Sisters of the Raven

by Barbara Hambly

  On the other hand, she reflected, licking the last of the stickiness from her fingers, the apricot paste was delicious. So there was something to be said for ostentation after all.

  The smell of sandalwood reached her nostrils long before she arrived at the tall blackwood gate at the passage’s end. Sandalwood and musk, incompletely covering the stink of old blood. The page who guided her had slowed his steps. He was only a very small boy and clearly afraid of the court mage. “You can wait here for me,” Shaldis said as the child pressed open the gate. To do him credit, the boy made one halfhearted offer to accompany her across the vast, bone-bare courtyard to the wizard’s door, but when Shaldis shook her head again he stepped back with relieved alacrity, leaving her to go on alone.

  This close to sunset, the courtyard’s high walls had already put it into deep shadow. The wizard’s house stood at the far end of almost two hundred feet of unbroken sand, a single small rectangular building like a temple of Niam, and absolutely plain. The walls were probably the only ones in the House Jamornid that didn’t bear both painting and statuary, but there was something curiously ostentatious about them in spite of that fact. Stone, not stuccoed brick, thought Shaldis, trudging across the enormous, featureless yard. Brought down from the quarries on the Great Lake at the gods only knew what cost, polished, seamlessly cut and fitted. Windowless—there wasn’t even a porch before its bronze doors, such as Niam had, to provide shade.

  He’s got to have another house on the other side of that rear courtyard wall, Shaldis thought, suddenly amused. He can’t actually live in this place.

  The door opened before her in eerie silence. The smell within was of bad things: blood, charred hair, burned flesh, incompletely mingled with incense. Standing before that darkness, Shaldis shivered with a sudden chill. A bare, dark chamber, windowless and stark as the courtyard outside, its walls smeared with years’ accumulations of bloody handprints. A second door, without handle or lock, opening soundlessly to reveal a second chamber. More cold, and the stink of blood and frankincense.

  “You bear a message from Hathmar?” Ahure’s slow, harsh voice was beautiful in its way, speaking out of the gloom as a third door opened in line with the first two. On either side of her as she passed through the second chamber Shaldis was aware of smudged lines and circles of power on the floor, of piles of ash, and dribbled blood long dried. No furniture. And this, thought Shaldis suddenly, in a palace crammed with every sort of expensive table and pedestal and cabinet that could be wrought of bloodwood and purple heart, of nacre and ebony.

  Where does he go to the privy in this place?

  And as the irreverent thought flicked through her mind, she heard, with the keen, preternatural senses of the mage-born, the faint, grinding scritch of machinery somewhere, and the moist hiss of steam as the doors behind her closed. Extending her senses as she had been taught, she smelled other things beneath the overpowering blood and incense: charcoal smoke and hot metal, damp goat leather and straw. Somewhere she heard the tiny drip of water, and identified the wan wheeze of bellows behind hidden slits in the wall as cold air was blown across her once again, producing that shivering sense of chill.

  Pity stabbed her, and disgust. Aktis at least was still trying to be what he had been, trying to call from his emptied flesh the fire that had once illuminated his life.

  Ahure only wanted the credit for doing what he could no longer do.

  “No, my lord.” She salaamed deeply, fighting her first instinct to snap at him Your magic doors need oiling and stalk out. “I came of my own accord, to ask your help, if you would be so good.”

  The Blood Mage sat in the third chamber; it was smaller than the first two, which wasn’t saying much. Given what city land cost in the Flowermarket District, the expanse of the two outer rooms—end to end they must have stretched nearly seventy feet, and the immense courtyard added still more distance—the waste of space sheerly for effect shocked her. A blue glow of mage light—or of wax candles concealed behind blue glass—silhouetted him in a raised black wooden chair like a king’s throne or the sort of thing men sat on in the north. The floor of the third room was arranged in a series of steps or risers, obliging a visitor to enter the room only so far and no farther, and to stand in a specific spot. Shaldis wondered what the setup would look like from another angle.

  “You may be seated.” Under the Blood Mage’s booming voice Shaldis heard the faint, grinding whir of machinery. She turned and saw a low stool behind her. That startled her, for she hadn’t seen him move. The black cloak that swathed his narrow shoulders covered his right hand; his left lay still as that of a wax image on his knee. It probably is a wax image, thought Shaldis. leaving him both hands to work levers in the arms of the chair.

  A table stood beside her stool. The mint tea in the cup was still vibrating. The cup, Shaldis noticed, stuck ever so slightly to the surface of the table, and when she nudged the table with her toe she found it was fixed to the black stone of the floor.

  “And how may I help Habnit’s Eldest Daughter?” There was an edge of sarcasm in his voice. “Am I given to understand that these powers that make you such a treasure to the Sun Mages are perhaps not as useful to you as you would wish?”

  You should talk, she thought, and almost said so, but she remembered again the Summer Concubine’s gracious tact. “I’m only a novice, sir, and you are a master.” And that was true, she told herself. Whatever he was now, he had learned more spells when he actually had power than she’d probably even seen so far. Hathmar was always telling her that the first principle of magic was not cultivation of power, but keeping an open mind. “I’ve been attacked in the Citadel, by someone who’s clearly a mage.” Which was all he needed to know about the situation. “I have to find a Spell of Deep Listening that works for me in order to learn who he is. And I need to know why so many don’t work for me, or don’t work all the time. This is something I can’t ask them at the college, because anyone there might be the one who’s sought to do me harm.”

  “So there are still some at the college with the power to attack you?”

  Shaldis had turned away from him to pick up her cup of tea, and when she looked back he had put off the concealing cloak and was standing beside her. He moved very fast, she reflected, startled. And his timing must be like a dancer’s. Close up he smelled, not just of the old blood of the scabbed cuts on his head, but of plain dirt in his unwashed robes. The thought of drinking any tea that he’d brewed—she could see the dirt under his uncut fingernails now, and dried blood in the creases of his palms—made Shaldis queasy, but she couldn’t think of how to avoid it. Being mage-born—and able to see in the dark—had decided disadvantages, she thought, watching a roach slip under an almost-hidden door at the rear of the chamber and walk unconcernedly up the wall. Among other smells in this third room she could detect the nearby presence of kitchen garbage and an untended privy.

  Blood Mages were notoriously filthy, forbidden by the disciplines of their order to bathe or wash their clothing, though they did, thank the gods, keep their heads shaved. Beneath the stinks of dirt and old blood, he smelled very slightly of alcohol and slippery elm. He was doctoring his cuts, she realized, as well as rigging his doorways. Goodness knew what he was doing to keep himself from feeling pain.

  Or maybe pain was what he wanted to feel.

  “There appears to be, yes. Someone who can brush aside the ward spells I’ve put on my rooms. Someone who can hide in darkness I can’t see through.”

  He studied her for a moment with those deep-set, hooded eyes. Looking across at him—on level ground they were nearly of a height—she saw in them bitterness and suspicion, ingrained wariness and anger so deep as to have long ago devoured his heart. “What did you speak of with Lord Jamornid?” he asked abruptly.

  “Apricot paste,” she said, and smiled.

  His mouth curled in an expression of both distaste and disbelief. Had he been from the Bazaar he’d have said Yeah, you right. “Show me the
spells you’ve been trying to use,” he said. “And drink your tea, child. It grows cold.”

  It had arrived cold; he’d clearly made it up and set it on the table the moment he’d gotten Lord Jamornid’s message that he’d be obliged to see her after all. Another use for those endless outer chambers. But she drank it obediently, trying not to think about the kitchen where it had originated. It couldn’t be any worse than some of the lake water being used in the city these days. While she did so, Ahure examined the spell tablets, quite frankly copying most of them: “These differ from the volumes in my own study,” he said. “I must compare them, you understand.”

  He then gave her a grave lecture on the sourcing of power—similar to Benno Sarn’s yesterday afternoon—which told her nothing and occupied nearly an hour. By the time the beribboned page led her along the dark, hot passageway back to the main court, night had fallen, and lamps and torches burned both within the House Jamornid and in the streets of the Flowermarket District round about. “My lord left word for you to wait upon him tomorrow or the next day,” the porter told Shaldis as he opened the outer gates for her. “He’s gone out to supper now, or he’d have asked you to stay and dine with him.” He sounded impressed, and bowed deeply to her as she stepped through the gate and into the street.

  It crossed Shaldis’s mind to wonder whether the lord of the House Jamornid was beginning to have suspicions about his court mage himself, and might be shopping for another.

  It might pay her, she thought, to go back to him, if not for outright patronage, at least for information. She’d have to speak to the Summer Concubine first. The older woman would understand the possible pitfalls of the situation better than she. He uses everyone who comes to his hand, the Red Silk Lady had said of her own son Mohrvine and of King Oryn as well. As magic changed, the patterns of power would change.

  Hurrying through the gaudy streets, sweet with the scent of the drying flowers, Shaldis felt very conscious of her youth and her ignorance of the politics of the Realm of the Seven Lakes.

  She paused in the colored lamplight of the Spice Court, one of the wider covered markets of the district, and leaned against the marble pillar of a fashionable café, trying to remember when or if she’d had anything more substantial to eat than a few dainty sweets. Her head ached and she felt breathless, and she wondered if this café—or any of the hundreds that made up the Flowermarket District—would serve a woman alone and unveiled.

  But the thought of eating made her ill.

  She walked on, leaving the wider streets to wind her way more quickly toward the Citadel gates via Slippermaker Alley again. Over the tops of high walls soft lights glowed, piercing to her tired eyes. The scents of cypress groves, of jasmine and moss and water, from the Blossom Houses went into her sinuses like chisels. She missed her way, could not seem to find where the ground rose toward the bluff. Twice she paused, certain that she heard someone following her, but, turning, saw only the jostle of the evening streets: water sellers, whores and women hawking silk handkerchiefs and pornographic gingerbread. Her head throbbed and she found herself thinking more and more of just sitting on a bench somewhere and dozing for a little, just until she felt better.

  Out in the open? For anyone to come along and pick your pocket or carry you off to the nearest brothel?

  Even before she’d been attacked in her own chamber at the college she’d never have even considered such behavior.

  She blinked, dizzy, trying to identify where she was. Only the recollection of the hate she’d felt through the shutters of her room, the vile, alien malice of that power, kept her moving. Her heart began to thud with fear. She emerged from a gaily lanterned street of cafés and found herself looking at the Temple of Oan Echis, which wasn’t anywhere near the Citadel, or Slippermaker Alley, for that matter.

  I’ll never make it in time for supper. She leaned against the corner of a wall, fighting to get her breath.

  At this rate I’ll have to counterspell the wards on the gates to get in.

  And then, If I could do that, why am I so sure my attacker was from the Citadel! The gods know the wards on the gate have no strength in them anymore, and Shrem the gatemaster can barely keep awake at his post even without the assistance of a sleep spell.

  It could be anyone.

  Anyone I’ve talked to today.

  She walked on, shaking her head against a gray buzzing that seemed to fill her ears. The flower sellers who normally lined the arcades of the district by day were gone. Away from the wide streets, the cafés and Blossom Houses, the chill air was redolent of drying leaves and petals spread on flat roofs. From the underground taverns—half buried beneath houses to keep the wine cool—came the clack of dominoes, the rattle of dice, the chatter of men’s voices and the smell of wine. Tomorrow I’ll have to speak to the Summer Concubine. She has to be back by then. Or Soth. I have to tell her . . . tell her . . .

  Did someone call my name?

  There seemed to be more fire around her than even the torches on the housefronts could account for, white flecks of it falling through the indigo darkness. The noise of the cafés mingled into a kind of chiming roar in her skull, like a swarm of metal bees.

  She thought, I’ve been poisoned.

  EIGHTEEN

  The serving girl at the café where Shaldis ordered rice gruel mixed with oil and cayenne pepper stared at her. The owner, wise with the cynicism of longtime contact with the public, only cocked an eye at her and said, “Watch the steps going up to the privies. It’s dark back in the yard.” His gaze flicked over her dust-blotched white robe, her haggard face, inscrutable, but she was past caring. She supposed she could have come-up with an illusion to make him think the customer demanding this standard hangover cathartic of her uncle’s was a camel driver or one of the neighborhood sluts, but her mind felt blunted, fogged, incapable already of any spell of defense. She couldn’t even figure out a circuitous route back to the Citadel gate from the Oan Echis Temple, much less deal with the thousand small details that made up such a spell.

  After throwing up in the yard she felt better. But the night seemed to her to be alive with the whisper of that jangling magic. Everywhere she turned she thought she saw the creeping ghost of blue flame.

  He’ll be waiting for me, she thought. In the darkness, in the alleys between here and the Citadel . . . .

  The tavern’s rear yard was barely ten feet by twenty, stinking of kitchen waste. Rats scuffled in the darkness as Shaldis climbed on a rain barrel, then to the top of the privy shed to look over the wall. There was another yard back there that smelled of soap and cheap starch; Shaldis swung over the wall, crossed the hard-packed dirt, muzziness clawing at her mind.

  Tea? she thought. Apricot paste? Vanilla cakes? Again she saw the Red Silk Lady’s turquoise eye cocked at her under the grizzled brow, saw big, soft hands chasing the finches away from the crumbs. The dark around her seemed to be getting thicker, as if she walked in fog. Magic shivered in the air.

  Waiting for her? Listening for her? She scrambled over the gate, dropped into a narrow street that stank of camel dung, tried to get her bearings. The walls were high, hemming her in. She couldn’t see the shape of the bluffs above them, though she knew she had to be close. Lamplight made wavering patterns behind latticed windows. Straight overhead she picked out the constellation of the Weeping Ladies, the burning red gypsy star. Left would lead her to the Citadel.

  And toward the darkness that waited for her.

  He’s a mage. He’ll know the city as well as I—better, if he’s a man and has been able to rove its ways all his life.

  Drink your tea, she heard Ahure whisper in her thoughts, before it gets cold.

  The taste of red pepper and vomit still in her throat at least served to keep her head clear, but she blundered against the wall as she turned right.

  Darkness among the alleys. The smoky blare of torches and music, the long tangle of the Night Market between the Baths of Ragonis and the Circus walls: booths of coarse-
dyed camel hair hung with flowers, cheap brass statues and pitchers, a woman selling shoes. A man offered attar of roses in painted pots and another carried trays of teacups slung from his hips, serving tea out of an urn on his back. Bullyboys in leather body armor smoked kif and called out to her, laughing, grabbing at her as she passed. Darkness again, alleys and yards and the reek of greasy cooking. Frankincense in a temple court no wider than a tall man’s arms. A god’s statue watched her from a niche. A cat yowled. A woman hastened up an empty covered street trailed by a white pig. Two girls dipped water from a nearly dry well—one of them had the face of Shaldis’s sister Twosie, but that might only have been a dream.

  Somewhere in the night, someone was calling her name.

  Seeking her, smiling and harmless, with an acid-blue crown of invisible fire wickering somewhere behind his back.

  “Do you think you could keep the teyn in line?” asked Oryn. “If you had to?”

  “That depends on what you mean by ‘had to.’ ” The Summer Concubine was a shadow against the enormous half-quenched glow of the camp, an outline backed by the creeping worms of red, distant firelight. The bitter smell of dust flowed over them with the wind off the desert, and Oryn felt a twinge of gladness that the horns of the Citadel had ceased. In the silence out here they would have been dimly audible, a weight on his shoulders, a reminder of the desperation of their plight.

  He felt guilty about his gladness, as if his longing for silence were disloyal to his friend Hathmar, and to all the adepts and masters of the college. They were doing their best.

  Maybe Akarian was right. Maybe all he needed was more faith.

  “If I had to defend myself, or you, or Rainsong Girl from immediate attack by teyn, yes, I think I could. If I’d been in Dry Hill the night of the attack, yes, I would have done all I could to keep those children from being taken, the men from being killed.”