Thick as Thieves (18 page)

Madd. Even through the terror, Vorgell recognized his friend’s voice. The urge to battle seized his limbs. Every fiber of his body urged him follow that sound. Those screams led him to a hall then to a door he had no free hand or patience to test, so he raised his leg and delivered a powerful kick. As the door crashed inward on its hinges, Vorgell followed it, crouched for battle and mace held at ready. The scene he found was one out of a nightmare.

The chamber walls burned with unnatural fire, and Madd writhed bound and naked in the clutches of creatures spawned by a netherworld’s madness. One monster hovered on leathery wings as it coiled tentacles around its prey, and the other grappled Madd from the front. A black-robed man stood over victim and beasts alike, bellowing in some foul language while holding what looked like a glowing thighbone in both hands. Other men—soldiers and the baron—stood off to one side, staring at him and the fallen door in astonishment.

“I shall make dog meat of you all!” Vorgell roared. He slashed twice with his blade at the necks of two soldiers who, seeing a sword appear as if in midair, collided in confusion and failed to defend themselves. Their heads rolled across the floor while Vorgell used his mace to crack open the skull of another. Though he had pushed back the hood the better to engage his enemies, the cloak of shadows was making him a difficult target.

Intent on reaching Madd, held helpless and being slavered over by phantoms, Vorgell slashed two more soldiers heedless enough to get between him and his friend. The soldiers were impediments. He must vanquish the wizard. Unleashing a battle cry certain to freeze the blood of any foe, Vorgell slashed and leapt over yet another soldier charging his way. With his next stroke, he swung at the wizard. His long sword cleaved both hands, wand and all, from the robed man’s arms. Blood spurted in ribbons, and the monstrous spirits howled.

“Fiends! My fiends!” The wizard fell to his knees and drummed with his stumps on the floor, searching for his hands. Vorgell brought his mace down on the hooded head with a juicy
thunk
that brought shrieks and struggle alike to a finish.

“Get him!” the baron cried to his sole remaining soldier. The man, already wounded by Vorgell’s sword, staggered forward. Vorgell snapped a look behind him to see the balding and much-changed nobleman make a dash for the door, only to stagger to a stop at the sight of a gray-cloaked woman with hands spread in front of her, light dancing from her fingertips as she chanted words of power.

With an audible gulp, the baron’s mouth fell open. His eyes rolled back just before he dropped to the floor in a heap. The wounded soldier collapsed too, sword falling from his hand. Even Madd, beset by monsters, ceased to struggle.

Dismissing the fallen men as no longer a threat, Vorgell ran to Madd. The creatures roiled about the bound man like wolves guarding prey. Whatever Reannry had done had not affected them. At Vorgell’s approach, they lifted their heads and hissed through hideous mouths.

“Begone!” he bellowed. He swung his sword, but the nearest beast, a horror of wings and lashing tentacles, beset him. A scaled and twisted limb coiled around Vorgell’s neck, and he dropped his weapons to grapple with the elusive form. The second creature leaped upon him also, and he inhaled its putrid stench.

“Wand!” Reannry cried. “Where’s the wand?”

Though Vorgell strained with all his might against them, the cold limbs of the infernal creatures slid through his hands. Magic swirled beneath his fingers as their monstrous maws pressed closer to his face to display strange phantom teeth. He managed to thrust one away from him long enough to see Reannry drop on her knees beside the fallen wizard. When she touched the wand, still clutched in the dead wizard’s hands, the creatures screamed. As they surged toward him again, Vorgell saw Reannry stand and pick up the mace. She raised it high, then swung the weapon down with all her might. The spiked iron head struck the wand with a resounding crunch. Bone. Vorgell knew the sound and that the wand had shattered.

The creatures flew back from him as if snatched. Loud and unnatural screams sliced through the chamber, the shrieks of dying things. The walls turned black, and the silver symbols upon them blazed as the fiends writhed in webs of energy and wind then vanished. Where had they gone? By the gods! He had never met such hellish things. But for his strength….

“Madd?” Two steps brought him to his friend’s side. “Madd!” He fell to his knees and gathered the naked, shuddering man into his arms. Head lolling, Madd’s blood-flecked face fell against his jerkin. Vorgell snarled at Reannry, who stood over him silently. “Damn it, witch! What did you do to him?”

“Nothing! I cast a sleep spell.”

Sleep? This looked nothing like any sleep he had ever seen. Vorgell pushed back the curtain of hair that obscured his friend’s face. Madd hardly looked peaceful. His lips were bitten and bloodied. Worse, his body shook in Vorgell’s arms like that of a man in death throes.

“He’s cold,” Vorgell fretted, grabbing for Reannry’s cloak. “Help me. We must warm him.”

“No,” she said. “It’s not cold. He’s been fed upon by fiends. He’s—” she looked around and spied something on one of the room’s two tables, “we can use this.” She picked up one of the objects and came back to squat beside him. The thing she held out to him looked like a bed of crystals cradling a large blue-green egg. When he shot her a questioning look, she nodded. “The basilisk egg. If we break it, the basilisk’s magic will replenish him.”

Vorgell stared at the collar and the brilliant jewel there, so much like an eye, the slit center of which stared back at him. “You mean we
kill
the basilisk?”

“Your friend needs the magic more. Magic and life are the same. The fiends have sucked the life from him, all the magic, to the point of passing.” She moved to crush the egg to the floor.

“Give it to me!” Vorgell snatched the object from her hand. He knew how to save Madd now, and it did not involve killing anything. Whatever a basilisk was, it was a living thing and as trapped by the baron’s cursed collar as was Madd. There was other magic at hand. He turned the crystal and lightly touched the egg’s shell to the eye of the collar. The crystals glowed, and the jewel at the throat of Madd’s collar turned black as the metal cracked.

“What are you doing?” Reannry shrieked. “He may die now!”

Bracing Madd’s head on his shoulder, Vorgell wrenched the broken collar from around his friend’s throat and tossed it against the wall. “How long will they sleep?” he asked with a glance at the baron and still breathing soldier.

“I don’t know. An hour or two, perhaps.”

Good. He would kill them later. He had more urgent things to do. Shoving the crystal and its egg into a pocket, Vorgell lifted his wrist and took his own flesh between his teeth then bit down until he tasted blood. After sucking a mouthful, he pressed his mouth at once to Madd’s swollen lips and gently pried them open. They parted easily, slack, nothing to them that any other lips in the world would not have yielded. Vorgell pushed his gift of blood and spittle past unresisting teeth. Tagard had said blood was alive, possessed magic. If Madd would swallow even a little….

“That’s disgusting—and there’s not enough magic in blood to work.” Reannry glared at him as if he’d lost his wits. Reaching out, she touched a band of what looked like thin plates of golden stone bound to Madd’s head, half-hidden in his thick hair.

“What’s that?”

“Allophane. To prevent him from using magic.” She undid something and the band came free, sliding slippery as snake scales as she ran it through her fingers.

His friend had been robbed of every means to fight. Furious, Vorgell bit his own wrist again, welcoming the sting. He sucked more blood and forced it into Madd’s mouth and rubbed gently on the young witch’s throat, triggering a swallow. If Madd would swallow just a little more maybe it would matter. He listened to Reannry moving about the chamber. Between feeding Madd another mouthful of his blood and rejoicing at how his friend’s battered body slowly relaxed and grew quiet, Vorgell watched the young witch woman pick up the discarded collar and pocket it as she had done with the allophane band. She did the same with other items, perhaps magic objects or valuables. Among the things she picked up were the contents of the baron’s purse and pockets and the wizard’s pouch.

Madd’s breathing was even again and his heart beat with new strength beneath Vorgell’s hand. With a sigh, Vorgell used his knife to cut the bindings on Madd’s hands. He then rubbed the cold from Madd’s fingers before he lifted his friend and walked to where Reannry stood over the baron. She clenched a green velvet ribbon in trembling fingers.

“The wizards have her. Gillja, my sister. This monster handed her to them.” She held out her fingers to show him the ribbon. Two medallions—one a golden sun and the other silver in the shape of a bird—joined at the center by threads the color of blood. Tears filled her eyes. “Gilli would not have given this over. It’s her kincloth. Sunraven. It proclaims her birthright as a witch. The wizard had it in his pouch.”

“We will find her.”

“The wizards will kill her. They
know
….”

Her fear for her sister was overtaking her. Vorgell laid his cheek on Madd’s hair for a moment, glad to feel his friend’s breath upon his neck. “We’ll find her,” he promised. He now hated wizards as much as she. He had no idea how they would manage it, but he could not deny her help. She had aided him in finding Madd.

With a swallow, she nodded and tucked the emblems into her tunic. Her silence frightened him more than words could have. Reannry looked around then walked over to where Vorgell’s sword lay fallen in a pool of wizard’s blood. She picked up the blade with both hands and heaved it to her shoulder. Face set with rage, she staggered toward them. Vorgell took a step backward. The girl had a sword, was losing her wits, and he had no weapon. Madd filled his arms. Reannry’s cloak swept his legs as she brought the sword awkwardly down across Baron Flemgu’s naked neck.

“You bastard! You killed her!” she cried. The ill-aimed blow only did half the job. Reannry wrenched the blade free and hacked twice more until the head was severed. Had the baron not been held in a sleeping spell, it would have been worse. Blood stained both their boots.

“Girl, you killed a sleeping man,” Vorgell said softly when she was finished.

“Don’t call me girl. And don’t tell me what I did was wrong. He deserved that and more.”

“I would have done it if you hadn’t. But he could have told us where to find her.”

“She’s here, isn’t she? He never left—”

“He came back. The soldiers sent someone to fetch their baron. We don’t know if he brought her with him. I see but one wizard, where he rode out with more.”

Still clutching the bloodstained sword in both hands, Reannry looked nervously toward the entrance to the chamber. The broken door lay on the floor. “Where is everyone? Soldiers. Servants. We made such a noise, but no one has come. Surely they heard. Why has no one come?”

“You cast a sleep spell. Perhaps—”

“I’m not that powerful. It would take a whole Circle of witches to put an entire castle to sleep.” She had regained her grasp of the world. Her hands shook as she laid the sword on the table before picking up items of clothing piled on a nearby chair. Vorgell recognized Madd’s fancy new shirt and cloak, along with his boots and hat. “Here, wrap him in this,” Reannry said. She laid the boots and garments atop Madd as he lay in Vorgell’s arms. She then helped tuck the dense wool cloak over and around Madd’s naked body. Vorgell marked her gentleness in doing it, the way she paused when looking at Madd’s face. “He needs to be away from here.”

Vorgell eyed the door and agreed. Now that she’d raised the point, he too worried about being descended on by the baron’s servants or more soldiers. He wanted to get Madd someplace safe, where he could take proper care of him.

“Let’s hurry,” he urged. Belatedly, he thought of the basilisk egg then felt the thing bump lightly against his leg. He had the egg in his pocket. Now that he and Madd lived, they would need to discharge their debt to Ibeena. The cloak of shadows still hung from his shoulders.

They left the chamber but saw no sign of soldiers. In the weapon room, Reannry found a belt to strap across Vorgell’s back and she fastened the sword and the mace to it, saying they might yet need weapons. From that point they took the secret stair, though Vorgell found Madd difficult to maneuver in so confined a space. But they moved quickly and soon found themselves in the kitchen. Reannry poked her head out first then gestured for him to join her.

Turnips and greens covered a chopping table. Steam filled the room from a pot hanging in the fire. The cook and two other people, scullery slaves most likely, sprawled upon the floor. A knife glinted dully near the cook’s hand. To judge by the snores and the rosy color in their faces, they were asleep.

“You should be sleeping too. Like him.” She cast a cold look at Vorgell then at Madd, slumbering with his cheek to Vorgell’s jerkin. “Don’t you have to put him down yet? Aren’t you tired?”

“No. He doesn’t weigh so much.” Vorgell thought it best not to address why he had not succumbed to her sleep spell. “Where do we go now?”

“You,” she said, ushering him into a storeroom, where she moved aside some crates to reveal a passage under the floorboards, “will go down the bolt-hole. It will take you into the forest where you’ll be safe. Follow the tunnel all the way to the end. When you reach a wooden door, use this—” Reaching up, she pinned a brooch to the neck of his tunic opposite Madd’s sleeping face. Made of gold, the brooch was in the design of an oak tree, with the trunk as pin surrounded by a circle of enlaced branches, acorns, and leaves. “It will gain you entry.”

“Entry to what? You are coming with us.”

“No.” A fall of black hair swung across her cheek, and she pushed it back. “You will go, and be safe, and so will he. But if the baron came back… maybe Gillja did also. If so, she’s asleep, and I must find her.” She cocked her head and managed a faint smile. “I don’t know how it happened, but it seems that every person in this castle is sleeping. I won’t get caught. If she is here, I will find her quickly.”