Defenders of Magic 01 - Night of the Eye

by Scorpion ZS 256

  Guerrand had seen too much of death in his nineteen years. At seven he was not permitted even to say farewell to his mother, whose own life had ebbed away at the same time she gave it to Kirah. He hadn't understood death fully then, half expecting his mother to return as if on holiday. But she never did.

  So, by the time their father died just two short years later, the nine-year-old boy understood too well that Rejik would not be returning, that life would never be the same. In his anger and his sorrow, he'd stood as still and pale as white marble next to his father's coffin for the entire two days of viewing. Day and night, no one could move him, not even to tears. He'd had a job to do.

  Guerrand had held a secret to himself in those dark days, one he'd not even told Kirah in the time since. On his last day of life, Rejik DiThon had summoned his children, one by one, to his bedside. Scrawny nine-year-old Guerrand stood in the dark and fetid air of Rejik's death room, the father's once-fleshy hand clutching the son's small, sweaty one. "Don't leave me, Guerrand," Rejik had pleaded. "The way is dark, my eyesight is failing, and I'm frightened."

  Guerrand's breath had caught for a moment. The once mighty and terrifying Rejik DiThon was afraid of death. Guerrand, growing frightened himself, said the only thing he could think of. "I'll not leave you, Father. Not until Habbakuk comes to take you home."

  "I fear I've not been as faithful as some, but it's a comforting thought anyway. You're a good lad, Guerrand." Rejik's frail hand, cool and death-dry, suddenly wrapped around Guerrand's like a hawk's talon on a perch. "Promise you won't leave until I see the Blue Phoenix's face at last. Promise me!"

  "I promise, Father!" Young Guerrand had kept his promise, staying at Rejik's side until his coffin was placed upon its pedestal in the family crypt. He'd had no way of knowing when Habbakuk would come for his father, but he would take no chances. Guerrand DiThon kept his promises.

  Standing next to the bier that held his younger brother Quinn now, Guerrand searched his memory for promises made to Quinn. There were the little ones between close brothers—"Don't tell Father I broke the leaded window in his study." The great, unspoken oath to defend each other, no matter the cause or cost. But, unlike Rejik's death, there had been no warning, no way for Guerrand to help Quinn when he needed him most. The young cavalier had survived two years on the road only to be slain by bandits mere leagues from his home and family.

  The day Quinn had left on his crusade seeking life's adventures, he'd not spoken of mortality. Quinn had been too full of hope, of possibilities to think dark thoughts. But a last, long solemn glance between the brothers had reaffirmed the unspoken vow.

  Guerrand had not been able to defend his brother against death, but he would stay by him until Habbakuk came, as much for his own sake as for Quinn's. The young lad of sixteen had grown into a deeply tanned, thickly muscled man of eighteen. His raven-black hair, longer than Guerrand remembered it, in death curled below the neckline of his surcoat. Beneath the tunic, he'd been dressed in royal blue leggings and a warm silk shirt. Across his breast was laid his gleaming sword, polished, no doubt, by some faceless servant for the young cavalier's final appearance.

  Guerrand forced shallow breaths. The scents of bergamot and balsam, used to wash and perfume the decaying body, smelled overpoweringly of death. After the viewing, Quinn's body would be sewn inside deerskin, along with the cloying scent. There was no death chamber to drape with black serge, so the drab woolen cloth was hung about the vast great hall, which now held the body for viewing.

  The last three days had been the worst Guerrand could remember. The entire village of Thonvil had gone into mourning for the immensely popular Quinn DiThon. Guerrand knew why. Quinn had been the kindest and most noble of the family. A steady stream of mourners had traveled between town and castle from the moment the public crier announced Quinn's death in the square. The village bell tolled endlessly, plaintively, until the distant sound felt like a dull, ever-present thudding at the back of the skull.

  Wearily rubbing the knotted muscles there, Guerrand looked among the throng of mourners for the wan face of his sister, not really expecting to spot her. No one had seen hide or hair of Kirah since Cormac had called her into his study to deliver the news. Guerrand would never forget his young sister's reaction. She'd given one great, slow blink of her blue eyes. Then, in a remote voice that sounded far older than her twelve years, she'd said, "Death follows this family like some hungry hound." She'd turned on her tiny heels and walked from Cormac's study, leaving the adults in an awkward silence of agreement.

  Guerrand thought it somehow fitting, given their opposing natures, that as committed to staying by Quinn as he was, Kirah had not shown up once. He knew from the servants' gossip that Cormac and Rietta were furious at her days-long disappearance and absence from the viewing. Not for Quinn's sake, but because people would think Cormac couldn't control his wayward half sister. Which he couldn't. Guerrand was certain that, wherever she was, Kirah knew of their humiliation and received some small measure of comfort from the couple's anger. When all this ceremony was done, he would find her and help her cope.

  Looking about the dark mourning chamber, Guerrand could see Rietta and her daughter Honora weeping appropriately while accepting the condolences of some neighboring nobles. Among them were the wife of the merchant Berwick and her daughter Ingrid, the betrothed of the dead young cavalier. Guerrand knew who she was only because he had been told—he'd never before seen young Ingrid Berwick himself.

  Squinting now in the dim light of the oil lamps, he had to agree with Kirah's assessment of the young woman's appearance. Ingrid's looks hadn't been aided by the weeping she must have done since the news of her betrothed's death. Still, he could scarcely summon a twinge of pity for her. She could only be crying for the lost opportunity, not Quinn. To Guerrand's knowledge, she and Quinn had not met in recent years, if ever. Ingrid looked up just then, across the vast hall, as if she felt his assessing eyes on her. Guerrand nodded briefly, a grim, stiff gesture, and looked away.

  Despite the milling crowd, Cormac and Anton Berwick were conspicuously absent. No doubt they had retired to Cormac's study to smoke cigars or sip port, or whatever noblemen did when they felt "uncomfortable." That was the most passionate word Guerrand could come up with to describe Cormac's emotion regarding their brother's death. "Inconvenienced" also came to mind, but nothing approaching grief.

  That's not quite true, Guerrand had to correct himself. Several times in the past few days, he had caught Cormac's eyes on him, vaguely angry, yet not focused on the present, as if his thoughts were far away in time and space. Guerrand recalled the look his brother had not even known he witnessed: it said clearly, "Why the useful one, and not you?"

  Guerrand winced, but not because of Cormac's incredible cruelty. That did not surprise him. He flinched because he could see how the thought might occur to persons far more charitable than Cormac. He was, in his own estimation and in all senses of the phrase, less useful than his noble younger brother had been. His worst crime, if a malaise of the spirit could be called that, was that he had no idea what he could do to rectify that situation.

  *****

  At that moment, Cormac DiThon was trying to find, in the haze provided by good port wine, a solution to a situation of his own. He'd been suffering from a burning ache, low in the belly, since the news of Quinn's death. The gentle sloshing of the port soothed his stomach in a way brandy could not, and its ability to narrow the senses dimmed the edges of the pain. Drink could not, however, make his problems disappear, no matter how many opportunities he gave it.

  Damned inconvenient, Quinn dying before the wedding. It was a minor annoyance that his half brother had met an ignominious death at the hands of bandits, rather than in the blazing glory of battle more suited to a cavalier. That mattered little to Cormac, because it seemed to matter not at all to the copious mourners who had been trooping through his castle for days. Quinn had been well liked, that was obvious. It was the reason he'd been an eas
y sell when Berwick had come looking for a titled son-in-law.

  Stonecliff had been within Cormac's grasp. The conversation he had just concluded with Anton Berwick had done nothing to bring it near again. Yet Cormac refused to let its return slip away so easily. He could not afford to buy the land back—if anything, his finances were worse than when he'd sold it to Berwick.

  "Damn those bandits!" Cormac cursed aloud. No matter what he did, or how hard he worked, the fates seemed to conspire against him. How many times had the answer to his problems been within arm's reach, only to be pulled away at the last instant? When his father had arranged his marriage to Rietta, Cormac had believed he was getting a handsome woman of high blood whose name and demeanor would raise his own standing. Instead, he got a supercilious, stiff-necked shrew who was raising their daughter Honora in her own disdainful image and assailing their son Bram with stories of pompous Knights of Solamnia, but who seemed at the same time too much like Cormac's own wastrel of a brother, Guerrand.

  Then again, when Rejik died and Cormac had at last become lord of Castle DiThon, he'd believed he actually had a chance to get ahead. He had hoped to pay off the gambling debts he'd run up in expectation of his inheritance. But he discovered soon enough that there was barely enough money to keep the castle running, and little more. Cormac's own creditors had forced him to sell off lands, among them Stonecliff.

  Once again, the fates prevented him from getting what he wanted. Cormac slammed the port glass to the desk a little harder than he'd intended. The stem snapped from the pear-shaped bottom, splashing the dark red liquid onto his hand. Growling in irritation, he wiped his hand on the thigh of his breeches.

  "You'll ruin the only suit that still fits you, Cormac, and you can't afford another, unless it's of that dreadful brocatelle the merchants are passing off as genuine brocade."

  Cormac looked up to see his wife Rietta strolling into the room. Her presence caused his mood to sour more than the wine spill had. "Can't a man have some peace in his own castle?"

  "Not during his brother's funeral."

  Through eyes just beginning to fog with port, Cormac considered his wife. In her late thirties, Rietta had that tight-lipped, smooth-skinned look of a woman who never smiled much for fear it would cause wrinkles. Her severity was emphasized by wearing her dark, thin hair in a tight chignon covered by a strong veil of lace netting. She was too thin for Cormac's taste, her bosom a sunken thing thankfully covered by the long gorget she wore around her neck. Rietta's silent, lithe grace brought to mind a cat, a black, sneaky creature that appeared only when she wanted something and left bad luck in her wake.

  "You left me alone to deal with all those wailing old women from the village, not to mention Dame Berwick and her toothsome daughter." Rietta shivered. "If you ask me, Quinn escaped a fate worse than death with that one."

  Cormac thought he knew such a fate firsthand, even thought of remarking on the pot calling the kettle black, but Rietta never seemed to catch his irony, especially when it was at her expense. He was definitely not in a mood to joust with her. "If you've come just to pull me back into that dank abyss with you, I've more important things to deal with now."

  "It's bad enough that scalawag sister of yours hasn't blessed us with her presence," sniffed Rietta as if Cormac hadn't spoken. "What will everyone think if the lord himself isn't there to greet the mourners?"

  Cormac poured himself a new glass of port and tossed it down in one gulp. "They'll think I've gone on with the business of running a vast estate. I made an appearance and accepted more condolences than I could stomach, anyway." He gave her a sly look. "However, they will wonder where the lady of the manor is."

  Rietta was too smart to rise to the bait. "I watched you leave with Berwick. What have you done with him?" She glanced about the room artlessly, though it was obvious the other man was gone.

  Cormac sighed heavily. "We finished our business, such as it was, and he left. I assumed he'd returned to the great hall."

  "You've not given up on getting back Stonecliff already, have you?"

  "Through marriage, yes. I can see no other lawful option, since Quinn had the ill-timed bad luck to be slain." Cormac fiddled pensively with a dry quill pen that lay on his desk. "More's the shame that he induced in me a brilliant idea for using Stonecliff to recover the family fortunes. It would be a perfect place to establish a fortress from which we could extort a toll on the vessels that traverse the river, including Berwick's own ships from Hillfort." Cormac sighed again and tossed back more port. "But it's not to be."

  With a disapproving eye, Rietta watched his drinking. "As usual, Cormac, you're not using your head."

  "I endeavor to, whenever possible." Cormac's perpetual scowl at his wife deepened. "Should I infer from your tone mat you have the answer that has eluded me?"

  "As usual." She strode to his desk and removed the nearly empty bottle of port to a distant shelf. "And, as usual, it's right under your cherry-red nose." He scowled again at her inference. "Propose another union between the families."

  "Of course I thought of that, but you can't possibly mean Honora," Cormac said. "You have loftier ambitions for your daughter than to marry her into a merchant family."

  Rietta raised one thin, dark brow. "Don't be absurd."

  "I know you look forward to the day, but you can't mean to offer up Kirah," he said, tapping the desk with the quill. "Even if she weren't too young, her marriage would mean that I'd pay a dowry, not receive one. That goes for Honora, too." Scratching his temple, he thought for a moment more. "Bram is also too young. Even Berwick, desperate as he is for a noble connection, would not promise Ingard for a marriage to one so much younger than she."

  "Ingrid," Rietta corrected. "You're right. Bram is out of the question. He's going to become a Knight of the Rose, like my father, and his father before him, and—"

  "Yes, I know, like all male Cuissets, back to Vinas Solamnus," interrupted Cormac in an unflattering imitation of Rietta's own haughty voice. "A bunch of pansy-assed, overdressed, magic-wielding charlatans."

  If Rietta had had any respect for Cormac, his words might have angered her. They didn't. "You're such a peasant, Cormac. But that's an old argument I don't wish to pursue now." She straightened her skirts needlessly "You've forgotten Guerrand."

  Cormac threw his head back and laughed at the absurd suggestion. "Don't you remember? We eliminated Guerrand as a possibility before we offered up Quinn. The reason hasn't changed. He's a wastrel."

  Rietta leaned over the desk toward her husband, her expression intent. "It's true the reason hasn't changed, but the circumstances have. Now he's the only son available. You said yourself that Berwick is desperate. You simply have to persuade him that Guerrand has changed." Rietta snickered unkindly. "That tradesman hasn't many options with a daughter like his."

  "What if Guerrand doesn't agree?"

  Rietta sighed with exasperation. "You'll have to help him see that he hasn't many—any—options. Threaten to cut him off. He hasn't any means of support besides you, has he? He hasn't completed his training as a cavalier, so he's not likely to run off and join a crusade. Appeal to his sense of DiThon family loyalty. Make him see that he'd be doing it for family and castle—and to make himself more comfortable."

  Rietta's words sounded surprisingly reasonable to Cormac, yet he doubted the comfort argument would gain him ground with his indolent half brother. Guerrand seemed unconcerned about material things. Cormac had never been able to use that as leverage to get Guerrand to do anything he didn't already want to do.

  "For Kiri-Jolith's sake, Cormac, you're the lord and master here!" Rietta cut into his musings. "Don't ask him, just tell him he has to do it. Guerrand wanted to become a mage, not a cavalier. Yet you forced him to train as the latter, and he seems to have forgotten the former."

  Secretly, Cormac did not consider that subject a victory, since Guerrand was taking the longest time in history to advance from squire to knight.

  "If you're as w
ise as I think," said Rietta slickly, nearly choking on the words, "you'll insist that the marriage take place in a fortnight, on the same day you'd set aside for Quinn and Ingrid."

  Cormac looked scandalized. "Without a proper mourning period? Such a rush will make the whole thing look like—well, exactly like what it is, a marriage of political convenience."

  Rietta laughed. "Don't fool yourself that it's ever appeared to be anything else. No one is more aware of propriety than I," she said. "Yet, in this case, what is proper is less important than that we not give Guerrand time to change his mind or flee."

  A small sound from near the fireplace punctuated Rietta's comment. "What was that?" she asked, looking toward the section of wall from which the noise had come.

  Cormac dismissed it with a toss of his head. "Rodents. I hear them all the time in here. Likely they have thousands of hidey-holes in this old castle."

  "I'll have the chamberlain put out traps." A small sigh escaped Rietta's patrician nostrils. "I fear I've been gone too long for propriety and must return to the great hall. Concerning Guerrand, you must do as you think best, my husband."

  Rietta wore a tight-lipped, triumphant smile as she watched her husband's port-fogged mind ponder her words. She knew he would do it, had already decided to, but would not admit it to her so readily. She knew all too well how to persuade her husband to do what she wanted. She had but to provide and plant the seed. Cormac himself, with the aid of port as fertilizer and desperation as sunshine, would make the notion grow.

  As she slipped from the room and donned her well-rehearsed expression of grief, Rietta only hoped Cormac would do it soon, before Berwick had time to pursue other avenues.