The Heart of the Sands, Book 3 of The Gods Within (24 page)

Holding the tray in one hand, Chrisainne knocked politely
on the door to BlakeDown’s study. “Enter,”
he said, though the heavy planks of the door muffled the sound.

She pulled the latch and eased the door open. BlakeDown
sat behind a large desk covered in parchments and ledgers, and without looking
up he waved a hand casually and said, “Put it to one side. I’ll
get to it in a bit.”

Good,
she thought.
He is alone.
He sometimes called in one of his stewards
to clarify some point or other in the accounts, but not today. Chrisainne
crossed the room and put the tray down on the small table he’d indicated.
Then she turned about and approached BlakeDown from the side. She curtsied and
leaned forward, holding her face up toward BlakeDown. The gown she wore hugged
her waist tightly and exposed plenty of cleavage. She summoned the most sensual
tone she could manage and said, “Will that be all, my lord?”

BlakeDown started, looked up from his accounts and down at
her. She didn’t miss the fact that his eyes lingered on her
breasts for several heartbeats. He smiled, and she saw the lust in his eyes as
he reached out to her.

She stood quickly and skipped out of his reach, saying, “Oh
my lord, I am but a lowly serving maid. What is your intention?”

He laughed as she stepped around the desk, putting it
between them. “I’m suddenly very hungry for lunch,”
he said. “But the lunch I hunger for is standing before me.”

She must be careful. Once he started pounding his manhood
in and out of her, she had little control of him. And while his lovemaking was
crude and artless—the man himself even cruder and more artless—at
least he was gentleman enough to acquiesce to her timing and not force himself
upon her prematurely, though she’d never pushed that to its
limits. It occurred to her now that his acquiescence was probably more
self-serving than any gentlemanliness. She’d subtly taught him
that if he allowed her to tease him a bit, to build his desire to an intense
demand, he would find far greater pleasure in the act itself. But Valso had a
very specific task for her, and she had to accomplish that before she allowed
BlakeDown to descend into his mindless rutting.

“Eat your lunch, my lord. You must keep up
your strength.” She let a little glint appear in her eyes. “There’ll
be time for dessert afterwards.”

He laughed again, and turned to the tray she’d
placed on the small table. He lifted a goblet and gulped some wine, tore off a
hunk of bread and chewed at it. While he did so she crossed the room, stood
behind him and massaged the muscles of his neck.

“You’re tense, my lord,”
she said, carefully easing toward the subject Valso wanted her to broach. She
dare not bring it up directly, for that would seem too inquisitive, too
probing. “Is it that old witch Olivia? She seems to be a thorn in
your side.”

“Thorn,” he growled angrily. “More
like a sword, or a spear.” He turned and faced her, chewing on a
hunk of cheese that soured his breath. “She turned the meeting of
the Lesser Council into a circus with her proposals.”

She turned away from him and crossed the room to an open
window that looked out on the inner bailey below. “We’ve
all heard rumors, my lord. But the subtle ins and outs of such politics are
beyond me.”

She heard his footsteps as he approached behind her. “Well
don’t worry your pretty little head about it.”

“I don’t worry, my lord, not
with you in command of the situation. And you have your son at your side. He
seems such a smart, intelligent, young man.”

“Yes, ErrinCastle, the only good thing that
cow of a wife ever gave me. He’s organized the border patrols
nicely.”

There, he’d brought up the subject of the
border patrols, not her. “Border patrols, my lord? I thought the
borders were stable and secure.”

“They were. But I worry those Elhiynes might
try something, though I draw comfort from ErrinCastle. He’s chosen
a select group of lieutenants to assist him, just the right men.”

She turned to face him, let him have a good look at her
cleavage. “Oh really, my lord. Who might that be?”

She saw his lust growing. He rattled off three names, and
as he did so she frowned, which peaked his curiosity. “What is it?”
he asked. “I saw it in your eyes: a bit of doubt.”

“Oh it’s nothing, my lord. You
know I know nothing of these matters.”

“No. What is it? I value your opinion.”

She hesitated and blushed a bit. “Well, I don’t
know the others well. But young Lord Perrinsall, he seems . . . Oh,
I shouldn’t say.”

“No. Speak your mind. I demand it.”

“Well then . . . Perrinsall
seems a rather . . . indecisive young man. I wonder how he will fare
when faced with those arrogant Elhiynes.”

BlakeDown’s eyes narrowed in thought. “You
know, I think you might be right. He might let those Elhiynes walk all over
him. I’ll have to personally review ErrinCastle’s
choices.”

“Oh, pay no attention to me, my lord.”

He smiled and looked at her cleavage, so she lifted an
eyebrow and said, “Perhaps it’s time for dessert.”

That was all the permission he needed. He lifted her skirt
and petticoats, fumbled at his breeches for a moment, pressed her against the
wall and thrust his manhood into her. She cried out, pretending to be in the
throes of passion as he pounded in and out of her. At least with her petticoats
raised up between his face and hers, she didn’t have to smell his
sour breath.

Valso would be quite pleased. She’d sown
exactly the doubt needed. And the next time she screwed BlakeDown she’d
help him think of the right men for those border patrols, men Valso could count
on to do exactly the wrong thing.

Chapter 18: A Deadly Diversion

Morgin allowed Mortiss to pick her own way up the steep
trail, and when they reached the crest of the hill, he reined her in. He sat in
the saddle and slowly scanned the panorama around him, the steep and jagged
mountain directly in front of him, the foothills of Attunhigh behind him. Ahead
and to his left the two spires now appeared exactly as they had long ago, which
told him Mortiss now stood somewhere close to the route Morddon had followed
after leaving Aethon’s tomb.

The spires had haunted him since he’d first
seen them. His glimpse of them back then had been from a far different angle,
and every time he thought of them he felt compelled to find the proper
viewpoint, to prove to himself he could stand on the ancient route Morddon had
followed. He’d hunted back and forth carefully all day to get the
angle right, frequently striking out through the forest where no game trail
led. Thankfully, the forest undergrowth grew thin and sparse this high in the
foothills below the great mountain.

Six times now he’d ridden Mortiss out to find
that back trail, and six times he’d failed after spending an
entire day seeking back and forth. Each time he’d returned to the
camp he’d felt even more compelled to find it.

The sun was dropping toward the horizon, and he knew he
had just enough time to get back to the camp for a late dinner. He turned
Mortiss about, ready to admit his sixth defeat, but a little to the right,
almost directly ahead, an outcropping of rock drew his attention. He nudged
Mortiss forward, had her follow the crest of the hill where no undergrowth
impeded travel. As she moved at an easy walk, the shape of the outcropping
changed subtly as the angle from which he viewed it changed. But not until he’d
traveled about half a league did he recognize it, and then it came to him in a
flood of memory. Its shape reminded him of the head of one of the great winged
griffins, another feature he’d memorized so long ago, and now he
knew for a certainty he’d found Morddon’s back trail.
And with that realization he understood his mistake. He’d been
searching for the features from below, always looking upward. But centuries
ago, as Morddon had ridden down from Attunhigh, he’d memorized
many of the features from above, looking downward.

“So what will I do now?” he
asked Mortiss.

She spluttered,
If you don’t
know, then I can’t tell you.

In any case, the thought of backtracking Morddon’s
trail was, at least on this day, a moot point. It would take days to carefully
search out each memory, to find each feature he’d memorized so
long ago, and then move on, searching for the next. He’d left the
Benesh’ere camp with sufficient provisions for only a few days of
travel, and he had a few blades to finish. He and the smiths had reached the
final quenching stages on several, and he must be there for that. No matter how
much that tomb compelled him to find it, the unfinished blades demanded even more
that he complete their forging and give them life. No, he’d have
to plan this more carefully, come prepared next time for a longer trek.

He’d used up most of the day with his hunting
and searching, but a direct route back to the Benesh’ere camp
should see him there shortly after dusk. It occurred to him that any indecision
about whether or not he would return and find the ancient crypt had now
vanished; or perhaps someone else had made the decision for him long, long ago.

~~~

Morgin and Chagarin watched Baldrak carefully chip the
dried clay off the blade, while the other smiths had paused at their forges and
anvils to look their way. The final quenching had gone well and the blade
appeared to be in good shape. They must still mount the cross-guard, wrap the
tang, sharpen, polish and buff the blade, but if testing proved the quench had
truly gone well, the hard part was done.

“Daddy, can I go to the plainface town with
LillianToc?”

At the sound of the girlish voice they all looked up from
their concentration on the blade. Felina stood just inside the door to the
Forge Hall, LillianToc hovering behind her.

“Go ahead,” Baldrak said. “But
you have to help your mother with dinner, so be back early.”

Felina turned and skipped out the door, shouting, “Father
says I can go.”

Morgin and the two smiths returned their attention to the
blade. Baldrak picked up a pumice stone and carefully scraped the last vestiges
of clay from its surface, exposing the slight gradations of color due to the
many layers formed during the striking of the steel. He stroked the edge a few
times with the stone and said, “The edge is good. Very hard. It’ll
be some work sharpening this blade.”

He handed the blade to Morgin, who accepted it in both
hands. The steel in the blade whispered an incoherent cacophony of voices at
him. Morgin turned, marched across the Forge Hall, and with all the smiths
following close on his heels, stepped through the door into the bright
sunlight. The eyes of every whiteface in the vicinity turned his way and all activity
ceased, for they all knew a blade would be born today, though the question
still remained if it would be born healthy, or stillborn.

In the sunlight, Morgin examined the blade carefully, and
slowly the cacophony of voices calmed, though still they could not speak as
one. He gripped the tang with his right hand, then lifted the blade and held it
high, let the stark light of the midday sun glint off its surface. He raised
his left hand and flicked his middle finger at it, tapping it with his fingernail,
producing a very faint and dull ping. But the sound reverberated in his soul
and he embraced it, took it into his heart and amplified it, and the dull ping
grew into a sharp, clear, loud tone. He amplified it further, noticed in the
corner of his eye that many of the whitefaces had covered their ears with their
hands, painful grimaces on their faces. One-by-one he spoke with each voice,
like a choirmaster tutoring the individual members of his choir. Deep within
his heart he sang the note this blade must sing, and nudged each voice toward
that single, pure tone.

He wondered about this strange choir of voices. If he
couldn’t get them to harmonize properly, was it a flaw in the
SteelMaster, or merely a flaw in the blade? Two days ago they’d
finished a blade, and Morgin had taken it out for
testing
.
The smiths and all the whitefaces thought he merely tested each blade as it had
been made, but he had learned through trial and error that all blades were
incomplete after the final quenching, and in them he always found this
untrained choir of untrained voices that needed a master to guide them. Two
days ago that blade had failed, and he’d finished holding melted
pieces of flawed steel. The entire camp had mourned his failure that day.

One-by-one he encouraged the voices like a parent teaching
a child, as AnnaRail had taught him, demanding, but never appearing to demand,
finding the strength of each voice and helping them to understand themselves. He
must be a bit irrational since, once introduced to a sword, he quickly came to
think of each voice as almost human, but then most people had always considered
him a bit odd. Or perhaps he was just a SteelMaster, and most people didn’t—would
never—understand a SteelMaster.

One-by-one the voices came in line with the tone they must
sing. It reached a grand crescendo, and then he allowed the tone to die away,
let it drift on a netherwind. And as the last faint remnant of the blade’s
note echoed through his soul it whispered to him in a single, clean voice.

No one could teach him what it meant to be a SteelMaster. He’d
contributed bits and pieces of forgotten lore to each step in the process of
making a truly superior blade, the forging, striking, shaping and quenching,
and the smiths had greatly valued such bits of information. But that had all
been no more than pieces of forgotten knowledge of the craft. Whereas quelling
the cacophony of voices in the freshly quenched steel, appeasing their fear and
disunity, that he had discovered purely by accident, that only a SteelMaster
could do. And once treated with the magic of the steel, such a blade struck
true even in the hand of a less experienced swordsman, for such a blade struck
with a single voice.

He let his eyes wander the length of the blade one last
time, listened to the single, clear voice within it. Then he turned to face the
smiths and repeated its words, “And so must a blade be born.”

The smiths cheered, and the whitefaces around them all
joined in.

~~~

JohnEngine reined his horse in one hundred paces from the
ancient rock wall that demarked the Penda-Elhiyne border. At one time the wall
had probably been cleanly crafted of carefully placed stones about waist high,
with straight, almost vertical sides, and a crown of finished, flat slabs. But
weather and time had turned it into a line of tumbled stones, a good source of
building materials from which local peasants scavenged stone for more immediate
needs.

Following the normal formula, the Penda patrol had halted
a hundred paces on the other side of the line of tumbled stones. The Penda
leader nudged his horse forward in an easy walk, and JohnEngine did the same. From
a distance of about forty paces he saw the man’s face clearly and
did not recognize him, though the mere fact of that did not raise any alarms.

They both halted a few paces short of the stones. The
Penda nodded his head carefully, the formal equivalent of a bow when in the
saddle. “Lord JohnEngine,” he said. “It
is an honor to finally meet you.”

JohnEngine nodded his head. “You have the
advantage of me.”

The man spoke clearly and proudly. “I am
Lewendis et Penda, third son of Cyril who is second cousin to Lord BlakeDown.”

Lewendis, not a name on ErrinCastle’s list of
those they could count on to keep a calm head; a distant relative of BlakeDown,
so probably from the north bordering on Tosk lands.

“Lord Lewendis, it is a pleasure to meet you.”

“You are kind, Lord JohnEngine.”
Lewendis seemed wary; not ill-at-ease or intimidated, but distrustful, and his
tone carried a note of cynicism.

JohnEngine said, “I wonder that we have not
met before.”

Lewendis upper lip curled up slightly, an involuntary sign
of distaste, as if he took some insult from JohnEngine’s words. “I’ve
just been assigned to the Penda border by Lord BlakeDown himself. I consider it
a true honor to guard our borders against incursion . . . by anyone.”

That was an odd way to put it, almost as if he felt the
need to specifically fear Elhiyne incursion, not just the usual stray cow or
bandit problems. JohnEngine asked, “Assigned by BlakeDown himself?
Not ErrinCastle?”

Lewendis gave him a smug grin. “Exactly, Lord
JohnEngine. Lord BlakeDown is taking a more personal interest in our border
with Elhiyne. He’s quite pleased with ErrinCastle’s
oversight, but felt his greater experience in these delicate matters warranted
his particular attention. I assume Lady Olivia has done the same, since she has
one of her grandsons riding border patrols.”

JohnEngine avoided the obvious probe. “We all
pay particular attention to our borders. If we don’t, then
something as simple as a stray cow or itinerant bandit might cause a
misunderstanding.”

Lewendis’ lips narrowed into a hard, straight
line. “And what do you mean by that?” he demanded. “Do
you accuse us of sending bandits across the border to rob your people?”

“Of course not,” JohnEngine
said, angered by Lewendis’ prickly nature. “Petty
thieves and bandits are always a problem, whether they’re yours or
ours. And we’ve always worked together to eradicate them.”

That appeared to appease Lewendis a bit. JohnEngine steered
the conversation to the usual cross-border comparison of local problems, and
slowly Lewendis calmed. But when they parted JohnEngine left with a most uneasy
feeling.

~~~

The door to Rhianne’s hut burst open without
warning. She started and dropped the potato she’d been peeling,
while Braunye jumped to her feet fearfully. One of Fat John’s sons
stood in the doorway, breathing heavily, fear plain on his face. “Mistress
Syllith,” he panted. “There’s been a
fight. You must come right away.”

“What kind of injuries?” she
demanded.

He shook his head. “I don’t
know. Knives and cuts and blood, and stuff like that.”

She had a little kit prepared for such emergencies and
stowed in a small canvas duffle. She snatched it up and said, “Come,
Braunye.” To the boy she said, “Lead the way.”

Once out in the street she saw the crowd gathered near the
smith’s shop and didn’t need the boy’s
guidance. But as she approached a wall of tall backs she had to shout, “Make
way. I’m a healer.” And even then it took the smith
elbowing several of them aside, shouting, “Make way for Mistress
Syllith.”

One of the whiteface warriors lay on the ground at the
entrance to the smith’s shop, clutching his side and gulping
shallow breaths, blood coursing between his fingers. Seated on the ground next
to him, a young, whiteface boy held a knife clutched in his right hand, blood
oozing from a wound on his thigh. The boy had gone into shock, trembling badly,
his eyes staring into a far distance.

Rhianne knelt down next to the boy and said, “It’s
all right now.” She gently took the knife out of his hand. There
was blood on the blade.

As she used the knife to cut away the legging of his
breeches, the wounded warrior hissed through clenched teeth, “Someone
send word to the camp.”

Fat John stepped out of the crowd. “Already
done. Sent one of my boys for that when I sent the other for the mistress.”

The warrior reached out and put a hand on Rhianne’s
arm. “Yer a witch, ain’t you?”

She paused and looked at him. “Yes.”

He shook his head. “We don’t
abide magic.”