The Brush of Black Wings

THE BRUSH

OF

BLACK WINGS

by

Grace Draven

The Brush of Black Wings - Copyright
© 2014 by Grace Draven.

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any
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electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses
permitted by copyright law.

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of
the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes
used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people,
living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions,
or locales is completely coincidental.

Dedicated to Lora Gasway:

My editor and friend.

Thank you.

CHAPTER ONE

On a snowy winter morning, Martise of
Neith—once of Asher—opened a gate and awakened darkness.

Such hadn’t been her intent when she rose in
the pre-dawn hours from the warm bed she shared with her husband.
The coals in the brazier had long gone cold, and Martise’s breath
drifted from her mouth and nose in ghostly pants as she threw on
clothing as fast as her shaking hands allowed.

Silhara lay still in their bed facing her,
half covered. Martise made out the silhouette of an arm and
shoulder and the lock of long white hair that draped across his
throat. She leaned over and twitched the blankets up to cover him.
His eyes snapped open, and she fancied she glimpsed a tinge of red
in the black irises as he stared at her.

He blinked slowly. “What are you doing up so
early?” He captured her wrist and tugged. “Come back to bed. I’ll
warm you.”

Martise smiled and resisted his gentle but
relentless tugging. For Silhara, warming her meant making love to
her until the sun’s first rays bled through the closed shutters.
She enjoyed his methods for chasing away the cold, but this morning
she couldn’t indulge.

She pulled her hand free. “You can warm me
later. The snows have come, and I promised Gurn I’d hunt the blue
parasol.”

Silhara rolled onto his back and flung an arm
across his eyes. “Why can’t Gurn gather his precious mushrooms
himself?”

Martise sat on the edge of the bed to roll on
her stockings. She lightly slapped Silhara’s hand as it wandered
over her leg toward the juncture of her thighs. “Because he’ll be
preparing a nice hash for your breakfast while I get the mushrooms.
Besides, it’s bitter out there right now, and his bones hurt when
the cold settles in like this.”

“
My bones hurt too, woman—one in
particular. You should stay here and ease the ache.” Silhara rolled
towards her, pressing an impressive erection against her back. He
clasped her to him.

Martise laughed and looked over her shoulder.
Silhara’s face was obscured in shadow, though she caught the wiggle
of his eyebrows as he tried to coax her back to bed. “I’ll make it
up to you this afternoon.”

Silhara growled, removed his arm and gave her
a light push off the bed. “Go find your fungus and tell Gurn I’ll
rip his entrails out after breakfast for ruining my morning.” He
turned on his side away from her and yanked the covers over his
head.

Martise slipped on her shoes and heavy cloak
and left Silhara to his sullen pout. The third floor corridor was
sepulchre-black, but she walked it without benefit of lamp or
witchlight. In the nearly five years she’d lived at Neith, she’d
grown accustomed to its pitched floors, creaking floor boards and
occasional holes through which the careless might fall to the lower
floors. Silhara and Gurn had repaired the worst of them, but anyone
unfamiliar with the Master of Crows’ ramshackle fortress took their
life in their hands trying to traverse the halls in the
dark.

She found Gurn already in the kitchen. Dressed
and busily chopping potatoes and a cut of mutton at one of the
weather-beaten tables, the giant servant greeted her with a wave of
his knife. A fire burned in the corner hearth, bathing the room in
yellow light that reflected off Gurn’s bald pate. A skillet nestled
in the heating coals alongside a kettle.

Cael lay stretched out in his usual place half
under the main table. The scruffy magefinder’s tail thumped a dull
tattoo on the floor when he saw her. He raised his head to give her
a whuffled greeting but didn’t leave his spot. Martise took her
place on the bench and rubbed her foot along the length of his
side, sending up puffs of dust from his coarse gray fur.

She spotted the cup of hot tea Gurn had poured
for her and toasted him in thanks. “This will go far to warm me up,
Gurn.” She glanced at the basket on the table. “If there’s enough
to pick, do you want me to fill the basket?”

He nodded and set the knife down so he could
sign to her with both hands. Martise’s aptitude with languages had
served her and Gurn well. She’d been able to translate his sign
language during her first few weeks at Neith, and Gurn’s wordless
commentary remained a source of amusement, often at his master’s
expense. His latest remarks about his Holy Laziness still lolling
about in bed made her grin.

She finished her tea and grabbed the basket.
“You might want to hang onto that knife. He’s promised to
disembowel you for destroying his morning.” She didn’t have to
elaborate on how or why Gurn had accomplished such a feat. The
servant knew him well.

Martise laughed as Gurn’s hands sketched
symbols rapid-fire in the air. She had no doubt the servant would
later repeat to his master what he just told her—that if Lord
Horse’s Ass was that hard up for a swiving, he’d just have to make
do with his hand this morning.

Her laughter ceased abruptly when she opened
the door to the bailey and breathed the open air. A shudder racked
her from head to toe. She froze her lungs with that inhalation. The
sky was the color of lead, canopied by a low ceiling of clouds fat
with snow. The bailey sparkled in the wan light, transformed from
its usual muddy pit to a pristine white landscape.

Gurn predicted the previous day they’d have
snow by evening. He’d rubbed his elbows and knees, wincing. His
aches and pains proved prophetic. Snow began falling by mid
afternoon and continued through the night—perfect weather for the
sprouting of parasol mushrooms. Martise volunteered to gather the
short-blooming delicacy, and Gurn eagerly accepted her
offer.

She looked down at the warm weight suddenly
pressed against her side. Cael emitted a soft bark before trotting
into the bailey. He stopped, gazed at her and barked again as if to
tell her to move it along. Martise pulled gloves over her chilly
hands. “Looks like I’ll have company.” She waved to Gurn and joined
Cael.

Woman and dog left the bailey and tromped
through the snow blanketing the property. They passed the skeleton
of the west wing with its shattered bones of stone blocks littering
the ground. The broken bits of masonry lay hidden under powdery
white drifts. The rusted gates separating the main grounds from
Neith’s woodland screeched a protest as Martise nudged them open
and slipped through with Cael beside her.

A wide boulevard bisected the forest that
shielded Neith’s entrance. Beyond the dark trees, the vast plain of
grassland, brittle and brown during the winter months, stretched
toward the far coast. The wood itself, steeped in Silhara’s curse
magic, kept out any wayward travelers looking for shelter. Towering
oaks loomed dark and threatening along Neith’s northern border,
their gnarled branches gripping each other in silent
struggle.

The forest had frightened her when she’d first
come here—a slave with a purpose, a spy with a mission. Everything
about Neith did, most especially its master. Much had changed since
then. Neith’s heretic mage was her husband, and the cursed wood a
part of her home. She feared neither now.

She abandoned the broad avenue, choosing a
narrow path leading into the forest. An arcade of colossal trees
stretched into the gloom, fading to obscurity in the gray haze that
filtered through the clerestory gaps in the branch
canopy.

Cael bounded ahead, sending sprays of snow
into the air. Martise caught a twitch of movement in the corner of
her eye. The magefinder bolted after it, his dusky coat rendering
him invisible as he disappeared into the leafless oaks’ shadows.
Martise guessed he chased rabbit or fox. She hoped that whatever he
ran to ground, he wouldn’t bring it back to share.

She strolled after him. The anemic morning
light faded. Though bare during winter, the tree branches twined
together so tightly in their grappling embrace, they left the
ground below them in a perpetual gloaming, home to nocturnal
hunters and things that thrived in half light.

Something swooped past her, lifting Martise’s
hair with a brush of wings. An indignant caw followed, and she
sighted a crow as it landed on a high branch above her. The bird
shook vigorously, wings ruffling, and sent a shower of snow down on
her.

Martise gave a small shriek, wiped at the snow
dusting her hair and shoulders and raised a fist at the crow.
“Stupid bird.” It stared at her from its perch, head cocked to one
side. She fancied it laughed at her predicament.

She marched deeper into the wood, keeping an
eye out for the parasol mushrooms growing on piles of snow-covered
deadfall. The crow followed, hopping from branch to branch, tree to
tree.

Her first cluster of mushrooms hugged the
remains of a fallen oak. They looked like bouquets of luminescent
flowers or tiny parasols from afar. Painted in shades of indigo and
lavender dotted with red spores on their gills, the mushrooms
glowed softly in a colorful cluster. Martise knelt before them and
fished her shears out of the basket. The mushrooms’ spongy stipes
stood tall and easy to pick by hand, but the caps were delicate and
popped off if tugged too hard.

Gurn had been specific in his instructions. He
wanted the mushrooms whole and intact, so Martise carefully snipped
at the base of the stipes until she’d cleared her first patch. She
had a lot more to pick before the basket was full, but she was
resolved to return to a Gurn happy with her harvest.

She continued her hunt, stopping thrice more
to pick mushrooms. An azure incandescence surrounded her basket and
lit the dark trunks of sleeping trees as she passed. Cael rejoined
her, tongue lolling, fangs glistening with blood.

She flinched. Cael considered her part of his
pack—would kill and die for her if necessary. But he was a
magefinder, and she’d once been a Gifted. In the ancient days, when
the Gifted were persecuted, magefinders hunted them like prey.
Centuries had passed since those days of slaughter, and now the
Gifted used the dogs for their own purposes. Still, any who wielded
a Gift knew of the savage history between mage and magefinder and
wondered when the long-ago hunter might hunt them once
more.

Cael leaned into, smacking her skirts with his
whip-like tail as she carded her fingers through his wiry coat.
“Good dog,” she murmured. “Welcome back.” He stayed beside her,
pausing once to stare at the crow that cawed and trailed them
through the trees.

They reached the innermost sanctum of the wood
and the carcass of a stone structure nestled in a natural clearing.
A ring of mushrooms encircled the ruin, more than enough to fill
her basket to overflowing. Gurn would be delighted, and Silhara,
who loved the delicacy despite his earlier protestations of her
abandoning him for them, might be pacified with her
offering.

She stepped into the clearing, her curiosity
piqued by the crumbling ruin. Once some kind of peristyle or open
temple, the architecture was old—like Neith itself—and built by
those whose veins didn’t course with human blood. It stood in the
middle of a spoked-wheel design half obscured by snowfall. That she
could see some of the wheel hinted at sorcery once strong, alive
and possibly dark. Grass still didn’t grow along the spokes’
outlines.