“Eh bene,” said Monsignor da Panzano, rousing himself. “So this Mauro, this sorcerer of Marroch, is somewhere out in the so-dark, so-secret night, and with a band of these lupi mannari to aid him. I do not say anything against your mistress; she has done what is very near the miracle tonight, yes? Although, è vero, she has placed her soul in peril with her so-blasphemous words”—here he made a little moue of distaste—“yet she has kept faith with me, so I say to myself, ‘Da Panzano, hold your tongue awhile.’ But I am concerned for this band of demons, with this man of power to lead them. Let me ask you, young man: What do you know of her ways? Can she complete this task, and destroy the rest of them?”
“Herself can do what is needed, Monsignor; I have never known her to fail at anything,” said Hob, realizing with a bit of surprise that that was absolutely true.
“Of course, it may be that King John, he will be angry at this sorcerer for failing, no? Then it might be prudent for him to make his way back to Marroch with his followers, and not to risk the fury of the king.” The legate sighed. “So many paths—is hard to see what to do.”
Sinibaldo looked up suddenly, as did Jack: both stared at the outer door. Then Hob, alerted by the warlike pair’s instincts, heard it too—a faint scuffling noise.
Da Panzano, a man of plots and schemes and purloined information rather than a man of action, looked back and forth among the others. “What? What is it you are hearing?”
Sinibaldo pointed to the outer door, and da Panzano swung around in his chair. Even as they watched, the locked door gave a clank and silently swung inward.
A moment later the elongated form of the Marroch sorcerer stepped out of the night, and behind him a small band of bouda pressed into the room, fanning out against the wall to either side of the doorway. The Cousins wore their hooded cloaks and nothing else, but they carried bags of coarse cloth, presumably with the ash so necessary to their transformation, and around their necks, slung on fine but strong chains, were sheathed the ornate curved daggers of the Berber folk. There were ten or eleven of them, and every man put a hand to his hilt, but none drew steel. One reached behind him and swung the door shut.
At once Sinibaldo stepped in front of da Panzano; Jack and Hob came to their feet. Hob put his hand on his own knife-hilt, and beside him he felt Jack tense and widen his stance for stability, the floorboards actually creaking beneath his bulk. There was a moment’s stasis, and then the sorcerer threw up a long thin hand: Wait. Yattuy was so cadaverously gaunt that he seemed even taller than he was, and Hob, looking up into the dark face with its taut cheekbones, its prominent brow ridges, the high forehead from which the crisp hair marched back in tight waves, was shocked to see something close to amusement—an angry, a dark amusement, the pleased expression of a cat with a mouse between its paws—in the sorcerer’s eyes.
And what eyes they were! In the shadow of those strong brow ridges, they glittered with intelligence. Here was a man who had mastered the arcana of sorcery, who spoke several languages, who inspired obedience in hundreds of malefic beings, who could gain and hold the confidence of the irascible and headstrong king of a foreign nation.
Now he held the room, with its two factions poised on the brink of violence, immobile with his commanding presence, his gaze, and his upflung hand. He spoke, a mellifluous bass, with the faintest of accents—plainly he had mastered English, and the Norman high speech at that. “Be at peace. I seek only two women, witches of great power—you know who I mean. These ones”—he indicated the bouda behind him—“have trailed them here by scent.”
He lowered his voice, and said gravely, “I have come to avenge my children.”
Yattuy smiled upon Jack. Hob wondered to see what a sweet and beneficent smile it seemed; almost one could believe that this was a kindly man, an uncle perhaps, reacting to his favorite nephew. He said to Jack, “You are what the people who dwell south of the great sands call the ebόbό, the hairy man of the mountain forests; my children can smell it upon you, the change, the animal inside your skin. Come, child, be my friend.”
Jack seemed fascinated; it was as though he were unable to look away. He moved restlessly; his feet shuffled; his head began to turn, but did not, and always he was gazing into the sorcerer’s eyes.
Yattuy reached behind him, blindly; the nearest bouda opened his bag of ashes, and held it so the magus could feel it. Still smiling upon Jack, he reached into the bag behind him, seized a handful of ash, and tossed it over Jack with a motion as of one who bestows a blessing. The Amazigh’s long arm and narrow hand flashed out and snapped the leather thong about Jack’s neck, the thong that held Molly’s amulet, a little deerskin bag with herbs, a lock of Molly’s hair, an image of the Horned Man, Lord of the Beasts. He tossed the amulet behind him.
Jack coughed, and began to shake his head. He staggered a bit in place, and reached a hand out to the nearest chair back. Hob stared at him in a mix of astonishment and horror: Had the dark man’s outline begun to blur a bit? Hob blinked. No, Jack could be seen clearly enough—but was he a little coarser in feature? Were his shoulders even wider than before? There was a little tearing sound, and a rip began to open up at the sleeve of his shirt. Suddenly Hob caught sight of Jack’s hand where it rested on the back of the chair—it was different: broader, darker, covered with coarse dark hairs.
Jack had begun to change into the Beast.
The Amazigh sorcerer, still smiling, turned his head slightly, addressing the bouda behind him. He pointed to Hob and the two Italians. “Kill these men.”
CHAPTER 34
ONE OF THE COUSINS SPRANG at Hob, whipping his curved dagger from its sheath; the young man caught the descending knife wrist, applied a technique that Molly had taught him, and rolled the Berber over his hip, throwing him headfirst against the wall, to fall lifeless to the floor, his neck at a disquieting angle. As soon as the first bouda left his hands, Hob snatched out the heavy war dagger given to him by Sir Balthasar and went to one knee with his right arm extended, as that ferocious knight had shown him. The vicious horizontal swing that the next man had aimed at him thus passed harmlessly over his head, and the attacker’s forward momentum carried him onto the dagger’s point.
Da Panzano had backed away, Sinibaldo standing like a wall in front of him. The bodyguard’s right hand flicked into his coat, flicked out, and did it again, and two men were down, convulsing, foaming, sliding down to death, the graceful Venetian darts quivering in their necks. In Sinibaldo’s left hand was the gray silk cord: now the pierced golden coin of Venice, stamped with St. Mark’s winged lion, flew out and coiled about a third man’s neck. The Italian gave a fierce and clever pull, a move like a riverbank fisherman heaving a fish from the current, and there was a crack, muted by the muscle of the bouda’s neck, that told of a snapped spine, and the Berber, dead on his feet, fell straight down and rolled to his side.
At this moment Molly, breathless from running, appeared in the archway that led to the cloister passage, and Yattuy threw out his arms to either side and snapped out a command in Tamazight. The bouda, just preparing a concerted rush, stopped immediately and retreated to the wall behind them.
“Why, welcome,” said the sorcerer, smiling pleasantly at Molly. “I am so pleased to find you here.”
And now Nemain appeared behind her grandmother, and the sorcerer’s smile widened. “And here is the whelp as well. We have a saying: Ayna ikka tisgnit, ikt ifilu—wherever the needle goes, so too goes the thread.”
The women gazed in dismay at the scene: Jack’s transformation was nearly complete. Da Panzano stared, his face drained of blood, his dark eyes wide and glassy, his palms flat to the wall behind him, as his mind fought to accept what he was seeing.
Jack’s clothes had burst apart and fallen from him; his back had broadened, covered with a coarse black pelt, the hairs tipped with silver; his arms had lengthened and thickened, as big around as a strong man’s thighs, with elbows knobbed with sinew and muscle, and the wrists and hands of a giant
. Jack’s legs had shortened and bowed and greatly increased in girth.
And his face! His face was a bestial mask of ferocity, small red-tinged eyes peering out from under a shelf of bone, a jutting mouth with four enormous fangs. He dropped to all fours, his leathery knuckles functioning as forefeet, and ambled forward a step, to peer uncertainly up into Yattuy’s eyes.
The sorcerer looked down from his great height, placed an avuncular hand on the monster’s shoulder, and pointed at Molly and Nemain. He bent down to the great head, where the skull rose to a casque-like ridge, and murmured in the Beast’s small black ear. As he muttered to that which had been Jack, Yattuy’s expression lost its veneer of urbane amusement, and became more and more savage. Hob had no doubt that he was ordering the women’s destruction; that it would be accomplished by Molly’s man added spice to the sorcerer’s vengeance.
And now the Beast turned its muzzle; slowly its gaze left the wizard’s face and sought out Molly and Nemain. It swung its stiff-backed torso about, and took a pace forward, still on all fours. Hob looked on in utter horror: the Beast was enormous, and immune to iron, and under Yattuy’s control, and Molly unprepared and without the potions she used to induce a return to Jack’s human state. It seemed that doom was inevitable.
But after a moment of frozen distress, Molly recovered herself, and extending a smooth white hand, she spoke to Jack in Irish, her beautiful deep voice calm and calming, her expression one of utmost kindness. The Beast’s lips drew back: two great fangs above, two below, a terrifying sight, and then it roared, a tremendous leonine sound in the confined space, a thunderclap that seemed to shake the walls. From the corner of his eye Hob had a glimpse of da Panzano slumping back against the side table, his face ghost-white, and even Sinibaldo was in a deep defensive crouch.
And still Molly spoke to the Beast, and crooned to it, she and Nemain standing there empty-handed, and Hob could make out the name “Jack” amid the stream of Irish, and some Irish endearments he had come to learn—mo mhuirnín, and a chuisle, and stόr mo chroí, and the like. He remembered what she had said about the wild white cattle, how they did not really understand Irish, but that the Irish helped Molly and Nemain focus their communication with the bulls, communication at a level below words. And the Beast was not a true animal; there was some Jack far down in that creature, and Jack had heard Molly murmuring those words, those Irish endearments, to him—on the pillows, in the dimness of the wagons, in the intimacy that they two shared with no one else.
Now Molly began to approach the Beast, still speaking in that soothing voice that was almost singing, almost a lullaby. The Beast raised a fist the size of Hob’s head, and hammered it down upon the floor, the planks giving off a muffled boom, and still Molly came on and she came up to the Beast and put a hand to its cheek, and bent forward—it flinched back a bit, but then stayed still—and she kissed it, full on the wide thin lips.
The Beast sat back on its haunches, looked off to the side, and gave a few desultory slaps at its black leathery breast, producing a popping sound. It almost looked embarrassed, thought Hob, if such were possible for so demonic a figure.
Now Molly put an arm about its neck, and she kissed it again, this time on the long flat cheek, and yet again, on the heavy supraorbital bone, and she looked up and past it, and into Yattuy’s face, and her expression slowly changed from the utmost tenderness that she had shown to the Beast, to a grim minatory glare; gone was the fond lover, and in her place was this stern and vengeful queen. She raised her arm; her sleeve fell away and revealed her graceful forearm, her white wrist and hand and pointing finger, all extended toward the tall Berber: a lovely sight in itself, but signifying only Death. Slowly the Beast shifted to face Yattuy; it came forward onto its knuckles and took a pace toward him.
However evil Yattuy might be, he was not slow of wit. Those keen eyes had at once seen and weighed the shift in power: he was faced with two women of the Art, two dangerous warriors—da Panzano could be ignored for the moment—and this uncanny monster; he had his remaining bouda, still in human form, his own deep knowledge of the Art, and his force of will.
He stepped back rapidly five, six paces, almost running backward, and rapped out a command to the remaining bouda. At once they unslung their bags of ash and dumped the contents to the floor. A gray cloud rolled out from their side of the room. The Imazighen dropped in place and began to roll about in the ashes. Almost immediately their forms began to blur and distort.
Jack-the-Beast began to advance on the Berber magus, but the wizard fixed it with a glance and began to mutter in Tamazight, and the Beast stopped a moment, holding its head to one side and shaking it, as one does to clear water from the ear, but it was only for a moment: Molly’s control over the Beast was complete, and it had the unholy strength of the shapeshifter, and the sorcerer’s ability to control it was negligible.
Yattuy ceased his mumbled spell, and cried out a command, and transferred his attention to the two women. Behind him the band of bouda, now fully transformed, rose up from their bed of ash, burst into a cacophony of growls and yelps and titters, and surged around the tall form of their chieftain, who stood with both arms outstretched, one lean brown forefinger pointing at Molly and the other at Nemain.
Sinibaldo was immediately submerged beneath three of the monstrous creatures, bitten and torn to death in the space of a heartbeat. Another hyena came around Yattuy’s left side and made for Hob. The young man went into a defensive stance, his dagger out before him, although he knew it was hopeless, but Jack-the-Beast swerved from his slow advance on Yattuy and snagged the hapless Cousin with an outflung arm as thick and hard as a balk of timber. The hyena crashed to the ground, and before it could arise, the Beast’s vast weight landed on its back; two enormous hands seized its head and wrenched the muzzle sideways. There was a dull crackling noise and the creature slumped to the floor, its dead eyes staring, its dead jaws dribbling saliva onto the polished oak boards.
The Beast turned away from the corpse and toward Yattuy, but a wave of the eerie hyenas, all that were left, leaped at it, and on the instant the room turned to a chaos of bestial snarling and roaring, the great bodies swirling and tumbling, hyenas thrown against the wall, scrabbling to their feet, and launching themselves back into the fray.
Hob backed to the wall near Molly and Nemain; da Panzano was already pressed tight against the wainscoting on his side, and even Yattuy stood aside somewhat. Hob could hardly make out what was happening; the combatants moved and dodged and swirled with the speed of fighting dogs, huge though they all were. He saw what had been Jack sink two-inch fangs into a hyena’s sloping neck, shake it as Sweetlove did with a rat, and drop it, dead, at Yattuy’s feet.
Then two more of the unnatural hyenas sprang at him; he smashed one with a fist like a small boulder, and it fell on its side and slid perhaps a foot and did not arise. Jack-the-Beast began to throttle the second bouda, and then a third and fourth leaped on him, the collision driving the whole group through the arch and into the hallway, where they rolled and bit and smote and tore at one another, a sight to make Hob think of a war between tribes of devils.
But inside the room, Yattuy and the women had turned their attention back to their struggle. Hob tore his eyes from the tumult in the hall. In response to whatever unseen attack the magus was projecting toward Molly and Nemain, the women each had both arms extended toward him, the left palm out, and the right with first and last fingers extended, making Hob think of the Horned Man. He pushed himself off the wall and started toward Yattuy, dagger extended.
As he stepped in between the women and the Berber, Hob went blind. A humming ran along his bones, his limbs grew weak, and bile rose in his throat. He took a step but could not feel the floor, and a heavy blow to his shoulder told him that he had fallen. His ears heard only silence. He began to sweep a hand over where the floor should be, and then realized that he could not feel his hand. A fierce shining panic ran up through him, and he rolled aimlessly back and for
th.
Mercifully his sight began to clear: at first it was around the perimeter of his vision, then the dark center faded to clarity. The three adepts still stood waging their silent battle, and the roaring of the Beast and the snarls and hysteric laughter of the bouda began to be heard, muffled at first and then, as whatever dire element Hob had stepped into began to wear off, louder and then yet louder. His limbs shook as though with fever, and he was weak, very weak, but sensation and strength were seeping back, however slowly, and he was giddy with relief.
From the floor he cast a glance at the women—what must it be like for them, standing full in the gale of the wizard’s malice? Sweat stood out on Nemain’s brow, she took tottering steps backward and forward again, and even as he watched, her eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed.
A red rage ignited in Hob’s chest, and seemed to seep into his limbs, thawing their chill, dampening their tremor; he forgot everything and began to creep. At first he was dragging his body along by his arms and one leg, then he progressed to a hands-and-knees crawl. He went past Yattuy and crossed behind the mage, grimly making for da Panzano’s side of the room.
He came to Sinibaldo’s corpse. With a great effort he seized hold of the bodyguard’s arm, and, with a heave that took all of his diminished strength, turned the body on its back. He was dimly aware that da Panzano was watching him and the others, in ashen horror. Sinibaldo had been terribly torn, and Hob’s hands were red to the wrist with his blood. He could hear the bodyguard on the day they had met: “The dardo—he is envenomed.” The shock of stepping into range of the sorcerer’s spell-casting had loosened the solid planks of the real world on which Hob stood, and for a moment the memory and the present became one, and he thought that Sinibaldo’s corpse had spoken.
Throne of Darkness: A Novel Page 19