Master of Crows
For as long as he resided here, this part of Neith had always been quiet. The ghosts of her builders rested peacefully, untroubled by the march of time and fate that had turned her into a crumbling ruin. Ruin or not, Neith was home. With her curse-laden wood, broken walls and an orange grove filled with battling crows, the manor and her lands were a haven to him, far from the teeming filth and misery of Eastern Prime’s wharves and the bleak cruelty of Conclave’s ancient seaside fortress. His spirit always calmed at Neith, the jagged edges of his bitterness blunted by her windblown isolation. Until now.
Silhara stopped to gaze at the shadowed oak wood and the sliver of road that cut a straight scar through its heart to the wide plain beyond. Gurn was well on his way to Eastern Prime, guiding Gnat and a wagon loaded with livestock—Neith’s only true wealth—through a swaying ocean of giant dropseed grass. He pictured Cael, his scruffy coat decorated in grass seed, the tip of his whip-like tail snapping back and forth as he trotted next to the rolling wagon.
He hadn’t resorted to crippling Gurn to make him leave, but he’d come close. The servant’s melancholy at Martise’s departure turned to confusion when Silhara ordered him to pack anything of value and ride for Eastern Prime. The confusion gave way to disbelief and fury when he questioned what Silhara’s real plans for the priests entailed.
The two men sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Silhara sipped a cup of Peleta’s Fire, welcoming the slow burn licking his throat and ribs. “You’ve already heard the real plans, Gurn. I’m to meet Conclave at Ferrin’s Tor in two days. We destroy the god and save the world.” He shrugged and drained the last of the Fire. Eyes watering from the spirits' effects, he raised the now empty cup to his servant. “And I die a hero,” he wheezed.
Gurn clutched his cup of tea in a large hand. Tension fractures blossomed across the cup’s surface beneath his tightening grip. His free hand slashed the air in sharp motion, and his face turned red.
Silhara shoved his cup and the bottle of Fire to the far end of the table. “We’ll do nothing more than load the wagon and harness Gnat. You’ll drive it to the city. Take Cael. I’ve already made arrangements for you to stay with your houri friend Anya for a week, or longer if you wish it.” He smiled at Gurn’s flushed features. “You must possess considerable skills beneath the blankets. She’s sent a message expressing her eagerness for your visit.”
Gurn didn’t return the smile, only slammed his large hands on the table hard enough to make it rock, and signed frantically.
The numbness swelling in Silhara’s heart since Martise rode off with the priests worsened. The Fire bubbled in his belly. He’d lost the woman he loved and now the friend he admired. Gurn had been more companion than servant—one who understood a need for solitude but helped keep years of loneliness at bay with his quiet presence. Silhara appreciated his loyalty, was grateful for it. How had he, a wharf rat, managed to engender such faith in a servant turned friend?
“You can’t stay, and you can’t help. Not here. If you’re my friend as you say, you will do me this last favor. When you reach Eastern Prime, find Martise. See that she’s well.”
More angry hand waving, and Gurn’s face paled and turned pleading before Silhara’s implacable will.
Silhara frowned. His words came out harsher than he intended. “I’m strong, Gurn, but not invincible. And I’m only a man. You didn’t see what I subjected Martise to under the god’s influence. The question isn’t if Corruption will possess me, but when. I’m no better than lich bait, and I won’t live as a puppet. I want you gone by sundown.”
Gurn’s mulish resistance surprised him, and Silhara was finally forced to lay a geas on him to make him leave. Tears of frustrated rage and sorrow streamed down the giant’s cheeks as he stood by the loaded wagon and faced his master and friend a final time.
Silhara clenched his jaw, finding it difficult to speak. “I’ve said it countless times. You’re a piss-poor servant.” He gripped Gurn’s forearm as much in farewell as to stave off an embrace that might crush his ribs. “Live long, my friend. Live well.”
As with Martise earlier, he didn’t watch Gurn leave but retreated to his chamber and studied the afternoon shadows as they stretched across the orange grove. He’d burned down two bowls from the huqqah before emerging to walk Neith’s inner boundaries.
A vast surge of power rushed through him when he lifted the curse wards off the wood. The dark magic, no longer a steady drain on his strength, beat like storm tide in his blood. Staggering against the sudden influx of power, Silhara breathed hard. Black lightning shot from his fingers, singeing the dry scrub grass at his feet.
The wood, free of the warping curse that kept visitors at bay, brightened with waning sunlight. Whatever darkness filled it in an hour’s time was of the sun’s descent, nothing more. Silhara curled his hands into fists, tamping down the residual waves of magic. He needed every bit of strength he could muster. If such means included leaving Neith’s front entrance unguarded, so be it.
He left the courtyard and returned to the house, striding through the empty corridors until he reached the door leading out to the grove. Ghostly echoes followed him—Martise’s alluring voice, the clatter of pots and pans as Gurn puttered in the kitchen, the staccato click of Cael’s claws on the floor as he patrolled the house. Silhara paused a moment and listened. Silence.
He sighed and made his way to the grove. Like the woods at Neith’s entrance, he’d warded the orchard walls with powerful spells. Again, Silhara absorbed the heady swell of power when he lifted the enchantments. Entire tribes of thieves could scale those walls now and pick his trees clean. Anger shot through him at the thought before he smothered the emotion.
The house welcomed him back with its cool shadows and pervading isolation. Silhara closed the door to his chamber and made his way to the balcony. Hanging low in the deepening indigo of encroaching twilight, Corruption’s star shone its brightest since it first appeared. Silhara stared at the god’s celestial manifestation and turned his magic inward. His thoughts, his emotions, every aspect of his spirit were locked down, shoved behind an ethereal door of warded strap hinges and mage-born locks.
Corruption would break through, but not before Silhara had him imprisoned within the shell of his body and bound to the priests who meant to destroy him. Martise’s pale features rose in his mind’s eye. At the edge of the night horizon the al Zafira constellation made her steady climb with her sister stars. He smiled. He’d done the right thing by not telling her of the symbol. He’d be honored for sacrificing himself for a world. None would know he’d done it for himself and one plain, enslaved woman.
The god’s star pulsed in recognition of his regard. Silhara spread his arms wide and faced his chosen destiny. “Shall I whore for you now, Corruption?” he whispered.
He knew little else beyond those words save a wrenching agony, as if a massive hand broke every bone in his body and ground the remains beneath a boot heel. Darkness exploded in his vision, and he went blind to the world around him. An ancient malice, bred of a thousand years of sleeping hate, filled him, pounding at the door guarding his soul.
Silhara blinked and saw before him not his orange grove or the indigo sky, but the bleak landscape of a familiar nightmare. He was back on the black shores of a dead world, facing an equally lifeless ocean. In the spill of silver-capped waves, the rise and fall of a massive dark shape, edged against a moonless night, surfed the water. It drew ever closer to lure him into the waves.
He answered its silent summons, wading into the surf. The tepid waves swirled sluggishly against his legs, and he struggled against their push and pull as if he swam through blood instead of water. A whisper of sound from behind made him turn, and he trod the water, sensing the approaching leviathan at his back.
A wraith in a white leine stood on a strand of ash and burnt bone and raised a beckoning hand. Above the dull rhythm of waves lapping against his face, her voice called out—entreating, spun of vanquished starlight
.
“Come ashore, my love.”
Silhara wanted to answer, wanted to swim back, but the pull of the tide drew him steadily out, away from the shore and that last pale remnant of hope. Water closed over his head, drawing him down, down into the yawning maw of the creature awaiting him.
Caught in a vortex of madness, he closed his eyes only to open them immediately. This time he was back on his balcony, facing a landscape strange and warped. He saw layers of motion and color, movement and time as if through a filter of dirty water. His vision, altered by the god’s possession, showed him the warmth of summer stripped of its vibrancy. Golds were faded yellows, greens only dull ash. The twilight sky was nothing more than shades of gray dotted by the sickly gleam of dying stars.
Corruption’s sweetly poisonous greeting echoed within him. “Welcome, Avatar. I have waited a long time for you.”
Silhara, his voice clear and free of the scarring rasp, inhuman in its clarity, answered. “I’ve come willingly. The priests of Conclave seek to destroy us at Ferrin’s Tor.”
The god laughed. “Then we shall play their game. They fooled me a thousand years ago. Not this time.”
Silhara watched his crows flutter and settle in his trees for the night. Corruption stilled inside him, and he sensed the god’s measure.
“I will reward you, Avatar. A world at your feet, kingdoms under your rule, immortality beyond your imaginings.” A shocking cold burned Silhara’s veins. “But first, a punishment for defying me.”
As if pulled by strings, Silhara’s arms rose. Magic, more powerful than anything he’d ever wielded, roared through him. White fire arced from his palms, spilling in cascades that raced across the ground and shot through the trees. His grove, proof of his triumph over a lifetime of obstacles and recipient of his greatest care, burst into an inferno of charring trees and screaming birds. Behind the protective door, Silhara’s broken soul wailed in anguish.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I won’t mourn for a man not yet dead.”
Martise scrubbed at her swollen eyes. Despite her declaration, she’d spent the night alternating between weeping and pacing the floor. She was desperate for an idea, a solution, even a miracle that might release Silhara from the trap he’d knowingly sprung on himself. By the time dawn edged the tiny window of her attic room, she was half mad with frustration.
Those priests selected to participate in the ritual at Ferrin’s Tor had left Eastern Prime before first light. Cumbria had volunteered before he was even chosen. Martise knew his intentions were neither noble nor brave. A chance to watch his nephew and life-long adversary die by Conclave’s hands was worth the risk of facing Corruption.
The sun climbed higher, glazing the tile rooftops of neighboring houses in fiery shades of red and orange. The sliver of sea seen from her window reflected the same bands of bright crimson on the face of the waters. Dawn was her favorite hour of the day, and another time Martise might have paused to admire the light’s beauty. But today she had a horse to steal, a journey to make and a man to save.
Cumbria had denied her request to join those who followed him to Ferrin’s Tor. “I need you here. Should we fail, you’re to present yourself to the Luminary at Conclave. He will be the last barrier against the god. Your time at Neith may help him.” He’d peered at her, suspicion drawing down his thin-lipped mouth into a frown. “Do you ask because you pine for the bastard mage?”
That bastard mage had just willingly given himself up as a sacrifice. While Cumbria had chosen to participate in the ritual, she doubted he’d be as willing as Silhara were he faced with the same circumstance.
“No,” she said, proud her voice remained cool and expressionless. “It’s only a matter of curiosity.” If she could help it, the bishop would never know of her bond with Silhara or his discovery of her Gift. She owed it to him as much as herself. His soul would rage through eternity if Cumbria managed to usurp power from the Luminary through her.
She straightened her cyrtel, slipped on her shoes and took a deep breath for courage. A beating waited for her once Cumbria discovered she’d not only openly defied his command to remain in Eastern Prime, but also “borrowed” one of his valuable horses. But she’d bow before the lash and suffer every stroke if she could help Silhara in some way.
The house was quiet, kept by a minimum staff of town servants unused to the master’s presence. Nearly all the Asher servants had followed him to Ferrin’s Tor. None would notice if she slipped out and disappeared for a day or two.
Much smaller than his manor at Asher, Cumbria’s town house was no less opulent. Martise traveled through rooms and halls decorated and maintained with exquisite care. A far cry from the ramshackle shabbiness of Neith, but if given a choice, she’d much rather be at Neith, negotiating a treacherous path of spider webs and holes in the floor to reach Gurn’s welcoming kitchen.
She strode through the kitchen on her way to the stables. Bendewin hailed her with a flour-dusted hand and a scowl. A tall woman and thin as a rake, she bore the hallmark features of a Kurman tribeswoman. Black hair streaked with gray and equally dark eyes set off an aquiline nose and high cheekbones. “And who set fire to your skirts at this early hour?”
Martise paused. “I have errands to run. I’ll be gone all day. Do you need me?”
The cook made to answer but was interrupted by a knock on the door leading to the back garden. A towheaded child peeked inside. “Sorry, mim. Saldin sent me. You have a visitor.”
Bendewin’s eyes widened. She glanced at Martise who shrugged. She followed the boy to the garden with an order for Martise. “Stay here. I want to know what you’re up to.”
The cook stayed on the doorstep, blocking the exit leading to the stables. Martise tapped her fingers impatiently on the worktable, sending up small clouds of flour. She was tempted to shove the woman out of the way and run, but it wouldn’t do to antagonize the cook. Bendewin would keep her secrets and might even aid her.
Her fingers drew meandering lines in the scatter of flour, and she was startled to see she’d traced the enigmatic symbol next to Berdikhan’s name in the Helenese scrolls. “What does this mean, Silhara?” she whispered.
So engrossed in trying to unravel the puzzle of Silhara’s stubborn silence, Martise didn’t hear Bendewin return until she spoke next to her.
“Foolish girl. Are you trying to give yourself bad luck?” Bendewin reached over her shoulder and quickly erased the symbol. “I heard the Master of Crows had Kurman blood, but you’d think he’d teach you something better than that about his people.”
The bottom of Martise’s stomach dropped out at her words, and her heart began to pound. A cautious hope rose in her. “You know this symbol?”
The cook shrugged. “I’m Kurman-raised; of course I know it.” She signed a hasty protection ward in the air. “A pattern of stars. The plains people don’t see the night sky the way the Kurmans do. To you, the Curl constellation is part of the Bull and the Serpent. To us, it stands alone. In Kurmanji, we call it al Zafira.”
Martise sucked in a breath. Her view of the stars had been shaped by Conclave’s teachings, and Conclave didn’t teach the ways of the mountain tribes. Without Bendewin’s knowledge, she would have never seen al Zafira.
She retraced the pattern in the flour. “What does it mean?”
Bendewin shrugged. “Nothing save a bit of bad luck. The consort of an ancient sarsin was named after those stars. Her husband was a mage, like the priests. Zafira met a bad end at his hands. She was what we call a bide jiana.”
“A life-giver.” Martise’s voice was breathless.
The cook’s eyes widened a fraction. “Yes. The old tales say he tried to gain the power of a god and used her to do it. They both died. No Kurman woman names her girl-child Zafira these days.” Bendewin scowled and laid a heavy hand on Martise’s shoulder. “You best sit down. You’ve gone whiter than milk.”
Martise shook her off. Her throat closed against another bout of weeping, onl
y these were angry tears, frustrated tears. If she could climb to the rooftop and scream her rage, she would.
Silhara’s words whispered in her mind. “I don’t love you.”
Her hands curled into fists. Damn him! He’d looked her in the eye with that cool, sardonic gaze and turned his back on the chance of survival with those words.
“Liar,” she snapped and raced through the door.
Bendewin’s cry of “Wait!” went unheeded. Martise sprinted across the garden toward the nearby stables. She stumbled at the sight of a servant leading a familiar figure across the dusty cart road to the back gate.
“Gurn!” she cried.
Thank the gods. In her misery over Silhara’s chosen fate, she’d forgotten he planned to send his faithful servant to Eastern Prime for safety. Gurn met her halfway as she flew toward him. Martise thought he’d squeeze the breath out of her and struggled until he loosened his hold. He looked haggard, his eyes sunken and dull in a face pale with grief. She suspected she looked the same.
Gurn still held her in one arm while motioning frantically with the other. Martise caught his fingers, stopping his frenetic signing.
“I’m well, Gurn.” She cupped his broad face in her hands and smiled. “I’m glad to see Silhara didn’t break your legs to get you to leave Neith.”
Gurn’s mournful expression angered. He growled low in his throat while he signed.
Martise sighed. A geas was almost as bad. Bound by the force of magery and resisting every step of the way, Gurn had left Neith with Cael in tow. A thought occurred to her. “Did Silhara only lay the geas forbidding you from returning to Neith?”
He nodded, blue eyes gleaming with curiosity.