Jhereg (8 page)

The next morning I found a small envelope on my desk. I slit it open and several human, or Dragaeran, hairs fell out. There was also a note which read, "From his pillow.

--K." I destroyed the note and reached out for psionic contact with my wife.

"
Yes, Vlad?
"

"
Are you busy, sweetheart?
"

"
Not really. Just practicing a little knife-throwing.
"

"
Hey! I wish you wouldn't do that!
"

"
Why not?
"

"
Because you can already beat me seven out of ten times.
"

"
I'm going for eight out of ten. You've been getting uppity lately. What's up? Do you
have some 'work' for me?
"

"
No such luck. Drop on by and I'll tell you about it.
"

"
Right away?
"

"
As soon as it's convenient.
"

"
Okay. I'll be over shortly.
"

"
Fine. Meet me in the lab.
"

"
Oh,
" she said, understanding, and the link was broken. I left word with my receptionist that I wasn't going to be taking any messages for the next two hours and walked down a few flights of stairs. Loiosh rode complacently on my left shoulder, looking around as if he were conducting an inspection. I came to a small room in the basement and unlocked the door.

In this building, locks are next to useless as a means of actually keeping people out of places, but they are effective as a way of saying "Private." It was a smallish room, with a low table in the exact center and several mounted lamps along the wall. I kindled these. In a corner of the room was a small chest. The middle of the table held a brazier, with a few unburned coals in it. I dumped these out and got more from the chest.

I focused, briefly, on one of the candles and was rewarded by a flame. I used it to light the others, then put out the lamps.

I checked the time and found that I still had a little while before I could contact Daymar. I checked the placement of the candles and watched the flickering shadows for a moment.

Removing a few more items from the chest, including a piece of incense, I set them on the table next to the brazier, placing the incense among the coals. Next, I took a candle and held the flame next to a coal. A moment of concentration, and the fire spread evenly and quickly. The smell of incense began to introduce itself to the various nooks and corners of the room.

Soon Cawti arrived and greeted me with a sunshine smile. She was an Easterner, a small, pretty woman with dzur-black hair and fluid, graceful movements. If she'd been a Dragaeran, she might have been born into the House of the Issola, and taught them all something about "courtliness." And something about "surprise," as well. Her hands were small, but strong, and could produce knives out of nowhere. Her eyes burned--sometimes with the impish delight of a mischievous child, sometimes with the cold passion of a professional killer, sometimes with the rage of a Dragonlord going into battle.

Cawti was one of the deadliest assassins I had ever met.

She and her partner, then a defrocked Dragonlord, had made one of the most sought-after teams of killers in the Jhereg, going under the somewhat melodramatic names of "The Sword and the Dagger." I had deemed it a high honor when an enemy of mine had considered me worth the expense of hiring the team to take me out. I'd been quite surprised when I woke up afterwards and found that they hadn't managed to make it permanent. For that, thank Kragar's alertness, Morrolan's speed and fighting ability, and Aliera's rather exceptional skill in healing and revivification. Some couples fall in love and end up trying to kill each other. We'd done it the other way around.

Cawti was also a competent witch, though not quite as skilled as I. I explained to her what was going to be needed, then we made small talk.

"
Boss!
"

"
Yes, Loiosh?
"

"
I hate to interrupt--
"

"
Like hell you do.
"

"
But it's time to contact Daymar.
"

"
Already? Okay, thanks.
"

"
Well, I suppose you're welcome.
"

I reached out, thinking of Daymar, concentrating, remembering the "feel" of his mind.

"
Yes?
" he said. He was one of few people whose voice I could actually hear when we were in contact. In the other cases it was because I knew them well enough for my imagination to supply the voice. With Daymar it was simply the strength of the contact.

"
Would you mind showing up?
" I asked him. "
We'd like to get started on this spell.
"

"
Fine. Just let me.... Okay, I've got a fix on you. I'll be right there.
"

"
Give me a minute first, so l can turn off some protections and alarms. I don't want to
have forty-eleven things go off when you teleport in.
" I ordered our teleport protections taken down for a few seconds. Daymar appeared in front of me--floating, cross-legged, about three feet off the floor. I rolled my eyes; Cawti shook her head sadly. Loiosh hissed. Daymar shrugged, and stretched his legs down; stood up.

"You left off the thunderclap and the lightning flash," I told him.

"Should I try again?"

"Never mind."

Daymar stood roughly 7 feet, 3 inches tall. He had the sharp, well-chiseled features of the House of the Hawk, although they were somewhat gentler, softer, than those of most Hawklords I've met. He was incredibly thin, looking almost transparent. It seemed that his eyes rarely focused, giving him the appearance of looking past whatever he was observing, or at something deep inside it. We had been friends since the time I had almost killed him for mind-probing one of my people. He'd done it out of curiosity, and I think he never understood why I objected.

"So," Daymar asked, "who is this you want located?"

"A Jhereg. With luck, I should have what you wanted for the trace. Will this do?" I handed him a small crystal I'd taken from the chest. He inspected it carefully, although I'm damned if I know what he was looking for. He nodded and gave it back to me.

"I've seen better," he remarked, "but it will do." I set it carefully down on the right side of the brazier. I opened the envelope I'd gotten from Kiera and removed about half of the dozen or so strands of hair. These I set on top of the envelope on the left side of the brazier; the others I would save in case I had to try the spell again.

It was interesting, I reflected, how much a witchcraft spell resembles an assassination, as opposed to either of them being similar to sorcery. To use sorcery, all you do is reach out through your link to the Imperial Orb, grab some power, shape it, and throw it. With witchcraft, however, you have to plan carefully and precisely so that you don't end up searching around for some implement you need, right at the moment of using it. The room began to get smoky with the lingering scent of incense. I took my position in front of the brazier; Cawti automatically stood to my right, and I motioned Daymar to stand at my left, and back. I let my mind drift and linked up mentally with Cawti. It was not necessary for there to be physical contact between us for this to happen, which is one reason why I like to work with her. One of the clear advantages witchcraft enjoys over sorcery is that more than one witch can participate in a single spell. I felt my power diminish and increase at the same time; which is strange to say and even stranger to experience.

I laid a few leaves on the coals, which obliged by making the proper hissing sounds. They were large, broad leaves from the Heaken tree, which only grows out East. They had been prepared by being soaked in purified water for a number of hours, and by diverse enchantments. A large gout of steam-smoke rose up, and Cawti began chanting, low and almost inaudible. As the leaves began to blacken and burn, my left hand found the envelope and the hairs. I rolled them around on my fingertips for a moment. I felt things start to happen--the very first sign of a witchcraft spell starting to have any kind of effect is when certain senses begin to feel sharper. In this case, each hair felt distinct and unique to my fingertips, and I could almost make out tiny details on each one. I dropped them onto the burning leaves, as Cawti's chanting became more intense, and I could almost pick out the words.

At that moment, a sudden rush of power flooded my mind. I felt giddy, and I would certainly have lost my end of the spell if I had actually begun it. A thought came into being, and I heard Daymar's pseudo-voice say, "
Mind if I help?
" I didn't answer, trying to cope with more psychic energy than I'd ever had at my disposal before. I had a brief urge to answer, "No!" and hurl the energy back at him as hard as I could, but it wouldn't have done more than hurt his feelings. I observed my own anger at this unasked-for interference as if it were in a stranger.

Any spell, no matter how trivial it really is, involves some degree of danger. After all, what you're really doing is building up a force of energy from your own mind and manipulating it as if it were something external. There have been witches whose minds have been destroyed by mishandling this power. Daymar, of course, couldn't know this. He was just being his usual helpful, meddlesome self.

I gritted my teeth and tried to use my anger to control the forces we had generated, to direct them into the spell. Somewhere, I felt Loiosh fighting to hold onto his control and take up what I couldn't handle. Loiosh and I were so deeply linked that anything that happened to me would happen to him. The link broadened, more and more power flooded through it, and I knew that, between the two of us, we'd either be able to handle it, or our minds would be burned out. I would have been as scared as a teckla if my anger hadn't blocked it--and the rage I felt was sustained, perhaps, by my knowledge of the fear underlying it.

It hung in the balance, and time stretched to both horizons. I heard Cawti, as if from a great distance, chanting steadily, strongly, although she must have felt the backwash of forces as much as I. She was helping, too. I had to direct the energy into the spell, or it would find release some other way. I remember thinking, at that moment, "
Daymar, if
you've hurt my familiar's mind, you are one dead Dragaeran.
" Loiosh was straining. I could feel him, right at his limit, trying to absorb power, control it, channel it. This is why witches have familiars. I think he saved me. I felt control had come, and fought to hang onto it long enough to throw it into the spell. I wanted to rush through the next part, but resisted the temptation. You do
not
rush through any phase of a witchcraft spell.

The hairs were burning; they merged and combined into a part of the steam and smoke and they should still be tied to their owner. I fought to identify exactly which isolated puff of smoke held the essence of those burning hairs and therefore was an unbreakable bond to my target.

I lifted my arms until my hands were at the outermost perimeter of the grayish-white cloud. I felt the four-way pull of energy--me to Daymar to Loiosh to Cawti and back. I let it flow out through my hands, until the smoke stopped rising--the first visible sign that the spell was having an effect. I held it there for an instant and slowly brought my hands closer together. The smoke became more dense in front of me, and I flung the energy I held at and through it. ...

There is a cry of "charge" and five thousand Dragons come storming at the place the Eastern army is entrenched.... Making love to Cawti that first time--the moment of entry, even more than the moment of release; I wonder if she plans to kill me before we're finished, and I don't really care.... The Dzur hero, coming alone to Dzur mountain, sees Sethra Lavode stand up before him, Iceflame alive in her hand. ... A small girl-child with big brown eyes looks at me and smiles.... The energy bolt, visible as a black wave, streaks toward me, and I swing Spellbreaker at it, wondering whether it will work.... Aliera stands up before the shadow of Kieron the Conqueror, there in the midst of the Halls of Judgment, in the Paths of the Dead, beyond Deathsgate Falls.... And with it all, at that moment, I held in my mind everything I knew about Mellar, and all of my anger at Daymar, and above it all, on top of everything, my desire, my will, my hope. I flung it at the small cloud of steam-smoke rising from the brazier; I reached through it, beyond it, within it, toward the one who was tied to it. Cawti chanted strongly, with no break in her voice, in words I still couldn't quite make out. Loiosh, within me, part of my being, was searching and hunting. And Daymar, away from us, and yet a part of us too, stood out as a beacon of light, which I grabbed, and shaped, and pushed through.

I felt a response. Slowly, very slowly, an image formed in the smoke. I forced energy into it as it began to grow distinct. I forced myself to ignore the face itself, which was only a distraction at this point. And, with agonizing slowness, I... lowered... my... right... hand... and... began... dropping... control... of... the... spell.... Piece by minute, fractional piece, Loiosh picked up the threads of control, accepted them, handled them. Exhaustion was my enemy then, and I fought it back. The jhereg had taken the power, and was handling it all, by the green scales of Barlen!

I allowed myself to look at the image for the first time, as my right hand found the small crystal. The face was middle-aged and showed features reminiscent of the House of the Dzur. I carefully raised the crystal to eye level, dropped the last threads of control over the spell, and held my breath.

The image was steady; I had trained Loiosh well. Cawti was no longer chanting. She had done her part and was now just supplying power for the last stage of the spell. I studied the image through the crystal, closing my left eye. It was, of course, distorted, but that didn't matter; the image appeared through it enough to be identified. A moment of intense concentration; I reached for the energy Cawti and Daymar were offering and burned the face into the container before my eye. My right eye was blinded for a moment, and I felt slightly dizzy as I bore down on it, trying to use up all of the excess power we had built up.