by Julian May
It was cleverly made. A fat waxen stub was affixed to the wall of the tankard. Tiny vent holes poked into the base kept the flame burning when the tankard’s hinged lid was shut. If the lid was more or less held open by a thumb, a beam shone out. The only problem with the thing was that a section of the handle tended to get uncomfortably hot after a while; he’d wrapped it with a strip of leather, but he still had to watch how he gripped it.
Snudge crept down the constricted spiral stairway and paused for a moment to look through a peephole into the library. The three Companions were dicing and drinking. Count Sividian cursed his luck while the two younger lords cackled and jeered. The four armigers were out of eyeshot. Snudge prayed that none of them had discovered the library’s own door into the secret passage, and continued down.
He had a fair distance to go. Castle Vanguard was an enormous place, almost oblong in shape, with a tower at each corner and two more sited midway along the extensive northern and southern wings. The repository tower lay across the ward from the kitchen tower, which overlooked the stable area as well as the brewing and baking buildings. In order to reach the stables unseen, he’d have to traverse half the castle’s perimeter, moving through the south wing past the great hall and the southwest tower, then beyond the solar, the west gatehouse, and the chapel, into the northwest tower. From there he would enter the massive north wing, in which the kitchen tower was emplaced. When he emerged at the base of that tower, he’d be forced to abandon the safety of the secret passages and make his way openly to the stables. He was unable to use his talent to hide and simultaneously follow the watcher’s trace.
He set out, moving quickly enough through the familiar passages, treading in his own dusty footprints (and those of Stergos and the prince), pausing only for a moment to peep into the solar, where he was amazed to see his royal master pouring wine like a pageboy. Then he came into places he had never been, and several times made wrong turnings. There were no more footprints now save those of the rats. He heard rustling noises now and again, but never caught sight of the creatures.
Inside the gatehouse wall he abruptly came to a dead end in a nook with small unglazed loopholes, full of spiderwebs and bird droppings. The only egress led outside onto a parapet where machicolations fronted the west barbican, above the top of the massive main gate. He cracked the door open and peered cautiously out, then withdrew with a curse. He dared not risk it. It was still bright twilight. Both the northwest and southwest towers were manned by guards, and one or more of the men would be certain to see him crossing. He couldn’t muddle the minds of several people well enough to hide himself unless it was full dark. But if he waited until then, the council of war might come to an end and the windwatcher cut off his surveillance.
He nearly gave it up, but almost by accident he pressed the proper stone in the mold-encrusted wall. A slab swung up, and he saw a black tunnel barely large enough for a man to worm through. Dust lay two fingers deep inside.
“Codders!” he whispered in disgust. It looked as though no one had gone that way for a hundred years. Even though he had not yet reached his full growth, he was a well-built youth with broad shoulders. What if he ended up wedged in there like a cork in a bloody bunghole?
Had to try.
A footman, even one serving a prince, owned no such luxury as a kerchief. So he used his small dagger to cut out the fustian lining of his black livery jerkin and wrapped that around his mouth and nose. Then, pushing the lantern ahead of him, he started to wriggle through. His eyes watered fiercely, and as the dust thickened in the meager air he feared he would smother. He pressed on, coming at last to another stone slab. It pivoted easily. He thrust his body through the opening and fell onto the floor of yet another passage, letting loose a huge sneeze. The lantern clattered as he dropped it and its candle went out.
“Shite!” he moaned, and lay still in the dark, first listening and then casting about with his talent to determine whether he had been overheard. When nothing happened he struggled to his feet and felt along the wall until he found one of the interior peepholes. He could see nothing through it, but smelled candle-wax and incense. A chapel storage room, no doubt, windowless and deserted.
He giggled. “Lucky again, Snudge!” Found the lantern, rekindled it with his talent, dusted himself down as well as he could, and started off.
Suppertime for the stablehands: chunks of black bread, hot mutton pottage thick with barley and onions and carrots, cannikins of strong brown Vanguard ale, famous in the north country. The duke’s men and the grooms and horseknaves of the visiting nobles were gathered together around a flaming brazier in the small arcade between the smithy and the saddlery, cursing the kitchenboys for ladling portions deemed too small and loudly demanding more ale when the first barrel was emptied.
Snudge dodged past that well-lit area into a shadowed corridor beside the granary and hay-store, where he came upon a stack of iron-bound wooden buckets. He had turned his mutilated jerkin inside out to hide the prince’s silver stallion blazon, and no one would think to question a scruffy waterbearer wandering about. He took a bucket and slouched openly to the spring-shelter out in the midst of the ward, dipped up a small amount of water from the basin, and headed into the area of the stables where common-born visitors were lodged at night. It was there that he believed the windwatcher was lurking. Almost immediately he met two head grooms in Marley livery, who eyed him with disdain.
“You, knave!” called one of them. “Where do the upper servants dine?”
Snudge bobbed his head humbly. “In the kitchens, messire. Straight past the smithy yard and to your left, within the middle tower.”
They strode off without another word, leaving Snudge with his heart pounding. He slipped into an alcove hung with coils of rope, put down the bucket, and closed his eyes to search closely.
Perhaps down that corridor to the right… His mind’s eye could perceive no human form in any of the chambers, but there seemed to be a strange blur among the packsacks and fardels and other baggage belonging to some lord’s train. The boy concentrated his oversight on the mundane objects near the blur. The room was dark, but he was finally able to make out a heraldic device stamped on a small leather coffer—a lymphad with the sail furled and oars over the side, flying a death’s-head flag: the arms of House Skellhaven.
Ha! Had the spy had come in from the east coast, with or without the knowledge of the piratical viscount?
An idea suggested itself. Since there was small likelihood that the watcher would recognize his own talent—not even Vra-Kilian, the Royal Alchymist, had managed to do that—Snudge decided to blunder into the room like an oafish servitor and hope for the best. The water provided a suitable excuse. Perhaps the spy would be so engrossed in his work that he wouldn’t even notice an intruder.
Snudge ignited his improvised dark-lantern, which he had hung from his belt like an ordinary tankard, and hoisted the bucket. The first dormitorium, with its door wide open, was untenanted. So was the second. The third chamber was closed but not locked, and when Snudge opened the door and held high the lantern he stopped short in astonishment.
“Futter me blind!” he whispered, almost letting the bucket fall to the floor.
At the far end of the dark, shuttered room, which was strewn with baggage, the wavering shadow of a human form was dimly visible on the wall.
A shadow without a body to project it.
Open-mouthed, Snudge advanced a few steps, sweeping the lantern from side to side. The movement of the light caused the shadow to change shape. “Who’s there?” he cried, without thinking.
“Why, it’s only me, laddie—Jasiko, a man of Lord Skellhaven’s! Who might you be?” The voice was like dry oak leaves crushed underfoot.
The windwatcher had appeared in the blink of an eye, and Snudge was aware of an insistent mental whisper telling him he had only imagined the bodiless shadow. The magicker was mind-mashing him!
He was a wiry little old fellow bald as an egg, wit
h a deeply lined face, as though he had experienced great pain. He wore the dirty white pantaloons, waxed leather jacket, and folded high boots of a sailor. Around his neck hung a short gold chain with a square stone pendant that glowed as faintly as foxfire. The sorcerer’s eyes were golden-orange, like an eagle-owl’s, and the boy had never seen their like in a human head. Within them shone the glint of talent, the same fugitive spark perceptible to him in the gaze of anyone possessed of arcane ability: easy to discern in Stergos and the other alchymists and windvoices of his acquaintance, more elusive but nonetheless a tell-tale sign in the eyes of certain others, such as Prince Heritor Conrig Wincantor.
“I’m… Oddie, the scullion,” Snudge said.
“What do you want?”
The boy lifted the bucket. “Here’s w-water for washing. I’ll just put it here and go.”
The spy started toward Snudge, an ingratiating smile spreading his furrowed lips. His teeth were decayed brown stumps. The pupils of his amazing eyes expanded until all trace of their fiery color had been obliterated by blackness.
“Bide a moment, lad. I’ll take the bucket.” He held out a hand, striding quickly through the scattered chests and packs of Skellhaven’s retainers.
Snudge felt a terrifying splinter of ice prick his throat. He cried, “Oh!”
“Don’t be afraid.” The sorcerer spoke in a wheedling tone. His eyes had become gleaming jet beads, enormous and compelling. Magic stiffened Snudge’s tongue and rendered him mute. He felt his fingers freeze. A wave of cold began creeping up his arms. His feet tingled painfully, then lost feeling and seemed rooted to the floor. Snudge’s mind screamed:
Damn you! You won’t! You won’t do that to me!
He drew arcane power from somewhere, fending off frigid paralysis, and flung the iron-bound bucket overhand, dealing the spy a glancing blow on the side of his head. The man blinked, breaking the spell of encroaching ice for a moment, but kept coming. The fatal cold took hold of Snudge again, and he hit his adversary in the face with the hot lantern, which promptly went out. The sorcerer tottered and crashed over backwards onto the wet, slippery stones, visible only because of the faint gleam of his amulet. Snudge leapt on top of him, using his fists. Neither of them uttered a sound.
The small man struggled like a mad thing in the dark, exerting uncanny strength. Straddling his adversary’s torso, Snudge felt sinewy fingers seize his neck. Thumbs with nails like steel pincers dug in on each side of his voicebox, bringing pain and roaring dizziness and a red fog pulsing behind his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. His pummeling fists had no effect. He fumbled desperately at his waist, found his little dagger, and grasped it in both hands as he felt death closing in on him. Time for one strike—only one—and instinct or something else taught him the appropriate place to drive in the blade, the sure route to the sorcerer’s heart. He knew how to thrust up under the breastbone, bury the dagger to its hilt, and twist…
Then came an abrupt relaxation of those claw-like hands, the melting of the muscle-fettering ice whose power he had kept at bay for a few critical seconds.
The eerie glow of the sorcerer’s pendant showed Snudge a face contorted with incredulous rage. His heart torn and stilled, the spy bucked upward in a last spasm of agony as all thinking ground inexorably to a halt. There was a rattling exhalation of breath, followed by a blare of windspeech:
Beynor!
A call?
How did the boy do it? How? How? How?
Each soundless demand was fainter than the last, until there was only silence on the wind. The furious glint of talent in the sorcerer’s eyes dwindled to blank nullity and his soul fled to an inaccessible place, leaving only dead flesh and bones behind.
The glow of his pendant winked out.
Snudge took a shuddering breath. For a time be did nothing but draw in sweet air, resisting a powerful urge to spew up his supper. Then he fumbled for the fallen lantern, found and lit it, and stared in wonder at his handiwork.
A human being once alive was slain by him, as dead as a crushed ant or an arrow-shot stag or a chicken with its neck wrung. He felt no remorse, no fear, no sense of relief at escaping whatever perilous enchantment had threatened him— only an empty numbness. Almost without thought he pulled out his blade, wiped it on the wad of torn fustian lining he had crammed into his belt-wallet, and sheathed it. Blood oozed forth from the small wound, not as much as he would have expected. It slowly soaked the man’s linen shirt, but was kept from leaking onto the floor by the waxed leather jacket.
The pendant on the sorcerer’s breast had become a square of ordinary translucent stone, blue-white in color, curiously carved.
A moonstone sigil.
Snudge had read of such a thing in one of the books purloined from Vra-Kilian back at Cala Palace. Sigils were rare artifacts of the Salka monsters, having conjured into them the power of the Beaconfolk. The only human beings possessing them were members of Moss’s Glaumerie Guild, a league of master sorcerers. A sigil could generate a single magical function. This one had obviously produced the strong covering spell of invisibility, but one that could be penetrated by the wearer’s windsight, as ordinary couverture could not.
After a moment’s hesitation Snudge unfastened the gold chain, slipped off the sigil, and thrust the thing into his wallet. The valuable chain he replaced on the dead man’s neck, buttoning his shirt and jacket over it.
Snudge was not that kind of thief.
He took the body by the arms and dragged it over the water-splashed floor into a corner. A few pallets of stuffed sacking had already been laid out as beds for Skellhaven’s men. He arranged the corpse in a fetal curl on one of them, face to the wall as though sleeping, then pulled off the seaboots and set them neatly to one side. He used the wad of fustian to mop up the spilled water as well as he could. Perhaps the floor would dry before anyone else came. He put the sodden cloth into the bucket.
Now I must search, he thought, strangely calm, to see whether any talented person heard the sorcerer’s death-cry.
Shutting his eyes, he became one with the wind again, seeking any trace of awareness, any thin strand of oversight focused on the dead man, exploring nearby first, then outside the castle, and finally sweeping along a narrow path three hundred leagues northward to Royal Fenguard. The effort drenched him with sweat and weakened his muscles so that he almost collapsed. But no magical adept watched from afar, and no ordinary person had heard the brief commotion in the stable and started out to investigate its source.
Deveron Austrey, mankiller, opened his eyes. After his strength returned, he stepped into the dim corridor and used the lantern to examine his clothing, making certain there was no trace of blood. Then he started back to the repository tower, moving slowly like one half-asleep, taking the bucket with him until he could abandon it safely inside the secret passage.
Chapter Five
Prince Conrig and Vra-Stergos sat together in a dark part of the ducal library sectioned off by tall stacks. The Companions’ drunken picture-dice game was still proceeding noisily out in the middle of the great round room. The armiger named Saundar Kersey played the lute while Belamil Langsands sang “Brown-Eyed Wenches of Garveytown” in a sweet young tenor. A clock-candle burning atop a nearby reader’s carrel indicated that the ninth hour after noon was three-quarters past. Conrig had only just returned to the tower from the solar after the council of war ended. He described to his brother what had transpired at the meeting.
Stergos listened without comment, his brow furrowed and his hands clasped tightly in his lap. When the prince finished, the alchymist continued to sit without speaking.
“Don’t you have anything to say, Gossy?” Conrig was puzzled. “The great enterprise is on! What’s wrong?”
Stergos made his decision. “Con… you know that I would never do anything to harm you, or to endanger your great dream of Sovereignty.”
The prince stiffened. “Go on.”
“Young Deveron perceived someone windwatching us.
Without my permission, he followed the trace to its source and discovered Princess Ullanoth overseeing Castle Vanguard. He identified her positively. She was not protected by any shielding spell.”
“We knew she had to be the one,” Conrig said impatiently. “What does it matter, since she knows our plans already?”
Stergos was staring miserably at his hands. “Deveron saw the princess fashion a Sending. He saw it travel here and meet you in the musicians’ gallery, and he read your lips as you conversed with it. The boy told me of this, unaware that a Sending can appear only to the talented.”
“So.” Conrig met his brother’s tear-filled eyes. “Now you know.”
“What I have suspected but tried to ignore, not being willing to accept the truth. You have the talent, but not in its full power, or Vra-Kilian would have identified it in you as he did in me. How Ullanoth discovered your secret, I have no idea.”
“She might have spied on me and caught me doing something… imprudent.” Conrig gave a great sigh of resignation. “When Snudge innocently found me out four years ago, I considered killing him, but decided he was too valuable to waste— a wild talent unknown to the Brethren: to Vra-Kilian, damn his prying! From time to time, when we were alone, the boy would attempt to teach me magical tricks. I mastered a few: moving small objects a few inches, kindling a flame without a tarn-stick. Ulla might have seen me do such a thing. Or perhaps the magic of the Beacon-folk guided her. She Sent herself to me many times and helped me formulate the scheme of Sovereignty.” He shook his head. “I never thought to ask her how she knew of my talent. I was bedazzled by her cleverness, by the prospect of being able to invade Didion with her assistance.” And by her beauty…