Shadowborn (31 page)

“I now appreciate,” said Vladimer, slowly, “why the Stranhornes have earned the respect of such very different connoisseurs of warfare as Ishmael di Studier and Lord Sachevar Mycene. What of Ishmael? Is he . . . ?”

She shook her head quickly, sparing Vladimer the word at which he had balked. “He left the manor with us, but he went back to try to find Father, and he has not returned.”

Vladimer’s expression turned bleak; if he called anyone friend, it was Ishmael.

“I wouldn’t give up hope,” Noellene di Studier said. “I’ve learned not to.”

“Lord Mycene and his men are still at the Crosstracks. With Lavender—my sister. People are still filtering into the Crosstracks from the surrounding areas. You know how extensive the underground complex is, so now that we have reinforcements from Strumheller, we hope we can hold. But, not knowing the extent of the Shadowborn forces, we cannot promise.”

“These reinforcements—I trust they do not represent a substantial portion of Strumheller’s own defense.” He sonned Noellene di Studier’s scowl. “I have no wish to insult your brother, but by Ishmael’s account, he does not have the experience—”

“His troop commanders do,” the baronette said. “My brother—
both
my brothers—are the quintessence of Borders stubbornness when it comes to each other, but they know their duty to their people and they are neither of them fools.”

“Please,” Telmaine interrupted. “Where is my
husband
, Dr. Balthasar Hearne? Is he back in the Crosstracks?” She could not imagine, if he were already in Strumheller itself, he would not have come to find her. “Or did he . . . ?” She could not voice the thought that he might have stayed behind in Stranhorne. Or
died
in the manor. Hopeless as he was with a firearm, he would put himself between any patient, woman, or child, and the Shadowborn. He might even have volunteered—

“I am sorry, Lady Telmaine,” Baronette Stranhorne said. “I am truly sorry. We don’t know what happened to your husband.”

She lies,
Telmaine thought. “That is
not
—”

With an edge of desperation, the baronette said, to Vladimer, “Ishmael said that you knew about the Shadowborn, Lord Vladimer, that they can, apparently, change their form—”

“Yes, we know about them,” Telmaine said, beyond courtesy. “Tell me about my husband!”

Vladimer, too, must have sensed something in Laurel’s manner. He said, “Baronette, if you would.”

“We had one of those Shadowborn in Stranhorne Manor,” she said, slowly and unhappily. “We think it arrived with Lord Mycene, as one of his men. Dr. Hearne had been helping our surgeon, quite capably, so I didn’t suspect him, but I caught him, or something in his shape, opening a side entrance to let in the Shadowborn.”

“No!” Telmaine cried out. “Balthasar would
never
do that.”

“Not willingly,” said Vladimer in a tone that made Phoebe’s head turn toward him.

“Whether it was or wasn’t, your husband did not escape with us. I’m terribly sorry, Lady Telmaine.”

Her ears were roaring. She heard Noellene di Studier say, “Put her head down.” She would have welcomed fainting, welcomed escape from the terrible choice between Balthasar as betrayer, ensorcelled by the Shadowborn, and Balthasar left behind, living or dead, in the ruins of Stranhorne Manor. But someone—
Vladimer?
—pushed her head down to her knees and held it there.

Slowly her head cleared, and her wits and resolve returned. She would not believe it until she had sensed for herself that Balthasar was gone, that his essence was no longer in the world. She need not rely on others’ reports or wait, perhaps in vain, for some relics of him to be returned to her. She could thank magic for that.

And she could thank it for something else, too: if Balthasar were dead, she would be able to do more about his death than weep for him. Unlike other wives, she would not have to beg others to punish or avenge his death . . . or beg them to do nothing, for their own lives’ sake. She had power;
she
could deal with his murderers.

“Lady Telmaine!” hissed Magistra Broome. Farquhar Broome’s softly scolding, brushed her mind. Smelling burning, she reared up—Vladimer had removed his hand—but all that remained was a faint scent of smoke and a tingle of magic.

“Yes,” Vladimer said. “There is that.” He let a beat pass, but neither of the Stranhornes challenged that cryptic statement. “Thank you, Baronette Stranhorne; that was most succinct. Your father is a great loss, to Stranhorne and to the archdukedom as a whole. I will ask for further details in a moment, but first I owe you, I think, a summary of events in the city.”

Telmaine realized he was going to begin with Balthasar’s opening the door to Tercelle Amberley. He certainly would not begin with his own encounter with the Shadowborn. She did not want to hear her part of it again; she would surely scream or weep. She stood up. “Please excuse me. Hearing it again would only distress me.”

The threat of magical vapors was even more potent than the threat of the ordinary kind. The door was well closed behind her before Vladimer said another word.

Out in the hall, she had nowhere to go; if she had been given a room, she did not know where it was. She did not want to join the mages; they might be her kind, but the train journey had amply demonstrated that they were not her class. She simply let her feet take her where they would, and when they led her through an unobtrusive door into a small library that smelled disquietingly familiar, she realized then that she had been guided by Ishmael’s memory.

Centerpiece to the library was a molded relief of the region as large as a dinner table and surely as heavy. When she was much younger, her brothers had had such a relief in their part of the nursery, across which model huntsmen, soldiers, and rogues skirmished on those nights when winter weather barred them from outdoor make-believe. This had a far more serious purpose.

She paused before it. She could not imagine Ishmael being careless in the placement and orientation of something so essential to his planning. So if she stood thus, then Stranhorne should be . . . Cautiously, she extended her mage sense outward, seeking her husband’s familiar vitality. It had never been a vibrant vitality—Balthasar lacked the brawny energy of her brothers and Ishmael—but it had a distinctive constancy and sweetness.

And then, out there, she brushed up against something potent and vile—Shadowborn magic, but so concentrated that she crumpled her magic back into her skin with such violence that, between the action and the Shadowborn magic, she found herself leaning over the table, fighting dry heaves.

She nearly screamed, but the mental contact was not Shadowborn; it had a ground-glass abrasiveness that she had learned to associate with one Lightborn mage.

His exhaustion was even greater than his irritation, but she did not sense the excruciating pain she had sensed from Ishmael, or that terrifying sense of his life draining away. Cautiously, she assumed the burden of the contact. Immediately, he demanded,

The binding that he had imposed on her as the price of his help when she went to save the archduke.