by J. L. Doty
As Morgin approached the open castle gates they loomed out of the blackness of the night like the jaws of some enormous beast. There were always crossbowmen and archers on the battlements above, and with the gates jammed open they would be uneasy and watchful, so he fought the growing urge to spur Mortiss into a charge. He watched the gates grow larger before him as she trotted forward, all going well, but then at the last instant, only a stone’s throw from freedom, a voice called out from above, “Halt! Identify yourself.”
Morgin tugged gently on Mortiss’ reins and brought her to a stop. He couldn’t answer them. He was too well known. His voice would be recognized.
“Identify yourself,” the voice called again. “Speak now, or we’ll drop you and your horse where you stand.”
In that instant an angry mob burst out of the castle and began spilling into the yard. The next instant JohnEngine and his sack-of-grain riders charged out of the stables heading straight for the gates and Morgin. At the same time a cloaked figure—whom Morgin later realized was Rhianne—pointed at JohnEngine and shouted above the rain, “It’s the outlaw wizard!”
Morgin heard the twang of a crossbow, waited through an eternity of an instant for the bolt to punch its way through his chest, but saw it bury itself instead in one of the sacks of grain as JohnEngine and his horses raced past him. On foot the mob charged chaotically across the yard to the gates, so Morgin pulled his sword, waved it above his head, pointed it through the gates at the fleeing figure of JohnEngine, shouted, “It’s the outlaw wizard. I’ll get him.” Then he spurred Mortiss into a charge, slapped her flank with the flat of his sword, and raced through the open castle gates.
He had to trust Mortiss to sense her own footing, for the rain and the gloom of the night blinded him completely, and at full charge the drops stung his face like grains of sand in a high wind. He kept low in the saddle, waiting for an arrow to pierce his back, or for Mortiss—like poor SarahGirl before her—to collapse beneath him. But no arrow came out of the night, and then he reached the edge of the forest, and there JohnEngine waited.
“Turn off here,” JohnEngine shouted at him. “Stay close to the edge of the forest and ride hard. Don’t try to find Val; let him find you, and by the gods don’t hide in your shadows or he never will.”
JohnEngine looked sharply toward the castle. “They’re coming,” he shouted. He nudged his horse next to Mortiss, reached out, gripped Morgin’s forearm tightly. “We’ll meet again, brother. I swear that now before you, and next time we’ll stand and fight, eh?” And with both of them seated atop horses, he leaned over and tried unsuccessfully to kiss Morgin, but gave up as their two horses jostled beneath them. JohnEngine spun his horse about, and with his horses and sacks of grain charged off into the night.
Morgin spurred Mortiss off the road, but on the uneven ground there he was forced to keep her pace to a slow trot, and after what seemed only seconds his ears caught the sound of the mob on the road behind him: the thunder of many hooves and the shouts of angry riders. Quickly he pulled Mortiss just within the edge of the forest and waited breathlessly. The cries and hoof beats approached, then dwindled slowly into the distance, but even after they were gone some instinct told him to wait longer.
While he waited the rain slackened, and after what seemed an eternity he heard the creak of saddle leather, a horse moving at a slow walk. Then out of the darkness a lone rider appeared and pulled his horse to a stop at the point where Morgin had entered the forest. Morgin moved his hand carefully to the hilt of his sword.
“Elhiyne,” the rider shouted. Morgin recognized ErrinCastle’s voice. “I know you’re there. But unlike my father I’m not here to hunt you. Not that I have any great liking or admiration for you, but I owe you a debt, and I am here to repay it. My conduct toward your wife was unforgivable. I know now that I was enspelled by the Decouix, but to use him as an excuse would be as dishonorable as my previous actions were unforgivable. I therefore grant you your freedom, and I give you my word I will do nothing to hinder your escape. But this makes us even, Elhiyne. The next time we meet, I will kill you for the outlaw you are.” And with that, ErrinCastle yanked his horse’s reins angrily toward the road, and disappeared into the night.
Morgin waited a few moments more, then continued on. As he rode through the driving rain the trees of the small forest beside him were almost invisible in the darkness of the night’s gloom, and just to keep them in sight he stayed uncomfortably close to them. He traveled for a good distance, following the curve of the forest as it turned slowly away from Elhiyne, and began to wonder if he’d missed his friends. But then three mounted riders loomed out of the darkness before him with swords drawn.
There came no greeting. France merely shouted, “Let’s ride, now, fast and hard, before that mob finds out who they’re really chasing.”
~~~
An odd silence descended on the castle yard as the last of the mob raced through the gates on hastily saddled mounts, and AnnaRail breathed a sigh of relief. She crossed the yard quickly to get in out of the rain, but she met Tulellcoe standing just inside the main entrance, and at the look on his face her heart almost came to a stop.
“What have you done?” he demanded coldly.
She ignored him, tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm and spun her to face him. “What have you done?”
She yanked her arm out of his grip. “No more than any mother would do.”
“You’re a fool!” he said, then turned away.
She reached out desperately and caught his arm, but he refused to be stopped and pulled her along beside him. “Where are you going?” she pleaded.
He halted, turned to face her. “I’m going to find him myself, and carry out the Council’s sentence.” He hesitated, looked in her eyes, and, as if reading her thoughts, added, “And you can believe I’ll not be foolish enough to follow horses ridden by sacks of grain.”
She reacted without thought. Her magic came upon her unbidden, coalesced into a black, hot spark of hatred cupped within the palm of her hand. She swung it at him like a club, realizing she had lost control and might well kill him. But his hand shot out instinctively and caught her wrist in an iron grip, stopping it only inches from his face. They stood that way for several seconds, facing each other silently while she fought for control, and slowly the power she had called forth faded, though not until she had released it completely did he release her hand. Shamefully she dropped it to her side.
Tulellcoe’s face could have been chiseled from stone for all the expression it held, but his eyes cut into her soul like white-hot steel. “As much as I hate that damn Council, I have to admit they’re right.”
“You don’t know that,” she shouted.
“And you don’t know they’re wrong.”
Roland, speaking softly, startled them both. “I do.”
Tulellcoe turned to face him. “What did you say?”
“I said I know the council is wrong.”
“You know nothing.”
Roland shook his head sadly. “The only thing I don’t know, is how I know what I do know. But I do know the Council is wrong, as only I can know such things.”
Tulellcoe shook his head, but while outwardly he scoffed, AnnaRail saw that Roland’s words had stung him, and she understood then that he was forcing himself to do what he thought was right, even while he hated the doing of it.
“Use your own judgment,” she said to him. “Don’t follow the dictates of the Council blindly.”
He frowned uncertainly, then looked at Roland, and the silence between them grew heavy and stilted. Then he turned about, threw the doors of the castle open, and walked out into the stormy night.
Olivia stepped out of a shadow near the base of the stairs. “Well done, Roland. You may have just saved Morgin’s life.”
AnnaRail exploded. “What do you mean well done? You betrayed my son to that pack of wolves and now you speak of saving his life.”
The old woman threw her head
back and laughed hatefully. “Oh you foolish woman! Do you think there is anything you do within these walls that I do not know about long before the doing of it? If I had wanted those jackals to have him, they would have had him. Do you believe for an instant you could have spirited him away without my help? Who do you think instructed the guards to open the gates for the swordsman and the twonames and the peasant? Had it not been for me those gates would have never been opened in the first place.”
Speechless, AnnaRail spluttered, “But—”
“But nothing!” the old woman shouted. “Your greatest danger was Tulellcoe, and you didn’t even realize it. He feels responsible for Morgin. He knew about this talisman even before Csairne Glen, but he failed to help Morgin then, and he failed to help him during the intervening months, so he blames himself now that Morgin is under sentence of death, and he would rather kill Morgin himself, kill him cleanly, than let those jackals have him.”
“But why didn’t you stop him?” AnnaRail demanded.
Olivia shook her head. “The only way to stop Tulellcoe when his mind is made up is to kill him, and not even Morgin is worth that. Tulellcoe can be as stubborn as Morgin, and as uncontrollable when his mind is set. The two of them are alike in so many ways, if I didn’t know Tulellcoe better I’d wonder if he didn’t do a little whoring about nine months before Morgin was born. The only way to stop Tulellcoe is to convince him to stop himself, and Roland began that process by introducing doubt with his intuition. But you had to lose control like a stupid young girl, and in doing so you hurt Morgin’s cause in Tulellcoe’s mind. We can only hope the doubt Roland introduced will grow, for Tulellcoe will find the whoreson, and if that doubt fades between now and then, then Morgin will die. It is that simple.”
~~~
Rhianne stumbled up to her room, conscious only of the sword and its power. A part of her knew she should feel some triumph at Morgin’s escape, but the talisman demanded too much of her for her to feel anything beyond a need to find a place where she would not be disturbed.
Her handmaidens were waiting for her excitedly, and immediately they began a flood of gossipy twittering that threatened to overwhelm her. But she silenced them with a single, angry bark, and when they finally took notice of the magic in her eyes they understood what was required of them. In silence they helped her out of her wet clothing, wrapped her in a dry nightgown and put her to bed. But she was barely conscious of these things, for all of her power was devoted to the sword, to holding it at bay during the first critical hours of Morgin’s escape so he could concentrate on the world about him.
She shut out the world around her, thought only of Morgin and the blade, placed her own magic between his power and that of the sword, and let the hours pass without rest or comfort. She had never done anything so terrifying, for as she penetrated deeper into the depths of the talisman’s magic, a malign intelligence hovered there, an unwholesome consciousness that, until then, had been aware only of Morgin. But now, with her interference, it had grown aware of her, and never again would she be able to lower her defenses fully and rest with ease.
Chapter 5: To Sense the Sword
Morddon brought Mortiss to a sudden halt and eyed the trail suspiciously. All about him the soft roar of a slow drizzling rain spattered on the leaves of the forest. It made him uneasy to have his sense of hearing so encumbered when on the trail of his enemy, not to mention the discomfort of the damp cold that penetrated to his soul. For the hundredth time he looked at the sky, but blanketed by low, gray clouds it gave no hope the rain would end soon.
He climbed wearily out of Mortiss’ saddle, squatted in the middle of the trail and stared for a long time at the hoof prints of what was undeniably a group of seven Kulls. Without Morgin’s memories to guide him, Morddon would not have known what a Kull was, for they were foreign to this time and this dream.
The spoor was fresh, not more than a few hours old, the signs were there for even the most inexperienced tracker to read: seven Kulls; not six, not eight, but exactly seven. And yet only that morning he had been following just three. Something strange was going on; of that he had no doubt.
He got back into the saddle and started up the trail again, moving with even more caution than before. He was well behind his own lines, and time and again he thought there should not be groups of Kulls roving about here. Possibly his enemy might begin using Kulls at this time, and a small number of halfmen might become separated from their main column, and through the fortunes of war even find themselves behind the lines of their enemy. But this was the second such group Morddon had come across, and like the first, after tracking it for some time, it had met and joined forces with another such group. He continued tracking them in the constant, steady drizzle of the rain-soaked forest.
Morddon had been scouting the Goath hordes for Metadan for more than a month, and during that time Metadan’s forces had met the enemy in full-scale engagements twice, and both times they had been victorious, though not without losses of their own. Morddon knew that he—and the intelligence he’d gathered—had been partly responsible for those victories, and that gave him almost as much satisfaction as doing the killing himself, though he’d managed to do his own share of killing on his scouting expeditions. Then six days ago the clouds set in and the rain began; it had stopped only occasionally during that time, poured heavily for brief periods too, but mostly it just rained a constant, steady drizzle, without wind or thunder or lightning.
The weather ended any plans for real battles, so he decided to come in and get a well-deserved hot meal since he’d been out on the trail for more than twelve days. But on his way in, after crossing into what was friendly territory, he’d come across the trail of that first group of Kulls: two of them. He followed them, and the next day they joined up with four more that had come from a different direction, and that night he killed them all in their sleep.
It had bothered him at the time; two separate groups of Kulls well behind enemy lines meeting and joining forces. But then, stranger things had happened in war. And then late yesterday he’d come across the trail of three more. Of course he took up the trail, intending to catch up with them and kill them in their sleep like the others, and of course it troubled him that there were three such groups of halfmen wandering through these hills, but for the third group to join up with a fourth . . . Morddon didn’t need magic to know that something was up.
About midday the rain stopped, though the clouds hung close and gray. But now, without the constant patter of raindrops on the forest leaves, Morddon’s ability to hear danger improved. Several hours later when, without warning, he caught a hint of sound at the edge of his hearing, he pulled Mortiss to a stop and waited, and after many seconds it came again: a faint, distant cry of death.
He dismounted and led Mortiss carefully off the trail, while Morgin pulled a cloak of shadow about both man and horse. He found it difficult moving through the undergrowth of the forest, but earlier he’d spotted a high ridge from which he should be able to see a good distance through the mist shrouded hills, and a direct route appeared to be the only means of gaining access to it. The climb was difficult, but as he approached the ridge his ears picked up certain sounds with increasing clarity: a shout, the clash of a sword, silence for a long time, the whinny of a frightened horse, the hoof beats of a charging animal on a muddy road.
At the summit of the climb he left Mortiss to graze, then dropped to his hands and knees and crawled to the lip of the ridge. Far below, in the middle of a long strip of road that wound its way through the misty hills of the forest, a coach lay on its side. The coachman, two attendants, and two guards lay sprawled and lifeless in the road, while nine Kulls swarmed over and about the coach. He reasoned that the seven he was following had met up with another two, then as a group had stumbled across an unlucky traveler on the road below.
While Morddon looked on the Kulls pried open the door of the overturned coach. Three of them dropped down into the body of the coach, and moments
later lifted the unconscious form of a woman from its interior. And though the distance was too great to distinguish any detail, Morddon caught a momentary flash of bone white skin and knew the woman to be AnneRhianne.
The Kulls moved quickly, tying her to the bottom of the coach between its axles in an upright position with both arms and legs spread wide, which meant she was still alive. The Kulls were probably going to have a little fun, and since Morgin understood all too well what the Kulls considered fun, Morddon started hastily down the slope leading Mortiss on foot.
With the Kulls concentrating on looting the coach, and their minds preoccupied in anticipation of torture and rape, Morddon took the chance of depending almost wholly on Morgin’s shadowmagic and his own sure footing. The Kulls would wait for AnneRhianne to regain consciousness before beginning, so he had only a little time to spare. But a deep ravine cut in the side of the hill forced him to veer far to one side, and by the time he reached the road the overturned coach was hidden around a sharp bend far in the distance.
Leading Mortiss he trotted up the road, and at the bend he pulled her into the forest and started to tie her reins to a nearby tree. But she shook her head wildly and refused to let him do so, though she was careful to avoid making any noise by snorting, and at the intelligence he saw in her eyes he changed his mind. “Have it your way then,” he whispered, tying her reins loosely to the saddle horn. “But stay here until you’re needed.”
He untied the bow case from the saddle, unwrapped the canvas and strung the bow quickly. The bow pleased him. He’d made it from the best ash, spent hours shaping and treating the wood. It could fire one of the steel tipped, arm-length shafts he’d fashioned straight through a man without stopping, or pierce full plate armor. He worried momentarily about the string so recently fashioned of stretched gut and not properly aged, and now exposed to the damp. But he forced that thought from his mind, strapped his sheathed sword over his back to keep it out of the way, slung his quiver of arrows over his shoulder, and slipped quietly into the forest and one of Morgin’s shadows.