Count Scar - SA (37 page)

Blood showed black in the moonlight on the steps below the narrow postern gate, where the seneschal must have fallen after relocking it. The massive wooden door, wide enough to admit only a
single man at a time, loomed dark and solid. Count Caloran weighed the big iron key in his hand. "Well, Father Melchior, this looks like another chance for you to practice your divination," he
whispered. "If the Perfected haven't yet discovered that the seneschal's left the castle, then the portcullis behind this door will still be up, and the narrow steep stair that leads up through the wall
behind it will be deserted. If they have, then there are probably five men with long knives standing in a line behind this door to greet anyone who might try to pay a visit. Can you tell me which is
the case?"

"Yes." My heart was pounding as I reached into my cassock, drew out the phial the Spector General had prepared for me, and took a long draught. But I made myself speak as calmly and quietly as
the count. "Now take me under the arms and hold my body up. Do not be startled into letting it fall by what happens next."

I saw the good side of his mouth quirk with interest, then he stepped behind me and seized me around the chest. He was none too soon; almost as soon as I felt his iron arms around my ribs, the
sense of their pressure began to seem distant. I had done this thrice under the Spector General's relentless tutelage while we'd been up at the House of the Order, but it had grown neither familiar
nor pleasant, and it was not pleasant now. I felt my senses waver, saw my vision grow dim and double. Then, with a sensation almost like shrugging a wet cloak of heavy wool off ones shoulders,
I simply slipped out of my own body. The instant I did so, all feeling vanished—except for a terrible sensation of cold, far worse than any cold that I had ever felt within my flesh. I turned and
looked back at my physical self slumped in the count's arms, while he gazed at my spectrar form with eyes as big as a staring owl's in the moonlight. Then I raised my hand (speech is impossible
for the discorporate), turned, and walked straight through the door.

Even if the count's five killers had been standing just inside, my vaporous form would have been completely invisible to them out of the moonlight. But there was no one, and the narrow
portcullis was still up. With a push of my ghostly foot, I sent my spectral self floating up the narrow stairs, which spiraled to the right within the wall so that defenders standing above could
swing their swords with their right hands, while attackers coming up could only defend themselves with their left. The door to the courtyard at the top had been pushed shut but not locked, and a
dead man lay slumped against the inside, a dagger deep in his chest. In my discorporate state, I could not shudder as I slipped through both corpse and solid door for a quick look about the
courtyard.

All seemed quiet, except for distant voices from the hall and the occasional pacing of a guard passing along the battlements above. Where moonlight fell the stones of the castle seemed bright as
silver, but the door by which my spectral self was floating luckily lay in deep shadow. Even when I brought my ghostly hand up to within an inch of my face, it was virtually invisible. Two men
in their living flesh would need to be far more careful, but we should to be able to slip into the courtyard and make our way along the shadowed wall to the nearest passage unseen unless we were
very unlucky. Satisfied, I drifted quickly back through the doorway, down the stairs, and out to the count and my fleshly self.

As soon as I shook my head and got my feet back under me, Count Caloran let go and stepped away, looking at me with a very strange expression. "By my faith, Father Melchior, if you were not a
priest I'd cross myself! You slip in and out of your body as easily as I change my cloak!"

"Not nearly—so easily—as that, Count," I gasped, shuddering and leaning against the wall until the moon ceased dancing in the sky and I began to feel at home within my own skin once more.

"The Spector General of my Order, who only recently taught me the rudiments of that art, might perhaps make such a boast. That is why nothing can be hidden from him. But for such as I,
leaving the body is nothing that can be done either easily or for very long without great risk."

"Then I must thank you for assuming it, as you have assumed so many other risks for me. Now, let's both enter Peyrefixade as living, breathing men—at least when we go in!"

He was smiling his crooked smile as he said this, turning the huge key in the postern door. As I reached inside my cassock and felt the cool, smooth shape of the conviare, I found myself smiling
back.

Chapter Thirteen ~ Caloran

Chapter Thirteen ~ Caloran

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The narrow passage inside the postern gate was silent and empty, lit only by a single high window that allowed a pale gleam of moonlight to penetrate. For a moment I hesitated, then turned the
heavy key behind us and dropped it into my belt pouch. The duke and Lord Thierri would realize quickly enough that we had gone, and I didn't want them coming after us, alerting the heretics to
our presence though unable to bring enough warriors through the narrow postern to make any difference. If I left the key in the lock on the inside, as it had been the whole time I was lord of
Peyrefixade, some heretic might take it, making impossible the quick escape Melchior and I would need if things went as badly as I feared.

"Bless me, Father," I said quietly, thinking that I might not live to see another dawn over the mountains. He murmured the sacred phrases rapidly, and I pushed aside the doubt whether the
blessing of a priest touched with heresy would be efficacious.

But with my sword in my hand, ignoring the throbbing in my leg, I felt in spite of everything a rising of my spirits just to be inside Peyrefixade again. I reminded myself grimly that if I thought
of this as my castle, then the heretics did, too, and there had been heretics here long, long before I even learned of the southern mountains.

Under the portcullis and up the passage we went, the priest's footfalls so silent behind me that he might almost have become discorporate again. I did not turn my head to look. The passage became
darker and darker as it burrowed up under the rocks, constantly rising. It had become completely black by the time we reached the stair that spiraled up to the courtyard above. I wished I had
thought to bring a torch and considered asking Melchior if the startling array of battle magic he had learned at his Order's house also included the magic of light. But if we didn't want to
announce to the defenders that there was an enemy inside the walls, the darker the better.

All the weight of the stones above us seemed to bear down as I felt along the invisible wall and groped for the first step with one foot. "The first tricky part is going to come when we reach the
courtyard," I breathed to Melchior. "Even with the man who was supposed to be guarding the postern stair dead, we may be spotted— either by warriors or by Magians."

"I thought that, too," he replied, his voice a faint murmur in the cold night under my castle. "It might be best if we separate."

I nodded although I knew he couldn't see me—or hoped he couldn't. If he hadn't saved my life—and I his—the proximity of a man with the powers he wielded, powers the pit of my stomach felt
quite sure God had never meant mortals to have, would have given me the shakes. But he was closer to me now, heretic Magian or not, than my own brother had ever been.

"You look for the hiding place of the great battle telesma," I whispered. "I'm going to try to get to the main gates. At a minimum I'll distract the Magians from noticing you. And if I can get the
gates open the duke's army may be able to rush in and capture the castle."

We went slowly and carefully up the spiral stairs, feeling for each step, the stone wall rough to the touch. I had to shift my sword to the other hand as we climbed, not that I would have been able
to see to fight anyway. We would come out, I knew, on a small terrace along a wall at the

side of the castle—the same terrace from which the countess had fallen. I had been up and down this stairway several times during the spring as I first explored my castle, but the way seemed
much longer now than it had then, coming down it carelessly with a torch in one hand and Bruno behind me.

The other reason I didn't like letting the duke's armies in the front gate, even though I knew perfectly well that I had to if I possibly could, was that I wanted to deal with the damned bouteillier
myself. He had killed Bruno.

When a faint trace of light showed before us, I had to blink twice to persuade myself it was real. Very cautiously I moved forward, probing with the point of my sword until I found a door, not
quite closed, and a dead body slumped against it.

"Can your spells of divination tell if there's anyone outside on the terrace?" I muttered as I heaved the body to one side with hands under its arms—the same way I had held Father Melchior as he
became discorporate. "Without leaving your flesh again?" I added without intending to.

For answer he took a few grains of powder from a small bag—he seemed to have an enormous variety of magical objects inside his cassock—and sprinkled them on the blade of a knife. They stirred
and glowed silver as he murmured a few words over them, then faded again. "There are at the moment no warriors on the terrace," he whispered then, "and none overlooking it from the tower."

He did not, I noticed, specify whether there were any Magians there. I also remembered that his spells had not revealed the duke's son, when he had appeared before us on our way back from my
meeting with Prince Alfonso. But I did not mention this—Melchior must remember the incident perfectly well himself.

"Then we'd best move now," I said, my hand on the edge of the door. But he forestalled me.

"Wait, Count," he murmured, taking something else from his cassock, something long and white that seemed to glow in the dim light from the moonlit terrace outside. "I want you to have this."

I recognized it at once. It was his grandfather's telesma.

He pressed it into my palm, and I felt again the deeply cut lines in the ivory's surface and the same eerie tingle I had felt up on the slopes of the mountain, when I had given it to him to help ease
the excruciating pain in his shoulder. I took a sudden step backwards. Out of several things I might have said I muttered, "No use my taking it. No idea how to use such a thing."

"But it is extremely simple, Count," he said, very low and very insistently. "Although I have not yet fully restored its power after draining it up on the mountain, one need practice virtually no
magic oneself to utilize the forces stored within it."

"You'll need it," I protested in a whisper.

"But it will be much easier for you to use than, say, the conviare which I also carry." The conviare which had helped channel destroying flames toward me. "This is as you have seen a quenching
telesma: it may be used against another's spells, against pain—and against fire."

It was the fire that decided me. The bouteillier knew perfectly well my aversion to fire and had already used magical flames against me once. "But how do I activate the magic within this?"

"In this case"—Melchior took it back and muttered a few quick words I could not catch before again pressing it into my hand—"you need only hold the telesma before you, speak the words, Hoc
est hora, meaning the time is now, and the inherent spells in the telesma will take over, to quench that which opposes you."

I thrust it into the back of my belt and hefted my sword. "Then let us see, Father Melchior, who may be opposing us."

The priest retreated into the shadows as I made my way across the terrace, carefully staying out of direct moonlight. Several doors and passages opened off it, but I headed for the door on the far
side that led into the great tower. Remembering the countess, I went nowhere near the parapet at the terrace's edge, even though a look from there might have shown me lights to indicate where in
the castle the heretics had their watchmen. Any dizziness at the edge could have meant me down at the bottom of the mountain and Thierri again master of Peyrefixade.

Assuming of course we were able to recapture this castle. My boots seemed loud on the flagstones as I reached the door leading into the tower. It swung open easily and quietly, just as it should—

I'd been strict in directing all hinges be kept well oiled.

This terrace connected with the tower several storeys above its base. I stood silently for a moment, waiting and listening, breathing through my mouth and willing my heart to beat more slowly.

And almost jumped out of my skin when a voice spoke above me. "They're lighting their watchfires for the night. It doesn't look as if they're planning an attack now, but I'll keep an eye on
them."

The voice, I realized, came from someone on the stairs that circled up inside the tower, calling through a window to someone outside, on the far side of the tower from the little terrace and the
postern gate. He was headed up to the top of the tower, to the spot from which I had first heard my servants call me Count Scar on my first morning in Peyrefixade—servants standing on the
terrace where Melchior and I had been a moment earlier. If we had come five minutes later, we would have been spotted.

The person outside said something I didn't catch. But as I slowly descended the tower stairs, setting each foot down with great care, I could hear his own steps retreating. The watchman above me
went clattering up to the top of the tower with no effort at silence, his way lit by