Sun Wolf 2 - The Witches Of Wenshar (38 page)

And he felt it, when the next thrust drove him backward over the Circle of Darkness.

He screamed, “NO!” as he hit the stone floor, and for an instant the demons swirled like hornets around him, a rending glitter of claws. Then the two men in the green leathers of the Tandieras guards were on him. He tried to get up. The knife fell from his bleeding hand as his back struck the stone of the altar; the weight of human arms and bodies twisted him face down on the stone. Edged metal pressed up under his jaw.

For a moment there was nothing but the smell of blood on the stone where his face pressed it and the thin, sharp push of his pounding veins against the pressure of the razor edge. Then from somewhere Nanciormis’ voice said, “Is there anything in the pit?”

The soft vibration of boots through the stone under his cheek.
No sound.

Then, “Dead calf, sir.
Fair tore to pieces it is. He was sacrificing, right enough.”

“Anything else?”

“No, sir.”

More footfalls.
Closer now, Nanciormis said, “So. It is as we said. He is the witch.”

Sun Wolf raised his head from the stone, the blade against his throat giving back slightly as he did so. The commander stood at the pit’s edge, looking down into it; his full lips thinned in an expression of disgust and horror, but every line of that thick, muscular back reflected satisfaction like a smirk.

And well he might feel so,
the Wolf thought bitterly. His accusations were borne out beyond the shadow of any man’s doubt. Beyond in the darkness he glimpsed the shapes of Starhawk, standing between the black-robed Kaletha and half a dozen guards, and of Tazey, shivering tearfully in the uncertain arms of the faithful Anshebbeth.

In all the silent blackness of the temple, there was no other movement. On the floor, his own footmarks and those of Nanciormis and the guards scuffed through the lines of the Circle. The smell of blood and smoke hung on the air like the stink of a battlefield, but the demons were gone.

“Turn the storm?” Kaletha’s short laugh reeked bitterness, like sweat in a beggar’s rags. “You’d put it to better use if you tied that barbarian thief hand and foot and pushed him out in it. It would save Illyra’s torturer the trouble of flensing the meat from his bones.” Her white hand, like a spider in the darkness against its black homespun sleeve, stroked the rotting cover of the Demonary that she held like a child to her full breasts. “Both of them,” she added spitefully, glancing across at Starhawk, who sat, hands bound, in watching silence. Starhawk met her eyes calmly, without apology. It was Kaletha who looked away. From where he lay Sun Wolf could see her fingers tremble with anger.

He sighed and let his head drop back to the patterned amber stone of the floor. He was glad only to be out of that haunted temple, though this wide oval chamber deep in the center of the palace maze wasn’t much of an improvement as far as he was concerned. Most of the doors in the old palace had been battered from their hinges by the invading troopers of Dalwirin a century and a half ago; to escape the fury of the storm, whose voice had begun to rise in the canyons outside, it had been necessary to come deep in. The absence of drifted sand and debris had told them that this inner chamber was a safe refuge.

From the storm,
Sun Wolf amended, watching how the torches flickered nervously in the crossing drifts of wind from the ventilation shafts. From the storm.

Anshebbeth wet her lips and glanced across at the Wolf. “Are you . . . ” Her voice sank, an exaggerated whisper above the conspiratorial murmur of the wind in the shafts. “Are you sure he’s safe?”

Annoyed, Sun Wolf rolled to a slightly more comfortable position on his back, his shoulders and his arms, bound behind him, piercing him with sharp pain. He’d long ago learned that, when one is tied up, there is no such thing as a comfortable position. “Hell, no, I’m not safe,” he growled. “And none of us is, in this demon-haunted hell hole.”

“Be silent,” Kaletha snapped. Everyone was on edge. The heat and electricity of the storm plucked and teased at the nerves and set up a throbbing in the brain. Impatient and contemptuous, she went on, “There are no demons. The only thing to fear is your killer’s mind and your stolen magic, and those, yes, are safely bound.”

Anshebbeth, sitting huddled beside the silent Tazey, looked little comforted, but Sun Wolf could have told her that even without the spells laid on his wrist chains, she had nothing to fear from him. He felt emptied, as if after long sickness or starvation, like grass burned to its roots. In a way, that troubled him more than the binding of his powers. The demons had been summoned, their appetites whetted, not satisfied. They were still abroad in the storm-hot, hazy darkness of the painted halls.

“You’ve bound my magic, Kaletha, but not my mind. The demons in this place are real.”

“If you are not silent,” she said, low and perfectly steady, “I’ll have one of the guards come over here and cut out your tongue. Do you understand?”

One of the little cluster of frightened guards glanced up from their huddle around a small fire directly beneath a vent shaft, then looked quickly away, pretending he had not heard. They might be under Nanciormis’ orders to obey Kaletha, Sun Wolf thought, but they weren’t at all happy about it.

A gust of wind kicked at the blaze, sending sparks whirling up. Sun Wolf shivered, seeing again how the demons had whirled above the pulsing glow of the pit. The guards drew nervously together—young men and women recruited from the Cordillera mining towns, trained to fight, perhaps, but only to fight what they could see. In the unsteady light, their shadows writhed over the honey-colored sandstone pilasters circling the walls and lent to the painted figures on the plaster a subtle and furtive life.

Though the storm winds did not blow here, the air was curtained with fine dust, which lent a ghastly, muted quality to the firelight and made Sun Wolf’s head ache. In that hideous haze, nothing seemed quite as it should be. All around the room they watched, mocking, from the faded walls—mother and daughter, grandmother and daughter-in-law, crones and girls with dark eyes and too-knowing smiles. He felt them, like ghosts, listening, staring down at the last Princess of the House who sat head bowed, beside her governess, not daring to raise her eyes. Kaletha, too, seemed to feel the pressure of those ironic gazes, but she remained straight-backed as a queen, as if daring them to show themselves.

And he was troubled with the thought that they might.

Somewhere the wind sobbed in the corridors; Anshebbeth slewed around to face the empty door from which the sound seemed to come, then edged closer to her teacher. With thin, shaking hands she plucked at the red-haired woman’s sleeve.

“Please,” she whimpered. “Can you—Can you do anything? This is a terrible place, Kaletha. I know it, I can feel it. We shouldn’t be here. The Captain is right, it is haunted.”

Kaletha jerked her arm away and rubbed her temples, as if doing so could crush out the splitting pain of the storm-ache within. “You’re the one who’s haunted,” she snapped irritably. Her eyes darted to the door and back again. “Haunted by your own fears, which he plays upon like a common charlatan.”

“No . . . ”

“There are no demons.” Her mouth was suddenly rigid with rage. “Even you believe his lies now, as everyone does.”

Anshebbeth stammered, “No—”

“Then why are you afraid?” Kaletha cut at her. “He used my magic, stole it, twisted it to work evil out of his own greed and vice. His greed has given wizardry an evil name that shall never be eradicated, leaving me—me—and all who come after to suffer for it. That’s all there is. The power comes from the mage, from the mind, not from some—some desert legend or djinn of shirdar superstition.”

“But what if he’s right?” Anshebbeth’s eyes, black and liquid, shirdar eyes, flickered from one empty socket doorway to the next. She was shivering as she tried to draw nearer for comfort, and angrily Kaletha moved away. “There were demons in the temple where we found him: I sensed it, felt it. And I felt them . . . the night Egaldus—”

“Will you stop whining!” Kaletha swung around, blue eyes blazing in the firelight. “Don’t you speak to me of Egaldus! What would you know about demons or anything else?”

Spots of red flared on Anshebbeth’s white cheeks. “Just because Egaldus was a more apt pupil than I doesn’t mean I know nothing—” she began shrilly.

“Apt!” Kaletha’s laugh was like a dog’s bark, harsh and false. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Don’t I?” Anshebbeth’s thin nostrils flared, her black eyes widening with a long-pent boil of fermented rage as the storm triggered her temper as it had triggered Kaletha’s. “And whose fault is that? Because you’d rather have taught him than me . . . ”

“He had more promise—he had the power—”

“He had you!” Anshebbeth almost screamed. “Again and again, for all your talk of purity! I heard you tell the Captain that, through your window—I heard it! You taught him because he was a man, because he’d lie with you and pretend he loved you!” Tears flooded the dark eyes. “I love you! I could have given you everything he did . . . ”

“When?
While you were playing the slut in Nanciormis’ bed?”

The tears spilled over, creeping down the blotched, swollen cheeks. Starhawk, sitting unnoticed by the wall, watched the scene with head tipped a little to one side, gray eyes suddenly sharp with interest. Hysterically, Anshebbeth cried, “At least he cares for me for what I am—which you never have—never . . . ”

“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t snivel!” Kaletha turned away and pressed her hands to her head again. Anshebbeth fell back, her hand rubbing nervously at her throat, her face working with stress and grief.

Tazey reached out to touch her comfortingly. “Don’t. She doesn’t really mean it. Everyone loses their temper during a storm.” But at that moment footfalls rang in the darkened hall. With a sob, Anshebbeth flung herself to her feet and, as Nanciormis came through the dead socket of the door beside her, fell desperately into his arms.

For one second Sun Wolf thought the commander would thrust her off him. His thick face, doughy-looking with strain, twisted in revulsion as Anshebbeth’s skinny arms clutched at his shoulders. The two guards behind him went on into the oval room with carefully averted eyes, not wanting to look at their commander and his hysterical, middle-aged mistress; that, too, showed on Nanciormis’ face. He patted her heaving back perfunctorily while she ground her flat breasts and running nose into the soft green leather of his doublet, but the Wolf could see in his face only the desire to get this over with and get her off him as quickly as he gracefully could. Sun Wolf supposed he should have thought better of the commander for taking even that trouble, but suspected Nanciormis would have shown less forbearance without the presence of an audience.

He turned to trade a glance with Starhawk and saw her gaze, not on Nanciormis, but on Tazey. The girl was watching her uncle and her governess, nauseated cynicism in her eyes.

“That’s right, go to him!” Kaletha jeered viciously. She had not forgiven the public revelation about Egaldus. “You’ll never see, will you? If I was never able to touch magic within your mind, it was because your mind wasn’t willing—because you had other fish to fry. It was you who lied, not I!”

Anshebbeth was sobbing miserably. “No! No!” Nanciormis, with the exasperation of an insensitive man who finds himself facing a scene, shoved her aside and strode over to the Witch.

Very softly, under the cover of the commander’s angry bluster, Starhawk said, “Tazey?”

The girl turned her head. Through the blurred apricot haze of dust, tears glinted in the shadows.

“What did Nanciormis say to you?” asked the Hawk. “What made you hate him so much that you thought it was you who had summoned the demons? Was it about your magic?”

Even in that strange gloom, Tazey’s face went first scalded pink, then white with shame. In a stifled voice she said, “No. He . . . He tried to kiss me.” She moved over closer to them, her face looking old and drawn with fear and shame at the memory. After a moment she corrected, “He did kiss me. I used to think it was sort of sweet, that he would be in love with ’Shebbeth. Now I see it—he only wanted to—to get near me. I—He—” She looked pleadingly at Starhawk and the Wolf, revulsion clear on her face. “He’s my uncle!”

“He’s your uncle,” Starhawk said softly. “Your mother’s brother.
Except for Jeryn, the last Prince of the Ancient House of Wenshar.”

Something in the way she spoke, the half-detached, half-speculative tone of her soft, even voice, made Sun Wolf look up at her suddenly. Her eyes looked as they had in a hundred pre-dawn conferences on battle lines and siege camps, adding up a thousand tiny details and coming up with . . . 

“Taswind!”

Tazey looked up at Nanciormis’ voice. Her uncle strode over to her, his white cloak billowing, his eyes oil-dark and hard.

“Come away from them.”

She did not move. The big shirdar lord hesitated for a moment, indrawn breath waiting on his lips, then changed his mind. He came to where she sat, against the wall at Starhawk’s side, and squatted before her. She tried to pull her elbow away from his gloved hand, and the silk and leather grip tightened.

“Don’t be a fool,” Nanciormis said softly. But now, listening for it, Sun Wolf heard the caress behind the hardness of the words. He saw by the angry stiffening of the girl’s mouth that she heard it, too, and resented it like a too-familiar touch. “They’ve played the friend to you, yes. Up to this point men can still be gotten to admire your loyalty, even if it is misguided. Don’t you see?” He leaned closer to her, put his hands on her strong, slender shoulders, where the Wolf’s grip had left sticky fingermarks of blood. His voice softened further, urging, coaxing. Tazey’s face was like stone.

“The proof is sure. If it wasn’t with the apparition that attacked me, what more can men need? He’s been seen to sacrifice as the Witches of old used to do. You have to disassociate yourself from them. I can protect you . . . ”

Tazey pulled her body from his grasp. “Get away from me,” she said softly. Sun Wolf could see her tremble. “Just get away.”