“If I could find you,” Mycelle stated heatedly, “so could the Gul’gotha. I’ve been tracking you since the foothills, and your guide has wisely kept you moving, escaping even my skill. But now this stupidity!” She threw a hand in the air. “Has it just been the luck of the lame, rather than wisdom, that has kept you from the dogs of the Dark Lord?”
Tol’chuk closed in on the woman. She seemed to know too much about them. He sniffed at her, scenting her strength but also an underlying fear, a bitter tang. Anything that could trigger such a response in her was truly something to worry about. He spoke at her shoulder. “Why have you been hunting us?”
“Is it for bounty?” Kral asked.
She sighed and shook her head with exasperation. “Have either of you been listening to me? If I was here for a fistful of silver, a legion of dog soldiers would have your innards for their victory stew. Now if we are done dithering, perhaps you could introduce me to this wit’ch of yours.”
Kral’s ax was now in his hand; he had armed himself so swiftly that Tol’chuk had not even seen him move. Yet the woman had. Both her blades were already poised, one at Kral’s throat, one above Tol’chuk’s heart. The og’re looked down at the sword tip touching his chest. Not only did she know the og’re’s language, she also knew the one weak spot on an og’re’s body where a single thrust could kill. Both her weapons were held with a casual steadiness that was more threatening than the edges of her twin swords.
Tol’chuk was the first to speak. “Kral, hitch your ax. If she meant us harm, we’d be both dead.”
Kral was not a dullard. He carefully returned his ax to his belt.
“And you—Mycelle—if you know of the wit’ch, then you know we will lay down our lives to keep her from harm. So sheathe your blades and let your tongue do your talking.”
With a single motion, she swept both swords into the crossed scabbards on her back. She reached and pushed back a single lock of hair that had escaped her braid. “I mean your wit’ch no harm. I have dogged her trail to offer my blades and service to her.” She nodded toward the town beyond the curtained alcove. “But I may have come too late. There are two ill’guard stationed here, and they can sniff magick.”
“Ill’guard?”
“Spawn of the Black Heart himself, imbued with foul magickal beasts. They make plans already to close off the city. Then they will hunt the streets for your company and the wit’ch you guard.”
Kral glanced at Tol’chuk, his question clear. Should they trust her?
“If you’re to escape,” she continued, “it must be within the day. My skills will be of great help.”
“And what do you want in return?” Kral asked, still doubtful.
“That is between me and the wit’ch,” she said coldly.
Kral eyed the og’re again. Tol’chuk shrugged at him. It would be best to bring her to the others, he decided. Let the matter be settled then.
Tol’chuk spoke to her, letting his threat ring clear in his voice. “If you betray us, you will need more than two swords to keep me from your throat.”
She smiled at him, a bit sadly, then raised a palm to touch his cheek. “Is that any way to speak to your mother, Tol’chuk?”
KRAL WATCHED THE og’re’s face change multiple colors at the woman’s statement and her touch on his cheek.
The og’re backed away from her. “How could . . . Where did . . . ?” Tol’chuk then collected himself with a shake of his head and stated firmly, “You cannot be my mother.”
Mycelle lowered her voice, a certain tenderness entering it for the first time. “I can see your father in you quite clearly.” She pointed vaguely at his face. “The way your eyes are pushed a bit too close together. And that nose! That is your father’s nose.”
Tol’chuk’s hands wandered to his face as if trying to feel the truth of the woman’s words. Kral sensed the woman spoke with an honest heart. “She does not lie,” Kral asserted.
“But how . . . Why?” Tol’chuk’s thousand questions were plain on his rocky features. He seemed unable to sort them in any coherent order.
Mycelle placed a hand on the og’re’s arm. “I fell in love with your father. It’s just that simple.”
These words quieted Tol’chuk. “If what you speak is true, why did you leave us? I was told you died in the birthing caves.”
She nodded and grew pensive. “In some ways, I did. You know of your si’luran heritage, do you not?”
“Tu’tura,” Tol’chuk mumbled.
“Yes,” she said with a bit of fire. “So the og’re tribes have always named us: Tu’tura, “baby stealers.” We were despised by the clans. Yet your father knew my secret and still had the heart to love me. But blood is blood, and with your birth, I could no longer hide the fact that I was not truly an og’re. Your half-breed birth spoke my deception to the rest of the clan. I was hounded and almost killed. Your father rescued me, taking me beaten and bloody to the ancient og’res in the deep caves.”
“The Triad.”
“Yes. They carried me to a magickal gate in the mountain’s heart and cast me out, warning that I must never return or I would be slain. They said the spirits in the gate would take me where I needed to go.”
Tol’chuk nodded with her words, as if he knew what she spoke of. “The Spirit Gate,” was all he whispered.
Mycelle did not seem to hear him and continued her tale. “I was cast east of the Teeth, deep into the lands of man. Wounded in body and spirit, I was barely able to transform myself, but I did—into the form of a human. Weak and dying, I was found and taken in by a kindhearted woman who cared for me. It was she who—”
Her words were interrupted by Mogweed’s sudden appearance at the curtain flap. The shape-shifter still wore his stage costume, his hair disheveled. “Something’s happened to Elena,” he said in a rush. “She’s safe, but Er’ril wants us all at the wagon.” Only after speaking his words did he seem to notice the woman standing behind Kral. Mogweed’s face blushed as he realized he had spoken openly in front of a stranger, breaking the company’s code of silence.
Kral clapped Mogweed on the shoulder. “Don’t worry. She already knows about Elena.”
“Wh-who is she?” he whispered.
Kral shrugged. “She claims to be Tol’chuk’s mother.”
Mogweed’s brow crinkled as he glanced around Kral’s wide shoulders to peer at her. “But Tol’chuk’s mother was si’luran,” he muttered. “That woman is not one of my people. Her eyes . . .” Mogweed waved to his own slitted pupils. For those who knew the creatures of the Western Reaches, the strange amber eyes with catlike pupils marked a shape-shifter in any form. This woman’s eyes were normal, like any other human’s.
Mycelle must have heard his words. “But I am si’luran. Or more truthfully, I was of your people. I have since settled.”
Mogweed’s eyes grew wide, a mixture of shock and disgust clear in his expression. “You . . . you settled? Were you forced?”
“We don’t have time for this,” she said, dismissing Mogweed with disdain. “The story is long, and Elena is not as safe as you so blithely stated. At least not here in Shadowbrook. Take me to her.”
Her words seemed to snap the others from their interlocked gazes.
“She’s right,” Kral said. “Let’s go.” He led them through a back flap of the curtained alcove and slipped behind the stage. As he walked, he pondered the day’s sudden events. First the warrior woman with her wild claims, and now there was something wrong with Elena. Was there a connection? Once past the backdrop behind the stage, Kral spotted Meric and Fardale huddled with Er’ril near the rear of the wagon. In the middle of them, Elena sat on the cart’s boot, showing them something clasped in her hand.
Kral cleared his throat, and all their eyes swung toward the mountain man’s group as they marched along the curtain.
Er’ril’s brow darkened as he saw the stranger among them, his suspicions plain in his expression.
But Elena was the first to s
peak as her face also responded to the newcomer. Her eyes crinkled in confusion, then widened with shocked delight. “Aunt Mycelle?” She leapt off the wagon and raced over to the woman, throwing her arms around the supposed stranger. Tears burst from the girl’s eyes as she buried herself in the woman’s embrace. “I can’t believe you’re here,” she sobbed and squeezed tighter, as if needing further contact to dispel her disbelief. “You’re really here!”
The woman returned her hug just as affectionately. “Child, how you’ve grown.”
“Who is this woman?” Er’ril said darkly.
Mycelle answered with a warm smile for Elena. “I’m not really her aunt . . . but her Aunt Fila and I did share a different sort of sisterhood.”
Into the stunned silence, Kral spoke. “You knew her aunt?”
“Yes. She was the woman who found me and cared for me after I passed through the Spirit Gate.”
“Ah . . .” Kral said, suddenly seeing how fates were twisting together.
Er’ril’s face had blackened with ire. “Could someone explain what you are all talking about?”
His question was ignored.
Mycelle pulled Elena’s wrist up. “What’s wrong with your hand?” The woman’s eyes had narrowed with concern.
Kral leaned closer. Elena’s left hand was crisscrossed with looping shreds of mossy vines. It seemed as if the tiny leaflets and corkscrewing branches grew out from the flesh of her hand.
“It won’t come off,” Elena said. She tugged at a fragment of the tenacious growth. “It’s stuck.”
Mycelle knelt on one knee and studied the girl’s hand, flipping it one way then another. Her lips were tight. “Does it hurt?” she finally said.
“No, it’s just sort of tight.”
“Hmm . . .” She twisted a leaflet from the moss and sniffed at it.
Er’ril had by now shouldered his way beside them. His eyes were still suspicious. “Do you know anything about this?”
“This is swamp moss,” Mycelle said, picking at another strand. “It isn’t just clinging to her. It’s growing into her.”
“What!” Er’ril pulled Elena back from her, but the girl shook him off and stood on her own.
Mycelle stood up and wiped off her fingers that had touched the moss. “Elena’s been bewit’ched.”
15
MYCOF AND RYMAN stared across the tai’man board, both deep in thought on their next moves. The bone and jade pieces were spread between them in an intricate parlaying for dominance on the wormwood gaming board. Both combatants sat hunched over their pieces, dressed in motleys of green silk shirts, red woolen jackets, and black tasseled slippers.
Though similarly attired, it was their matching features that drew an eye. Obviously of twinned birth, the pair’s likeness to each other was disturbingly exact. Where most other twins had slight differences, minor imperfections that set them apart, these two had no such telltale signs. It was as if both had been carved by an artisan of impeccable skill from the same bone as the tai’man pieces. Their ivory faces, each slender as a woman’s, with features small and pale, made each seem more a statue than a man.
The left corner of Mycof’s lip twitched slightly up.
“You have made a decision, Brother?” Ryman said, noting this abrupt outburst from his twin. Mycof was always such an exuberant tai’man player.
Mycof glanced at Ryman. He saw the ridicule in his brother’s eyes for his obvious lack of control. Mycof fixed his unruly lips back into a thin line. “Sorry,” he said, and reached to move a piece; he mounted it atop Ryman’s stallion.
“Is that the move I have been waiting all afternoon for?”
“You are mounted,” Mycof answered. “Three moves and I will have your castle stormed.”
Ryman stared at the board. Had his brother gone mad? Then with this thought, he saw the trap. It was his turn to let one eyelid open a bit wider in surprise.
Mycof enjoyed his normally stoic brother’s enthusiastic response, and enjoyed even more Ryman reaching a finger out and toppling his own castle, admitting defeat. Still, Mycof kept his features still: Not a lip parted, not an eyelash moved. He would savor this moment and not ruin it with a ridiculous display such as a smile. Mycof caught Ryman studying him from under his white bangs. Mycof kept his face placid.
“You are in rare form, Brother,” Ryman finally conceded. He used a polished nail to sweep back his stray hair from his red eyes.
“Another game?”
“Evening approaches, and the Pack will soon be ready to hunt. Perhaps it would be best if we waited until the morn.”
Mycof conceded the logic of his brother’s plan with a slight bowing of his head.
“Quit patronizing me!” Ryman scolded; even his cheeks showed a thin reddish hue.
Mycof had not realized how upset his brother was at the defeat. “I was only acknowledging the full value of your assessment. Evening doth approach, and the Pack grows most hungry for blood.”
Ryman heard the solidness of his brother’s words and used Mycof’s even tones to help harden his own constitution. The flush faded from his cheeks. “Then we should retire to the cellar.” He stood, keeping his gaze well away from the board. He did not want to be reminded of his defeat.
The careful shunning of the board was noted by Mycof. He stood up and followed his brother toward the door. At the threshold, the back of his hand brushed his brother’s sleeve. This token of affection was not unappreciated by Ryman.
“Thank you,” Ryman said, his lips barely moving. “I think this day’s challenging game overheated both our bloods.”
“Certainly it was a most riotous contest.”
They left together, two ivory statues draped in expensive finery. Their slippered feet whispered through the scattered rushes that covered the castle’s stone floor. Servants stepped aside, casting their eyes down as the two lords of the Keep passed. Few but the servants ever set eyes upon the pale brothers, and the sun never did. Mycof and Ryman were not unaware of the whispered rumors about them, but no one questioned the twins’ heritage and right to the castle.
Their parents, long gone to their crypts, had been deeply loved by the people of Shadowbrook. It was the Kura’dom family who had founded the city long ago, and it had been the twins’ father who had most recently overseen the flourishing of Shadowbrook through wise contracts and trade agreements, expanding the flow of riches into the city. The entire town had shared in this new wealth, and in memory of their fine parents and ancient lineage, most folk just shook their head at the eccentricities of the brothers.
So no one said a word to Mycof and Ryman as they wandered deeper into the less-traveled regions of the Kura’dom stronghold. It was their right. It was their home.
The stronghold, known in Shadowbrook simply as the Keep, was older than the town around it. It had started as a small signal tower, one of many once scattered throughout the Standi Plains. Most had fallen since to rubbled ruin, but this one, positioned strategically and profitably near the banks of the Shadowbrook River, was a seed that had grown the town itself. And as the town had spread like roots from a tree, the tower itself had grown in fits and starts: a wing extended here, a third story built there, even four stumped towers added to surround the old signal tower. And in recent times, battlements, walls, and even a thin moat had been constructed around it, though these last works were more decorative than purposeful. The moat had a park built at its edge, and stately black and white swans swam its waters in languid circles around the Keep.
Proud of the castle gardens and handsome soaring battlements, most townsfolk had forgotten the true seed that had sprouted their town. The ancient signal tower was buried deep within the fanciful facade, a crumbling structure of rough, ill-fitted stones that was the heart of the Keep. Only a handful of men still remembered its ancient name—Rash’amon, the Bloody Pike, named during the first of the Gul’gothal battles five centuries ago, when a thousand men had given their lives to defend the plains. Its bloodstained
battlements, lit by hundreds of siege fires from the encamped d’warf armies, had glowed crimson for an entire moon. Only with the death of its last defender had the tower finally fallen to the d’warves.
Yet this ill history was not unknown to the twins.
This was their true heritage.
Mycof and Ryman glided in silence from their heavily curtained room in the Keep’s west wing toward the narrowing passages that led to the inner tower. As they progressed, the ceilings lowered, and the walls to either side closed in until the pair were forced to walk in single file. Finally, as the roof began to brush their white hair, they reached a door of beaten and carved brass gone green with stain. Mycof slipped a silver key from his sleeve and unlocked the way into Rash’amon.
Swinging the door wide, a waft of air washed up from below. Mycof inhaled the sweet scent. It smelled of mold, damp dirt, and a hint of something richer, a musky scent that thrilled through him. Ryman also paused at the threshold, his eyelids slightly lowered as he, too, reveled in the dank reminder of what lay below.
“Come, Brother,” Ryman said in a thick voice and led the way down. “It’s almost twilight.”
Mycof saw his brother’s hand tremble slightly as he reached out to the moldy stones for support in his descent down the steep, narrow stair. Mycof also felt the rush of anticipation in his own limbs. He had to restrain himself from hurrying his brother forward.
Ryman, though, still sensed his brother’s growing urgency, like a storm cloud over his shoulder. He increased his pace.
With Ryman’s back turned so he could not see, Mycof allowed himself a smile. The two brothers knew each other so well. As they continued down the winding stair, the passage grew darker. No maid or servant kept the torches burning along the length of this inner staircase. Only Mycof and Ryman had keys to open the brass door that led into the bowels of Rash’amon.
Yet, faintly ahead, far down the staircase, a glow began to grow.
Now, without any urging, both brothers sped down the stair, oblivious to how their slippered feet gave them the poorest grip on the damp stone. The reddish, burning light called to them.