The Malmillard Codex (5 page)

A woman and a man, both dressed in rumpled
finery, were wrapped around each other in the drafty hallway. Their
lips locked together, hands struggling for purchase, they swayed
and turned, now leaning on the wall, now standing free. The swish
of the two thickly embroidered cloaks that muffled them was the
sound that had alarmed Madryn. It was interrupted from time to time
by a soft clink from the metal beads of the embroidery as the two
clashed together in the midst of their frantic pawing.

"Would you be kind enough to continue this
in your own rooms?" Madryn called out. She tapped the hilt of her
sword against the doorjamb.

The two stumbled apart, quite obviously far
gone in both wine and lust, and their dull eyes widened at the
sight of the cold steel. They mumbled unintelligible phrases of
apology about lost rooms and abandoned parties, then staggered back
down the hallway.

Madryn slammed the door with unnecessary
force and snapped the latch.

"Get back in bed," she ordered, her tone
thick with irritation.

Valerik was glad to comply. He watched from
his mountain of blankets as she settled herself back in the chair,
pulling her cloak tight about her and resting her stocking feet on
the low table.

This time,
he thought,
I know I'll
never get back to sleep.

An instant later, he was snoring.

***

Valerik was running, running in desperate
fear from a pack of ravening wolves. The wolves had human faces and
hands, and their howls sounded like children sobbing in the night.
The faster he ran, the closer the wolves came, but if he slowed the
slightest fraction they backed away, as if anxious to keep the same
distance between them, to keep him in constant and ever burgeoning
terror.

A tree, with a grinning evil face set deep
in its gnarly trunk, snaked out a root and tried to trip him. He
jumped over the twisty wood and ran on, followed by wicked
whispering laughter.

Then, from the very ground beneath his feet,
an abyss opened before him, flames leaping up from its depths to
tower high into the empty ebony vault that was the starless sky. He
skidded to a halt, grabbing for a handhold—but not soon enough. A
despairing wail echoed from his throat as he tumbled down, down,
down into flame-pierced darkness…

"Valerik."

Someone was shaking him. A wolf, it must be
a wolf that had followed him into the abyss and had him in its pale
human hands.

"Val. Wake up."

Valerik shook and slithered out of a pile of
congealed blankets; they fell away like a shed cocoon. He seized
the hand shaking him, gave a growl of mingled threat and fear.

A gasp of pain. A familiar voice.

Yesterday. The hunt. His escape.

Madryn.

Valerik released the hand as if it had
burned him.

"Sorry," he muttered, careful not to meet
her eyes. "Bad dream."

"So it sounded," Madryn agreed as she shook
her hand, already reddening from his grip. "I must remember to
leave you in the next one, if I don't want broken bones."

Valerik looked dazedly about the room.
Madryn was sitting on the side of the shelf that contained the
bedding, her cloak around her shoulders. The room had grown chill
and damp, the fire faded to cold gray ashes, the pile of wood
beside it exhausted. Valerik gave a mighty yawn, stretched his arms
to the sides then looked up at the window. An ashen pasty light
seeped through the cracks of the shutter.

Valerik sat up, his face inches from
Madryn's. "You let me sleep all night," he accused with a quick
frown of embarrassment. "You said you'd take the first watch."

Madryn was looking at him with an odd
expression in her violet-shot eyes, a faint mocking grin on her
long mouth. "You need sleep far more than I did," she said at last,
her voice little more than a whisper.

It was not what she had been thinking.
Valerik didn't know how he knew that, but he did.

Madryn did not draw away from him; instead,
her face was a mere hand's breadth from his, so close their breaths
mingled. Valerik scowled to hide the feelings her closeness, her
clean scent, aroused in him.

Feelings weren't the only thing Madryn
aroused. Even with his mind still drugged and sluggish from
slumber, his arms and legs aching from the efforts of yesterday's
hunt, Valerik suddenly wanted her so fiercely that his body burned
with the desire.

A noble, any noble, could do anything
whatever with or to a slave, use a slave's body in any conceivable
fashion. But for a slave to desire a freeborn, let alone a noble,
and to act upon that desire, was punishable by death, death in any
of its myriad forms, but usually slow and always painful.

Valerik shifted away from Madryn's warmth,
felt the blankets sliding away and grabbed at them. Too late. They
escaped his grasp, exposing the emblem of his desire throbbing just
beside her hand where it lay on the traitorous blankets.

"How flattering," said Madryn after a glance
down; one eyebrow cocked upward. "And quite impressive. Your
mistress must have hated to send you to the hunt. What did you do
to deserve it? Or is this not the best time to ask?"

Valerik could feel the hot blood rushing to
his face—though not enough of it to dampen his desire. Madryn
sounded arrogant, amused, condescending—noble—indeed, much as his
late mistress had sounded. He jerked the blankets back and slid as
far away from her as he could, until the wall at his back stopped
him.

"What did I do to deserve the hunt?" he
asked, forcing the words out through gritted teeth. "I broke my
mistress's neck. Four days after she bought me from the arena. I
was a gladiator."

"And she thought, no doubt, that she could
make an interesting bedslave of you? Tired of her pampered, scented
boys and girls, eager for…stronger meat, shall we say? Well, she
paid for her stupidity; unfortunately, you nearly did as well."

"You knew the Lady Alysa Stormcloud?"
Valerik gasped in amazement at the apt description of his former
owner.

"Yes, indeed I do—did. And I thought that
you must have been her possession, finding you where I did. Lady
Alysa and I are—were—old acquaintances, and I can't say I'm sorry
to hear of her untimely demise. I knew of her…tastes. And of how
she treated her slaves."

"So, I suppose you'll hand me over to be
sent back, now that you know I murdered my mistress?" Valerik held
his breath as he awaited her reply.

Madryn eyed him, her head cocked to one
side.

"No. I won't," she said at last.

"Why?" he asked. He wasn't quite sure he
could believe her, but a certain tension went out of his back and
arms.
Why, I was planning on knocking her down and running
,
he thought in some surprise.
As though I could get far from
those long legs…

"Why? Because you remind me of
another…acquaintance of mine, one that I have not seen for a very
long time."

"Why?" Valerik asked again, not sure he had
heard her aright.

"Why haven't I seen him? Because he's dead.
And because he's dead, I don't think he'll mind if you borrow his
name while we travel, especially since it's so similar to your own.
I called him Val and I will call you the same—if you do not mind,
that is. I'd like to find out why you remind me so much of him, you
see, when you're really very little like him…very little at all, in
fact. I'd like very much to find out why we've been thrown
together, just now, just when I'm on my way to…"

Madryn's voice died away. She eyed him with
that familiar calculating expression in those violet-shot eyes.

She wants to ask me something.

Valerik waited, wondering what it could be,
wondering if he would be able to offer an answer that suited
her.

But the only thing she said was, "Come, get
dressed. It's time for our breakfast, Lord Valaren Starseeker."

Valerik gave a sour laugh at the name.
"Who'd believe that
I'm
a lord?"

"Everyone. If you do. So get up." That
crooked grin crossed her face, was immediately gone. "If you'll
pardon the expression."

***

It was a glorious morning, a morning on
which it was good to be alive. The sky had been washed to a
cloudless azure by the previous night's storm, and there was less
chill than the day before.

They had breakfasted well, and so had
Daemon. The great stallion trotted forward as if their combined
weight was no more than a feather on his broad back, his ebony coat
gleaming, his tawny mane and tail brushed to a golden glory. The
hostler had treated him well, and Valerik was glad to see it.

No, not Valerik. Val. Valaren Starseeker.
Lord Valaren Starseeker.

Val turned his new name over and over in his
mouth as they bounced along, his arms clasped loosely about
Madryn's lean waist. The cloak, its furred lining far too hot for
the warmth of this new day, was bundled under him as a kind of
saddle.

Valaren Starseeker. There was something
familiar about that name. Val thought he could remember hearing it
before, but just where and when eluded him. But he did remember
that there was something about the name, the man, that he did not
like…

The new Valaren did not know where they were
going. He did not know why Madryn had decided to rename him and
take him with her. But she had done both, and at this particular
moment, he could find no more to ask of the gods. The previous
morning, he had been jerked from a restless sleep and cast out,
naked and defenseless, to be run to his death by a pack of hounds
and riders. This morning, he rode high above the muddy road on the
back of a magnificent horse, with a mysterious woman…that his body
insisted on wanting even as his mind shied away from the inherent
danger in that forbidden desire.

Short tawny hairs escaped from the thick
braid that dangled in front of Val's face and tickled his nose as
they feathered across it in the breeze of Daemon's trot. Val
laughed a most unaccustomed laugh, a deep rumble that rose through
his chest and snorted out his broken nose. A smile broadened his
already broad mouth.

"What a disgustingly cheerful sound,"
snapped Madryn, her tone cross, her lack of sleep evidently
catching up with her. "It sounds like Daemon when he's drinking
from a bucket."

Another snort of laughter echoed across the
fields to either side of them. They had left the forest a few
leagues back. The road, its snaking twisting turns behind it for a
time, shot straight as a board through sodden farmland, stubbly
with cut stalks of grain. Far in the distance, a faint line of
misty uneven bumps proclaimed a range of hills.

"Where are we going?" Val asked after a
time. His sense of well being still bubbled inside him as they
trotted far above the road; it was all he could do to keep from
climbing down to run alongside Daemon.

"To Karleon," came Madryn's reply, followed
by a most prodigious yawn. "There we must find a ship bound for
Lakazsh."

"Why?" asked Val agreeably, trying to stifle
the tiny thrill that raced up his spine at Madryn's use of the word
'we'.

"Because."

It was the only answer that he received to
most of his questions for the next several days, even after they
could see the gates to the bustling seaport of Karleon before them,
tall masts piercing the azure sky.

But he was satisfied.

For now.

***

"Does the one suspect the other?" asked the
soft dark voice.

A misty globe hovered in the air, suspended
by nothingness as it floated over a deep brass bowl carved with
arcane symbols. Deep inside the globe was a faint image of a great
dark horse, two riders clinging to its back.

"No. It is good, thus far. They are neither
of them suspicious, save perhaps the…no. Neither of them." The
answering voice was as cold as the starswept night sky that draped
the open window behind the globe. "When they reach Lakazsh, the
comedy will begin. And soon after, our vengeance will come at last,
dearest brother."

"Good," said the darkness.

"Very good indeed," agreed the cold.

A scream echoed up from the bowels of the
high stone tower, in the topmost room of which floated the globe.
The terrified sound ripped through the frigid air like a red-hot
saber…then died out in a long, shuddering wail.

A dark chuckle.

A cold laugh.

Karleon was a
shabby rabble of twisting streets and tumbledown buildings, all
clustered about the aromatic and ancient port. It had once been a
much more inviting city, from the looks of several of the old manor
houses that lined some of the broad streets away from the docks.
But time and lost trade had sapped its strength and energy,
leeching from the glad city most of its blood and booty. Now it
stood, alone, on the shores of the Bay of Imahz; a dying village
that now, instead of mighty vessels, catered to single merchant
ships or small fleets that stopped there for water and provender
before heading to richer ports to unload silks and swords, spices
and slaves.

Daemon snorted in complaint at the odorous
waves half a league from the town, far before they reached the
actual gates to the city. Madryn reached down to pat his
midnight-hued head.

"Tonight you will bathe in oats and fresh
hay," she promised the great beast.

Daemon shook his head, as if the thoughts of
such riches did not assuage the stink that rolled through the gates
still so far from them.

Val trudged along beside Daemon. The gritty
dust of the road rose in wavelike billows about him, settling into
the folds of his clothes and itching like a horde of angry fleas.
Or perhaps there were fleas, he thought. The inn where they'd spent
the previous night had not been near the quality of the Dancing
Toad. Val scratched his stubbly chin, his other hand loosely
clasped around a stirrup, and spat into the ruddy dust. He had been
amazed, eight days before, just after they'd left the Toad, when
Madryn had suggested that he give Daemon a rest by walking. Amazed,
not at her suggestion—after all, it was a logical one—but at the
fact that she took turns with him in the walking.