Sisters of the Raven

by Barbara Hambly

  What had happened to Ru’hak Boh of the City of the Gods (though not the same gods that were worshiped in the Realm of the Seven Lakes)? To Dik-sjan whose chamber windows looked out onto night, when Yanrid the crystalmaster would speak to him at the tenth hour of the day? To Nyan-Nyan with his dogs and his tales of his mother-in-law’s iniquities?

  All gone.

  Dead?

  Shaldis wondered if anyone would ever know.

  At the ninth hour of the day she had rinsed out and dried the water and ink bowls, and returned the signacon to its place in the library. Walking about the Citadel afterward in the hot slanting light still felt dreamlike. Her footfalls, trained to be as unobtrusive as the breath of a sleeping kitten, still scraped loud on the pink and gold sandstone pavements, her shadow ran long and blue on the walls. She encountered no one.

  The Song, though it still stirred resentment and hurt pride in her breast, comforted her as it echoed in these empty walkways, these silent buildings. At least, she thought, she knew where her attacker had to be, in any case until it was too dark to see. Unless of course her attacker was Benno Sarn. Less than an armspan wide, the passageway by the novices’ dormitory still made her shiver, filling already with shadow. In it she felt trapped, and she looked back over her shoulder constantly.

  She wondered if she’d ever be able to think of it as anything but a trap again.

  Her own small door, and the air shaft by the wall onto which her window looked, seemed tiny and distant as she approached them. She hugged the wall, kept her hand wrapped around the straps of her satchel, ready to swing. Her thoughts probed at the three doorways into the novices’ rooms to her right. Halfway down the passageway she stopped, retraced her steps and at its entrance sketched a ward sign like the one she’d put by the foot of the library steps, an invisible mark that would cry out to her should anyone pass. She put it low on the wall, almost at its base, knowing that the man she feared would be capable of seeing it—might very well, in spite of her limitations, feel it as he passed.

  Finally she crept into the entryway and drew a Sigil of Listening on the first of the dormitory doors.

  She tried several without results of any kind. Even the ones that had reacted on her so strongly in the scrying chamber were mute. This was something she’d gotten used to: that spells sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. When she was able to follow her thought down into the fibers of the wood, she sensed only a confusion of little half-formed magics, a sense of things very old and very strong. Fading odors of power. Layer upon layer upon layer of personalities, all of them male. Bright and dark and flashing, cold and hot.

  Little that could be clearly identified at all.

  She drew her mind back, concentrated closer to the surface.

  Better. A few personalities she could recognize, like the sound of voices or the eyes of women friends glimpsed between veils. She was aware of clever Minktat and of that dark gruff boy whatever his name was—Kylin—who refused to participate in the hazing, and of the strong, furious personality she recognized as Seb Dolek.

  Seb Dolek, she thought. Of course, he’d been here for several years and she could feel no magic connected with him.

  Still . . .

  The rest was only dim scuffings, faint and without power. Most of the novices, she realized then, had no magic at all. No more than if they’d been born kyne—common Empties, powerless as teyn.

  And some of them were already taking ijnis. Its dark echo seemed to stain the whole door, as if she’d sniffed rotten meat.

  Saddened and repelled, she drew her hand away. Her anger at them—even at Soral Brûl—mingled now with a pity that she wasn’t sure wouldn’t show in her face when she looked at them. And if it did, would they hate her more for it?

  She licked her finger again and unmade the sigil. Then—because she’d only had a glimpse of the dormitory room once, on her first tour around the college—she pushed open the door and looked in. No door in the Citadel was supposed to be locked or warded; she felt obscurely afraid of what the masters would say when and if they discovered her spells of guard on her own door. The room itself was as she’d seen it that first time: bare stone walls, three beds, goat-hide chests at their feet, unlocked and, it was assumed, unspelled. It crossed her mind to search for the ijnis bottle, or the bundle of dried leaves, just for her own curiosity—and maybe to have something over them, in case she needed it—but she put that thought away too and closed the door.

  She went to the end of the corridor and drew the sigil again on her own door, near the lock.

  And perceived in the wood nothing that she hadn’t perceived on the door of the other dormitory.

  No spell of malice and danger. None of the terrifying sense she’d had of the nearness of storm. Nothing of the cold column of darkness, of the unexplained trailing flicker of bluish light. Of the hoarse voice whispering Bitch . . .

  No sense that anyone had worked a spell to undo this latch at all.

  Raeshaldis muttered a marketplace curse and dug in her satchel for another tablet, to try another spell.

  She tried a Sigil of the Retrieval of Dreams.

  She tried I Summoning of Lost Voices.

  She tried a Glyph of Resonance.

  She tried the doubled sigils of summons and night—Why night? She puzzled over the instructions . . . in the instant before hate hit her, vile and sudden as a blow in the face.

  Nausea cramped her belly as she jerked her hand from the wood. Hate and anger and a disgorged vileness, like a vulture spewing its carrion, a loathing so personal, so contemptuous, that she had to step back, her breath short in her lungs.

  And something else. Cold, alien magic that burned the air, like the far-off jangling of a universe of chains.

  She thought, Is it like that?

  She wanted to reach out her hand, touch the wood again, and couldn’t. It felt fouled, as if with a physical stickiness that would come away on her fingers and eat at the flesh.

  She hadn’t understood, she thought, shaking all over with shock, that hate was like that. Could be like that.

  And there was power in it. Power unlike any she’d felt in the library, any she’d felt in the door of the boys’ room. As if she’d been comparing the flavors of bread and fruits and cheese and then someone had struck her over the head with an ax.

  She stood for a long time, sick and shocked, a sinking chill gripping her in the blue cold of the passageway. Behind her the horns sounded, the chants lifted to the unsympathetic sky.

  That is up there in the Ring, calling the rain.

  And they send me away because I’m a woman?

  Everything in her screamed against doing so, but she took a deep breath, stretched forth her hand and touched the wood again.

  And there was nothing there at all.

  Nothing she could feel. Nothing she could see or smell or taste.

  It was still there, though. She knew it. Feared it.

  She went around to the air shaft and tried every spell in her notes—starting with the double sigils of summons and night—on the shutters of the windows where his malice had nearly broken the hinges two nights before. Nothing, not even the shambly murmur of everyday touch. Damn it, where are you? She shivered at the memory of the latch rattling sharply in the dark.

  She was obviously doing something wrong, but she didn’t know what.

  Or was it just that she wasn’t all that anxious to feel that hideous hate, that spitting contempt, again?

  She heard someone coming in the same instant that the rune at the end of the passageway called out her name. The next instant Benno Sarn’s voice snapped, “Raeshaldis,” and she thought, He wouldn’t have called my name if he meant to assault me.

  She sprang down out of the air shaft and gathered up her tablets, thrusting them into the satchel.

  “I trust you have nothing to report concerning the scrying chamber?”

  “No sir.” She wondered if he’d gone there first, looking for her—or checking up
on her. “I thought, before getting some supper, sir, that I’d do a little practice.” She gestured back at the window. “Try to figure out why the unlatching spells Rachnis taught me only work some of the time, even thought I do them the same way.”

  The slight perpetual downward curve of the rector’s too-small mouth didn’t alter, but the line of it seemed to darken as his lips pinched. Looking into his blue eyes, Shaldis saw irritation that a woman would not drop her gaze before his.

  Only this wasn’t something masters could say to novices.

  Instead he said, “You only think you do them the same way. A curve that isn’t perfectly round”—his stubby finger traced the glyph of focus in the air—“feeding lines that aren’t properly connected, a rune misaligned . . .”

  He shook his graying head. He should not, properly speaking, have been appointed rector of the college—the masters were usually very careful to keep the near kin of the clan lords away from anything that smacked of rulership—but Shaldis suspected that the appointment had been maneuvered in those first few years of consternation about the lengthening labor of calling the rains that refused to come.

  “You need to be more diligent at your practice, girl,” Benno Sarn went on. “Everyone wants to work spells, and a girl more than others, I suppose.” Shaldis had to press her lips hard together and look away from his face to keep from retorting. Does he think I practice glamours to make the adepts fall in love with me?” “But ordinary, common runes, simple exercises, like calligraphy, to make sure that each spell is perfect each time. To concentrate the mind and discipline the thoughts. That’s what the problem is,” he went on, “and not all this absurdity about magic failing or dying or whatever people say it’s doing. What’s failing or dying is the discipline that novices are willing to put into their craft.”

  “Yes sir.” Shaldis’s eyes returned to his.

  “Before you try to mess about with spells you’d best learn the sigils more thoroughly.” His voice grew harsh. “And before you can make a proper sigil you need the basic runes.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “And if that isn’t the answer,” added Benno Sarn, “it might pay us to look into whether you belong with the Sun Mages at all. I understand the king’s desire”—his small blue eyes flicked her up and down—”to have you taught, I suppose. But you were never properly tested. Hathmar was overeager, there, to impress the king. That’s understandable. But you may not be capable of sourcing your power from the sun at all. It may be you should study with an Earth Wizard, or a Pyromancer for that matter.” He sniffed, as if to make it clear that only the custom that forbade mages of one order from speaking ill of those of another kept him from voicing his contempt for such persons. “But that’s typical. For the time being I’ll just say you need more practice.”

  And he stepped aside, a silent injunction for her to pass and return to more public venues of the college.

  Shaldis collected her satchel and preceded him along the passageway. Despite the fact that if he meant her ill he would have already done it, the nape of her neck prickled at the presence of that cobalt-robed form so close at her back in the empty quiet of the spell-wrapped Citadel.

  She remembered the hate imbued in the wood of the door. Is that what they feel about me? Is that what he feels?

  Someone does.

  Had that someone also been responsible for the disappearance of Turquoise Woman? Of Corn-Tassel Woman, missing now two days?

  And if that were so, whom would he seek out next?

  FOURTEEN

  Few prettier sights existed, reflected Mohrvine, than a supper room perfectly dressed for a party. It was an art practiced by fewer and fewer women in these days, this art of being a hostess. To know that a thing was simple, and perfect in its simplicity, and then to let it go; to let events flow where they would—that was the art of it, and the separation point between the truly noble houses like the Jothek and the parvenus whom he despised.

  He had selected the House of the Six Willows because Chrysanthemum Lady, whoever had been her parents, had been trained in the understanding of the right way of doing things, and she passed this understanding to the women she instructed. It might cost the price of a good first-quality robe to host a supper here with one of the courtesans of the house, but, he thought, it would be worth it.

  The men met in the gate lodge of the house, a pink-stuccoed building tucked away on a quiet street of the Flower-market District. No footman, no banners, no bell, just an anonymous door in a rose-colored wall. Even the ward spells against vermin and insects, which formed a frieze of stylized glyphs and sigils around every window and door in the city, were pleasingly proportioned, drawn by a master. The old marks had been scrubbed away or pink-washed over before the latest set was put on. As Mohrvine stepped down from his litter and straightened his cloak, the door opened for him—naturally, the gesture implied, you are a known and awaited friend—and Chrysanthemum Lady herself was there to greet him in the lodge. One of the elderly females who served in the house brought sweet mint tea and another offered towels wrung in warmed rosewater to clean his face and hands while he chatted with the gray-coiffed mother.

  Having come here many times before as both host and guest of parties, Mohrvine knew that a second lodge existed on the next street; a second supper room stood in its own garden in the labyrinthine little complex, equally spacious, equally pretty. A student of human interactions, Mohrvine had observed Chrysanthemum Lady for years, trying to determine how the mother arranged it that one party of guests would arrive later than the other so that she could personally greet each man. Certainly she had never suggested to him or anyone ahead of time at what hour they should assemble.

  Yet she always was there when the first guest arrived, and she never left the lodge until the last appeared. At that time she would personally conduct the party through the lamplit gardens to the supper pavilion. And she never glanced at a water clock—Mohrvine had never seen such a thing in any Blossom House he’d ever visited—or seemed to be aware that another party would be going on more or less at the same time.

  Some in the Yellow City accused Chrysanthemum Lady of being twins. Others, like his overmuscled elder brother King Taras Greatsword, didn’t even notice such niceties, accepting them as their god-ordained due. But graciousness like this impressed men, and it was the mark of the great houses, and so it interested Mohrvine. It had been a long time since a king had dared take a formal consort—ten generations of Akarian kings had been the sons of concubines and thus the grandsons of camel drivers and weavers and anyone else short a few pieces of silver in a bad year—but among the clan lords, marriage alliances were still the rule. His own mother had been the daughter of a nomad hunter, something for which he’d never forgiven his father, King Oryn I. His sons, he’d made certain, had wed into the families of the Jothek-allied houses and would pass this care for the right way of doing things along to their sons. His daughter . . .

  “I trust the cook obtained the meat for the supper from the Temple of Nebekht?” twittered Lord Akarian as he came through the door. “I wouldn’t wish to feel that any beast perished unwillingly to provide us with a feast.”

  “My dear lord, how could I look you in the face were it otherwise?” cried Chrysanthemum Lady with every evidence of genuine distress. “I sent my servants this morning to the temple to obtain food that is lawful for you.”

  Which was not, reflected Mohrvine, with a shudder at the thought of the hacked fragments of limbs and bones that were daily handed out to the True Believers, by any means the same as saying yes. From the water boss Xolnax he knew all about the complicated process of local blackmail among the shambles keepers that provided the huge numbers of sacrificial animals killed each morning in the Temple of Nebekht and permitted Lohar to feed them to any worshiper who came to the gates. The meat, Xolnax reported, was generally tough or old; there were gods who, according to their priests, demanded only tender, succulent and unblemished animals for sacrifice, but N
ebekht wasn’t one of them. Volume counted more than quality by all accounts, and the sacrificial killing—all done by Lohar himself—seemed to be the work of a lunatic with an ax. But Lohar reported that the animals themselves went willingly, even happily, to sacrifice, and being individually and personally blessed by himself were therefore lawful eating among his followers.

  At the moment, the other butchers in the district weren’t sure how to deal with this novel mode of competition. Mohrvine had a private bet with his daughter—an intelligent girl, if far too saucy for her own good or anyone else’s—as to how long it would be before pieces of prime real estate belonging to the more influential of the True Believers started making it known to Lohar, through the medium of Nebekht, that they would be happier belonging to the temple too.

  He glanced across now at Proath and Whorb Akarian as they entered, stern young men with their father’s prominent chin and slightly mismatched, narrow-set eyes, and wondered what they felt about this latest in the long line of their father’s answers to the great question of life. Both, he saw, had clipped their hair short and shaved the twin bands of novitiate across the crowns of their heads. “One could feel the presence of Nebekht in the room during the prayers,” Proath was saying in a reverent voice to the somewhat glassy-eyed Chrysanthemum Lady. “It baffles me—truly baffles me!—how so many can still put their trust in wizardry when Nebekht has quite clearly revealed that such foolishness must and will be destroyed.”

  “The very fact that the temple wells have not run dry should prove beyond a shadow of doubt that he speaks the truth.” added his brother. “But do people believe?”

  “Is it true, then?” Mohrvine tilted his head inquiringly. He’d heard rumor to that effect from Xolnax and the two or three other minor water bosses in his pay: Every other well in the Slaughterhouse was bringing up mud. Xolnax had been buying water from him, surreptitiously, for weeks.