Four and Twenty Blackbirds bv-4

by Mercedes Lackey

  Ardis shook her head dubiously. "I don't know about that. I've never heard of a murderer flaunting himself—"

  "People like this are different," Tal reminded her. "They have something to prove. They want to show that they're better, smarter than anyone else; it enables them to think of the rest of us as inferior. But at the same time, they have to havesomeone to impress. So—you get displays—" he gestured at the line of corpses "—though I'll admit the displays aren't usually this lavish."

  Ardis shuddered visibly. "With this many victims—one person couldn't have moved all of them here in a single night. It would take at least two people; that means that hehad to help his accomplice. This may be the mistake we were looking for. I think that there will be traces of both of them here—maybe a less-practiced mage wouldn't be able to find those traces, but if they're there,I will. And once I have the 'scent,' I'll be able to find the men."

  Fenris blinked at her, at the fierce tone of her voice and stepped to one side. "Your site, High Bishop," he replied, in the most respectful of voices.

  Tal stepped to the side as well, and watched her as she knelt down by the side of the first in line. He fingered the pen in his pocket as he wondered what she intended to do.

  The pen—odd, he didn't usually carry it there, but this morning, he felt as if he wanted it there, like a luck-piece. The smooth surface was oddly soothing beneath his fingers, like the surface of the prayer-beads so many of the Priests carried—

  Suddenly, with no warning at all, something seized complete control of him.

  It felt as if his clothing—or the air surrounding him—had hardened around him like a shell. And the shell had a mind of its own. His throat was paralyzed, and the air over his face had hardened like a mask, keeping his features from moving. He watched, his heart beating in a panic, as his hand slowly came out of his pocket holding the pen exactly like a fighting-knife.

  His hand rose with the pen in it, and held it in front of his eyes, mocking him. He knew, with dreadful certainty, just what this strange and powerful force meant him to do, and that the pen had been the means by which it had taken him over. How had the spell been put on the pen? When and where? Never mind—the killer now hadhim as a puppet; this entire scene had been a trap, a way to puthim where the killer could get at him. Somewhere above them, he was laughing, and about to use Tal just as he had used every other tool he had taken. Tal knew what his expression was—he'd seen it before, on other killers. A blank, dead mask, with only his eyes giving a glimpse of the struggle going on within him. Only his mind was free—and that was meant to be a torture, that he should know what he was doing, and be unable to stop it.

  No!he thought at it, anger blazing up in him.Not this time! Red-hot rage flared inside him, consuming him, mind and soul. He would not let the killer do this again!

  He fiercely fought the magic that encased him, and within a few moments he knew exactly why the tools all had strange compression-bruises on their limbs. They, too, had struggled against this shell, this second skin of force, and their struggle had left bruises where the force crushed their flesh. There was nothing for him that he could fight with hismind —this was no mental compulsion, it was a greater power than his forcing his limbs to do whatit willed, as an adult would force a child's clumsy and unwilling limbs to walk. He could as well try to force a river in flood to reverse its course; nothing he could do would make it release him.

  He wanted to shout, to scream, but he could not even move his lips. His hands removed the cap of the pen and dropped it; he advanced on the unsuspecting Ardis, who still knelt with her back to him, the sharp-pointed pen in his hand held ready to stab her at the base of her skull, killing her with a single blow.

  Fenris, completely oblivious to what was going on, had gone to the end of the alley to speak to his men. Tal heard his voice echoing along the brickwork, in a murmur too soft to be properly understood. Ardis was wrapped up in her magics, and wouldn't move until it was too late.

  Horror twisted his stomach and throat, and sent chills of fear up his backbone. Anger reddened his vision and put a fire in his belly. Neither helped. He was still a prisoner to the crazed killer, and in another few steps, Ardis would be dead.

  Abruptly, he gave up trying to fight in all areas but one—his voice.

  Hehad to shout, to scream, to get out something to warn her!

  His body reduced the interval between them to six steps—five—

  "Rrdsss!"He managed to make a strangled noise and Ardis looked up, and saw him poised to strike, hand upraised.

  She was bewildered for a moment, probably by his expression, or lack of it. It would never occur to her that he was a danger to her! As he continued to lumber forward, he labored to get something more out of his throat. Despair gave him another burst of strength. She didn't understand; hehad to make her understand!

  "Rrrdisss!"he gurgled through clenched teeth."Rrrnn!"

  Then, she blinked, and bewilderment gave way to startlement; then startlement gave way to astonishment. He saw her tense, and start to move. She knew!

  As he made his first lunge at her, she managed to get out of the way. But that put her into the cul-de-sac, out of sight of Fenris and help, and well within his reach. As he pursued her, chasing her in the filthy, slippery alley, he was astonished and appalled to realize that shewasn't trying to escape him!

  Instead, she kept edging backwards as she frowned with concentration and focused her intent gaze on his face. He saw her lips moving; saw her fingers weaving odd patterns in the air—

  Then he knew what she was trying to do, and if he could have screamed with anguish, he would have.

  My God—my God—she's trying to break this thing to save me—she'll get herself killed trying to break this thing—

  Visyr had gone out at dawn, brought by the summons of a messenger from the Abbey sent by Ardis. An odd message, he had not been entirely certain what to make of it.

  We have victims, it had read. Please meet us at this address, but stay up above. I want to see who—or what—is watching us.

  That had him a little puzzled. Why would anything be watching them? It wasduring the time of a murder that the Black Bird appeared, not afterwards.

  Nevertheless, he obeyed the summons, launching himself out onto a damp, chill wind into an ugly gray morning. This was not a day he would have chosen to fly in; the air was heavy, and the dampness clung to his feathers.

  I'm going to be late,he realized, as he thought about how long it would have taken the messenger to come from the Abbey, then for one of the pages to bring the message to him.It would be just my luck to get there after they've all finished and gone away.

  He pumped his wings a little harder, wishing that the cloud-cover wasn't so low. He wouldn't be able to get any altitude to speak of in this muck.

  As he neared the area Ardis had directed him to, he started to scan the rooftops for possible landing-spots. The address the messenger had specified was in an alley, not in the street; he couldn't hover there indefinitely. Sooner or later he would have to land and rest.

  It was then, with a startled jolt, that he finally spotted the Black Bird he'd been looking for all this time.

  It was dancing around on a rooftop overlooking the alley; it probably thought it was hidden from view by an elaborate arrangement of cornices, chimney-pots, and other architectural outcroppings, but it wasn't, not from directly above. And there was something about the way it was moving that was the very opposite of comical. In fact, the moment he saw it, he had the same feeling that vipers, adders, spiders and poisonous insects gave him—a sick, shivery feeling in the pit of his stomach and the instinctive urge to smash the cause flat.

  Without a moment of hesitation, he plunged down after it. As he neared the halfway point of his dive, it saw him. Letting out a harsh, startled, and unmusical set of squawks, it fled, half flying, half scrambling along the roofs, like no bird he had ever seen before.

  The very sound of its voice made him feel si
ck; he pumped his wings hard and pursued it with all of his strength. Whatever it was, whatever it had been doing—well, it waswrong, evil. There was nothing Visyr wanted at that moment more than to feel his talons sinking into its skull.

  Suddenly, Tal froze in place, as a strange series of squawking noises came from up above. Something flashed by overhead, and a moment later, Tal felt the strangling hold on his throat and tongue ease—not much, but enough for him to speak? At least he wasn't chasing Ardis anymore!

  "Ardis!" he croaked. "Ardis, something's turned me loose! For a moment!"

  She stopped what she was doing and held perfectly still.

  "I'm in the spell, the magic—" Each word came out as a harsh whisper, but at least they were coming out now! "It's like a shell around me, forcing me to do whatever it wants. I think it's using the pen—not the knife, but my pen—I think that's how it got hold of me!"

  She nodded—then moved, but not to run. She closed the few steps between them faster than he had ever thought she could move and began taking things away from him, virtually stripping him of anything that might be considered a weapon, starting with his belt-knife and the pen. As her fingers touched the pen, he felt something like a shock; as she pulled it away, he felt for a moment as if he'd been dropped into boiling lead. He screamed, the focus of the worst pain he had ever experienced in his life.

  Visyr was a hunter; more than that, he was an angry, focused hunter, one who had pursued difficult game through the twisting caverns of the Serstyll Range. And he was not going to let this particular piece of game get away from him again.

  He narrowed the gap between them, until he was close enough to snatch a feather from the tail of the Black Bird. It wasn't squawking now, as it tried desperately to shake him off its track. It was saving its breath to fly.

  But Visyr the hunter was used to watching ahead of his prey as well as watching the prey itself, and he saw what it did not yet notice.

  It was about to run out of places to hide.

  A moment later, it burst out of a maze of gables into the open air above the river.

  It realized its mistake too late. Before it could turn and duck back into cover, Visyr was on it.

  Two hard wing-pumps, so hard he felt his muscles cry out, and he had his hand-talons buried in its rump. He executed a calculated tumble, which swung it under, then over him, and brought its head within reach of his foot-talons. One seized its skull; the other seized its chest.

  He squeezed.

  And a moment later, he landed safely on the docks amid a crowd of shouting, excited humans, with his prey safely dead, twitching, beneath his talons!

  Of all of Orm's calculations, these events had not entered into them.

  He had been watching from the safety of the recessed doorway of his own rented warehouse, figuring that Orm the spice-merchant had a perfect right to be in his own property, and a perfect right to investigate anyone rattling about in the alley. From here he could not see the pile of bodies, so he wouldn't "know" there was anything wrong. This was a good place to watch for the moment when Rand took over the Church constable; when Rand was completely occupied, Orm would have a chance to flee.

  But then everything went wrong.

  The constable got taken over, all right—but before he could do anything but chase the High Bishop around a bit, there was a flash of black overhead, followed closely by a flash of red, blue, black, and gray. Orm had seenthat particular combination before.

  It was the bird-man, and it was after Rand. Rand, who couldnot duck down alleys too narrow to fly in, Rand who was subject to exactly the same limitations as the creature who was chasing him, and who did not have that creature's sets of finger-long talons to defend himself with. Oh, he had that long, spearlike beak, but the bird-man had a better reach, and besides, Rand wasn't used to defending himself physically. The only things he'd ever used that beak on were helpless human women, not six-foot-tall predators.

  The two Church officials were out of sight in the cul-de-sac, but Orm knew what was happening: Tal Rufen was no longer being controlled by Rand. The High Bishop would free him in a moment—and she would have the pen in her possession in another. Nothing he could do or say would take away the fact thathe still had Rufen's pen in his room, and traces ofhis essence would be on the pen in Rufen's hand. Ardis was famed for being able to dig the true facts of a matter out of people who might not remember them. None of Orm's alibis would hold up against her investigation. Once she began unraveling his web of deceptions, it would fall completely to pieces. Rand might die by the talons of the bird-man, but Orm would be taken by the Church constables, and—

  And he'd heard rumors about what they did to prisoners. Look what they'd done to Rand!

  Nothing he had planned had included the High Bishop surviving Rand's attack.

  His luck had run completely out. He could not run far or fast enough to escape the Church's justice with Ardis in charge.

  But for a little while longer, at least, Rufen would not be able to move. Until Rand was actuallydead, Rufen would be frozen in place. There was only one hope for Orm, only one way he could buy himself enough time to flee.

  Kill them both.Now.

  He had learned a lot from Rand. It would be easy. First the woman, then the man—she, while she was held in frightened shock, he, while the spell still imprisoned him. Humans died so very easily; a single moment of work, and he would be safe.

  Lightly as a cat, quickly as a rat, he dashed from shelter, his knives already in his hands.

  Just as the spell broke and freed him, Tal heard the sound of running footsteps behind him; he did not wait to see what it was or who it was.

  He could move; that was all that counted. Freed from the force that held him, he flung himself between Ardis and whatever was coming. His body answered his commands slowly, clumsily, but he got himself in front of her just barely in time, and turned to face what was attacking them.

  That was all he had time to do; he wasn't even able to get his hands up to fend the attacker away.

  He felt the knife more as a shock than pain—the attacker plunged it into the upper part of his chest, in a shallow but climbing uppercut through his chest muscles, glancing off bone, too high to do any mortal damage. Tal had been through too many knife-fights to let that stop him.

  He thought he heard shouting; he ignored it, as everything slowed for him and his focus narrowed to just the man in front of him. The attacker—a thin, supple, ferretlike man—still had another knife. Ardis was still in danger. He had to deal with the attacker; he was the only one who could.

  Cold calm, as chill as an ice-floe, descended over him.

  The wound began to hurt; the pain spread outwards through his body like an expanding circle of fire. Hot blood trickled down his arm and side. None of that mattered; what mattered was the other man. He pushed the pain away, pushed everything away, except his opponent.

  As time slowed further, Tal watched the attacker's eyes flick this way, that way, then focus over Tal's shoulder. Ardis. He was going after Ardis. His shoulder twitched. His upper arm twitched. He flipped the knife in his hand, so that he held the point. He was going to throw that second knife.

  There was more shouting. Tal ignored it.

  Tal distracted him for a crucial second by making a feint with his good hand, then lunged for the attacker, knocking him to the ground and landing on top of him. Tal grappled him while he was still stunned, keeping him from using the knife, then used the advantage of his greater weight to keep his attacker pinned. Then Tal shoved a knee into his chest, seized him by the chin with his good hand, and began pounding his head into the ground.

  Nowanger took over, and the red rage completely overcame him. He continued pounding the man's head into the dirty ice, over and over, until he stopped struggling, until the body beneath his grew limp. There was a growing red smear on the frozen ground of the alley, when he realized that there was no more resistanceor movement from the body beneath him.

 
; It was over.

  There was more shouting, but suddenly Tal was too tired to pay any attention to it.

  Time resumed its normal course.

  Tal fell off their attacker's chest and rolled over onto his back, and stared up into the gray slit of sky above the alley.

  He was tired, so very tired.

  His shoulder and chest hurt, along with most of his body, and he rather thought that he ought to close his eyes now. . . .

  "Ardis!" Fenris shouted, pounding into the cul-de-sac ahead of his men. "High Bishop!"

  "I'm all right," she managed, getting to her feet and stumbling in the direction she'd last seen Tal. "There's been some trouble—"