by J. L. Doty
She searched out what must be the village inn, the only two-story structure in the place, with a healthy cloud of smoke billowing from its chimney. The door was barred, so she rapped on it with the heel of her foot, and after a pause it opened a crack and a grimy face stared out at her.
Close to tears, she asked, “Is this an inn?”
“Aye,” a gruff male voice answered her. “And who’s askin’?”
“A traveler,” she said, “seeking shelter from the cold.”
“Where’s yer man?”
A woman never traveled alone; it was much too dangerous. Rhianne tried to think of a good lie, but realized they’d learn the truth soon enough. “I’m traveling alone.”
The innkeeper looked her over silently for an interminable moment, then grumbled his disapproval and opened the door. Inside, blessed warmth washed over her and she paused just within the door for a moment to let her shivers die. Across the room a healthy fire crackled in a large hearth, and without hesitation she approached it. She stood in front of it until she could no longer stand the heat, then she backed away and turned about, and for the first time took stock of her surroundings.
There were a number of patrons seated at crude benches in the inn’s common room, all of them male, all of them staring at her with undisguised distrust. The ceiling was low, the air sooty and stale, and the floor simple packed earth. The fat innkeeper had retreated behind a bar at the far end of the room, and like his patrons, he stared at her suspiciously while he used a dirty rag to polish a tin cup. She crossed the room toward him, stepped up to the bar and smiled politely. “I’m very hungry. I haven’t had a full meal in days.”
“Sure,” the innkeeper grumbled, thick folds of skin at his neck wobbling as he spoke. “We got food to sell.”
Money! Rhianne had never thought to carry money. A woman didn’t carry money, unless she was the kitchen maid going to market for her master, or some servant on an errand. “I have no money,” she whispered.
The innkeeper shook his head. “I don’t give food away free.”
A man stepped next to her at the bar, standing over her uncomfortably close. “So yer hungry?” the man said. “And penniless, eh?” He grabbed her by the arm, spun her to face him, leaned up close to her and grinned a gap-toothed grin. His breath smelled of onions and beer and it turned her stomach. “But yer a pretty one, me girl, and I know how you can earn a few coins.”
“Jokath,” someone shouted, “going to keep her all for yourself?”
“Please,” Rhianne pleaded. “Let go of me.”
“Ah, you just don’t know what you want, little girl.”
“Let her go, Jokath,” the innkeeper said.
The bully glanced his way. “I’ll let her go when I’m done with her.”
He grabbed both her shoulders with his hands, pulled her face toward his, and as rising panic took her she instinctively reached for the only weapon at her commend, and she surprised herself at how easily her magic answered her call.
Sparks crackled at her shoulders where his hands touched her, and while her power protected her, the bully screamed out, jerked and twitched, then fell away from her and landed on his back on the floor. He groaned and clutched his smoking hands to his chest. At that moment, every man in the inn decided he had other business to worry about and looked away. But Rhianne’s blood was up: Morgin’s death, days without food and rest, hungry, tired, and dirty. She stood over the bully and he cringed beneath her as she pointed a finger at him. “Lay a hand on me again, bully, and I’ll turn you into a toad and feed you to the innkeeper’s cat—if he has one. If not, I’ll eat you myself. Now be gone with you.”
The bully whimpered, got up onto his hands and knees and crawled to the door. Rhianne wondered how he’d feel if he knew she didn’t know how to turn him into a toad. She turned back to the innkeeper. Clearly as frightened as the bully, he remained behind the bar as if it would protect him from the witch who’d come in the night. “I’ll work for a meal and a roof over my head,” she said.
The innkeeper’s fear dissipated, turned into curiosity as he considered her proposal for a moment. Then he came to a decision. “Can you heal?” he asked. He leaned across the bar toward her, cocked his head to one side and pulled the collar of his tunic down to expose the side of his neck and a large, ugly, swollen boil. “Can you heal this?”
She looked it over for a moment. It was obviously painful. “You’re asking for magic,” she said. “And magic is difficult and dangerous. Dangerous for me, not you. So healing that will cost you far more than a single meal and a single night’s sleep.” She tried to judge the degree of suffering the boil had caused. “Three days and nights room and board, and stabling and feed for my horse.”
He lifted his collar, straightened up and looked at her narrowly. They argued further, settled on a day and a half. He finished with, “Ok, what’s yer name? Gotta have a name to seal a bargain.”
Rhianne hesitated, knew she shouldn’t give her real name, hadn’t thought far enough in advance to come up with one. She blurted out the first thing that came to mind, “Syllith.”
The innkeeper noticed her hesitation, but didn’t say anything. “And I’m John, but everyone calls me Fat John.”
He lifted his hand, spit into his palm and extended it toward her, saying, “Done, Mistress Syllith.”
Not sure what she was supposed to do, she spit into her own palm and shook his hand, then wiped her hand on her dress. “I’ll begin in the morning. For now have someone show me to my room. And that’s where I’ll eat, so have them bring my dinner as soon as possible.”
The innkeeper nodded to a young boy seated near the end of the bar. “Take her to the room in the northeast corner.”
Rhianne’s magic flooded her soul, and she sensed some deceit in the innkeeper’s words. She looked at him angrily. “I won’t demand the best room in the inn. But if there’s anything wrong with the room you give me, I’ll give you another boil to match that one . . .” She glanced down at his crotch, “. . . but in a far more painful place.”
The innkeeper looked at her for an instant, then shivered and grumbled at the boy, “On second thought, take her to the southeast room.”
~~~
NickoLot sat in her room, trembling as she listened to Rhianne’s screams. When the Kulls were done with Rhianne, she knew in her soul that Valso would give her to them next . . .
The Tulalane tried to paw her, slapped her and hurt her . . .
NickoLot awoke from her nightmares trembling. She sat up in bed, recalled that night so long ago, and yet it seemed only last night that she’d had to sit in her room, listening to the Kulls raping Rhianne in the room next to her. Rhianne’s screams had eventually died down to whimpers, barely heard through the thick wall between them, then nothing. And yet, Nicki had still sat there imagining what they would do to her when her turn came.
She climbed out of bed, went to her closet to select a gown for the day. After Csairne Glen there’d been a great deal of mourning to do, and Olivia had arranged for all of them to be properly attired. Nicki found black a comfortably unflattering color, and she now preferred it, wore it exclusively. She liked the high necklines that hid her small breasts, with a black veil to hide her face.
It suddenly struck her that the black dresses and veils were her equivalent of Morgin’s shadows, a comfortable place to hide.
~~~
Morgin awoke to the blackness of the tent, vivid dreams of Shebasha and Aethon’s tomb fluttering through his memories. Outside, he still heard the storm blowing out its fury, while inside he sensed a tension in the air that could only be coming from his companion. “What’s wrong?” he whispered into the darkness.
Harriok shifted his position. “Night is approaching, and there’s no sign the storm is letting up.”
“So?” Morgin asked. “We seem to be safe.”
“So we’ll miss travel time, and we’re short enough on water as it is.”
Morgin could al
most see Harriok through the darkness, and he wondered if some small part of his lost sense of shadow might have returned. But more than seeing him he heard the tension in his voice. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Harriok nodded. “The big cats. They hunt at night, though they’re loners, so ordinarily they’ll stay away from men, especially if there’s more than one of us. But they become quite bold during a storm like this because we’re so helpless.”
“Aren’t they helpless too?”
“No. Where the blowing sand would cut the flesh from our bones their thick fur protects them; and where the grit and the dust blind us, they have a transparent membrane that protects their eyes. But we should be safe. We’re dug in nicely, so it’s not likely one will find us.”
Remembering his dream Morgin asked, “Do they kill with their venom?”
To be the target of the lightning speed of a Benesh’ere warrior was a frightening experience. Almost before he’d finished speaking, Harriok pressed the cold steel of a knife to his throat. “What did you mean by that? The cats have no venom.”
Morgin glanced down at the blade. “I dreamt of a big cat with one venomous claw.”
Harriok released him, shook his head and muttered, “We’re doomed.”
“What do you mean we’re doomed? I’m not giving up that easily.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Harriok groaned. “If you dreamt of the demon-cat then she is coming for us.”
“And why is this cat so special?”
Harriok curled up in a corner of the tent. “Her soul is haunted by the spirit of a demon, and her venom is the darkest magic of death. Once it has touched you your soul is hers until she dies.”
Morgin argued, “Then we’ll have to kill her.”
Harriok shook his head. “How can you kill something that is already dead? The storm itself is probably her doing.”
As the hours passed the fury of the storm abated somewhat, though not enough, Harriok assured him, for them to travel. The howling of the wind outside often sounded like the cry of a large animal, and with increasing frequency Morgin found it difficult to convince himself it was only his imagination. Eventually he drifted off into a fitful sleep where he dreamt of the storm and the sand and Harriok and the cat.
She was a hot spark of life in the blackness of the wind and the sand and the night, a soul filled with hatred and desire and madness. He needed not the vision of his eyes to see her, for in his soul he watched her stalking them, darting from one dune to the next, uncaring of the fury of the storm. Just a dream, he tried to tell himself, but he found little comfort in that, for he’d long ago learned how dangerous his dreams could be.
Another spark of life appeared in his dream, a hint of netherlife with a strange familiarity to it, a netherbeing whom Morgin would never fail to recognize: Rat. The spark that was Shebasha changed course, intent upon intercepting Rat. But he darted from one dune to the next, popping in and out of reality as if reality and dream were stepping stones across a path of fear.
Rat crossed the terrain of Morgin’s dream and slipped into the tent. He crouched within a shadow in the confined space and his scent reminded Morgin of the sewers of Anistigh. Dressed in a jumble of filthy rags, his eyes, hot sparks in the blackness of the tent, he growled, “You forgot this.” He dragged forth Morgin’s sword and dropped it in the sand before him.
Morgin awoke to the howl of the wind, his fingers wrapped about the hilt of his sword, memories of Rat haunting his dreams. Shebasha’s scream rose above the cry of the wind, an anguished shriek Morgin knew must come from the demon haunting her soul. With the sound of tearing cloth the tent opened up to admit the night, and the fury of the storm, and the spark of hatred that haunted the great cat’s soul.
The sand cut painfully at Morgin’s cheeks so he folded the hood of his robe across his face to protect it. Harriok rose beside him, sword in hand, probably unaware Morgin now had a sword of his own. Harriok gripped Morgin’s tunic, pulled him close and screamed in his ear above the howl of the wind, “Stay low, or the blowing sand will shred your skin.”
Morgin sensed the spark of Shebasha’s hatred tracing a zigzag charge through the sand toward them. Then she made her final charge, and as she leapt, he wrapped his arms about Harriok, let his own knees fold and they landed in the sand. Arcing over them, she missed them and plowed into the horse. The horse screamed, went down with the cat on top of it, and Morgin caught a momentary glimpse of a massive, clawed paw tearing out its throat. As the horse kicked out its last moments of life, the cat clamped its jaws about its throat and dragged it off into the storm.
Morgin screamed into Harriok’s ear, “Get up. We have to fight.” But the young Benesh’ere remained unmoving and lifeless. Morgin held on to his sword with one hand and with the other gathered the tattered remnants of the tent about them, tried to wrap them both within its folds to protect them from the storm. But he sensed Shebasha just on the other side of the dune next to them, and tangled in the cloth and sand he feared there was little he could do to defend them.
He concentrated on his only chance: the sword. He sought out its magic, searched for it, opened his soul to it. But Shebasha, possibly born of the same netherlife as the sword, sensed his tactic, climbed to the top of the dune and leapt just as the metallic scent of magic touched his nose. The sword came to life, literally lifted him off the sand, and stood him straight up in the heart of the storm directly in the cat’s path. He struck out as she hit him, but the force of the impact sent him and the great cat tumbling down the side of a dune. At the bottom she landed on top of him and consciousness left him.
~~~
JohnEngine cringed as Olivia said, “This has been a disaster.” Even in his mid-twenties, JohnEngine reacted like a trained dog taught to fear the voice of its master.
“Yes it has, mother,” AnnaRail said, Roland standing beside her. “But you must calm yourself.”
JohnEngine glanced about the room as the two tried to calm the agitated old woman. Even here in Durin, Olivia had managed to recreate her sitting room in the suite she’d been given. The furniture was clearly not the same as that in her room in Elhiyne, the colors and materials different. But the various pieces had been moved about, and were no longer positioned as JohnEngine had first seen them almost twelve days ago. The old woman had shifted them here and there until the atmosphere of her sitting room had been recreated, an atmosphere in which all present felt as if Olivia sat on a throne above them, passing judgment at every turn.
“How can I remain calm with Morgin and Rhianne both dead?”
At the mention of their deaths, JohnEngine saw the hint of a tear in AnnaRail’s eyes, and suppressed a tear of his own. DaNoel’s stoic attitude disturbed him. His brother showed even less feeling than the old woman, and JohnEngine found that curious. Certainly, he and Morgin had never gotten along, but it appeared odd that he showed absolutely no sorrow whatsoever at the death of his adopted brother.
Olivia continued her rant. “The Decouix turned the tables on us. BlakeDown will surely use this to his advantage.”
Yes, Valso had turned their victory at Csairne Glen into a horrible loss of face. They’d come to Durin in triumph. Then the Kulls had dragged Morgin into the throne room and dumped him onto the floor, a bloody, beaten mess.
“We leave this city on the morrow,” Olivia said. “Instruct our servants and retainers to be ready for travel.”
JohnEngine bowed and said, “As you wish.”
DaNoel did the same, and they both turned and left the room while AnnaRail and Roland remained.
Out in the hallway JohnEngine turned to DaNoel and said, “You feel nothing for Morgin?”
JohnEngine expected to see defiance, but thought he saw something akin to guilt flash in DaNoel’s eyes.
“I mourn him,” DaNoel said. “Perhaps not as deeply as you, but I do.”
DaNoel’s words just didn’t ring true. As DaNoel turned away and strode down the hall, JohnEngine wondered
why he felt the need to lie so; and from where did such guilt stem? JohnEngine pondered that as he followed in DaNoel’s footsteps.
~~~
Morgin awoke to the vast silence of the morning dunes. The storm had blown itself out, the sun had risen, the morning still and calm with the temperature just beginning to rise. He lay on his face at the bottom of a dune, twisted up in the tangled remains of the tent. He hadn’t dreamt of Shebasha, but he had dreamt of Aethon’s tomb.
He looked about; there was no sign of the big cat, so he rolled over onto his back, discovered painfully that she’d clawed him across the back of his left shoulder. Probing with his right hand, he found five straight, deep furrows in the skin there, each throbbing painfully and caked with dried blood and sand. He thought he felt a small sixth furrow next to them, perhaps the length of his thumb. To his surprise it didn’t throb with pain, but was numb to the touch. He tried to recall what Harriok had said about Shebasha’s venom, and he wondered if he would now die some horrible death as her venom consumed his soul.
His left arm was of limited use and it took him some moments to pull free of the tent, then he climbed slowly to the top of the dune to survey his surroundings. On the other side of the dune the remnants of their camp were spread across the sands, though he saw no sign of his sword and assumed he’d lost it in the sand somewhere. Harriok’s horse lay nearby, its throat ripped out, long since dead. Sand had completely filled the depression Harriok had created for their tent.
Morgin dug frantically and quickly found Harriok wrapped in a good-sized piece of the tent. He was still alive, though unconscious. He’d been clawed across the chest, and he bore the marks of all six claws. Morgin examined the mark of the sixth claw carefully; it was shallower than the rest, and while the others had closed and the blood about them had dried, the small, sixth mark continued to ooze a thick, yellowish fluid.
Morgin laid Harriok to one side and dug further. He uncovered one of the water skins, torn and empty with no hint it had ever contained moisture. Digging further he found Harriok’s saddle, and along with it the rest of their provisions, including one, half-full water skin.