Darkspell

by Katharine Kerr

  “Oh, plenty of bards already have, but it hasn’t done any good.”

  Jill went down to the stables, where she’d been sleeping in an empty stall next to her horse. A groom helped her saddle up and told her how to get to Ynryc’s dun, about a day and a half’s ride away.

  “Now, be careful, lass,” he said. “There’s going to be as many warbands in the hills as fleas on a hound.”

  “I will. Can you spare me some oats for my horse, or will your tightfisted lord beat you for it?”

  “He’ll never know. You want to take good care of a horse like that one, you do.”

  As if he knew he was being praised, Sunrise tossed his head and made his silvery mane ripple over his golden neck. Rhodry had given her this Western Hunter, back when he’d been a lord himself and able to bestow valuable gifts on those around him, and unlike Marclew, he’d been as generous as a lord should be.

  Jill rode out without extending Marclew the courtesy of a farewell and galloped the first mile or so, just to put the dun far behind her. When she reached the broad, grassy banks of the River Lit, she slowed to a walk to let Sunrise cool down. Suddenly her gray gnome appeared on her saddle peak and perched there precariously.

  “We’re going to get Rhodry and then get back on the long road,” she told him. “Marclew is a swine.”

  Grinning, the gnome nodded agreement.

  “I hope he’s being treated well. Did you go take a look at him?”

  The gnome nodded a vigorous yes to both questions.

  “You know, little brother, there’s one thing I don’t understand. Here’s Rhodry with his elven blood, but he can’t see you.”

  The gnome picked his long blue teeth while he considered, then shrugged and disappeared. Apparently, he didn’t understand it, either.

  The road wound through low hills, sometimes leaving the river when the water ran through a deep canyon, then rejoining it in the valleys. To either side stretched mile after mile of scrubby pastureland, rolling through the hills. Here and there Jill saw herds of white cattle with rusty-red ears, tended by a cowherd with a pair of big gray-and-white hounds. Late in the day Jill had just come round a large bend in the river road when she saw ravens off to the right. Out of the tall grass they suddenly broke to fly and circle, only to settle to their feeding again.

  Jill assumed that the corpse was a dead calf, born too weak to live, or even maybe a cow who’d gotten ill and died before the cowherd found her, but all at once the gray gnome reappeared. He grabbed a rein with bony fingers, shook it hard, then pointed at the ravens.

  “Do you want me to take a look?”

  He nodded yes in great excitement.

  Jill tied Sunrise to a bush by the road, then followed the gnome over. At their approach the ravens flew up, squawking indignantly, and settled in a nearby tree to keep watch over their prize. In the tall grass lay the carcass of a horse, still carrying saddle and bridle, the leather straps cutting deep into the swollen flesh. Although she circled round it, the birds had eaten so much that she couldn’t tell how the horse had died. The saddle and bridle bothered her. If a horse belonging to a warband had merely broken a leg, the men would have taken the gear after they put the poor beast out of its misery.

  Holding her breath, she moved in a little closer. Silver and gems winked and gleamed on the bridle.

  “By every god and his wife! Who would have left gear like that behind?”

  The gnome, however, wasn’t listening to her. He was rooting round in the grass, parting it with both hands to peer through it, his skinny little face screwed up in concentration. As Jill watched him, she realized that someone else had searched the area, because the grass was trampled and torn a good ways round the horse. When she walked toward the gnome, a wink of gold caught her eye. She picked up an arm bracelet, a semicylinder of pure gold, worked all over in an elaborate pattern of spirals and rosettes. Although she’d never seen anyone wear this sort of jewelry, she’d heard tales in which the great warriors of the Dawntime did. It had to be some family heirloom passed down for centuries, and doubtless worth twenty times the weight of its gold. Weight—she hefted the bracelet in her hand. No doubt about it, it seemed to weigh next to nothing at all, even though it looked like a solid mass of gold.

  “Here, is this what you’re looking for?”

  His eyes narrowed in confusion, the gnome came over. He touched the bracelet with one finger, sniffed it with his long nose, then suddenly smiled and did a little jig of victory.

  “Well and good, then. We’ll take it along.”

  The gnome nodded and clapped its hands.

  “But why is it so light? This is really strange. It feels more like wood than gold.”

  The gnome looked puzzled, shrugged, and disappeared.

  As Jill wrapped the arm bracelet in her spare socks and put it in her saddlebags, she was wondering who had killed the horse and what had happened to its rider. She should probably try to get the bridle off, she decided, if she could bear the stench. One of the local lords should be able to identify such a fancy piece of gear if she brought it in, and perhaps there’d be a reward.

  All at once she felt a dweomer-warning, a cold shudder down her back as if someone had stroked it with a clammy hand. Something dangerous was at work here, something far beyond her understanding, but she could smell it as clearly as she could smell the dead horse. She decided against trying to cut the bridle free, mounted up, and rode out fast. That afternoon she rode on a good long ways before she made camp, and she barely slept that night, drowsing between sleep and keeping watch.

  That same night Nevyn was staying in a small inn about a hundred miles west. For the fortnight past he’d been tracking down Camdel, ever since one of the spirits who vivified the Great Stone of the West had come to tell him of the theft. Since he rarely slept more than four hours a night, he was sitting up late, brooding over this appalling theft, when Jill’s gray gnome appeared in front of him.

  “Well, good eve, little brother. Is Jill close by?”

  The gnome shook his head no, then danced round, grinning from ear to ear.

  “What’s this? Good news of some sort?”

  It nodded yes, then did an elaborate pantomime, using its hands to describe some small round thing and staring into the shape as if it were scrying.

  “Oh, ye gods! Do you mean the Great Stone of the West?”

  It nodded agreement, then pantomimed searching for something and finding it.

  “You’ve found it? Oh, here, do you mean Jill’s got it?”

  The gnome nodded yes again. For a brief moment Nevyn felt sick with terror.

  “Do you realize this means she’s in terrible danger? Those men who stole it want the thing bad enough to kill to get it.”

  Its mouth opened wide, and it actually made a little whimper of sound, a difficult thing for one of the Wildfolk to do.

  “You get back to her. At the first sign of danger, come tell me, do you hear?”

  The gnome nodded, then disappeared. In something as close to panic as his disciplined mind could get, Nevyn turned to the charcoal brazier standing in the corner of the chamber. At a wave of his hand the Wildfolk of Fire set the coals to glowing. Nevyn stared into them and thought of Jill.

  Almost immediately he saw her, keeping a lonely camp by a riverside amid rolling hills. Although she was asleep, she was sitting up with her back to a tree, and her sword was clasped in her hand. At least she seemed to realize that she was in danger, but he knew that the sword would do her little good against this kind of enemy. And where by all the gods was Rhodry? Irritably he switched his thoughts and saw the lad, lying on his blankets on the floor of a badly overcrowded barracks. All of the men packed in there looked sullen and shamed. Nevyn widened the focus, made his mind walk through the barracks door, and saw armed men on guard outside. So Rhodry had been captured while riding in some war or other. Jill was out on the road alone.

  Nevyn swore so vilely that he nearly lost the vision, but he recaptur
ed it and sent his mind back to Jill. What counted now was where she was. Using her camp as a starting point, he enlarged the vision and circled round in ever-widening sweeps until he saw enough to know that she was in the central part of Yr Auddglyn. He broke the vision and resumed his restless pacing while he made plans. He had to travel fast. He would buy a second horse, he decided, because he could make more miles a day if he switched his weight between two mounts.

  “I’ve got to reach her in time,” he said aloud. “And by every god I swear I will, even if I have to founder every horse I get my hands on.”

  Yet his fear swelled, because the dark master behind the theft had to be closer to her than he was. He went back to the brazier and took up a watch over her through the fire.

  The mirror lay upon a cloth of black velvet, embroidered with reversed pentagrams, that evil symbol of those who would tear down the very order of nature. Two candles stood to either side, their light caught and focused in the center of the curved surface. Alastyr knelt over it, bracing himself with his hands and wishing that he had a proper table. Since he had never actually seen the Great Stone of the West, he couldn’t scry for it in the normal, easy manner. He took a deep breath and called on the evil names of the Lords of Husks and Rinds. At the names he felt spirits gather, but just beyond his mental reach.

  “Show me the stone,” he hissed.

  In the center of the mirror shadowy shapes came and went, but nothing resolved itself into a clear image. No matter how hard he cursed the spirits, they fled from him, as they’d been doing all day.

  “We need blood,” Alastyr said, looking up.

  Sarcyn smiled and went to the corner of the kitchen, where Camdel sat crouched in terror. When Sarcyn hauled him to his feet, he began to whimper, but the apprentice slapped him into silence.

  “You’re not going to die,” Sarcyn said. “You might even like this. You’re coming to see how well pain and pleasure blend, aren’t you, my fine lord?”

  Slack-mouthed, Camdel half leaned against Sarcyn as the apprentice dragged him to the mirror cloth. Hobbling and shuffling, Gan came up with the thin-bladed ritual knife. Sarcyn stood behind Camdel and began to fondle him. Chanting, Alastyr summoned those spirits that he had trained to do his will. Three black, twisted gnomes and a sprite with a huge mouth of blood-red teeth materialized in front of him.

  Gan slashed the back of Camdel’s hand. The lord moaned, but he leaned back into Sarcyn’s embrace as the blood dripped down. The deformed Wildfolk clustered round, catching the drops on their tongues. Although they would get no nourishment from the blood itself, they were soaking up the raw magnetism that both the blood and Camdel’s state of sexual arousal were exuding. Slowly the shallow wound stanched. The gnomes stretched clawed hands out to Alastyr.

  “No more until you show me the stone. Then more.”

  The spirits dematerialized. Although Camdel was trembling, close to his climax, Sarcyn took his hand away.

  “Later,” he whispered in his pet’s ear. “Later we’ll work the ritual again. You’ll end up liking that—in spite of yourself.”

  Camdel looked at him, his face torn between lust and loathing. Alastyr ignored them and knelt down by the mirror again.

  “Show me the stone!”

  In the light-struck mirror clouds formed, swirled, and turned slowly to darkness. Smiling, he leaned closer as the darkness resolved itself into solid shapes: hills under the night sky, a horse standing at tether near a tree. Pacing back and forth under the tree was a lad with a sword in hand. Not a lad—it was Jill, the warrior-lass who’d interfered with his plans the year before.

  “The stone,” he whispered. “Where is the stone?”

  The vision swooped down and focused on her saddlebags.

  “Now, show me exactly where she is.”

  The vision flickered, then began to expand, to swoop out—and suddenly vanished in a blaze of white light. Half-blinded, Alastyr nearly fell forward onto the mirror as the Wildfolk materialized in the room. From the way they writhed on the floor in front of him, he could guess that they’d been banished by force. A person with great dweomer-power was watching over the lass, then, and he could guess who that someone must be.

  “The Master of the Aethyr,” he whispered.

  Nodding, the gnomes agreed with him, then disappeared. Alastyr sat back on his heels and considered Sarcyn, who stood watching with his usual stone face.

  “The Master of the Aethyr,” the apprentice said. “Are we running back to Bardek?”

  Old Gan gurgled and moaned.

  “We’re not,” Alastyr snarled. “I’ve worked too long for this.”

  Years had he worked—finding informants, laying his snares, then expending such a flood of power upon ensorcelling Camdel and maintaining the ensorcellment that he needed every drop of magnetic force that he could suck from his cowering victim. He refused to run again, not until he had the stone in his hands. Besides, he’d seen Jill in the flesh last summer, when she and her famous father had been sitting in an Eldidd tavern. At the time he’d thought that sight of her was merely a piece of luck, but now he was sure that the Lords of Husks and Rinds had guided him. Since he’d seen her, he could scry her out normally, and Nevyn would have no way of detecting him. He got up, stretching his painful joints.

  “I’ve seen who’s carrying it,” he said. “And we should be able to kill her easily.”

  Jill woke in the morning, feeling stiff and sore, to find the sun risen well over the horizon. She got up fast, stretching and cursing at her sluggishness. At least Sunrise had finished his morning graze. She gave him a nose bag of oats, then ate her bread and cheese standing up. Although it was a beautiful sunny day, she felt as cold as if she were about to take a fever. She packed up her few possessions in a hurry, and Sunrise had barely nibbled the last oat before they were on their way.

  That morning her road took her away from the river. As she jogged along, the dark line of mountains that separated Yr Auddglyn from the province of Cwm Pecl loomed closer and closer, like clouds on the horizon. Toward noon she was trotting through a small valley when she saw dust on the road ahead. As the dust resolved itself into six armed men, she loosened her sword in her scabbard, but when they met, the riders hailed her with a friendly wave.

  “Hold a moment, lad,” the leader said. “Are you riding a message from Lord Marclew by any chance?”

  “I’m not, but I’m going to Lord Ynryc’s dun, sure enough. That silver dagger he’s holding for ransom is my man.”

  The riders leaned forward in their saddles and stared at her.

  “And isn’t that an evil Wyrd to fall upon such a pretty lass, to have a silver dagger for a husband!” the leader said, but with a pleasant smile. “Won’t old Marclew ransom him for you?”

  “Will hell turn warm and grow flowers? I’ve come to haggle with your lord myself. Will you let me pass by?”

  “Ah, we’ll escort you back. You’ll find our lord a good sight more generous than Marclew, but I’ll warn you: he’s short up for coin right now.”

  Although Jill stayed on her guard at first, the six of them treated her gallantly, commiserating with her on her difficult situation. The war had yet to reach the stage when men rape as casually as they kill. She had to admit to herself, too, that she was glad of the armed guard, even though she couldn’t say why she knew that she needed one.

  Another four miles on, Ynryc’s dun perched at the crest of a hill. Behind the walls rose a massive stone broch almost as wide as it was high, a thing Jill had never seen before, and the usual collection of huts and sheds. Horses, tied up outside for want of enough stables, filled the cobbled ward. At the edge of the herd Jill saw Rhodry’s blood-bay warhorse, haltered off to one side as if a silver dagger’s horse shared his shame.

  One of Jill’s impromptu guards, a stocky blond named Arddyr, took her into the great hall, as crowded as a town on market day. Among extra tables and piles of bedrolls, nearly two hundred warriors stood or sat, drinking ale a
nd talking over the fighting to come. At the table of honor four men in the plaid brigga of the noble-born sat studying a parchment map. When Jill followed Arddyr over, a paunchy, grizzled lord turned their way.

  “Lord Ynryc?” Arddyr said. “May this lass trouble you for a moment? Do you remember Rhodry, the silver dagger? This is his wife, and Marclew’s refusing to ransom him for her.”

  “The old pig’s turd!” Ynryc turned to another lord. “Well, Maryl, I’ve won our wager and you owe me a silver piece.”

  “So I do. My faith that Marclew might have a scrap of honor left has just cost me dear. But here, lass, I’ve never heard of a silver dagger with a wife before.”

  “Doubtless I’m the only lass in the kingdom stupid enough to ride off with one, my lord, but he means the world to me. I don’t have five silver pieces, but I’ll give you every copper I’ve got to have him back.”

  Ynryc hesitated, chewing on the edge of his mustache, then shrugged.

  “A copper as a token,” he said. “And naught more.”

  “If I were a bard, my lord, I’d praise your name as it deserves in the best verse I could sing.”

  In some little while, Arddyr led in Rhodry, who was carrying his saddlebags slung over one shoulder and his bedroll tucked under his arm. He dropped his gear onto the floor and knelt at the lord’s feet. When Jill handed over the token copper, Ynryc gave Rhodry back his sword and bade him rise.

  “You’re a lucky man to have a brave woman like this,” Ynryc said. “Promise me you’ll never ride against me in this war.”

  “With all my heart,” Rhodry said. “Do you think I’m stupid enough to ride for Marclew again?”

  All the lords laughed aloud.

  Since Ynryc was as generous as a lord should be, he let Jill and Rhodry eat among his servants that night and gave them shelter in his dun. After much searching through the crowded fort, a servant found them a place to sleep in a storage shed. Among strings of onions and barrels of ale Jill spread out their blankets while Rhodry held his sword up to the lantern light and examined every inch of it.