Bloodsongs (42 page)

But anger drove her now. As its fingers dug into her neck, she reached down, snapped one of the broken ribs free and twisted her body. Her gruesome foe tumbled sideways. As it struggled to sit up, Frost lunged. The jagged end of the rib flashed into the empty eye socket, striking the back of the skull. The length of bone reflected an eerie, scarlet luminescence as she leaned all her weight upon it.

There was a crunch. The red sheen faded at once. She let go of the rib and sagged back, wiping sweat from her face. The corpse grinned at her, pinned to the side of the grave. It flopped about, and the hands still reached for her, but the rib held firmly.

She recovered her sword and drew back. Bone and earth sprayed from the force of her blow, and the third corpse tumbled headless beside the other two.

She pulled herself out, looked around, and saw there was little more to do. Telric chopped down the two remaining shamblers as she crawled from the grave. Ashur sniffed at the corpses on the ground. If it twitched, he stamped on it until it didn't twitch anymore.

Kel was nowhere in sight.

Telric approached her, his weapon still unsheathed. He wore an expression of barely controlled rage. But there was more, too. He had the look of a man who had seen too much, who had walked to the edge of the cliff and barely resisted the fall.

“He's mine, Samidar,” he said through clenched teeth. “He's my nephew, and he's mine!”

She shivered at the change in him. If his eyes had burned scarlet, she might have mistaken him for one of the shamblers. But for the dark growth that shadowed his features, his cheeks were colorless and hollow. His empty hand clenched and unclenched. He glowered at her.

“He's mine!” he repeated. It was almost a serpent's hiss.

She bit her lip. “Then we go back inside,” she told him, finding within her soul the disharmony that would lead them to her son. She sheathed her blade, awed that it had done such killing work without a drop of blood to stain the edge. Ashur came to her side, and they went back to the fortress gate.

The mare was gone. There was no time to search for her.

They did not creep across the yard this time; there was too much anger in them for that. They strode up the steps, leaving Ashur at the bottom. Telric let out a growl and kicked open the doors. They stepped into the entrance hall.

“Have a care with my woodwork, you fool barbarian.” It was a female voice, menacing in its calm. It filled the hall. “I doubt if such artistry is common in this world anymore.”

Frost looked up and saw the woman who stood at the top of the broad, sweeping staircase. She peered down at them, clutching the balustrade, leaning on it. A torch burned in a sconce near the highest stair, but shadow obscured most of the woman's face.

Frost whipped out her sword. Though her witch-powers had returned, she still felt safer with a length of steel in her hand. “Oroladian!” She spat the name like a curse.

But the woman shouted back, “Gods, how you shame this house and your Esgarian heritage. Put your man's weapon out of my sight!”

“Who are you?” Telric's voice boomed in the hall. “Are you the sorceress Oroladian? Answer me, damn you!”

Frost moved to the foot of the staircase, her weapon still bared. She set her boot on the first step and stopped. A queer sensation gripped her, not unlike the one she'd experienced when she'd first looked upon the fortress from the cliffs by the Calendi. “Who are you?” The words rasped from her like a saw over dry wood.

“Don't you know me?”

That voice echoed in Frost's head, spanning years. It crawled up out of her blackest nightmares and choked her with a terror worse than anything she had felt in the cemetery.

The woman mocked her. “Of course you know me, Samidar.” With spectral grace the woman started down the stair, passing from shadow into the light of the torch. Frost stared agape at her own face. No, it wasn't quite hers. The woman was younger by some years. Yet the resemblance told a chilling truth.

“Reimuth?” Frost could barely speak the name after so many years, after so much pain and bitter guilt. “You're dead!”

The woman grinned hatefully. “You should know, Samidar. You killed me.”

Frost lowered the point of her sword and drew herself erect. She had tortured herself with that accusation for far too long, but she had finally come to terms with it. Kimon had helped her to see events as they had been, to accept what blame had been hers and to cast off what had not.

“You took your own life,” she contradicted, and at last, she believed it. “I set the stage, but it was your hand that held the sword.”

Telric touched her shoulder. “What are you talking about? Who is she? Where's Kel?”

Reimuth glowered at the Rholarothan and answered in a voice that dripped venom, “To get Kel you must come through me, Northerner.”

Telric answered with equal menace, “If you say so, bitch, then that's the way we'll do it.” But he turned back to Frost. “You're pale. Are you all right?”

She nodded, drawing a slow breath as she sheathed her sword.

“What are you doing?” Telric insisted, catching her hand. “Is she Oroladian or not?”

Frost matched gazes with the woman on the stair, and again she nodded.

“Then why did you call her Reimuth?”

Frost felt the stirrings of her witchcraft. It beat and throbbed within her, crashed like the Calendi surf on the rocks of her soul. Its roaring was sheerest music as it filled her.

She knew at last why it had returned. “Reimuth is her true name,” she explained to her friend.

Telric's expression was pure scorn. “You know her?”

“Do you know me, Samidar?” the woman mimicked. She started down the staircase again.

Frost held her ground but motioned her companion away. Without looking at him, she answered, “She's my mother.”

 

 

 

Chapter Eighteen

 

I hear you when you sigh

Soft as raindrops pattering the leaves

Quiet as fading dew

I hear you

But you will not come near

I see you in the sunset

In a topaz moon

Reflected on a still pool

I see you

When I cannot hear

I feel you

Like a lingering song half-forgotten

But you will not come near me

Where I wander

And I cannot come to you

 

“Go outside, Telric.”

He touched her sleeve, but this time she shoved his hand away. “Go outside. Stay close to Ashur and don't wander away from him.”

Hurt was evident on his face. “What about Kel?”

“Get out!” Reimuth gestured threateningly, and the air tingled with the flux of her sorcerous power. But Frost stepped protectively in front of her friend and glared at her mother. The two women locked gazes for a brief moment, then Reimuth relented. “Leave us, Northerner,” she ordered with the barest civility. “My daughter and I are overdue for a family talk.”

“I am family,” Telric spat scornfully. “Kel is my nephew.”

Reimuth gave him a cursory glance and frowned distastefully. She spoke again to her daughter. “Get rid of him—or I will.”

Frost knew Telric's anger was straining toward the boiling mark, but before he could say another word she put a hand over his lips. “If you love me, Telric,” she said softly, “then do as I ask and wait with Ashur.” She turned and gave her mother a hard look as if to emphasize her next words. “Nothing more is going to happen this night. We're going to talk, that's all. This is between Reimuth and me.”

“And Kel?”

“Forget Kel,” Reimuth snapped from the stairway.

Frost ignored her as she steered Telric toward the door. “I'll find him, don't worry. He's still here. He knows I can find him wherever he runs.”

Telric slammed his sword back into its sheath and made a gesture of his own to Reimuth. It wasn't magical, but it was quite rude, and the expression that flashed over Reimuth's face proved she knew its meaning. Frost caught his elbow and hurried him to the door. Before he stepped into the night, though, her touch softened and her hand drifted up to his cheek. He took her other hand, squeezed it gently, and kissed the palm. Then, he pulled the door closed and was gone.

She drew a deep breath and turned back to her mother.

Reimuth descended the stair. Long black hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back. Sea-green eyes flashed under dark lashes. She held herself imperiously, one hand resting lightly on the banister.

Frost repressed another shiver. She had never appreciated how similar they looked. Now, though, she was peering back through time, seeing herself as she must have been ten years younger. There was no gray in Reimuth's hair, no wrinkles at the corners of the eyes. Frost experienced a strange, unsettling jealousy.

“Take that thing off,” Reimuth demanded, pointing to the sword her daughter wore. “It's an abomination. You'll not wear it in my house.”
 

Frost moved toward her mother, tossing her head defiantly. “Go to hell,” she answered stonily, curling her fingers around her weapon's hilt. Then she forced a smile. “Oh, I forgot. You've already been there—and back, apparently. Still, since you're fond of Esgarian law, then you know this property is mine through inheritance after the deaths of my parents and the only possible male heir, my brother. I doubt if Esgarian courts would recognize your resurrection.” She shouldered past her mother and headed upstairs.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“To tour my property,” she said flatly without a backward glance.

Reimuth followed her, and together they moved through the upper rooms of the fortress. The halls echoed with voices from the past, old conversations suddenly remembered with crystal clarity. Here she had fallen and bruised her arm while playing with a servant girt. There was the passage that once led outside to her favorite garden. Here was her brother's room.

She hesitated at the door to her own chamber, then pushed it open. She regretted it at once. Her bed was untouched from that night when she had slain her brother. The blankets were rumpled where she had thrown herself across the bed, crying with fear and guilt. The rich blue material of the spread, though, was gray with a layer of thick dust.

There was a trunk at the foot of her bed, and, driven by a terrible compulsion, she lifted the lid. She glanced at the piles of folded dresses and gowns and lowered the lid again. So many memories! A table stood near a narrow, shuttered window: on it were a pretty stone and the musty remains of a feather. She didn't remember them. Perhaps she had found them in the forest and brought them home. So many years!

She turned and something behind the door caught her eye. She bent closer to see in the weak light that spilled from the hall torches. She straightened, holding a small pair of felt slippers. She made a quick swipe at the corners of her eyes, afraid her mother might see the tears that leaked out. She set the slippers on the trunk, gave the room another lingering gaze, and departed.

“You might at least show some remorse,” Reimuth said.

Frost stopped in midstride. “It was you who taught me to be strong, Mother,” she answered caustically, turning. For the first time she noted one difference between them. Reimuth was shorter by several inches. “Why did you come back?” Frost finally asked, the words hissing between her teeth. “How did you come back? I know you were dead.”

A shallow smile parted Reimuth's thin lips, and the woman folded her arms over her breasts. “Do you doubt the power of my sorceries?”

Frost answered coldly, “I know your skill, and I know that death can be conquered. I've seen Chondite priests wrestle with the death god and win. But always resurrection followed quickly before the soul accustomed itself to a new existence, and assistance was required to guide the soul back to the body.” Frost shook her head and folded her own arms, unconsciously imitating her mother's posture. “No, Reimuth, don't try to lie to me. Too much time has passed. It was Kel's doing, wasn't it?”

They wandered back down the stairs. Just off the entrance half was another large chamber, where her father had held court and sat in judgment over the people in his charge. The walls were hung with rich, hand-woven tapestries; a fine film of dust obscured the cleverly embroidered raven motifs, but Frost remembered how magnificently they had framed her father as he sat in all his finery dispensing justice.

“Yes, it was Kel's work,” Reimuth admitted at last. “How he found his way here, I don't know. He said something about tracing your adventures. He's obsessed with you, you know.” Reimuth drifted toward a large chair that perched on a low dais. She ran her hand lovingly along the back of it and down over the carven armrests.

Abruptly, Frost realized that her mother, too, was a victim of remembrance. Reimuth had married in this house, borne children under this roof. Her husband had sat daily in the very chair she ran her hands over. Frost felt a sudden, powerful urge to reach out and embrace her mother, to apologize for all that had happened between them, to ask forgiveness.

Yet she could not. She
would
not. There was blame for all to share, blame for her mother and father, for her teacher, Burdrak, and especially for her brother. Yes, and there was blame for her, too. But she refused to shoulder it all alone to please her mother. For years she had done that, until Kimon taught her better.

She longed with a potent yearning to feel her mother's arms around her, but she settled for her own, hugging herself.

“When he recalled my spirit,” Reimuth continued, “he didn't know my name. I could not speak for some time; the shock of returning suddenly to this world was too great. But he had to call me something, so he named me Oroladian.”