But that would make her indebted to him, and if there was anything that witches were taught from the cradle, it was never to owe anything to a Magister.
“You don’t mind if I call you by your name, do you?”
She blushed slightly as she lowered herself to a cushioned seat opposite him, with the silk-draped table between them. “No, my lord. Though I’m surprised you know it.”
His smile, faint though it was, brought sunshine into the tent. “Your skill is renowned among the city folk. They say your talent is genuine, which few can claim.”
His words mirrored those of the Magister but a few days before. “I have the Sight, my lord. Sometimes more than that, if more is required.”
“Then you may indeed be able to serve me,” he said. The smile faded and an odd, guarded quality entered his tone. “Will you See for me, Rakhel? As witches See?”
“Of course, my lord, but—” Startled, she stumbled over her words. “Do not . . . I mean . . . the Magisters . . .”
“You mean, I have the Magister Royal at my beck and call, and gods know how many black-robed visitors right now so why don’t I go to them for help? Is that what you meant to say?”
She bit her lip and nodded slightly.
He looked down for a moment, no doubt musing over what knowledge might be shared with a commoner, witch or no. Finally he said, “The Magister Royal serves my father first and foremost, and tells him what he wants to hear. As for the rest, they are strangers to me, and their masters are rivals to my father.” His eyes were blue, misty blue, like the sky just before a rainstorm. “Which of those should I trust, Rakhel? Which of those will give me an honest answer?”
“I see,” she whispered.
“You . . .” His blue eyes were fixed on her with mesmeric intensity; she could not have looked away had she tried. “You’ll tell me the truth, won’t you? Even if it’s not what you think I want to hear? I’ll pay whatever such service costs, Rakhel. I’ll see you never want for anything in your life, if you are true to me in this.”
It took her long seconds before she could respond. That long to still the wild beating of her heart, and to be sure she could speak without fear resonating in her voice. “Of course, my lord.” Her voice was a whisper. “It is an honor to serve you.”
What truth could there be, that such men would hide it from him? What would they do to her if she got involved in Magister business? Her hands trembled in her lap; she hid them quickly in a deep fold of her skirt, hoping he wouldn’t notice.
“What is it you want of me?” she whispered.
The blue eyes, misty as a morning sky, studied her for a moment. A woman could lose herself in such eyes, she thought . . . if the woman were not a witch, and the man not a royal prince, and the business between them not likely to be a dark business, rife with razor-edged secrets.
“I have been ill of late,” he said quietly. “The Magisters pronounce it a disease beyond their healing, but I know what healing feels like, and none of them have even tried. Ask them why and they scatter like deer before the hunter’s horn. I’ve seen the look in their eyes, Rakhel. They know more than they’re telling me. A prince learns to recognize such things.”
He leaned forward over the table. “Tell me what afflicts me. Give it a name that I might call it, and I swear to you, though it be that of the Devil’s Sleep itself, I will reward you for your honesty.”
For a moment she could not answer. Her heart was pounding too loudly. There were too many traps here, too many potential pitfalls; which one would swallow a witch whole?
Then she forced herself to draw a deep breath—to remember to breathe—and told herself, This is not Danton. The High King was infamous for taking out his rage upon those who brought him bad news. But this one? She had never heard anything like that about Andovan, or any implication that he was cruel or unjust. Women who talked about him tended to whisper and giggle in the shadows, and men just scowled and pretended not to notice his existence.
She bound a bit of power to read his intentions . . . and yes, he was telling her the truth, he wished only honesty. And hungered for answers so fiercely that she could taste it.
“I am no Magister,” she said quietly, “but I will do my best for you.”
He nodded.
She reached out her hands. He understood, and placed his own in them. She turned them palm upward and for a moment simply studied the patterns etched across his palms—a callus here, a slender scar there, the marks of an archer and woodsman and hunter who cared little for the perfumed niceties of court.
Then she looked deeper.
As soon as she entered his flesh she could sense the weakness in him. It was an odd kind of weakness, one that seemed to have no source, yet anywhere she looked the signs of it could be found. The flow of his blood was like a stream in midsummer, narrow and hesitant, its course clearly marked for a more powerful current. Yet there was nothing choking off its flow that she could find. The drumbeat of his heart was odd, strangely muted, yet she sensed no malfunction within it. The very muscles themselves seemed to lack in youthful resiliency, but there was no cause for that either: not disease, not parasite, not inborn flaw that she could find, not anywhere.
Then she looked at his soulfire . . . and gasped.
Low, so low! Like a bonfire dying, its last feeble embers shrouded in dust. As soon as she touched it she could feel its terrible wrongness, and she knew that here was the heart of his illness, its name if not its cause.
It was said among witches that one should never gaze too closely at the soulfire of a stranger, lest it sear one’s soul to ashes. Yet it was impossible not to look. She had heard of conditions where the soulfire would expire before its time, but had never had the chance to study such a thing herself. Could the athra be healed like the body was healed, by correcting the cause of its weakness? If she could probe deeply enough to find out what had caused this, could she make him whole? It was said that witches were better at healing than Magisters, that their nature was better suited to that art; might it be that she could succeed where all the king’s ministers had failed?
Trembling, she wrapped her special senses around the dying flame, tasting its essence. Deep inside it she could sense a spark of true heat that might perhaps ignite the whole anew if she prodded it, but the outer boundary was a wispy, shadowy realm that already tasted of Death. It was as if he was already an old man, dying, but without any cause of the flesh to show for it. Yet there must be a cause somewhere, she thought. Men did not die for no reason.
Gathering her will together, drawing on the strength of her own soul for power, she gazed even deeper into the heart of the dying prince. Beyond the outer boundaries of the soulfire where strangers should hesitate, into that central core of the soul’s strength, where all living energies were born—
And she sensed something then. Something rooted within the prince’s weakened soul, that led . . . elsewhere. In all her years of witchery she had never felt anything quite like it, nor even heard rumors of such a thing. The soulfire was by definition self-contained, and among the morati never extended beyond the bounds of flesh; yet here was something that undeniably led elsewhere, outward from his flesh, to . . . what? Where did it go, this tenuous connection, that had no solid conduit to lead it? Fascinated, she drew upon the full strength of her power to taste its true essence, to learn its name—
And the breath was sucked out of her lungs by a crushing force that seemed to come from all directions at once. Instantly she tried to draw back from the prince’s soul, but could not; it was as if some invisible power had grabbed hold of her and would not allow her to leave. Even if he had been a master of the athra the prince could not have done it himself; no, there was something else connected to him, someone else connected to him, and the witch could feel that alien will wrapping itself about her own essence, tendrils of power like hungry snakes piercing deep into her flesh, seeking the tender soul within.
She screamed. It was a horrifying, empty s
ound, even in her own ears. Maybe Andovan moved in response, or maybe he just stared at her in amazement. She could no longer control her own senses enough to observe him. Something had gotten hold of her soul and was drawing it out of her body, leaving the flesh behind like an empty carcass. She struggled against it, but to no avail; her soul was as a fish caught in a net, spasming helplessly as it was drawn up into the suffocating air. Black stars danced before her inner vision; she tried to scream again but the breath would not come.
“Rakhel?” She heard the voice as if from a great distance, and could not respond. Was it Andovan talking to her, or her friends from the market? Her screaming must have brought many. “Rakhel, what is it?”
The world was growing dark now, her struggles less intense. The fire within her that would fuel greater efforts was weakening, its substance drawn out of her flesh by that terrible alien power. It was hungry, terribly hungry, and it tore at her essence the way a starving animal tears at raw meat. She could feel herself bleeding out into the night, into the cold, eternal darkness of Death that beckoned to her.
Desperate with dying, she tried to reach out to the source of the assault. To go forward with strength, instead of struggling to hold back.
And then she saw.
And she knew.
“She’s killing you!” she whispered hoarsely. The words echoed strangely, as if from a great distance. Was she speaking them aloud? The picture came to her of a slender young woman with hair like a corona of fire about her pale face. She tried to send the image to Andovan, but her power was weak and she had no way to know if she succeeded.
A roaring filled her ears then as the last of her athra left her, drawn out by that same merciless hunger that was devouring Andovan. She no longer had the strength to resist it, or even to try. Slowly her eyes shut, closing out the last of the worldly light. Slowly her inner senses waned, as the flame of her soul banked low, shivered weakly, and then began to dim.
I’m sorry, she whispered. Soundless words, lost in the dying. I’m sorry. As if somehow the act of dying was her fault. As if somehow it should merit apology.
And then the last of her athra was gone, and there was only darkness.
Chapter 8
SHE IS killing him.” Ramirus said it slowly, then stressed the first word anew. “SHE.”
The pronoun hung heavy in the Magister’s conference chamber, surrounded by knife-edged silence.
Finally Del spoke. “It could be a witch that’s responsible for this, somehow. Maybe that’s what the seer meant.”
Fadir nodded. “It is not impossible to imagine that some quirk of the power might exist that would allow a mere witch—”
“To what? To draw upon the soulfire of another?” Lazaroth’s expression was dark. “If that were the case she would be a Magister, plain and simple. Is that not the very definition of our kind?”
“Perhaps this illness isn’t truly a Wasting,” Fadir persisted. “Perhaps it’s something that appears similar, but stems from another cause.”
Ramirus’ gaze was narrow and dark. “Andovan suffers from the Wasting. There is no doubting that.”
“No.” Colivar’s tone for once was brooding and thoughtful rather than derisive. “It was the Wasting, without question. I examined him myself.”
“So that means there is a Magister involved, yes? And we are back to the same problem.”
“Perhaps some woman was the initiating factor . . .”
Severil snorted. “In what sense? Do you suggest someone convinced a Magister to take Andovan as consort? If so she’s more adept than any of us, since I myself have never heard of any Magister able to dictate who his consort would be . . . or even to discover its identity after the fact.”
“So what are you suggesting—a female Magister?” Lazaroth’s tone was harsh and derisive. “I for one find the idea quite insane.”
“Agreed!” another responded, and a third muttered, “Impossible!”
Fadir nodded curtly. “If such a thing could exist we’d have learned of it long ago.”
“There are many possibilities here,” Ramirus said evenly. “Including, of course, that the witch who spoke to Andovan may simply have been wrong. Or perhaps another female intends to do the prince harm, and she picked up traces of that intent instead of the true cause of his illness. An equal threat, having nothing to do with his current . . . condition.” He sighed, and for a moment weariness flickered across his white brow. “Of course, even if that were the case, the damage has already been done. Danton knows of the interview, which means that probably half the gossips in the castle do as well, so it will soon get out beyond that. Andovan has the Wasting and a witch caused it . . . that is a bad connection for people to be making, even if the exact details are in error.”
“Someone tried to bring a woman through Transition once, didn’t they?” Kellam asked. “I seem to remember hearing something about that.”
“Someone always tries,” Colivar responded. “When they think they find the right candidate, or the right method of training . . . or else they just get bored. It never works.” He chuckled coldly, a sound utterly without humor. “Women apparently don’t have what it takes to devour human souls.”
“What about that one down in the Free Lands?” Seviral asked. “That . . . what do they call her . . . the Witch-Queen?”
“In Sankara,” Ramirus supplied. Colivar noticed Ramirus’ eyes turn to him, suspicion suddenly dark in their depths. Had he only just realized that Sankara bordered on Auremir, and that in keeping the latter city-state out of Danton’s hands, Colivar was effectively protecting Sankara itself? If so, the black-haired Magister observed, the stress of the situation with Andovan was clearly making him sloppy. The old Ramirus would never have missed that.
Colivar shrugged. “She’s a witch. Powerful, ambitious, dangerous as all the hells combined . . . but still just a witch.”
“You know her.” Ramirus’ tone was an accusation.
Again he shrugged. “She has a standing invitation to any of our kind who pass through her domain to partake of her hospitality. Have you never been down there yourself, Ramirus?” Colivar shook his head in mock disapproval. “You really should get out more often.”
“I’ve been down there,” Kellam said with a dry smile. “She tried to bed me.”
“And you said no?”
“I hear that’s not so easy to do,” Thelas offered. “I hear she has potions that can turn a man’s mind to whatever she desires.”
“I hear she collects the balls of Magisters as keep-sakes.”
And she likely has taken all of you for lovers, at one time or another, Colivar thought, though none will admit that fact to all the others. Of all the Magisters in this part of the world, he suspected that only Ramirus had no concourse with Sankara’s ruler. Did the Magister Royal recognize their banter as the misdirection it was, or did he genuinely not know how many of his brothers had ties to Sankara? The latter seemed unlikely. But then, these were unlikely times.
“Brothers.” Lazaroth’s voice was firm. “We are forgetting the real issue here, are we not?”
“Are we?” Ramirus said softly. His eyes were fixed on Colivar. “I am not so certain of that.”
Colivar shrugged again; his face was pointedly devoid of any expression another man might read. “Investigate her if you like. I tell you now I don’t see anything she would stand to gain from the illness of Danton’s third son . . . he is unlikely to inherit much of anything with Rurick strutting around, but by all means, seek the truth.”
“Would you care if I did?” Ramirus said softly. “Would you care if that truth were . . . not favorable to her?”
Colivar’s eyes were hard and cold, the gaze behind them as black as a moonless night. “Siderea Aminestas is morati,” he said shortly. “Her lifetime is no more than the blink of an eye compared to ours. The shifting of a vagrant breeze that greater winds will swallow. It matters little when that breeze expires, in the face of greater storms. We who
mold the storms know that.”
“And we don’t yet know she is the one responsible for this,” Kellam pointed out. “Or have any more evidence than the simple fact she is powerful enough among morati to draw our notice.”
“And she is also a suitable target for Danton’s ambitions,” Fadir reminded them. “Let us not forget that, shall we?” He turned to face Ramirus. “Those of us outside Danton’s domain have taken note of his political ambitions. Sankara would be a jewel in any conqueror’s crown. I for one would take it poorly to be dragged into an investigation whose true purpose was discrediting a morati rival to your wretched royal house.”
The snowy brows drew together in fury. “Do you accuse me of manipulating this brotherhood for morati politics?”
“Please!” Lazaroth raised up a hand sharply between them. “We’re not children here, nor are we fools. There’s not a Magister on the face of the earth who has not manipulated his fellow Magisters for the sake of some morati prize at one time or another. Let’s not waste time pretending it is otherwise.”
“Indeed,” Severil noted. “If the morati didn’t amuse us, if their political games didn’t keep us occupied, why then we would have nothing to concern ourselves with but each other . . . and I for one would go stark raving mad.”
A dark amusement glittered in Colivar’s eyes. “Yes, we are piss-poor company for one another, are we not?”
From a shadowy corner of the room, Suhr-Halim said quietly, “What attempts have been made to seek more information on this mystery woman?”
“You mean using sorcery?”
He nodded.
“Too much danger in that,” Kellam said. “If Andovan suffers from the Wasting, as our host claims, any attempt to trace the cause by sorcery would be a fatal enterprise. As it appears to have been for this witch he consulted.”
“Witches die,” Colivar pointed out. “Usually in the midst of some magical enterprise, since that is ultimately what kills them. Has anyone confirmed exactly why this one expired? Or are we all just making assumptions?”