A white dog, or what was once a dog, raised its enormous head and froze him in place with a lambent yellow gaze. The creature dwarfed the largest mage-finder male and sported a misshapen skull and mouth filled with teeth like sword blades. A mottled patchwork of hair and scabrous skin stretched across a skeletal frame.
Silhara drowned in those glowing eyes. Once more the images of fallen kingdoms and worshipping throngs flooded his mind. Satisfaction ran deep within him at the vision of Conclave Redoubt razed to rubble and drowned in the sea, the priests hunted to extinction. He licked his lips and caught the taste of iron on his tongue. Corruption poured power into him, offering gifts even as it sought his enslavement.
The god didn’t whisper to his mind as before but spoke through the white nightmare holding Silhara’s gaze. “Come forth, Avatar. Do you not know me, Son of Lies?”
The voice, hollow as an empty grave, rose above the insectile buzzing and snapped Silhara out of his stupor.
He spun away from the parapet. Racing into his room, he careened into the bedside table, sending the pitcher crashing to the floor in a shower of water and broken pottery. He skidded in a puddle as he grabbed the crossbow and bolts stashed against one corner.
Rage burned his spirit clean of Corruption’s bewitchment. “Neith crawls with unwelcome guests this evening.” He nocked a bolt into the quarrel groove and strode to the door. “But I am ever a civil host.”
He nearly ran Gurn down on the steps leading to the great hall. The giant teetered on the stair’s edge, clutching his oil lamp until Silhara shoved him against the wall and squeezed past, snapping out orders as he leapt the risers two at a time. “Lock the girl’s door and stay in the house with Cael.”
The first floor corridors were sepulcher-black, but he never slowed, fueled by anger and a fevered compulsion to confront the god on his terms.
He kicked the back door open and found the cadaverous dog awaiting him. It slinked toward him, monstrous and reeking worse than corpses left in the sun. Silhara swallowed back bile and leveled the bow’s sights on the creature. “What do you want?”
The aggravating drone ceased abruptly, and Corruption spoke through the dog’s rictus of teeth. “What you want, Avatar. Homage, respect, power.”
“Then you have no need of me. You are the god here, not I.”
The dog cocked its head to the side. A stream of worms poured from a rotting ear. They writhed in a slick heap near Silhara’s feet. He didn’t think the thing capable of smiling. He was wrong. The heavy jowls stretched back in a death head’s grimace, exposing curved canines gleaming silver in the dying light.
“Oh, I need you, Master of Crows. Do you not wonder why I call you Avatar?”
The spectral voice changed, turned oily and cajoling. “I know your mind, sorcerer, and your spirit. Your hate burns hot for the priests–these men who spit on a whore’s get. Surrender to me, and I will see them destroyed in your name.”
Silhara pulled the trigger. The bolt struck the cur in the eye with a hard thunk, and the animal collapsed in a heap. Ashen skin and fur melted away, exposing a jumble of bones and more of the putrid worms. Even those soon dissolved, along with the fired bolt, leaving only a coil of oily smoke in a patch of ruined grass. He waved the smoke away impatiently and spoke to the grove’s deepening shadows.
“I hate many things and many people; none are worth subjugating my will. You’ll have to coax me with something better than a few dead priests.” He spat, a mix of blood and spittle striking the ground. “Until then, stay out of my mind and out of my grove.”
The star answered him, pulsing sullenly behind a scatter of slate clouds. He turned to the house and caught Gurn hovering in the doorway, peering into the grove’s darkness. “Did I not say stay inside?”
The servant pointed to his feet, demonstrating he hadn’t crossed the threshold. Silhara chuckled, despite the evening’s events and the burgeoning headache ramming spikes between his eyes.
"You're a piss-poor servant, Gurn. Will you ever learn your place?"
Gurn shrugged, unconcerned, and opened the door wider for his master. Silhara glanced over his shoulder at the grove. "I doubt it will help, but I'll strengthen the wards on the walls tonight." He pointed to the ceiling. "Did she try leaving her room?"
Gurn shook his head and mimicked a sleeping position by resting his cheek against his hand. Silhara rolled his eyes. "Unlock her door, otherwise she'll think we've made her a prisoner."
He sent Gurn to bed after several assurances he was well and unharmed by his encounter with Corruption. A last study of the grove before shutting the door behind him, and he returned to his chambers.
Gurn had doused the brazier’s coals and put away the huqqah. The mess Silhara left when he rushed from the room was swept away. A carafe of sweet wine sat on the uprighted table.
He put the crossbow and bolts back in their place and poured a generous dram of wine into a goblet, draining it in two swallows. It did nothing to kill the pain in his head, so he poured another and strolled to the window. His land was deceptively peaceful outside. Only the rustle of sleeping crows whispered back to him. He recalled Corruption’s words.
“Do you not wonder why I call you Avatar?”
Of course he wondered, and his suspicion left an abiding horror in his soul. His neck ached as much as his head, and he rolled his shoulders. Conclave spies, demon dogs and parasitic gods–just what he needed during the harvest season. “I grow tired of this wheel,” he murmured.
The star glimmered. Silhara raised his goblet to the god’s celestial face in a mocking toast. “To Silhara, master of nothing.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Great stinking heaps of refuse surrounded Martise. The rancid odor flooded her nostrils on steaming puffs of air and buffeted her face until she gagged. The smell and the heat beat against her head and shoulders, followed by a cool dampness that nudged her neck. The touch startled her out of a restless sleep. She rolled over and opened her eyes to find a face covered in bristling gray fur and gagged scars filling her vision. Cael, Silhara's mage-finder hound, touched a wet black nose to hers and sniffed.
“Bursin’s wings.” She scooted back and pulled the covers over her head. “Cael, you smell like the dead. Have you been rolling in the pig sty again?”
The dog whined and shoved his nose into the blankets. Martise scrambled out of the bed, anxious to put some distance between her and his repulsive smell. He padded after her when she hurried to her window and opened the shutters.
Pale morning light embroidered the window’s edge and cast the last pre-dawn shadows in sharp relief. The crows sleeping in the orange grove fluttered to life, rocking the drooping branches as they hopped from perch to perch and fought for space in the coveted treetops.
Cael joined her. He stood on his hind legs, resting massive paws on the window ledge. Martise stared at him with trepidation as he towered over her. The mage-finder was a massive animal, bigger than any of the males in the pack she’d seen at Conclave. White-muzzled and past his prime, he was still formidable. She’d watched him hunt on Neith land, easily running the fastest prey to ground with a long, loping stride. His kills were swift, efficient and left Martise rubbing the chills off her arms hours later. Once, long ago, mage-finders had hunted and killed the Gifted in the same fashion.
Her first introduction to the mage hound two weeks earlier had scared ten years off her lifespan. Standing in Gurn’s comfortable kitchen her first morning at Neith, she’d stood frozen while Cael slowly circled her. As big as a pony, but with the feline grace of a cat, he’d slinked into the kitchen and made directly for her, black claws tapping on the stone floor. His dark eyes, gone crimson the second he saw her, watched her every move. The gray fur along his curved back rose in a spiny arch; his whip-like tail smacked a warning tattoo against Gurn’s work table.
Martise pleaded silently for Gurn to pull the mage-finder back. He signed an apology and clapped his hands in command. Cael reluctantly followed the s
ervant to the door leading to the inner bailey, but not without looking back at her several times with those brilliant red eyes.
When Gurn returned, Martise was leaning against the table for support. “You have a mage-finder,” she said in a weak voice. He nodded. She took a deep breath and straightened, feeling the first stirrings of anger. “He’s the ‘denizen’ your master spoke of.” Gurn inclined his head once more.
Heartless bastard. She echoed Cael, growling under her breath. She didn’t expect Silhara to believe Cumbria’s assurances. The animosity between the two men was too great. But, there were many, less extreme ways to verify she was one of the Gifted. Ways that didn’t involve a deadly mage-finder sniffing her skirts.
She schooled her expression into a placid mask. “Will he be satisfied now?”
Gurn shrugged, his eyes frosty. Martise sensed his disapproval wasn’t directed at her. He motioned for her to sit and served her breakfast.
She'd quickly settled into a new routine since then. Cael, despite his initial wariness, accepted her. He was still curious and followed her about the manor as she performed the numerous chores Gurn assigned her during the day, and she grew used to his silent, if odorous company.
In that time she’d seen nothing of Silhara yet felt his presence in Neith’s every crook and crevice. She’d met him only once so far, but his image was burned into her mind. He reminded her of a captured whirlwind, spinning fiercely in place, waiting only for the moment to burst free of its confines and blast the surrounding land. Cumbria had assigned her no easy task. Her freedom would be hard-won.
A brisk breeze swept through her open window, dispelling some of Cael's pungent odor. Dust motes danced in a spiral before come to rest on his coat in a glittering net. In the early dawn light Corruption's star shown dull amidst tinted clouds. The star never remained stationary. Yesterday it had washed the southern horizon in murky yellow light. This morning it hovered in the eastern sky, nearly obscured by the sun's fiery ascent.
Cael snarled softly. His eyes were red once more as he also watched the star, and his fur bristled. No one knew what drew the hounds to magic, but they sought it in the same way an ordinary dog tracked prey. Cael had first reacted to her with restrained animosity, typical of a trained mage-finder when introduced to one of the Gifted. His reaction to Corruption’s manifestation was different. The animal exuded hatred, a bestial hostility at its fiercest. His lips curled back, exposing fangs as long as her fingers. Were the god to take a more earthly form, she had no doubt Cael would leap out the window in an effort to hunt it down and rip it apart.
If he were an ordinary dog instead of a mage-finder, Martise might have patted his back in reassurance. But she was reluctant to touch him, wary of having her hand bitten off for her presumption. And he smelled worse than a privy.
“Come on, boy,” she said and left the window. “Gurn will be wondering where I am.” Her stomach growled, and she swore Cael’s bushy eyebrows wriggled in amusement. “I don’t want to miss out on the porridge either.”
She made quick work of her ablutions and dressed in one of her borrowed cyrtels, castoffs from Cumbria’s wife’s ever changing wardrobe. She wrapped her hair in a tight bun and secured it with two wooden hair pins. “Dull and plain as a potato,” she murmured and smoothed the front of her cyrtel. She wasn’t here to seduce, only betray. Her beauty, or lack of it, played no part in this game. And the game might never begin if she didn’t see Silhara more frequently.
Gurn had left a half-full oil lamp for her, a necessary navigation aid in Neith's dark corridors. Martise lit the lamp and motioned Cael out the door. The hallway winding through the manor's second floor was just as dark in the morning. Her lamp provided the only light, a weak luminescence that sent shadows chasing each other across the cracked walls and buckled floor.
Cumbria's comment about Neith being a hovel was rude but not far off the mark. This was truly a poor man's house, despite its size and decrepit grandeur. She hopped over a hole in the floor and rose on her toes as the boards groaned in protest beneath her feet. Dust covered every surface. Remnants of cobwebs fluttered like tattered lace from ceiling beams, caressing her head as she passed beneath them. Her skin crawled, and she tried not to dwell on the possibility of a spider trapped in her hair.
Was Silhara an aristocrat with only bloodlines to give him value? After the droughts and famines swept the far lands when she was a child, many of the aristo families were reduced to begging and selling their possessions just to feed themselves. Had such misfortunes brought his family to ruin?
It was the only thing she could think of to explain his haughtiness. He seemed a man born to rule—if not a country than certainly a fiefdom, a dale. His behavior toward Cumbria was insolent, as if he considered himself not only the bishop’s equal but his superior. In her experience, only those born of noble stock and to great wealth displayed that conduct. Martise despised such people.
She’d have to temper her dislike for the crow mage. He was no different from any other landowner or high-ranking clergyman, and so far inflicted nothing more damaging on her than a few snide remarks. Still, there was something inherently dangerous about him. Conclave did not always rule by paranoia; instinct warned her to tread carefully around him, though she itched to box his ears for his arrogance.
He confused her more than anything. She was used to haughty behavior from those of his class and should have felt nothing more than the usual disdain of a servant for those she served. But fire had licked her insides at her first sight of him. Her face heated with what was surely the hottest blush ever gracing a woman no longer a maiden. Such feelings had no place here. She was bound; he was outcast. She resided at Neith to spy on him, and if the promise in his expression was any hint, he'd make her wish she never crossed his threshold.
His scarlet robes, bright and overwhelming in a house painted in shades of gray and faded brown teased her memory. There was a stark beauty about him, a compelling strength in his sharp-boned face with its prominent cheekbones and hooked nose. Like Cumbria, he radiated power in the set of his shoulders, the challenge in his dark eyes. Even Martise, Gifted but failed, sensed it. The mage-finders must have gone wild when they first scented him. He was a renegade and possibly a heretic. If he was as formidable as the canonry believed, and as susceptible to Corruption’s seduction as they suspected, then the clerics had a right to their misgivings.
The sight of the rickety wooden stairs descending to the first floor made her forget her annoyance with Neith’s master. Martise paused, envious of Cael’s surefootedness when he eased passed her and took the steps two at a time. Sagging in spots and broken in others, they were a death trap. But it wasn’t her place to complain. Instead, twice a day, she took a deep breath, said a heartfelt prayer and trod the treacherous path.
More groaning and popping sounded beneath her feet. She took comfort in knowing the much larger Gurn had climbed these same stairs countless times and not come to a bad end. Her luck might not be so good. The banister almost splintered beneath her grip. She pictured herself stumbling and pitching head first over the broken railing. She’d be of little use to Cumbria as his watcher if Silhara discovered her splayed dead on the floor of his great hall. Nor did she think he’d be pleased. The hall sported decayed furniture, soot-blackened walls and a cold hearth. Abandoned and eerie, yes, but not littered with corpses as part of the décor. As far she knew. She didn’t want to ponder what oddities lurked in this place.
She sighed with relief at the bottom of the stairs. Cael waited for her, growling his disapproval at her slowness. She shrugged. “I’m not half so nimble as you, Cael.” She wrinkled her nose at the odor wafting off his fur. “Nor half as smelly.” He growled again and led her to the kitchen.
Gurn might not have much interest in tidying the rest of the manor, but he took pride in his kitchen. Pristine and uncluttered, the chamber practically sparkled. No unwashed pots or dishes were stacked in the dry sink; no livestock wandered about, no hunti
ng hounds sprawled at the cooking hearth.
Battered cupboards placed against a far wall held an array of chipped dishes and stacks of pots and bowls. Fans of dried sage and rosemary hung next to chains of garlic from a low beam near the dry sink. A shallow bowl of oranges stacked in a neat tower shared space with loaves of cooling bread on a table by one window. The preparation table, dented and scratched with hard use, held a soft sheen that only came from industrious scrubbing.
Martise’s admiration for the mute servant grew by leaps and bounds in her weeks at Neith. Even Bendewin, Asher’s cook, had to be reminded to polish her preparation table on a constant basis. No one liked splinters in their food. Unlike most of the manor, not a speck of dust grayed the surfaces, and the entire room was redolent with the rich scent of porridge simmering in an iron cauldron suspended over a low hearth fire. Her mouth watered.
“A fair morning, Gurn,” she said in greeting. “Breakfast smells wonderful.”
He gave her a pleased smile from where he bent over the pot, stirring their porridge. The smile turned to a disgusted frown when Cael padded past him and flopped down in his customary place under the table.
She didn’t wait for Gurn’s direction but made her way to the cold cellar in one corner. Recessed into the kitchen floor and accessible by a hatch, the deep space was filled with jars of preserved food, slabs of salted bacon and ham, a bowl of eggs and crocks of butter, cream and milk. She gathered butter and milk and ascended the cellar steps, grateful they, at least, were sturdy.
Gurn had placed two bowls of the steaming porridge on the table by the time she set the crocks down. Martise was relieved not to see a third bowl. It was inevitable she’d deal with Silhara, and often. However, she preferred to delay as long as possible, and she didn’t relish the thought of those penetrating black eyes watching her as she ate her breakfast.