Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Tashir looked about; although he had lost some of his apprehension, there was still fear and great unhappiness in him that Vanyel could Sense without effort. Small wonder. Everyone he ever knew died here.

  “The kitchen, I think,” Tashir replied. “And there wouldn't have been anybody back there when -” He shuddered, and not from the cold.

  “Another thing to consider,” Vanyel said gravely. “We're all likely to come on some very grisly relics, and of us all, Tashir is the least used to such things. Tashir, don't go off alone. Stay with one of us; Jervis, by preference. If at any time this gets too much for you, just go straight back to the kitchen until you get yourself settled again. I do want you to try and remember what happened that night. I don't want a repetition of what you did in Mother's bower. It's not that I think you'll hurt anybody because I know you won't.” He managed a little smile of encouragement. “It's that you'll be noisy, lad. There's not supposed to be anybody here. I'm sure Vedric has figured it out, but he might not dare act on his knowledge just yet. We want to keep him from having reasons. We don't need someone sending for your Uncle Vedric to lay the ghosts, now, do we?”

  Tashir paled, and Vanyel was immediately sorry he'd mentioned either ghosts or Vedric. The youngster shook his head wordlessly.

  “All right, then let's get to the first stage.” He shouldered his pack; the others did the same. “Tashir, it's up to you. Find us that kitchen.”

  Thirteen

  None of them slept particularly well. The first light of dawn saw three of the four lying open-eyed and tense on their sleeping mats; held prisoner by cold, nebulous fears, and waiting for someone else to make a sound that indicated rising. Vanyel was actually the last to claw his way out of uneasy half-dreams, which wasn't surprising, considering how exhausted he was. He felt the wakefulness around him after a confused moment or two and made a mage-light without thinking. Three gasps of startlement answered the first flare of the light; three pairs of eyes reflected blue flickers back at him.

  “If you were all awake,” he said, still sleep-mazed and confused, “why didn't you just get up?”

  He told Jervis later that - on reflection - he was surprised no one killed him for that question.

  There were still usable supplies in the kitchen; dried, salted, or otherwise preserved, and the kitchen had its own pump and well, which solved the problem of where they were going to get water. Trying to ignore the nagging thought that they were robbing the dead, Vanyel helped Jervis cobble together a tolerable meal of bacon, tea, and biscuits.

  They sat on folded blankets beside the hearth to eat it; the windowless kitchen was dark, and it somehow echoed more than it should. Even Jervis was affected by the somber atmosphere, casting surreptitious glances over his shoulder at the shadows behind him.

  “I think we're going to have to divide our attentions,” Vanyel said quietly, as they sipped their tea from an assortment of whatever containers had come to hand. “Does anyone object to my taking charge?” He waited, but no one said anything. “Fine. Savil, I'd like you to look into the trap-spell; find out what it does, or did, if you can. And how it was set here in the first place. Jervis, Tashir, I'd like you two to start going over the palace, room by room. Jervis, you've been in and out of highborn homes for a good part of your life; you know what belongs and what doesn't. I want you to look for anything that seems odd or out of place. Tashir, you're to try and trigger your memory of that night. While you're both at it, we need candles down here, and a bit more in the way of blankets and bedding would be nice.”

  “And you'll be- ?” Jervis raised a thick, grizzled eyebrow. His tone was not accusatory, just inquiring. Once again he and Vanyel had achieved a delicately balanced friendship. It was beginning to grow into something closer and less tentative, something more like a reliable partnership.

  A partnership built on respect, and concern for the boy. That Tashir had confessed his fictions hadn't hurt.

  “I'll be doing exactly the same, but from the bottom up; I want you two to work from the top down.” Vanyel grimaced. “I don't think things are going to be very pretty in the cellars, and, to be brutal, I'm the one of us most recently off a battle-line. I don't want Tashir to have to deal with the kind of things I may find down below. I did learn that your father wasn't holding any prisoners, Tashir, but I doubt the searchers spent much time in the cellars looking for victims.”

  Tashir blanched, and took a large, audible gulp of tea.

  “Eventually there's one more thing I'll be doing - I've got a hunch that the magic-node beneath the palace plays a major part in the why of all this; I want to find out just what the connection is, if I can. There has to be some kind of a connection; I cannot believe that Tayledras Adepts just left a powerful node like that undrained and unattended. That kind of carelessness goes counter to everything I know about them. Even if they were forced out, they'd have come back to release the mage-lines and drain the node - if not the original clan, then the descendants, or allied clan. I think that old spell Savil mentioned is very likely to have something to do with that.”

  Tasks assigned, they parted. Vanyel had taken the cellars for another reason; he and Savil were the only ones capable of producing their own light without needing to resort to candles or lanterns. They had no such physical lights, and there obviously were no windows in the cellars.

  He had cause to be grateful for a strong stomach before the morning was over. He'd been right about searchers not checking below. And Lores had not exaggerated the violence of the massacre in the least. Even this old, the shredded remains were appalling. But he had seen remains as bad, or worse, over the past year. And he began to discover a pattern: where there had been no people present, the damage to things was minimal, or nonexistent. The more people, the greater the damage.

  He did find candles, and the wine cellar. The former he took up the stairs and left at the kitchen landing; the latter he sealed. Half the casks had been split and all the bottles shattered. And as for what remained intact-he rather doubted anyone would ever want to drink from casks that had been stained and spattered with-

  Well, it was better not to dwell on it.

  They could drink what they found in the kitchen, or water.

  From the look of things, four of the servants had been drinking and dicing down there when the disaster had struck. At least, he thought it was four. There were four overturned mugs beside the dice and pile of coins, but he couldn't find more than six hands before he gave up searching.

  And the hands were the only parts still recognizably human.

  It was odd though; four of those six hands had worn rings exactly like the one the maid Reta had worn; dull silver with strange, dead-white stones. Reta's ring had plainly been something other than ornament, but although he Mindtouched one of the rings cautiously, Van could find nothing out of the ordinary about it.

  And yet he had seen a ring identical to these acting on his behalf. They could be just the badge of the household, yet in magic-fearing Highjorune, why would the ruler's own household wear something spell-touched?

  Vanyel wondered; it all tied in, somewhere, somehow. He had to find the key. But answers were not forthcoming; not yet. He lost track of time down there, and certainly under these circumstances his stomach was not likely to remind him. It felt like being on the Border again; every muscle tensed and waiting for something to leap on him from behind. And no Yfandes to guard his back. He'd never been so conscious of being completely alone before; he might easily have been the only living being in the entire palace. And it was far too easy for his overactive imagination to people the shadows beyond his mage-light with pathetic or vengeful spirits.

  When he finally completed his inspection of the cellars and their occasionally grisly contents, it was with profound relief that he climbed the kitchen stairs to emerge, blinking, into brilliant light.

  That was the first welcome surprise in a long while. Someone had taken it upon himself to remove the bundles of candles. That sa
me someone had stuck them on every available surface all over the kitchen, and lit them. Light transformed the look of the place from that of a gloomy cave to a normal island of commonplace, a bright and cheerful haven of sanity. It was a profligate use of candles, but there were hundreds of candles. Vanyel stepped into the kitchen with a feeling of having left a little hell behind him.

  Tashir and Jervis were by the hearth, sorting through several large bundles.

  “Where's Savil?” Vanyel asked. He squinted into the light. “What time is it?”

  Tashir jumped, and stared at Vanyel with a momentary expression of panic, as if he did not recognize him immediately. Jervis continued with his sorting, unperturbed. “She's tryin' to track down where that trap was set up,” the armsmaster replied. “And it's early evening. Give us a hand here, eh? We come up with some likely stuff out of closets and chests; if you get it sorted out an' made up as beds, I'll see to dinner.”

  Jervis was as good as his word; by the time Savil drifted in, still a little unfocused, he had another fair meal put together.

  The blankets, comforters, and sheets that Tashir and Vanyel had made into tolerably comfortable beds smelled strongly of sendle and lavender; proof enough that they'd been laid away in storage. Vanyel judged by Tashir's silence and white lips that the two had probably come across the same appalling signs and stains of slaughter that he had, though probably not the actual remains. The party that had searched the palace had most likely dealt with the actual bodies. Which was all to the good; if Tashir had seen what Vanyel had been dealing with, the boy might well have snapped. Vanyel gave Jervis high marks for unexpected sensitivity; in the state of nerves the young man was in now, one bloodstained sheet come upon in a bundle of bedding he was expected to use would likely send him into hysterics. Safer, far, to have searched out the linen closets and taken things sealed away for winter use.

  And it was also probable that the pattern below had been continued above; rooms that had been occupied at the time of the massacre might not have anything usable in them anymore.

  Savil wandered over to the fire and sat down absently on the bed nearest her pack. “Any luck?” he asked her. She shook off her vagueness and finally looked at him instead of through him.

  “Yes and no. I think I've got the site narrowed to the second floor, and I think I know how it was set. Someone brought in a catalyst, then using that catalyst, enlarged and strengthened the spell's compass over a long period of time. With no shields on this place, it would have been apprentice work once the initial spell had been set.” She accepted a plate from Jervis without looking at it. “It's nasty stuff, ke'chara. Makes my skin crawl. Hard to force myself to probe it, now that I know it's there. Like some kind of web with something incredibly evil at the heart - and I'm over on the edge of it, trying to see into the heart without waking what's there. And there's something very, very odd about it. It reeks of blood-magic, as you might well expect, but there's 'blood' involved in it in a much subtler way.''

  “Eat,” Vanyel advised, guessing that she hadn't paused for food or drink since this morning. “Jervis, did you and Tashir find anything?”

  The armsmaster chewed and swallowed before answering. “Maybe. If you're done below, I'd like your word on it. It's a room, first floor, smack square in the center of this building. Not much bigger nor a closet, an' has just one thing in it; a floor-t'-ceiling pillar; same stone as the outside. Might just be a kinda kingpost for the palace, it's bigger around than I can reach, but I never seen anything like it. You said look for odd, well, that's odd.”

  “Tashir?”

  The young man froze in mid-bite, and stared at him like a cornered rabbit.

  Vanyel felt an uncomfortable sympathy for him. His own Empathy told him Tashir was dancing on a hair-thin thread of nerve at the moment. There was no doubt in Vanyel's mind that he was trying to jar his memories loose. There was also no doubt in his mind that the youngster was, literally, going through hell. But there was no help for it; if the mystery was to be solved and Tashir cleared of guilt, it was likely to take all four of them to do it.

  “Tashir, what do you know about this room Jervis found?'' he prompted.

  Tashir swallowed and licked his lips. “Nothing,” he replied faintly. “They wouldn't ever let me in there. Everybody else got taken in at least once, but not Mother, and not me.”

  “Tashir, that's something,'“ Vanyel chided gently. “You said 'everybody'; do you mean that literally? Servants, too?”

  The young man nodded so hard he started to tip his plate off his knee. Jervis caught it before it spilled. Tashir hardly noticed, he was so intent on Vanyel. “Servants, too, Vanyel. Everybody.”

  “That's more than odd; that's smacking of a mystery.” He brooded for a moment, staring at the crackling flames in the hearth. He was greatly tempted to seek the place out now, this instant.

  But then he thought of the empty rooms filled with wreckage and the long, haunted halls he'd have to traverse to get there. He hesitated, and shivered. Strong stomach, battle-trained or not, there was a limit.

  I don't think so. I'm not up to it. Besides, I'd rather not chance a light being seen from outside. It'll be there in the morning.

  “D-d-d-do you want to go there tonight?” Tashir stuttered, patently not relishing the thought at all.

  “No, Tashir, not tonight,” he replied, half-smiling as a rush of relief brought a little more color to the youngster's cheeks. “Not tonight,” he repeated, echoing his own thought. “We've all had enough for one day. It's been there all this time; it'll be there in the morning.”

  Jervis broke the silence that followed. “Van, I was noticin' something. Rooms where there wasn't any folks, hardly anything's smashed. Maybe a curtain torn, chair broken, that kind of thing. Rooms where there was people, they're wrecked. The more people, the worse.”

  “It's the same down below,” Vanyel told him, as Jervis continued demolishing his dinner thoughtfully. “Savil, does that kind of pattern suggest anything to you?”

  She scowled with concentration. “Yes, but I can't think what. Damn!”

  Vanyel followed a stray thought. “Tashir, when they broke in and found the mess, where were you?”

  “Th-the Great Hall,” he faltered. “I just sort of woke up and I was there.”

  “And the worst wreckage was in the Great Hall?” Vanyel turned to Jervis for confirmation.

  “Near as I can tell from what I've seen so far.”

  As he tried to trigger his own memory, he had a momentary flash of that dream he'd had, of being surrounded by a whirlwind of devilish creatures. He realized with a start that made him sit up straight that that dream actually had an echo in his recent experience. The fire flared on the hearth, and with it, memory.

  He'd been playing bait, at the beginning of the Karsite ampaign, sitting all alone in an old keep just behind the Border.

  The keep was supposed to be held by nothing more formidable than an old man and a handful of retainers. Certainly the Guard was days away at the best forced march pace, though that shouldn't have mattered. Because no one was supposed to know that the keep was held so weakly. And no one was supposed to know that it guarded a very strategic supply route.

  But someone did know; someone had been leaking information to the Karsites. Poorly-guarded keeps of strategic importance behind the Valdemar lines were being decimated, the occupants slaughtered, leaving holes the strategists didn't learn about until it was too late. Or worse w en the strategists checked on their supposed holdings, they found keeps somehow occupied by hostile forces.

  Vanyel read the signs of magic, and had known only magic could counter these attacks. So Vanyel had ridden Yfandes to exhaustion to reach this one, a likely target. He'd cleared out the old man and his following, and waited.

  And the attack had come, in the form of a gretshke-Swarm; demi-demonic creatures (mostly head, teeth, and appetite) that, taken individually, were inconsequential. An ordinary fighter could deal with one - or tw
o; and they certainly were not immune to cold iron. But a Swarm - that was another matter. The Swarm contained hundreds, if not thousands, of the creatures. You could kill them by the dozens, and still they would overwhelm you, like encountering an avalanche of starving rats.

  A mage didn't control a Swarm; he just unleashed it. When the food was gone, or when they were sated, they would return to their own plane if they were given an exit. So a mage using them would customarily lure a Swarm to the Portal to their plane that he had opened within his target area and cast a shield about the target to keep the Swarm from escaping. He would wait an appropriate length of time - usually no more than a candlemark; the Swarm was fast - and open the Portal again to pull whatever of the Swarm remained back to their own plane. He would take the shield down then, and an occupying force could move in.

  All this required someone on the level of Adept; which made it likely that the mage in question was one of the three Adepts the Karsites had hired when they began this. One of the three had threatened, then launched the brutal incineration of an entire town; the town had been saved, but in stopping him Mardic and Donni had called the flames on themselves in a desperate attempt to confine them.

  It had worked. It had been a brave, unselfish-and ultimately fatal - ploy. The best that could be said was that their pain had been mercifully short.

  Vanyel had been determined that before he was pulled off the lines, he would have that particular mage's life. By preference, given the other things they'd done, he would have all three, but he wanted that one.

  The only problem was, the mages themselves refused confrontation; striking time and time again where he wasn't. By the time of this ambush he'd had enough. He had begun hunting them with the patience and stealth that would eventually earn him the name “Shadowstalker” when he tracked down the second Adept.