Patricia Briggs (11 page)

A bloodmage clad in black and red with arcane symbols climbing his sleeves stood alone in a gray tower that looked out over the city. Some of the runes worked into his clothing I knew from Gram—calls for health and well-being.

The man turned, letting his face touch the lamplight. It was the face of a man eaten from inside by his magic. I knew what it was because Moresh's mage was showing signs of it. Father said it was because bloodmagic made the bones go soft. What this man's original features might have been was impossible to tell.

“I told you that we would lose this fight, my lord,” he said. His voice was only a harsh whisper, but it carried power.

Someone made an answer, inaudible—but the effect on the mage was electrifying. “I have done all I could. Do you accuse me of treachery?” He listened, then replied even more softly. “A truce? What would he take in return for truce when he knows we have already lost?”

Madness lit his face briefly, then he closed his eyes, rubbing one of the black runes with his left hand. When his eyes opened, there was something sane dwelling there, but his left hand still moved on the runes, which glittered with an eerie yellow light.

In the manner of a man overtired by work, he repeated himself, but the dangerous edge to his voice was gone. “What have you offered him?”

This time I could hear the other man. “I sent your son to him with a sealed message which he has read several hours since. I told him the boy was his to do with as he pleased—like you, he is a bloodmage. What strength would he get from a mage as powerful as your son? But perhaps the boy was able to defeat him as you never have? The rituals you go through take so much time—perhaps you can do something about him before your son dies? Perhaps the war is not so hopeless after all?”

The bloodmage closed his eyes again and moved his right hand, the left one still tracing the runes on his sleeve. When he opened his eyes, he appeared calm and his left hand dropped to his side—but there was nothing sane about him. “You are correct. There is something I can do to defeat him—I discovered it a month ago. Who could have told you? Ah, no matter. All the reason I had for not doing it is dead with my son. For your part in this you shall not die here.”

The mage spread his hands and closed his eyes again. An aura surrounded him, growing gradually, making first him, then the room, and last the tower glow red with the power he called to him. It took a long time to gather and barely an instant to send on its way, taking with it the mage himself.

My vision fell away from the tower and the king who sat there alone. I traveled some great distance outside the city before so much as a blade of grass survived the bloodmage's wrath. Far from the city, empty battlefields were covered with bits and pieces of metal scattered here and there across fields of yellow flowers where butterflies danced….

T
HE BUTTERFLIES WERE RATHER ABRUPTLY OBSCURED
by Wandel's mustached face. I blinked at the harper stupidly for a bit while I slowly realized that Kith was standing beside me. My arm ached. When I looked down, fresh blood spotted the bandages.

“I'm fine,” I said, surprised at how steady my voice was.

“What did you see?” asked Kith.

I stood up stiffly, then swung my uninjured arm to indicate the dress-clad bones. “She was killed by the same thing that killed all the cattle in the fields—I'll wager we could find their bones under all that grass. It killed everything here larger than these chickens. The king's bloodmage pulled the bindings from the land to destroy everything he could reach. And he reached as far as Auberg.”

Alarm flooded Wandel's expression. “Why would he do that? The nearest fighting is close to thirty leagues from Auberg.”

“He set the spell from the capital—at least I think that's where they were,” I said. “I don't think anything closer to the king's castle than Fallbrook survived.”

Kith whistled sharply, and Torch trotted over from his grazing. The one-armed warrior swung gracefully to his saddle, collecting his reins by using his hand and his teeth. “Let's see what remains of Auberg. We'll go home with a report, and then perhaps we can send a party from here back to Beresford over some of the old trails if the raiders give us time.”

T
HE STREETS OF
A
UBERG WERE SILENT, BUT
I
HADN'T
expected them to be otherwise. We rode around piles of cloth and bone lying here and there on the streets. At the well in the center of town, Wandel pulled his mare to a halt. He'd been uncharacteristically silent since I'd told them what I'd
seen
.

“This will get us nowhere. If Aren's right, and I have seen nothing to disprove it, no one who was here when the spell hit has survived. Since we're looking for refugees from Beresford who might have come here, we ought to try and find somewhere they'd gather. The innkeeper of the Pale Grouse was from Beresford, so I suggest we check there.”

Kith nodded and turned Torch to the left. I had never stayed at either of Auberg's two inns, real inns with six or eight rooms for travelers. Auberg was at the northernmost point of the river that was navigable and had several trading fairs throughout the year. Father took—used to take—the surplus harvest to the fall market, and got more for it than if he'd sold it at the market in Fallbrook. But when we came, Father usually found a family who would take us in for a few measures of grain. I didn't even know where the Pale Grouse was. Kith and Wandel seemed to, though. After a short ride we came upon an inn. The bird painted on the sign might have been a grouse twenty years ago.

When I saw the horses in the paddock in front of the inn, I turned to say something to Kith, but held my tongue when I saw that he searched for a specific animal. Danci's horse was sired by the same stallion that had sired Torch, and shared their father's yellow coat. There were no duns in the small enclosure.

As we rode into the yard, several men came out of the inn and looked at us suspiciously. Their faces held the same despair that had begun growing in my heart since we rode down off the Hob.

“Who are you?” asked the smallest of the four men who blocked the way into the inn.

“We're from Fallbrook, looking for refugees out of Beresford,” replied Kith slowly. “And you are?”

“Folks call me Ice. Don't know you,” replied the man, narrowing his ice-blue eyes. “Been some strange goings-on here. Heard things walking the streets at night. Most of them things my grandfather used to tell us about when my grandmother wasn't around to stop him. How do we know you are who you say you are, and not some haunt looking for a way in?”

I hadn't expected to meet with such suspicion. I didn't know any of the faces I saw, and I knew any number of people from Beresford. I glanced at Wandel, and he shook his head—he didn't know any of them either. Kith, though, narrowed his eyes and nodded his head slowly.

“I see your point. I'm Albrin's son, Kith, and in the field there's a bay gelding I trained eleven summers gone for a man named Falkin from Beresford. If he's here, he'll vouch for me.” He nodded toward Wandel. “This is Wandel Silver-Tongue. If there's some of you mountain folk who spend time in town in the late spring, they'll recognize him.”

Ah
, I thought,
that's why I don't know any of them
. There were several clans of trappers living in the mountains above Beresford. They were loners for the most part, staying to themselves except when they traded fur and meat for other goods in town. Obviously they'd been in a better position to survive the flooding than the townsfolk had been.

“And the woman?”

I answered for myself. “I was married to Daryn of Beresford less than a fortnight ago. He died at the hands of raiders the same day the mountains fell.” I patted my horse's neck. “He left me Duck, here, and an obligation to his home village.”

A tall, thin man with haunted eyes shook his head. “Be careful, brother mine, the wraith that knocked on my window last night bore the face of a man I knew. If my window weren't on the third floor with nothing for a man to climb up, I might have let him in.”

“Ah, stuff and nonsense, Manta. If Kith died, he'd be a demon full-grown, and not some pathetic haunt reduced to aping the living!” scolded a voice I knew full well.

Danci pushed past the men as if they were cattle, though she didn't reach the shoulders of the smallest of them. “It's no use hiding that smile, Kith, I know you're glad to see me—and it's about time you got here.”

If Kith smiled, I missed it. I swung off Duck's back, but before I could find somewhere to put him, one of the young men on the porch took the reins from me.

“I'll loose him with the others,” he said, softly enough that he didn't interrupt any of the questions going on around us.

I caught his arm and shook my head. “No,” I said before I knew I was going to. I projected my voice over the general conversations. “We have to leave before nightfall.” A deepening dread was growing upon me, as it had the day Daryn had died.

Kith turned toward me. I shook my head again, ignoring the others. “I don't know why, but it's important.”

It had something to do with the defeat clinging to the faces of all of the people in the inn yard, even Danci; the weariness that left the children creeping slowly out the inn door instead of running to see the strangers. Even the wariness of the men seemed to be unnatural. Then, again, I was still spooked from the vision of the king's bloodmage—and maybe from yesterday's attack.

Wandel grinned reassuringly. “We've learned to listen to Aren's hunches. If you don't have a pressing reason for staying, I would urge you to come with us to Fallbrook—though that might be jumping out of the pot into the pit. Fallbrook's been invaded by a band of raiders.”

“If we're outside at night, the haunts will get us like they did Leheigh the first night we were here,” said the man Danci had called Manta.

“My brother's right,” agreed Ice, who seemed to be the leader. “At least something killed Leheigh, and what it left behind didn't look like the work of anything I've ever seen before. It's going to take more than a woman's hunch to make me travel at night.”

Kith pursed his lips thoughtfully, but when he spoke, his voice was dangerously soft. “I'm going. If you're wise, you will come, too. Aren's got the
sight
, and she knows things that we cannot.”

“Tier, go get Chatim and Falkin,” commanded Danci briskly. “I'm going with Kith. Anyone who wants to come with us, can.” No one argued with her. Not that I was surprised; I'd never been able to argue with her.

The young man who held Duck's reins gave them back to me and ran to do Danci's bidding.

Danci turned back to Kith. “They left to check out the other inn and to pick some vegetables. It may take a little while to find them. We've run low on supplies.”

“Have you raided the houses for food?” Kith pointedly addressed Danci rather than the men.

“No one wanted to,” she replied, a little sheepishly.

Kith nodded once. “Then the three of us”—he indicated Wandel, himself, and me—“will scavenge food for the ride back from the houses nearby while you pack.”

Wandel looked at the disgruntled faces of the Beresforders and shook his head. “You two go scavenge—I think I'm needed here. I'll tell them why we're so quick to take Aren's suggestions.”

I
TOOK THE LEFT-HAND SIDE OF THE ROAD, LEAVING
Duck ground-tied next to Torch and the Lass in front of the inn.

If it had been anyone else who suggested exploring the houses, I would have danced naked in the winter snow before I stepped foot inside any of the buildings in Auberg. But it had been Kith, and anything he could do, I could do—especially when the alternative was to watch all the Beresforders' faces while Wandel explained what kind of freak I was. Besides, after Manta objected to a woman going through the houses of the dead, I was left with no choice at all.

The first house wasn't bad. I located the larder immediately, just off the kitchen. I found a tablecloth and loaded it with what food would travel—cheese and unleavened bread mostly. After tying the bundle, I set it on the street in front of the house, where I could pick it up on the way back to the inn.

The next house was smaller than the first, made of stones set one on top of the other with no need of mortar to hold it together. As I stepped over the threshold, I came face to skull with the master of the hearth.

Except for the woman on the farm, I'd tried not to look at the heaps of bones we'd passed in Auberg. I hadn't let them be people, only piles of rubbish. But, even dead, this man wouldn't let me do that.

He must have been resting in front of the fire, for his remains were still settled in a chair before the blackened grating. His trousers were patched neatly, though without the ornamentation a woman would have given them. His shirt was made of fine cotton cloth and showed no such wear.