She lowered her voice so the nearby servant wouldn’t hear. “I think I can save Silhara, but I need to steal a horse.”
The words were barely out of her mouth before he yanked her toward the stables.
She matched Gurn’s ground-eating stride. When they reached the stable doors, she tugged on his arm. He paused, eyes bright with hopeful fires. “The stable master or one of the stable boys may be in there. You’ll have to distract them while I get the horse. I suspect your size will be distraction enough, and such a talent has never been mine.”
They entered the stables, startling pigeons that fluttered to the shadowy rafters in a frantic flap of wings. Inside, the air was warm and pungent with the scent of horse and feed, oiled leather and horse dung. All but three stalls stood empty, and two of the horses stretched their necks over the gates for a closer look at their visitors. One wuffled in greeting, and Martise recognized the piebald mare that first carried her to Neith from Asher.
Light pierced the interior gloom from the open door but didn’t penetrate the darkness of the loft or the stalls at the far end of the stable row. Martise peered into the closest corners and listened. “Hello?” she called. Only the piebald answered her with another wuffle. She glanced at Gurn, radiant in a shimmering column of swirling dust lit by the morning sun. He watched the door and the loft by turns.
“Our luck is holding. It’s just us. Cumbria rode out before first light. I wouldn’t be surprised if the stable master returned home to enjoy his breakfast. Watch the door while I saddle the mare.”
The horse was a friendly creature and solid mount. Her long legs would cover a lot of ground in a short time. She shoved her nose into Martise’s arm, snorting with pleasure when the action earned her a quick scratch behind the ears. Martise had her bridled and saddled and was leading her out of the stall when the creak of the stable door sounded a warning.
Martise froze and peered under the mare’s neck. The stable master, a wiry, grizzled man with a shock of white hair and bits of egg in his beard, stared at her accusingly. He had time for a single breath before a giant hand shot out of the dark and cuffed him. The man went down with a thud amidst a cloud of dust and straw. Martise stared at Gurn as he emerged from his hidden corner and bent to place his fingers against the fallen man’s throat.
Gurn’s idea of distraction wasn’t as subtle as hers. Martise winced. “Is he dead?” she called in a loud whisper and breathed a sigh of relief when Gurn shook his head.
He signed to her to get moving and heaved the unconscious man over his shoulder as if he were nothing more than a half-empty grain sack. Martise swung onto the mare’s back and trotted her to the entrance. She reached for Gurn and briefly clasped his outstretched hand.
“Bind and gag him if you have to, then get out of here. Did you ride Gnat to Eastern Prime?” He nodded. “Good. I’ll be riding this mare hard. Gnat won’t be able to keep up, but you can meet me at Ferrin’s Tor later.” Gurn scowled, and his hand slashed the air. Martise shook her head. “No, Silhara only laid the geas against you for Neith. There’s no magery preventing you from going to the tor.”
His eyes brightened. He grinned and slapped the mare on the rump. Martise grasped a handful of reins and coarse mane and held on as the animal galloped out of the stable.
They made it through the gate and into the heart of the city without incident. Martise slowed the horse to a walk, guiding her through winding track of narrow streets slick with slime and littered with refuse.
Despite the mare’s eagerness to stretch her legs into a dead run, Martise kept her in check once they left the city for the open plains. She quelled the urge to give in to the horse’s impatience, frantic to reach the tor. Riding hard didn’t mean running her horse into the ground, and it wouldn’t get her far. She wouldn’t be of much use to Silhara if the mare collapsed from exhaustion, leaving her to foot it the rest of the way to the tor or wait for Gurn and Gnat.
Miles of tall grass flew past them as they cantered west toward the sacred mound. She stopped twice to rest the mare and drink from the streams that carved shaded paths from the snow-capped Dramorin peaks to the southern coast and picked a handful of fruit from a plum tree. She recalled another hot summer day when she’d rested beneath the shade of a leafy plum and admired the kiss of the sun on Silhara’s bronzed skin.
Martise knew she was near the tor even before she spotted its steep slopes in the distance. Obsidian light knifed across the sky, leaving jagged wounds in the blue and splattering the clouds in an oily luminescence. As she rode closer, the mare began to shake. Her hooves struck the ground in protest, and she reared when Martise tapped her heels into her sides to coax her onward.
Closer to the tor the sky had darkened into false night. Black clouds, fey and menacing, loomed above, blotting out the sun’s crimson disk as it sailed lower on the western horizon. A high, keening wind raced across the plain, bowing the grass as it barreled toward them. The horse tossed her head, squealing in panic. Martise struggled to hold her seat as the reins snapped out of her hands, and the mare bolted.
The sky tilted, obscured by her skirts and the whiplash snap of bluestem grass. Martise tumbled from the saddle, hitting the dusty ground hard enough to rattle her teeth. A stinging pain accompanied the iron taste of blood where she bit her tongue. The mare’s hooves beat a fading tattoo as she raced for safety.
“Damn, damn, damn!” Martise staggered to her feet, sore from the fall and the long ride. She spat blood and dusted her skirts. The wind howled its rage, and she wanted to howl with it. So close. The tor was within sight—mere minutes on horseback, a good half hour on foot. The fear of dying was a moot point now. If she managed to survive the ritual with Silhara, Cumbria would kill her for losing his horse.
She struck out for the tor, buffeted by the magic storm blasting off its peak. The wind tore at her clothes, dried her eyes. At the base, she discovered the retainers and their horses huddled together within the protective bounds of a warding circle. None looked her way, their terrified gazes locked on the spinning column of jet light erupting from the tor’s crown.
She circled away from the servants, careful not to draw attention to herself while she trekked up the hill.
The climb was steeper than it appeared and far more treacherous. The magic streaming from the top froze the surrounding turf, turning the face of the tor into a slippery pitch of ice and mud. Martise shrieked curses as she lost her footing twice and slid down the incline. Wiping mud from her cheeks, she clawed her way up on numb hands and wet knees.
Breathless and shuddering with cold, she reached the top and collapsed against a standing stone. The tableau before her sent her scrambling behind the stone.
The stones, ancient sentinels raised by the not quite human hands of a vanished race, encircled the tor’s peak in a granite coronet. Within their ring, a dozen Conclave priests confronted the black tornado at its center. Reduced to pale, hollow-eyed wraiths, they swayed in the howling maelstrom, spears of crimson light shooting from their raised palms to tether them to Corruption’s earthly manifestation. Cumbria stood among them, eyes wide and glazed white from the ritual’s magic.
Martise covered her mouth and moaned. Thirteen mages battled Corruption on this high and ancient place, twelve within the circle, one within the storm itself. Silhara stood inside the whirlwind’s center. She saw only flashes of his harsh face, cloaked by the spin of clouds, gaunt and stripped of its humanity by the god’s full possession. He seemed taller than before, equaling Gurn’s height, and his eyes were the same reptilian-black they’d been when he’d attacked her at Neith. The wind didn’t touch him, and he watched the priests’ efforts with an icy half smile of triumph. The Master of Crows had wholly become Corruption’s vessel.
Despair and anger mingled with fear, lessened it so that she abandoned the safety of the stone and stepped inside the perimeter of the ritual gathering. Her Gift surged inside her, hostile, desperate to engage the malevolent force filling the space inside the ring of stones
.
Martise slowly approached one of the priests, a woman she recognized from her years at Conclave. The bishop didn’t even twitch when she touched her arm. Lightning bolts of magery shot through Martise’s fingers, hot and sharp. Her Gift roiled in response, beating against her will. She held on, running her hand over the woman’s forearm until she reached the cascade of scarlet light spilling from her palm.
The light binding the priests to the god was the path to Silhara. Martise took a shuddering breath, glanced at her lover trapped in the whirlwind, and touched the crimson stream.
Her Gift punched through the barrier of her control, buried ethereal claws in the mage-bind and wrenched her soul along as it raced toward a pilaster of shimmering obsidian.
Colors—emerald and nacreous yellow, silver and rust—collapsed in on themselves in a mad kaleidoscope. Martise gasped at the rush of wind, the agonized jolt of her spirit splitting from her body as her Gift struck the black spire and shattered the wall of the world.
She hit something soft with a muffled thud. No pain juddered up her arm or down her back. She rolled and leapt to her feet. The cold mud smeared on her face and clothes was gone. She stood on a beach, but a beach unlike any existing in the living world. Gray sand drifted over her feet, light as ash and smelling of funeral pyres. Behind her, cliffs hewn of tortured rock reached toward an endless night brightened only by twelve red stars. An ocean stretched before her, black waves tumbling toward the silent shore.
This was a dead place, a prison of vanished memories and unlife, of eternity that passed without the measure of days. A soulless quiet that devoured itself as a serpent swallowing its tail. She was in the belly of the god, and somewhere in this wretched prison Silhara waited.
Above her, the twelve points of light brightened in the moonless sky. The flat sea rolling in from a vanishing horizon suddenly split into churning waves. Martise caught a glimpse of an arching shape and a massive dorsal fin taller than a temple spire before it sank into the depths. Something swam in the dead waters, something titanic that thrashed with fury. Waves heaved, higher than castle walls. The chant of ancient spells filled the heavy air and was answered by shrieking laughter.
From the corner of her eye she glimpsed an outcropping of rock rising from the water, not far from the shore. A figure, silhouetted in red starlight, sat on the rock and watched the waves lap at his feet.
“Silhara!” Martise bellowed his name and jumped as the ghostly echo of her voice bounced off the jet cliffs behind her. She caught her breath when the water suddenly churned, leaving a wake of white peaks as the thing in the water sped for the outcropping.
She raced along the shore’s edge, following the leviathan’s waterborn path until she faced Silhara’s rocky perch from the shore’s sanctuary. He didn’t look at her, but instead stared at the far horizon.
“Silhara!” she shouted once more, and he turned long enough to give her a bored glance. Martise motioned frantically. “Swim to shore, Master!”
This Silhara was the soul of the man yet unclaimed by the god. He watched her with human eyes, eyes filled with a hard resolve and an acceptance of his own death. The bitter smile he bestowed on her was poignantly familiar.
“Was it not enough that you burned my grove to the ground, Corruption? You would torture me with this illusion?” Like Martise’s, his voice echoed in the vault of the god’s prison. He turned away from her.
Martise closed her eyes for a moment, a sympathetic ache lodged in her chest. Willing possession wasn’t enough. The god had punished him by destroying the thing that meant the most to Silhara—his trees. Such petty cruelty spoke of lesser beings unworthy of a prayer, much less worship. Hatred for Corruption rocked her.
Terrified to her bones by what her immediate future held, she was still glad to be here with the man who’d chosen her life above his own. She loved him. He was worth dying for.
“Master,” she called. “I’m no illusion.”
Silhara ignored her. Martise clenched her hands into fists and growled her frustration. Damn the stubborn bastard, he’d make her swim to him.
She kicked off her shoes and tucked the hem of her cyrtel into her belt. The water lapped at her feet, neither cold nor warm. She had only a sense of oily wetness, as if the tide lapped blood instead of water on the shore. This sea didn’t smell of sun or salt or fish, had likely never tossed a ship on its waters or had anything other than the leviathan swim in the depths. Taking a breath, Martise waded in, certain she walked into a liquid sarcophagus.
Black waves struck her face as she swam for the rock. She kept her mouth tightly shut against the water, fearful of somehow swallowing the god’s essence and tainting her soul forever.
Something vast moved below her, stirring the underwater current. Martise sensed its presence, a colossal entity that watched her from the black deep. She swam harder. In this unnatural world, she didn’t tire from the exertion and soon reached the outcropping on which Silhara sat, arms braced casually over his knees.
“Silhara, help me up.” She stretched out a hand. He glanced at her, annoyed.
“What do you want of me, Corruption?”
Martise slapped her hand against the slippery rock. “Stop being so thick-headed! I’m not the god or an illusion.” She scrabbled harder to find a solid grip, sure the monster with its towering fin was even now rushing up from the depths, its great mouth, razored with rows of sharp teeth, opened wide to swallow her. “Damn it, Silhara. I’m Zafira.”
The sucking grasp of the water pulled at her legs as Silhara yanked her out of the lifeless sea. He glared at her, the first vibrant emotion she’d seen in his face since she’d fallen into this alternate place.
He dropped her hand as if scorched by her touch. “I’ve poor luck. You discovered the symbol’s meaning too soon.”
Heedless of her drenched state and his sharp reception, Martise threw her arms around him, hugging him fiercely. Like the waters and shore, he smelled of a funeral pyre. She could see her hands through his back and shuddered. In this world, his soul had taken physical form like hers, but it was fading. Like the priests, he was becoming a wraith, drained by the god and holding onto life with an ever-weakening grasp.
Still, Martise felt the weight of his arms as he embraced her, the ferocity of his kiss. He didn’t taste of oranges or tea, but of a terrible despair. Her Gift, quieted once it slung her through the barrier of realities, awakened. Martise held it down, hoarded its strength. She captured Silhara’s mouth in a kiss of her own, savoring the feel of him in her arms.
“Foolish woman,” he whispered against her lips. “You have made this meaningless.”
The apprentice returns. Corruption’s voice, mocking and filled with malice, thundered over the waves.
“Not meaningless,” she said. “Survivable.” She meant to say more, but Silhara suddenly seized in her embrace, convulsing as a spear of red light from the distant stars struck him. His eyes rolled back in his head, mouth opening on a silent scream. Martise cried out with him, scrambling to hold him upright when his knees buckled. The shadowy creature surfing beneath the waves slapped an enormous fin against the rock, and Corruption’s enraged howl deafened her.
Martise lowered Silhara to the wet ground, holding him like a child. Bursin! The strength of the priests and their spells. They’d attacked as one, throwing all their force against Corruption and the mage who held him in a body growing fragile with the strain.
Had this world and time allowed it, she would have cried when Silhara opened his eyes. All the stars missing from the false night glittered in his black gaze.
“I cursed the day you came to Neith.” He turned his face into her hand, kissing her palm. “And cursed the day you left.”
“Let me help you.” She stroked a lock of hair from his cheek, loving him with her eyes, her touch. “I don’t want your nobility, Silhara. It doesn’t suit you.”
He stared at her for a long moment. “You may well die here with me. Neither Berdikhan
nor Zafira survived.”
She shrugged, doing her best to conceal her terror, knowing he saw it in her eyes. “There are worse deaths.”
Silhara pulled her down and kissed her again. This time Martise tasted the bitter essence of battle magic. The priests would continue to decimate him. As long as he trapped the god and was trapped by him, Conclave would attack until Corruption fell and his avatar fell with him.
“I didn’t give you up to death at Iwehvenn,” she said. “I won’t do so now.”
His sensual mouth, thinned with pain, curved into a shallow smile. “What happened to that sad mouse of a woman who first came to Neith and leapt at her own shadow?”
“I didn’t love you then.” Martise stroked his cheek. “And I still leap at my own shadow.”
Crimson light rained down on the sea. The outcropping shuddered beneath Martise and Silhara as the water beast slammed against the rock in agitation. Silhara struggled in her arms. Martise helped him stand, shouldering his weight as he staggered.
“I’m dying,” he rasped.
Martise wrapped her arms around his waist and stared into his drawn features. His dark eyes, alight with stars moments earlier, were dull.
“Then make it stop,” she beseeched him. “Use me. Use my Gift. I didn’t make your sacrifice futile. Don’t make mine wasteful.” She curved her palm against his cheek. “Let me love you for this moment. It will be enough.”
Silhara laughed, a deep, hollow sound. “No, Martise of Asher.” A nimbus of bloody light bathed him in macabre radiance. His hands on her shoulders tightened. “I am a greedy man. We could live a thousand years more than this twisted god, and still it will not be enough.”
He bent to her, teased her lips with his. “Open for me, bide jiana. Let me in.”
Martise shook with fright and laughed with joy. Her Gift, smashing against the gates of her will, broke free, rushed toward the man in her arms in a surge of living amber light. She fell into darkness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE