The Dragon Revenant (38 page)

“Did I forget? Well, I suppose I did, at that. My apologies, lad. There’s a good bit on my mind these days.”

“Er, well, at least Cullyn can’t get at me here, and that’s all that matters to me.” He sighed, staring vacantly at the blue-and-white tiled fountain playing in the middle of the chamber. “Jill’s off to the east and north.”

“You’re certain of that?”

“I am. It’s like an … well, er, ah, like an itch, truly.” He got up and turned slowly, like a bit of lodestone searching out the south. “When I stand like this, it’s like scratching the itch, and Amyr told me that the direction I’m facing is east and north.”

“So it is. Splendid, lad! You spoke of restitution back in Aberwyn, and truly, this is a grand way to pay it. If we can find Jill without my having to scry, it’ll confuse our enemies no end.”

“Enemies?”

“Oh, well, I seem to have forgotten to mention that, too. I must be growing old or suchlike. You see, I’m afraid that men with evil magic are trying to find Jill and Rhodry before we do. We’ve got to stop them, because they’re vicious killers.”

Perryn looked at him, started to speak, then fainted dead away. With a sigh Nevyn reminded himself to watch his tongue from now on, then went to fetch Amyr to help put Perryn to bed.

Some hours after midnight, when the change in the astral tides had settled down, the Old One went to his temple of time and found what he’d been anticipating for so long: Nevyn’s statue was alive. The cold gray image of stone had transformed itself into an image of warm flesh, and the piercing blue eyes seemed to turn his way as he walked into the chamber.

“Very good, enemy mine,” the Old One said in his thoughts. “Soon we’ll have our last battle, you and I.”

First, though, he had something else to attend to. Over the past few days the Old One had been using various devices and rituals to scry, ranging from geomancy on the one hand to actual astral travel on the other, in an attempt to discover just who his enemies in the Dark Council might have been. He had found nothing. Since he was far more skilled at extracting information than any individual member of the Brotherhood was at hiding it, he could only surmise that several had joined forces against him. He had also lost Baruma; every time he tried to contact his student, he received only the dimmest impression of his mind, trapped and bound under a powerful ensorcelment. Although he could probably break through that ensorcelment to scry him out, he preferred to know his enemy before he tried.

In the dead time of that night, when all the astral forces ebb and grow still under the presidency of Earth of Earth, the Old One worked a ritual in a secret chamber deep within his villa. He roused one of his house slaves and had the frightened boy bring him two fat rabbits, trussed up but still alive, from the cages out in the stable, then sent him back to bed. Carrying the rabbits in one hand and a lantern in the other, he waddled and puffed up a small stairway, worked the mechanism for a secret door, and went into the pitch-black room. Walls, ceiling, floor—all were painted black, as was the altar that stood on the north side below a tapestry of the inverted pentagram.

When he flopped the rabbits onto the altar, they struggled and squealed, driven to a pitch of terror by the very feel of that room, but he picked up the long-bladed ritual knife, reversed it, and knocked them on the head with the heavy jeweled hilt until they lay still. Later they would die; now he needed silence to concentrate. As he went round the room widdershins to light the black candles in the wall sconces, he began chanting under his breath, an evil song older than the Dawntime, a remnant of a craft known and despised long before the ancestors of the Bardekians and the Deverry folk had left the mysterious Homelands. Although the strangely mixed origin of the name had been long lost, the Old One called upon Set the Horned One to open the gates of the Otherlands and release the spirit with whom he wished to speak. Using that name for such a purpose was a blasphemy in itself.

Once the candles were lit, the Old One blew out the lantern. Its smoke mingled with that of the candles—the room was windowless, though some clean air came in round the door—and thickened to a smokey haze. Still chanting, the Old One approached the altar again, picked up the knife, and began to summon a hundred evil things and forces and symbols to his mind and to that accursed room. At last he fell still, then raised the knife high and plunged it down. As he slit the rabbits’ throats and slashed open their bellies, he let their blood pour across the altar and drip to the floor. With his trained sight he saw the bleeding as the release of magnetism, the gush and rising mist of pure life-force, the goal and only reason for this cruelty.

Stoked by the candle smoke and the wisps of magnetism that the burning released, the pure etheric stuff gathered and thickened above the altar. Drawn like hungry dogs to meat came spirits of all sorts, clustering round, snatching at the food, whimpering and mewling as the Old One drove them off with mighty curses and the flash of the consecrated knife. At last a face formed above the mist, a thin face with narrow eyes glittering under peaked brows, and a cruel mouth contorted into a snarl.

“Let me drink, Tondalo,” he whispered.

“Oh, gladly,
master.”
The Old One grinned at him, a parody of a servile simper. “Aren’t you glad you taught me the black arts so well?”

The spirit snarled at him and darted at the mist, only to be driven back by the knife blade.

“Promise me you’ll answer my questions, and then you drink.”

“I promise, you ingrate hell-spawn.”

The Old One snatched back the knife and let the spirit feed and batten on the life-force. As the mist thinned, the shape thickened, until it seemed his old teacher of unclean things stood on the altar and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand at the end of his meal.

“Now,” the Old One said. “I have an enemy.”

“Do you? What a surprise!”

“Someone is working against me. Do you remember the matter about which I consulted you? The death of the Master of the Aethyr?”

“I remember nothing but pain.”

“It’s of no matter. Someone is working against me. Someone is blocking all my attempts to scry him out. He must be drawing force from the places where you dwell. Who is he?”

“There isn’t anyone working against you in the Dark of Darkness, not in the miserable fetid corner where you’ve trapped me, at any rate.”

“You He!”

“I cannot lie.”

It was, of course, perfectly true—within its limits.

“No, but you can bend the truth. You’ve seen someone working somewhere else, haven’t you? Who is he, and where?”

The spirit drew back its lips in a soundless snarl.

“I don’t recognize him,” it said at last. “He must have come to power after my time on earth. The way he works marks him for a Hawkmaster, but I have no way of knowing what guild. As for where he works, why not look in the usual places instead of the paths of mastery? You’re still an overly subtle fool at times, Tondalo.”

“My dearest master, I have to admit that I deserve the rebuke. Now begone!”

When he threw up his arms in a ritual gesture and brandished the knife, the spirit fled, whimpering and cursing, back to its trap of torment in the Dark of Darkness that abuts the evil places of the world.

The Old One banished the various forces and released the various spirits inadvertently caught by his invocations, then picked up the dead rabbits and tossed them outside the chamber for a slave to dispose of later. As he put out the candles, he realized that he could most likely identify this treacherous Hawkmaster. The only hireling—or so the masters of the dark dweomer considered the Hawks—who could know that he had some important work in hand would be the master he’d hired the year before from the Valanth guild. Now that he knew his enemy was no more formidable than the head of an assassins’ guild, it would be a relatively simple matter to scry in the usual way and see if his guess were right. Probably the Hawkmaster held Baruma, too, he decided as he thought about it. The question was whether the little fool was even worth rescuing.

In the morning, when the time came to visit the archon, Nevyn took four men of the warband along for an honor guard and Perryn as well, to act the part of manservant and carry the box of Aberwyn’s second-best goblets. The municipal palace was up on the highest point of the city, a flat hill that served for the law courts, temple centers, and training grounds for the militia as well as the site of the civic leader’s residence. The archon, Klemiko, received them in an echoing reception chamber, tiled in blue and pale green. At one end was a dais spread with enough cushions for twenty men, and at the other, four purple-tiled fountains splashing in front of a wall painting that depicted Dalae-oh-contremo in albatross form. Like an endless tide a bustle of slaves came and went, bringing food and wine, while Nevyn and the archon chatted in Bardekian about the marvelously lucky sea voyage. At length, after the lemon-scented finger bowls and damp towels had been brought and taken away again, Klemiko dismissed the slaves with a clap of his hands.

“Well, Lord Galrion, you must have incredibly important business on hand to take a risk like this.”

“Yes, I’m afraid it’s more important than I care to contemplate. I know your city and ours have treaties and alliances of long standing, but still, I appreciate this hospitality to a sudden and importunate guest.”

“Any service I can pay your gwerbret will be nothing but pleasure.”

“I wish it could be so, Your Excellency, but I’m afraid that there may be some considerable pain involved. You see, Gwerbret Rhys died suddenly last fall.”

“My heart is pierced with a spear to learn of your ruler’s death. I met Lord Rhys on two separate occasions, and always he was the soul of courtesy and graciousness.”

Amyr and the other riders exchanged disbelieving glances, which fortunately Klemiko didn’t see.

“It was a terrible shock to us all,” Nevyn said smoothly. “Even worse, he left behind him a line of succession that’s tangled at best and unclear at worst. He had no sons, you see.”

“Ah.” Klemiko’s brow furrowed, as if he were trying to remember the to-him peculiar customs surrounding an inherited office. “Oh, of course, daughters wouldn’t do, either. Did he have brothers or—I believe this pertains—an uncle?”

“Not an uncle, no, but his younger brother does indeed stand to inherit his properties. Unfortunately, that brother has disappeared. He was last seen here in the islands.”

“Now that’s an oddity!” Klemiko allowed himself a smile. “Has the younger brother taken to commerce to improve his prospects? It’s so rare that one of your lords is that enlightened.”

“I only wish he’d been so sensible. No, I’m afraid I don’t really know what he’s up to, but I wager that it’s something disgraceful. At a guess I’d say it involved girls and gambling.”

“I see that your young men aren’t all that different than ours.” Klemiko looked away, his dark eyes turning pained. “One of my sons has a profound interest in the dance, or so he says. It extends more to the young women who perform it than the noble art itself. I can but sympathize.” He sighed and turned his mind back to the matter at hand. “Do you think he’s in Surat?”

“I have no idea, but I doubt if I’m as lucky as all that. What I need, Your Excellency, is some sort of paper that will allow me to travel with my honor guard. I know that the islands have strict laws about traveling openly with weapons, but I also know that my men—well, to be exact, they’re the new gwerbret’s men—won’t want to give them up.”

“Probably not, no. I’ve noticed that the men of your country get rather insulted if anyone so much as suggests they might disarm themselves for courtesy’s sake. Well, that certainly can be arranged. Since the new gwerbret is a military ruler, it stands to reason that his honor guard would be armed as well. I can give you a selection of documents, and you can use them as you see best. Now, are you going to require horses?”

“Yes. All of these men are cavalrymen.”

“Ah. Well, we’ll present you with some from the city militia’s stables.”

“Your Excellency, your generosity overwhelms me.”

“It is nothing, a mere trifle between friends.” Klemiko allowed himself a smile. “Of course, if you might mention our city’s name to the new gwerbret when you find him …”

“No doubt, Your Excellency, I’ll be mentioning it many times over.”

When they returned to their inn, Nevyn found Elaeno waiting, pacing up and down with a wine cup in his hand.

“How did it go?”

“Splendidly. Klemiko definitely wants to be in the new gwerbret’s favor. Everyone seems to know that the High King’s given Aberwyn a bigger share of the Bardek trade, and you could hear the good archon thinking ‘monopolies’ with every compliment he paid. I didn’t tell him the truth, by the by. I made up some tale about Rhodry being too fond of gambling and women and general carousing.”

“Good. No archon in the islands is going to want to hear the Hawks so much as mentioned in his presence. Might mean he’d have to take some action against them.”

“Do the Brotherhoods have as much power as all that?”