Death of a Darklord (23 page)

“Tell me, my friend.”

But he did not want to. This grief was too intimate. Even after nearly forty years, the wound was still raw. His mother had been a gypsy like Tereza. Perhaps that was why from the first her dark hair and rich voice had captivated him. Do we not all spend our lives trying to get back to happier days? Of course, if that was all Jonathan had wanted, he wouldn’t have joined the brotherhood. He wouldn’t have become a mage-finder. He would have taken Tereza and found some quiet corner and hidden away. But he hadn’t, perhaps because he believed that the evil would find him.
Those who did not seek out evil to slay it, would be sought out by evil. Better to face it, hunt it down, than to be caught unawares.

He had been ten the year the wizard rode into the yard of their homestead. His father was a sheep farmer. His mother, with her delicate hands and rich, contralto voice, was a noted bard. If she had traveled, she might have become a meistersinger, but she was not ambitious. It was a very gypsy trait to have great talent and not worry about whether it was used to best advantage. Happiness was more important.

They had a small inn where travelers could come and stay. Mother sang in the evenings. Father was often away during the day, tending the flocks, but every sheep had to be in by nightfall. The wolves could destroy an entire flock in a single night.

The wizard was a tall, painfully thin man, as if he never got enough to eat, but Jonathan remembered watching him eat great quantities of his mother’s food. He never grew fatter, and fascinated Jonathan and his younger brother, Gamail.

The wizard, Timon, stayed for a week. The two boys hadn’t even realized he was a wizard until the day the woman rode into the yard. She was small, dainty, with a fall of hair down her back the color of autumn-bronzed leaves. She came looking for an old foe, Timon, and challenged him to a duel.

Jonathan’s mother tried to stop it by stepping between them.

The red-haired witch raised her hands to the sky. “Get out of my way, woman. My quarrel is with him.”

“This is my home. If you must duel, duel elsewhere. That is all I ask.”

“If Timon will go with me, that is acceptable.”

The tall, thin man just shook his head. “If I am going to be executed, I will not go willingly.”

“Please, Timon,” Mother said, “go outside the homestead.”

He shook his head again. “I am about to die, and you complain about your house. A house can be rebuilt.”

“Timon, my lady, please.”

Timon scowled. “Leave us, woman.” He made a flat gesture with his hand, out from his body.

Mother fell to the ground. Jonathan and Gamail ran toward her.

“No, stay back.” She shouted the words in her wonderful voice. The sound carried into the house. Guests and servants came to the windows and the door, and the cook dashed out and took the two boys by the hands, then pulled them back toward the house.

No one helped Mother. No one helped.

Mother tried to crawl away in the dirt on her hands and knees, but the red-haired witch pointed one hand. A bolt of sizzling green light roared outward, engulfed her. Mother screamed. They could see her through the green light as if through colored glass. Her body began to melt, falling down and down, impossibly small. Her clothes formed an empty puddle on the ground when the light died away.

Jonathan tried to run to her, to help her, but the cook clung to his wrist as if her life depended on it. Her fingernails dug into his skin. From that day on, he would carry a perfect imprint of her fingernails there.

Timon walked forward, carefully, never taking his attention from the red-haired witch. He poked the cloth with his foot. Something small moved under the cloth. Something impossibly small.

Timon stooped and jerked the cloth up. A cat stood huddled on the ground. The cat hissed at him, hair raised on end. It
scratched him. He jerked back, tumbling to the ground. The cat ran toward the house, darting inside.

Jonathan didn’t realize the cat was his mother. He couldn’t hold such an absurdity in his mind, not at ten years old.

The red-haired witch laughed, finger pointed at the fallen wizard. No blaze of light burst forth. Jonathan saw nothing, but Timon screamed. There was a swimming in the air; a nothingness seemed to wrap round him. It squeezed him, that nothingness. It pressed tighter and tighter, until his screams died for lack of air. No air, no screams. He burst in a splash of red and darker fluids. The body fell to the ground.

“Timon was always easily distracted,” the witch said. She turned her horse and rode away.

Jonathan wanted to yell after her. What he would have yelled, he did not know.

His father came home that night. He made a sort of quest of trying to find a wizard to cure mother, to change her back, but it was no use. No one had the power, so in the end, Father set out to find the red-haired witch. He did, and she killed him. Mother was run over by a cart like any common house cat.

Seven years later, Jonathan Ambrose had slain his first wizard.

The elf was very quiet behind him. Silvanus did not ask him to share his confidence again. It was rare to find someone who respected silences, though the few elves Jonathan had met before had all seemed more than able to keep their own counsel. Perhaps it was an elven trait to understand silences. Few humans did.

Tereza knew of his past, and that was all. It was enough.

Cortton lay in darkness. Lamps shone at second-story windows. Light gleamed between the cracks of shutters on the
ground floors. Jonathan had never seen such a waste of lamp oil. It was almost as if they thought the light alone would keep them safe. Childish. But it was hard to give up that love of light, the hope that light alone can banish monsters.

The main street was wide enough for a wagon to drive through. Snow had been shoveled to either side and piled in man-high drifts by the doors. The frozen earth was rock hard under their horses’ hooves.

They could have ridden two abreast, but Konrad did not wait. He led the way down the dark street not looking back to see if anyone followed. Jonathan wondered if Konrad would even notice if they all stopped and let him go alone. He had been going alone since Beatrice died. He still did his job, so Jonathan had nothing specific to complain about, but the spirit in which he worked was soured.

If Tereza had been killed, Jonathan was not sure he would be doing as well as the younger man.

Konrad pulled his horse up sharply. A narrower street bisected the main road. There was something about the way he sat his horse, a tenseness that made Jonathan kick his own horse forward.

“What’s wrong?” Silvanus asked.

“I’m not sure,” Jonathan said. They drew up beside Konrad, who was staring to the right. He seemed mesmerized by something down that black narrow passage, more an alley than a street. The dark ribbon of road was overshadowed by the eaves of the buildings on either side, so the black of night was the color of coal, and just as penetrable.

“What did you see, Konrad?” Jonathan asked.

“I’m not sure. I saw something move.” His hand was on his
sword hilt. Jonathan could feel the tension radiating from the man, like the cold air itself.

Jonathan peered into the blackness, straining until white spots danced in the darkness before his eyes. “I see nothing.”

“Nor I,” Silvanus said.

Tereza rode up beside them. Averil sat behind her. “Why are we stopped?” Tereza asked.

“Konrad thought he saw something down that alley.”

“I did see something,” Konrad said.

“Whatever it was, it seems to have gone. Let us ride on to the inn,” Jonathan said. He kicked his horse forward. Tereza followed him. Konrad stayed behind, staring into the darkness.

Jonathan glanced back to find that everyone else was following. Only Konrad remained, stubbornly staring into the alley. He could have seen a stray cat or dog hunting for a warm place on this bitter night. But then again … Jonathan found himself searching the darkness.

Another narrow street crossed the road. Jonathan stared down both sides of the new street, and saw only thick blackness winding away from them.

A sign hung half into the road. A gust of wind roared down the street like an icy chimney. The sign creaked. The sign showed a white bird winging skyward, pierced by an arrow. Painted blood traced the bird’s chest. In small letters the sign read: The Bloody Dove.

Not a cheerful name, but Jonathan had seen worse. His least favorite had been the Lustful Fiend Inn. Its sign had been positively offensive.

“Jonathan,” Tereza said. Her voice had a note of quiet panic that made the hair on Jonathan’s neck try to march down his spine.

He turned back to her, but she was looking past him, down the wide street. Elaine’s face, behind Tereza, was wide-eyed with fear.

It was like a thousand nightmares. Jonathan turned slowly round to face the street. A half-dozen shapes were shambling toward them, man-sized, but moving like drunken puppets. Jonathan had seen enough walking dead to know what they were.

“Zombies,” he said softly.

The sound of horse hooves made him glance behind. Konrad was riding toward them at a fast pace. He was motioning for Blaine and Elaine to move. Blaine hesitated for a heartbeat. It was enough. Deadmen poured out of the alley that separated them from Jonathan and the rest.

Konrad pulled his horse up. It reared, screaming as the dead things clawed at it. Konrad’s axe slashed downward frantically, but he could not break through. He was forced to back away, trying to control his screaming horse. Blaine had drawn his own sword, but was hampered with Elaine so close behind him. He used his other arm to slide her down to the ground, behind him, away from the zombies, then kicked his horse forward into the shambling horde.

Jonathan watched it all in dawning horror. Elaine’s yellow hair vanishing behind the screen of zombies. Had Blaine forgotten there was another alley behind this one, an alley near where Elaine stood, alone and weaponless?

He started to turn the horse to help them. Tereza called, “We’ve got problems of our own, Jonathan.” She had regained control of her voice; it was almost matter-of-fact.

He wheeled the horse back. Silvanus clung desperately with his one arm.

The shambling dead were still coming slowly down the street, but there was something crouched in the mouth of the alley. It looked like a man, but scuttled from shadow to shadow as if even the cold, distant moonlight hurt it.

Tereza had her sword out, trying to keep the creature in sight. A zombie stumbled from the alley, clawing at her horse. The horse reared; Averil screamed, clinging to Tereza’s arm, crippling her sword. The man-thing leapt. There was a shimmer of pallid skin, and it hit Tereza and Averil, knocking them both to the ground. More dead closed in, and Jonathan lost sight of them.

He urged his horse forward to help them. A zombie stumbled into the horse. Hands clawed at Jonathan’s leg. He kicked at it. The thing staggered backward a few steps. Something that had once been a woman grabbed Silvanus around the waist.

The elf’s one arm jerked into Jonathan’s stomach, making him gasp. A zombie with most of its face rotted away grabbed the horse’s head. The animal tried to rear, but the zombie had been a big man. Its weight kept the horse down. The dead closed in, pressing the shuddering horse back against the inn door. Jonathan kicked the door. “Open! Open!”

Silvanus was pulled from the horse; only his arm around Jonathan’s waist saved him from being lost completely. Jonathan grabbed a handful of the elf’s tunic, the other hand tight-gripped on the saddle horn, legs digging into the horse’s side, holding them against the pull of the dead.

Thordin and Randwulf were there, swinging blades, nearly maiming each other. Blood fell on the snowy street. Dead flesh gave way, but dead hands still reached for them. The horse shuddered, but did not rear. Thordin had trained the mount himself, and that training saved them now. If it had reared,
they would have been lost, as Tereza and Averil had been.

Silvanus’s fingers slipped. His hand was torn away inch by inch. The elf’s fingers bruised Jonathan’s skin through the clothing. Jonathan dug his hand into the elf’s clothing.

The big zombie clawed the horse’s eyes. The mount pressed against the door, pinning Jonathan’s leg. Jonathan screamed, “Open the door!”

A blinding burst of light shot the length of the street. The zombies cowered, hands before faces. Silvanus sat upon the road, fingers still laced in Jonathan’s clothing. The elf, weary in the brief respite, leaned his forehead against the horse’s flank.

Gersalius sat on his horse, hands enveloped in white flame. “Hurry, I cannot hold them long.” His voice echoed among the buildings, louder than it should have been.

Tereza had hoisted Averil over her shoulder like a bag of flour, then put their backs to the opposite wall. She pushed through the zombies, using her body to shove them aside. Her sword was naked in her hand, but the zombies seemed uninterested in fighting.

Thordin urged his horse toward the inn. Randwulf poked at the zombies with his boot. The dead simply turned away, barely noticing.

Fredric spurred his mount through the zombies. The horse pushed aside the dead as if wading through water.

“Elaine!” Blaine’s frantic cry brought everyone’s attention to him. He was wheeling his horse in a frantic circle. “Elaine!”

Konrad rode a few steps into the dark beyond the dead. He called, “Elaine!”

The light was fading around Gersalius’s hands, like a white-hot ember dying. “A few minutes is all I can give you. Whatever you’re going to do, do it soon.”

The zombies were looking at them now. The dead eyes stared at the living, not eager, but patient, as if they knew all they had to do was wait.

Jonathan slid from his horse, banging on the inn door. “I am Jonathan Ambrose, mage-finder. You sent Tallyrand for me.” No sound, no movement of the heavy door.

Gersalius had urged his horse forward, using his knees. The light was the barest of flickers now. “My magic has done all it can. It’s your turn, mage-finder.”

The dead were moving slowly, drawing closer. The rotting hands lifted, plucking at the air, held back only by the invisible wall of Gersalius’s spell.