Sun Wolf 2 - The Witches Of Wenshar (37 page)

With deliberate brutality, he slashed the tendons of two of the calf’s legs, one fore and one hind. The poor beast cried out with pain as well as terror, the smell of the blood on the knife mingling with the smoke, filling the darkness of the room. Something cold brushed Sun Wolf’s shoulder. Whirling, warrior’s muscles honed by terrors of his own, he almost cried out himself at what he saw, inches from his own face—the skeletal countenance of a demon, its head the size of a calf’s, brown eyes bulging from sockets of terror, complete even to the fringe of white eyelashes—the calf’s eyes. Under them, the unspeakable mouth smiled.

Turning back swiftly, Sun Wolf slashed open the calf’s belly, blood pouring hot and slippery over his hand. He felt the prickle of cold claws in his back, the thin, bodiless muzzling of teeth against the skin of his neck; he forced himself not to look, not to think, not to panic. In the split second before the hot fumes of the blood and the smell of the sagging entrails choked him, he remembered being buried alive in a collapsing sapper tunnel at the siege of Laedden, remembered the torture pits of Elthien the Cruel, and remembered the floating flame speck whirling in the darkness of the dungeons of the Wizard King Altiokis, the pain of it lancing into his left eye . . . 

He hadn’t panicked then, and he had lived.

The blood smell pierced his brain. His head throbbed with the frantic lowing of the tortured calf. His mind felt locked, clamped in a crystal grip that he dared not open. The Women of Wenshar had all done this, he thought dizzily.

But they had enjoyed it.

As if he were someone else, he watched a demon like the glass skeleton of a serpent twine down his outstretched arm, to lick the blood from his hand with a human tongue. The edges of the altar were thick with demons, seeping from the stone, floating down through the air, and whispering and giggling in straw-frail descant to the agony cries of the calf. One of them smiled at him with a mouth like Tazey’s, except for the fangs. Another had breasts like Starhawk’s, even to the scar. Their cold pressed all around him, teeth like chips of broken glass chewing at the bandages on his wrists. Worse than the cold was the knowledge, from he knew not where, that it would only take a slight giving of his mind to feel that cold as warmth.

He dragged the calf from the altar, demons swarming and crawling over it, bouncing weightlessly free and floating in the air, limbs dangling, like monster wasps over a rotting peach. He cut free the calf’s feet and shoved it over the edge into the pit, averting his eyes from what he half-saw swarming below. The calf bellowed in agony and terror, staggering from side to side in the pit, crippled, bleeding, dying, unable to escape the things that had now begun to tear at it. Through the glittering, crawling swarm of demons, Sun Wolf could see the dusty hide matted with blood, as Tazey’s mare had been. In the darkness of the pit, demons flashed like starlight on glass, colors deepening their skeletal shapes, blood spattering them, and their eyes the dark eyes of women.

The Witches of Wenshar had summoned demons so—and not with animals.

From the sticky trail that led from altar to pit, he daubed up enough blood to mark the last two runes, as he knelt between the rune circle and the outer boundary of the Circle of Light. He then traced in the last markings, the calf’s blood mingling with his own where the demons had ripped the bandages from his wrists.

The Circle was finished. It would hold the demons—for a time.

And for a time, he could only crouch on his knees outside the Circle, his blood-slimed hands pressed together over his mouth, shaking so badly he was unable to stand, like a small child exhausted by fleeing to safety from that which whispers in the dark. He felt cold, empty, sick, and weary unto death. Yet he knew he had a night’s work ahead of him, to bind the demons permanently to the stones . . . And he must start at once, before the sandstorm, whose approach bit and whispered at his nerves, gave them its electric strength.

He raised his head, and saw that Starhawk’s Circle of Protection was empty.

Shock jolted him like a fist driven into the pit of his stomach. He stared for a moment at the tiny glow of its smoky fire and the dark flower of points, curves, and runes on the stone floor, all with the inner glow of magic gone.

“Chief!”

He swung around. She stood beside the darkness of the temple door, face and throat and her one bare shoulder and arm white against those horrible shadows. With her was Tazey.

Somehow, he managed to get to his feet. The two women started to come toward him, and he waved them violently back. In the peripheral vision of his single eye, he could see the cloudy swarm of corpse-light weaving and billowing above the pit, like hornets over a burning nest. The women had no business coming anywhere near.

He stumbled to them across the patterned sandstone of the floor. Reflected in their eyes, he saw how he must look—bloody, scratched, with the filth on his face and the dark line of the eye patch standing blackly against the pallor beneath. Starhawk put out her hand to his neck, and he flinched—for the first time he was aware that the demons had bitten him, shallow scratches, like love bites. He remembered what he had read of the Witches of Wenshar, and the simile turned him ill.

“They came, then.”

The Hawk had, of course, seen nothing. Even now he could see her looking toward the altar and the pit; in her eyes he could see no awareness of the evil lights floating above the glow of the pit. He fought a hysterical urge to laugh. “They came.”

But by the horror on Tazey’s face as she stared toward the pit, he knew she saw something and he wondered obliquely if their forms looked the same to her.

She tore her gaze from it and looked back at his face. “You have to flee,” she said quietly. “Nanciormis and his men are coming. Kaletha’s with them. They saw Jeryn coming back and followed his trail. I got the fastest horse I could. If you can get even a little ways away from here before the storm comes, it will cover your tracks.”

“And you?” Starhawk’s arm tightened around the girl’s slim, straight shoulders.

“I’ll—I’ll wait it out here.”

“The hell you will,” the Wolf rumbled. “That Circle isn’t going to hold the demons forever . . . ”

“You could draw one around me,” she offered, clearly frightened but not about to obligate him to help her by admitting it. “I wouldn’t be in any danger then.”

Sun Wolf put his hands on her shoulders, the blood on his fingers leaving sticky red blots on her faded pink shirt. “You’ll be in danger as long as you live, if those demons aren’t bound to the rocks that spawned them here and now,” he said quietly. “So will everyone in Tandieras—everyone in Pardle. Whoever has been calling them . . . ” He hesitated and looked away from that absinthe gaze. “It isn’t only danger from them. If the Hawk and I ride on, and there’s another killing, you may very well take the blame. I’m sorry, Tazey. I know what they did with the Witches . . . ”

She flinched—evidently Nanciormis had told her that, too. But she only said, “It’s what they’re going to do to you.”

“How long do we have?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I rode as fast as I could. I could see their dust behind me and their torches after it got dark, but I lost sight of them when I came into the ruins. An hour, two hours, maybe. They’ll be hurrying,” she added, “because of the storm.”

It was close. He could feel it turning, far out in the desert—dust columns like mountains, black-bellied anger holding night and blotting dawn. His struggle to keep his mind locked against the probing lusts of the demons had left him shaky with fatigue; he had little enough power left to complete the binding-spells. Within the enchanted Circle, he could hear the demons cluttering furiously over the fading wails of the dying calf.

“I can’t turn it,” he said softly. “In any case we may need it . . . ” He hesitated. They would need it for escape, from Nanciormis and his men, perhaps from the demons, if it came before the binding-spells were done . . . 

There were too many variables, pressing upon his aching mind like the collapsing weight of a tunnel roof. He could sense the anger of the demons now, as they began to scratch and whisper at the rune-circle that held them in. The light of Starhawk’s little fire, far back in the vast cavern behind them, was going, and he knew he had no strength to spare, either to make witchlight or kindle the ashes again. His hoarse voice low to hold it steady, he said, “Take care of the fire, Hawk. I’ll do what I can to finish and get us out of here, but it can’t be rushed.” If the demons got out, the Hawk and Tazey would be in danger, too.

She said softly, “I know.” Tightening her arm around Tazey’s shoulders, she led her back toward the dying glow of the flames. Sun Wolf stood for a moment, willing strength back into his numbed muscles and shaken mind, as he had willed it on a dozen occasions in the camps of war throughout the years, rallying his men to fight or his own bruised body to haul himself out of some peril or other . . . They all seemed so trivial now, compared to what he must face.

He could smell dawn coming, hours away. If there was even a little daylight between the retreating hem of night and the coming of the storm, it would help, but he sensed now there wouldn’t be. Whatever happened, it was going to be close.

The awareness of the storm grew on him as he dragged out the small pack of implements he had assembled and the battered black Demonary with its crumbling leather cover. The storm’s electricity chewed at his bones as he drew further signs on the floor and repeated the words, marking the runes and the great curves of the power-lines, digging strength and the last glitters of magic from the marrow of his bones to summon and fix the power of the ritual in the air.

As he had in the snake pit, he cursed his own sloth in pursuit of Starhawk’s meditations, cursed his arrogance in refusing to believe entirely what Kaletha had grudgingly tried to teach him, and felt the power slip with his concentration, even as he cursed. He brought his whole mind back, to center on his work—runes drawn, softly shining in the air, and the sweet resinous smells of the aromatic herbs, the search for which had further delayed their arrival in Wenshar earlier that day. He relaxed into the ritual, willing himself to see the reality of the light-runes that flickered into shape between his hands—the clumsy, heavy-knuckled hands of a warrior, nicked with scars and gummed, like a butcher’s, with blood. He forced each gesture to be calm and unhurried and precise, sinking his mind and thoughts into the soft chant of the words, unfamiliar at first, then stronger as his tongue caught their alien rhythm. He forced his mind not to be caught in wondering contemplation of the glowing ritual itself. That was perhaps the hardest of all.

He repeated the names of the demons, as they had been known and written over the years by the women of the cult, summoning each, binding each, holding it to the honey-yellow sandstone beneath his feet with the ritual mix of herbed wine and blood, commanding it never to depart from this place, never to walk upon the air, never to seek surcease of its cravings in the dark warmth of men. He felt their anger and their rage shimmering from the pit as he walked the outer perimeter of the Circle and repeated their individual names. And he felt his own exhaustion twist his sinews as he dredged and scraped power from his heart, like a starving man scraping the scum of rice-boilings from the rim of an empty pot.

He couldn’t let himself stumble. He couldn’t let his cracking concentration break. The demons were swarming against the glowing barriers of the Circle of Darkness now, their arms edged with color and their cold, chitinous bodies burning with smoky phosphorescence, whispering in thin voices that stole like wind through the chinks in his soul. It had grown hot in the temple, the air close and thick with the coming storm. Gluey wind kissed his cheek as he passed between the Circle and the doors, the hot electricity of dust . . . then, sharply, the smell of horses.

Starhawk had gone to the door. It was a small entrance, narrow and tucked away; she’d be able to hold it . . . 

He dragged his concentration back. He could not even permit himself to speculate on how long the ritual would last, could not let that break the silence he held like perilously friable armor around his heart. The demons; the storm; Tazey sitting near the broken protective Circle, feeding twigs to the little fire, her absinthe gaze dark with horror as she saw the ragged heat-swirl of the demons and sensed the tearing cold of the demons’ minds seeking a way into his. The far-off call of voices touched his consciousness, the rattle of weapons, the scuffle near the door, and the smell of new blood. He heard the chittering of demons and the weak groaning—by his ancestors, he’d never have thought the calf would have lived that long in the pit. Arms aching, he traced the signs in the air again, his numbed mind repeating the formulae, thanking all the spirits of his ancestors that the magic took most of its strength from the building power of the rite, not from his own emptied reserves.

There was another cry from the door and the hiss and clash of swords. He pulled his mind back again as his warrior’s reflexes twitched. There were too many of them for her, even in that narrow way. The demons swirled up like rags of fire above the pit—a glowing holocaust breaking against the ceiling—screamed at him in voices he knew he alone could hear, and reached skinny arms for him. He raised his hands again, his back muscles a twisting spine of flame.

Then in the darkness deep at the back of the temple, where the second door was, he saw the glint of a crossbow bolt—not aimed at him. Without turning his head he knew where Starhawk stood, sword in hand, silhouetted now against the black rectangle of the narrow entrance, a dead man and a wounded one at her feet.

He yelled, “DROP!” the second before the iron bow whapped, hideously loud in the echoing temple. Spinning, he was aware of all that fragile creation of magic and light that hung in the air around him shattering like kicked glass. Rocketing iron clashed on stone; footsteps thundered, racing across the temple floor toward him from the inner door. He swung to meet the two men who fell upon him, bearing him backward. The sacrificial knife was in his hand as he made a despairing dive inside the reach of one attacker’s drawn sword. At the last second he twisted, springing aside from the second man’s sword . . .