried upstairs to find the door shut, but when she knocked, Bocc opened it.

  “I heard Ogwern was ill,” Jill said. “I brought an herbman we can trust.”

  “Thank every god in the Otherlands,” he said with sincere piety. “This has been horrible, it has. I never thought I’d be grateful to a cursed warden, but if his grace hadn’t set that great, strong fellow at the door for a guard, Da would have thrown himself out of a window, I swear it.”

  Nevyn nodded grimly, as if he’d been expecting just that. They went in to find Ogwern lying in bed with a frayed blue blanket pulled up around his massive neck. Although he was staring at the ceiling, he looked more terrified than ill.

  “Last night was like being in the third hell,” Bocc said. “We were having a tankard in the Red Dragon, and all at once he started shaking and raving.”

  “I don’t want to hear of it.” Ogwern pulled the covers over his head. “Leave a dying man in peace, all of you.”

  “You’re not going to die,” Nevyn snapped. “I’m an herbman, good sir, so pull the blanket down and tell me your symptoms.”

  The blanket receded until Ogwern’s dark eyes peered over the edge.

  “I’m going mad. Oh, doom doom doom! I’d rather die than go mad, so brew me up some kindly poison, herbman.”

  “I’ll do nothing of the sort. Stop ranting and tell me about these ravings.”

  “Tell him, Da,” Bocc broke in. “Tell him about the chickens.”

  Ogwern groaned and pulled the blanket up again.

  “He started talking about drinking blood,” Bocc said. “About killing chickens and drinking their blood.”

  “It was horrible.” Ogwern lowered the blanket. “I don’t truly know what to say. All at once I was terrified, good sir, and I started shaking and sweating buckets. I knew I was doomed, you see, that I was going to die, no matter what I did.” Ogwern let his voice trail off weakly. “But I had to drink the blood. But it was disgusting. I’ve never felt such terror in my life.”