In Os, it was said that the palace of Eusiron was a labyrinth of stone and ice, cold all year round, full of wild animals and terrifying illusions. Having lived here, Lorth knew that talk was tripe. The halls of the lower reaches held alcoves, terraces and high spaces full of trees, plants, pools and falls. Tapestries, ivies and trees adorned the passages. The air smelled of roots and moldy leaves. Occasionally, he heard the sound of a scurrying animal or the hoot of an owl.
Huge terraces faced the southern sky, where the farmers planted food and herbs as the seasons allowed. The palace took care of its own; its inhabitants grew or raised most everything they needed here, though neighboring villages and farms offered them food and supplies in return for protection, arms training, or rare and bountiful seeds, plants and oils made from herbs and barks into scents, potions and medicines. The Mistress of Eusiron had great skill with such things. She also knew beasts and birds, and could heal a sick cow, bring game to a barren ridge or fishes to a pond, call home a lost sheep or deliver a breach-birth foal. These things she taught to her women, among other, more mysterious things. Her priestesses traveled far and wide to help those in need.
Soon Lorth’s burning thighs told him they were going high into the palace, towards the center. The company passed very few people, most of them dressed in robes. Every one of them bowed or in some way acknowledged the Raven as he passed.
As Lorth walked in the grim cluster of the High Guard, a sensation gathered around him, a high vibration energy pulsing from the walls. It reminded him of something Efar had once said as he described the layout of the palace. The blademaster had tilted his face back and smiled as if recalling the arms of a lover. The life force of the twelve-sided crystal sings in the walls.
“You are taking me to the Waeltower?” Lorth said abruptly.
The wizard turned his head at the word, and kept walking.
“I didn’t kill any wizards,” Lorth said. I was raised by one, he did not add, grief coiling around his heart.
A heavy hand landed on his shoulder and spun him around. “I told you to shut up,” Cael growled, his blue eyes flashing.
Lorth’s patience snapped like a bone. He slammed the red-haired warrior in the chest hard enough to knock him back into the arms of the man behind him. The passage erupted as the guardsmen jumped into action. Lorth breathed a word and turned fluid, striking with bloody precision anything that came at him. The Shade of Alarm sang in his veins.
No chance to fear.
It didn’t last long. The warriors moved back as the wizard intervened with a shout that shook the floor and caused dust to rattle from the ceiling. The command drove Lorth to his knees; tension rose as the space between the heavens and the earth drew apart like the string of a mighty bow. It snapped across Lorth’s body and hurled him over the floor, slamming him into the wall.
He rolled over with a groan, and opened his eyes to the points of six blades held by the flushed, angry guardsmen, bruised and bloodied by his hands. The bloody nose on the hothead who had provoked him alone was worth it.
“Wolf can fight,” one of them said.
The Raven stepped through the ring of swords, gazing down like some harbinger of woe. “You insist on testing my mettle. For somebody packing half the Eye under his belt, you’re amazingly naive. As I will not have you working the inner space under questioning, I’m going to bind your powers.”
At the sound of those words, the hunter’s life force withered and flowed into his bowels like something dead rolling into a storm drain. Icaros had often warned him about the dangers of wielding magic without a proper sense for the Old One’s balance. Most must be taught this, he had said. Others know it instinctively. You are such a one—but don’t lose your wits, boy, lest the Destroyer bind your powers!
At the time, Lorth had thought that was a wives’ tale. Evidently not.
“Get him up,” the wizard said.
Cael grasped Lorth by his cloak and hauled him to his feet, none too gently. His cheeks were ruddy. “Just give us a reason, you bastard.”
They shoved him into the corridor. Bastard, indeed. He gazed at the floor under his boots and considered who he was. Not a wizard—he looked up at the implacable Eye staring out from the Raven’s back—no, not that. But magic was so much a part of him that he would be nothing without it.
I am alone.
His weapons, gold, horse, home, all gone. Icaros’s teachings were all he had left, now, and losing them was beyond comprehension. They might as well execute him.
Chapter 7
Shade of Balance: The Old One knows.
Remember the Shade of Blood.
As he shuffled amidst his armed and angry escort, Lorth glowered in response to the apparition and thought, Asshole. So much good the Rede did him now.
The company ascended a long flight of steps and entered a hall with tall windows. Arcane symbols covered the stone, and the passage breathed power and light, even in the dimness. They stopped before a low door carved with delicate, interlacing knots in the shapes of serpents and trees. A crystal star glittered in the center. The wizard held his hand before it and spoke a word, and the door opened with a faint creak that echoed into a high place.
All I wanted was a gods-forsaken fire, Lorth thought. So much to ask?
His belly knotted up with the desperation of a caged beast as they stepped into the Waeltower of Eusiron. The tall chamber had a crystalline ceiling carved into a twelve-rayed star, and windows with panes of multi-colored glass set into the shapes of ivy and vines. The floor contained an inlaid pentacle across its diameter, with the Eye in the center. Above the ceiling, concentric to it, towered a sapphire spire with twelve sides; this was visible from other parts of the palace grounds.
Just as Lorth began to wonder why they would come here to strip him of his identity, the wizard walked across the floor to a dark, low door on the north side. He took the torch from the man who held it, and uttered a word that sounded like a groan. As the door screeched open, the guardsmen spread out and stood on either side.
Lorth followed the wizard down a cramped, hoary stairwell that curved down, and down, spiraling around the chamber above and into the depths of the mountain. Lorth had lost all sense of himself—let alone the wits to ask where they were going—when they finally emerged into a chamber. In the center lay a pool, still and black as an onyx flagstone. It smelled of dittany and wild endive, darkness and spring, the womb, graves and hollow places in the earth.
Lorth’s heart began to pound. He backed up a step, breathing heavily, staring at the pool. It cast no reflections.
The wizard put the torch in a sconce, then strode around the pool and stood like an executioner. His expression held a weird blend of pitilessness and curiosity. “Approach.”
Lorth couldn’t move. Grief swelled in his heart as tears crashed against a towering wall of refusal. His spider bite burned like a conflagration as the source of his power rose up from an invisible depth and howled to the sun with pain. He shook his head. “I will not.”
“It won’t harm you. When you gaze into the pool, I’ll invoke Maern. She will speak and her words will separate you from the structures in your mind where you use magic. Only she can do this. Only she knows.”
The Old One knows. A storm of blackbirds, blood and snow raged around him.
The wizard stepped closer, his eyes glittering. “I am a Master of the Eye and a High Priest of Maern. I am bound to guard the balance. You are wielding high wizardry outside the boundaries of the Eye, and I can’t allow you to do that.”
“I’m not a wizard.” I am alone.
“You don’t have a choice. Step up to the pool.”
“Sod off, you son of a bitch.” Lorth stepped back again as a chasm yawned in his heart, an impossible rift between love and light, hollow and mountain, sun and sky. You have the eyes of the Old One! Icaros laughed, spreading his arms for an embrace. Lorth dropped to his knees as a tear slipped down his cheek. I am alone.
As the R
aven started to speak, the chamber went dark and the waters swirled. From beneath Lorth’s mind, a voice rose up in his throat and cried, “Lea Maern silin moth!” Water roared from the pool and slammed into him, knocking him down. The wizard shouted. Lorth rolled over, then jumped back against the wall as the Destroyer rose out of the water in the shape of a serpent, black and without eyes, yet seeing everything. She spoke in the Dark Tongue, the oldest language, the sound of formlessness and that which fed the roots of Aenspeak. The air smelled like the sea rotting on a hot, humid shore.
Then he felt another presence. A black-cloaked figure entered the chamber, flooding it with light. The serpent screamed. A woman cried something in the Dark Tongue that caused the beast to curl in upon itself and crash into the pool. Lorth’s face hit the floor as darkness fell.
“You tried to bind him?” the woman said.
“He is—” the wizard started.
“Did you give him motherblack? He’s a web, you imbecile!”
Lorth’s consciousness flickered out.
~ * ~
The chirruping of birds filled the air, warm and fragrant with the scent of fresh-tilled soil and lilac blooms. Bright clouds moved slowly across the sky filled with boughs of glimmering leaves, yellow-green and fresh to the wind. The earth felt cool against his bare feet.
A shadow passed over the sun. He walked slowly, with no thought or emotion, to the garden. She lay there, in a white dress. Wind ruffled the hem and caressed the tendrils of her hair, which she had pulled back into a braid and tied with a snapped bowstring that had once been his father’s.
“Mother?”
Her face was serene, as if she were sleeping. Her gardening tools lay in disarray near her hands. There was a trowel pressed into the dirt near her breast.
“Mother.” He knelt, touched her. She didn’t move.
Wolf tracks dented the soil. His tracks. He trotted in a smooth gait into the forest. The others awaited him there, gold and yellow eyes staring. They smelled of meat, bones and death. The talons of winter dug into his heart; nothing existed now but cold, ice and snow outside the caves and hollows warmed by the bodies of his kind.
The pack ran. He ran with them. He tossed his head, stopped, and scratched his neck with his back paw. It hurt, there. The pain wouldn’t go away and he couldn’t lick it. He ran, stumbled, fell, rose, ran again until at last he stopped and, with great wrenching resignation, sank slowly into the frozen ground.
Grief broke open like a howling gale splintering everything in its path. “Lea Maern silin moth!” His cry shook the ground, ravaged the wood and blew the snow in a spiral explosion of force that came down from an unseen, eternal sky. It released the power he had buried beneath the maple tree that turned three colors in autumn.
I am alone.
He yelped and splayed his paws into the snow under the weight of a huge wolf. He couldn’t fight off the attack. The wolf closed its teeth on his throat, tearing it.
Death is life.
He swam upwards with all his might, through thick black mud. Something suffocated him.
Lorth opened his eyes and cried, “Icaros!” He flailed his arms to throw off the weight pinning him down.
“Ho!” said a voice. “Easy. It’s all right.”
Lorth’s eyes focused on the black-haired Raven leaning over him. The wizard held his shoulders to keep him from moving.
“Let him go,” said a woman by his side. The sound of her voice, or the force of her presence, brought Lorth’s attention to bear. She had pale gray eyes with flecks of gold around the edges, and wild, graying dark hair. “I am the Mistress of Eusiron.” The way she tilted her head brought out something familiar in her features. “You are in the Hall of Light.”
He lay in a bed, in a small room with dark wooden arches in the ceiling. Ivy grew along the wood, and around the stone sills of small windows with crosshatched panes. The air smelled of herbs and soup. Blankets covered his body, and feathers and soft linens supported him. He wondered why they had brought him here, to the bright chambers where sick or wounded came for healing, and not to his cell.
He plucked away the covers to find himself mostly naked, with fresh dressings on his wounds. The pain in the cut on his chest had subsided—but the throb in his spider scar hadn’t. He closed his eyes with a long exhale. One more thing to explain...
He heard a voice nearby, across the room. A door opened. “He’s awake,” the wizard called out. “Go find the High Commander.”
Lorth worked to recall who commanded the armies here, but his thoughts scattered as the Mistress slid a hand under his head. “There now, have some of this.” She gently pressed a cup to his lips, and helped him to drink. It was warm, and somewhat bitter. He gulped down several sips before she let his head back onto the pillow.
“To what do I owe this?” he asked.
The wizard approached the bed and folded his arms over his chest. “You aren’t out of trouble yet.”
The Mistress’s expression turned grave. “No, you have some healing to do.”
Lorth lifted his nightshirt and looked at his sword cuts. “Those feel better.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
The Raven said, “Don’t slip into the dark. We have questions.”
The Mistress smiled faintly. “This is Eaglin, Raven of Eusiron, son of the Aenmos and High Dark to the Priesthood of Maern.”
Eaglin. The Mistress’s son. Now, Lorth understood: Eaglin was just a boy, when he had trained here. He had lived in the east at the time, in Eyrie, the seat of the Keepers of the Eye; but everyone knew his father was none other than Ealiron himself, the Aenmos, creator of the world. When Lorth had lived in Os, he once heard that Ealiron’s mortal son had the passion and temper of the god who fathered him: unpredictable, easily misunderstood—and a very bad man to cross. A bit late for that advice.
The door creaked open, and a man put his head in. “Master,” he said. “A moment.”
Eaglin nodded and left the room.
As the hunter lay beneath the Mistress’s care, it occurred to him that his summons would finally be revealed. He watched her rise and move to the hearth with a tomboyish lift in her stride. Beneath the clinging silk of her cloak, she was tall, lean and shapely. He couldn’t tell her age, and the way she moved made it irrelevant. Her manner baffled him; purposeful yet elusive, strong yet lithe, complex yet innocent.
Voices rang out in the hall. Eaglin returned with an older man whom Lorth recognized from his training here as a younger man. Wiry as a deerhound, with thin gray hair and narrow slate-gray eyes, he wore a tunic of deep blue stitched with the Eusiron standard.
“Morfaen, High Commander of the Eusiron Force,” Eaglin said.
Lorth’s earlier calm withered in his solar plexus. When he had served here, Morfaen held second in command. But even then, the commander was reputed to be the most dreadful Questioner in Eusiron’s history. He could get information from a stone.
Lorth pushed himself up to sit against the headboard. Were they going to question him here? Now? He looked again at the Mistress. She had settled onto the floor by the hearth, her knees up and her arms draped over them, like a boy, a pose that both charmed and rattled him. As her gaze touched his, something changed. The innocence was gone.
Thus abandoned, he returned his attention to the men by the bed. Eaglin grabbed the chair his mother had been sitting in, forcing Lorth to look past him to see her, should he dare.
Morfaen stood at the foot of the bed like something from a nightmare. He gazed at Lorth strangely. “Where are you from?”
I have no place.
Lorth decided it was time to abandon the Rede and save what was left of his skin. The Mistress may have rescued him from a binding, but he had to concede the possibility that he would never know why, and he doubted she would get involved in this beyond making sure everyone played nice—and even that was questionable.
“I was born northeast of here,” Lorth replied. “Near the valley of Graynot
ch, east of the river Asur.”
Morfaen nodded. “I knew your father.”
“I didn’t.”
“They called him Fin,” the Mistress said. “You look very much like him.”
Lorth studied his hands. At seven summers, Icaros told him his father had died on the Archer Falls. He had always wondered how the old wizard knew.
As if seeing his thoughts, Eaglin said, “Icaros was once a Keeper of the Eye. Order of Raven. Are you aware of this?”
The hunter glanced up. “I was not,” he said truthfully.
“Few people knew,” Eaglin said. “He came here many years ago, and put away his cloak to live another life.” He looked at his mother, who sat against the hearth with her eyes closed. “When I was a child, my father told me when Icaros left the Order of Raven, a boy filled the void in his heart.”
“Lorth,” the Mistress said.
“I didn’t kill him,” the hunter asserted.
“I found a dead spider on his hearth,” Eaglin returned, settling his gaze on Lorth’s neck. “A rastric, no less, found only in the south of Tarth.”
Rastric. The spider has a name. Lorth rolled his head to release the pain as he recalled the stench of Tarth he had felt when he entered Icaros’s house and cast his mind out for impressions. In collusion with the Keepers, the Tarthians in Os must have discovered who he was. He had certainly left enough evidence around. They could have questioned the crew on the Slippery Elm, for all that. But how had they known Icaros raised him?
“Where did you get that bite?” Morfaen asked.
Lorth ignored him. “I received a summons in Tarth that bade me to return to Ostarin. I intended to journey to Eusiron after I saw Icaros.”
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