Four and Twenty Blackbirds

by Mercedes Lackey

  Orm "shyly" accepted Rufen's apologies, stumbled through a clumsy apology of his own, then hurried on to the city as Rufen headed back to the Abbey. Orm's job wasn't complete yet. He still had a baker's-dozen bodies to put out before daybreak.

  Captain Fenris was an actual veteran of combat, a survivor of one of the feuds that had erupted among the nobility until the High King came back to his senses and put a stop to them. The Captain was no stranger to mass slaughter, but most of his constables were not ready to see bodies heaped up in a waist-high pile. The callousness of the scene unnerved them completely; even the hardiest of his constables was unable to remain in the vicinity of the cul-de-sac. Only Fenris waited there, as Tal and Ardis answered the early-morning summons. The rest of the constables guarded the scene from the safe distance of the entrances to the alleyway.

  "It's not as bad as it could be," Fenris said, quite calmly, as he led the two Church officials down the alley. "No blood and the bodies are all frozen. If this had been high summer, it would have been bad."

  It was quite bad enough. Tal had learned after many hours spent in morgues how to detach himself from his surroundings, but the number of dead in itself was enough to stun. Fenris's warning about what they would find made it possible for him to face the pile of about a dozen bodies with exterior calm, at least.

  The corpses were all fully clothed, in straight positions as if they had already been laid out for burial. That made the way they were neatly stacked all the more disturbing; just like a pile of logs, only the "logs" had been living human beings before they were so callously piled. Three of them had been severely mutilated, with patterns carved into their flesh; patterns resembling, in a bizarre way, ornamentation. These three were on the top of the pile, their garments open to the waist, to best display their condition.

  Of all the many scenes where crimes had occurred that Tal had seen over the years, this was the most surreal. The alley was deep in shadow, the sky overcast, the area so completely silent that the few sounds that passing traffic made never even got as far as this cul-de-sac. This could have been the Hell of the Lustful, the damned frozen in eternal immobility, denied even the comfort of their senses.

  Inside, while part of him analyzed what was in front of him, the rest of him was trying to cope with the idea of someone capable of such a slaughter. And someone capable of making a display like this, afterwards. That's what's the most unnerving. He strove to take himself out of the scene, to view it as if it was a play on a stage, but it was difficult not to imagine himself as one of those victims.

  "I sent a runner to tell Arden's people. What do you think?" Fenris asked as he edged his way around the pile.

  "Have them laid out, would you?" Tal asked, instead of answering him. The bodies were all coated in ice, which was interesting, for it suggested that they had all been in the water at one time. Even their garments were stiff with ice.

  And that would make sense, if he's using the water to remove magic we could trace. That would be why there was no blood, and no obvious bloodstains; they had been underwater long enough for the blood to wash out of their clothing.

  And isn't that what all the advice-givers say? Rinse out blood with cold water to keep it from staining? He fought a hysterical urge to laugh.

  Fenris nodded at the two silent figures waiting to one side; robed and hooded, these must be two of the Priests who collected the dead in Kingsford. They said nothing, but simply went to work; handling their charges respectfully, carefully and gently, as if the corpses they moved were of the highly-born, or were sleeping, not dead. Tal, watching them with surprise and admiration, found himself wishing that all those who cared for the dead were as compassionate as these two.

  When they were finished, Tal walked along the row, carefully examining each one. Interestingly, one was male, and strangled, but the rest were all women, and had been stabbed. With a third of them, the mutilated ones, it was difficult to be certain, but he thought that the final, fatal wound was the knife-blow to the heart that was so characteristic of "their" killer. In the case of the rest, except for the man, that was certainly so.

  These victims were not musicians, but there were enough similarities in how they had died that Tal was certain that they tied in with their murderer, and he told Fenris so.

  "You think perhaps that one was someone who walked in at the wrong time?" Fenris hazarded, pointing to the lone male.

  Tal nodded. "And those, the ones that were cut up—he's done this before, that Gypsy I told you about."

  "That was at the hands of a jeweler," Fenris noted.

  "As it always has been at the hands of a tool," Tal agreed. "But this time it does look as if he's done the work with his own hands, and I have to wonder why."

  Fenris leaned over one of the bodies to take a closer look. "Interesting. I think you may be right. Maybe he didn't want to expend the magic he needed to use tools? But I can see something else here—these are all—well, human flotsam. They're not musicians. Is he getting desperate? Could that be why he didn't take tools?"

  Tal considered that for a moment. "He might be. We've made a fairly good job of warning real musicians off the street. But do remember—just because we haven't found tools, that doesn't mean he didn't use them—they may simply be under the ice downstream, and we won't find them until spring."

  "He may need power, and a great deal of it." That was Ardis, her face so white and still it could have been a marble likeness. "That would make him desperate enough to do the work himself, and to murder so many in so short a period of time."

  "Or he's taunting us," Tal suggested. That was his private opinion. "He's piled up all these victims to say—'Look at me! See what I can do, and you can't stop me!' He knows we're after him, and he knows we haven't got a single idea of who he is or where to find him. This is his way of thumbing his nose at us."

  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 have someone 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 he had 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 th
e spell been put on the pen? When and where? Never mind—the killer now had him as a puppet; this entire scene had been a trap, a way to put him 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 his mind—this was no mental compulsion, it was a greater power than his forcing his limbs to do what it 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.

  He had 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; he had 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 she wasn'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 was during 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 sick; he pumped his wings hard and pursued it with all of his strength. Whatever it was, whatever it had been doing—well, it was wrong, 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 seen that particular combination before.

  It was the bird-man, and it was after Rand. Rand, who could not 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.