“Sweet Charrot and Esthrane, enough!” Tenneril blurted. He was one of the mages Carensa had recognized in the outer workroom, a bookish man whose specialty was charms and talismans. Tenneril looked as if he might faint. He had gone deathly pale, and his eyes were wide and shocky. “Please, Vigus. Enough,” he begged.
Quintrel turned a cold glare on Tenneril, and the man shrank back. “You disapprove?”
Carensa had no desire to see a repeat of Quintrel’s attack on Jarle. She did not think Tenneril’s heart would take it. Recklessly, Carensa took hold of Quintrel’s bloody sleeve.
“Vigus! I think my magic broke the code,” she said, doing her best to look as excited as she could manage, when all she wanted to do was crawl into a corner and retch. “The manuscript! I think I can translate it for you.”
Quintrel hesitated, torn between his greed to know what the manuscript revealed and his desire to punish Tenneril for his outspokenness. In the end, greed won out.
“Show me,” he said in a hoarse voice, and Carensa could see the strain in Quintrel’s face as he tried to rein in his rage.
“Vigus—what do you want us to do with the body?” one of the mages asked hesitantly.
Quintrel did not turn back. “Dump it where the crows will feast on it,” he replied.
Carensa led the way out of the room, eager to leave behind the slumped form of the bloodied young thief. She heard Tenneril’s murmured thanks, and glimpsed others crowding closer against the frail, older mage, no doubt fearing that the confrontation would not be good for his heart.
She had seconds to come up with a convincing lie. I can’t give him the real translation, she thought wildly. He’ll use it to go after Blaine, and anyone else he wants to eliminate. No man deserves that kind of power, especially not the ‘thing’ that Vigus has become.
Carensa knew she would have to be careful. Vigus is clever. He’ll smell an outright lie. I’m sure he knows what the manuscript ought to contain, so I can’t tell him it’s something else. I’ll have to alter it, just enough, so that it doesn’t work.
She set her jaw, knowing there was a price to pay. I could get someone else killed, if the magic goes wrong, or if Vigus goes into a rage because it doesn’t work. By the gods! I never asked to be in this position!
Quintrel reached down the scroll once more, and again Carensa laid it out on the table. Slowly, making it seem as if the translation was coming with difficulty, Carensa worked out each word as Quintrel hung over her shoulder, giving her his full attention.
“Master Quintrel—” one of the Workshop mages called.
“Not now!” Quintrel snapped.
“But Master Quintrel—”
Quintrel rounded on the man with a snarl. “I said ‘not now’!”
Breathing hard from the exertion of restraining his temper, Quintrel turned back to Carensa. “Go on,” he urged, and the hunger in his eyes looked less than human. He had beckoned for one of the other mages to come over and write down everything Carensa said. The rest of the mages left their work and came to stand around them, except for Tenneril, who had not rejoined them.
Silently offering up a prayer to Esthrane to guide her, Carensa continued her halting ‘interpretation.’ At each instruction, she paused as if working out the wording, then read aloud the opposite of what the manuscript set forth. Worried that strictly giving the opposite of the instructions might somehow still make it work, Carensa did her best to hopelessly muddle the directions while still maintaining a ring of authenticity.
When she finished, she glanced at Quintrel, as if seeking his approval. In reality, she wanted to know whether or not he had seen through her deception. His eager expression gave her to know that he believed he had the tool he wanted.
“Excellent,” Quintrel said. “Well done, Carensa. We’ll work with this; see what we can make of it.” He beamed at her. “You’ve handed us a powerful weapon. Be proud of your gift.”
Carensa managed a smile. “I hope the Old Ones got it right,” she said. “I wish we knew more about the manuscript’s author. It would be nice to know whether it really worked as planned.”
“We’ll figure it out, I have no doubt of it,” Quintrel said, nearly ecstatic with triumph. “And if this works, we have more manuscripts for you to work with.” He went to a shelf in the corner of the room full of scrolls and an odd assortment of objects and pulled out a silver bracelet in the shape of a serpent and a bone carved with runes, along with several parchment scrolls.
“You can start with these,” Quintrel said, handing the items to Carensa. “We’ve vetted the objects—they’re safe. But we’re not sure about the full range of their uses because no one can read the manuscripts where they’ve been mentioned.” He bestowed his most charming smile. “So we’re depending on you, my dear.”
“Master Quintrel!”
They looked up to see Havilend, a rotund, older man, standing just inside the doorway to the next room. He had been the mage calling for Quintrel’s attention before, and he looked terribly upset.
“What is it, Havilend?” Quintrel snapped.
“It’s Osten. You need to come quick.”
Grudgingly, Quintrel went where Havilend beckoned, and the other mages followed. Carensa looked down at the silver bracelet in the shape of a serpent and a bone carved with runes. The day is coming when I’ll need to make a stand, Carensa thought. I can’t fight Vigus with my translation magic! But if I had a weapon or two, I might be able to stop him with the right opportunity. It’s time to start gathering what Guran and I will need when it comes time to make our stand.
She wrapped the items Quintrel had given her in her shawl, then hurried to catch up with the others. Carensa tried to peer over the mages who had crowded around the room where they had taken Osten. Worry gnawed at her. Osten had been the mage who demonstrated the translocation spell. From Havilend’s expression, something had gone wrong.
“By the gods!”
“Charrot protect us!”
“Torven keep us!”
The mages murmured protections and prayers as they crowded into the small storage room off the main workroom. Osten—or what remained of him—heaved in a gelatinous blob on the stone floor. His features were flattened and distorted, as if his skin remained whole, but there were no longer bones supporting his body.
Osten was alive, trapped in his trembling flesh, unable to do more than moan, without bones to work his jaw. His eyes darted back and forth in panic, pleading.
“I don’t think the translocation artifact worked as well as we thought it did,” one of the mages behind Carensa observed.
“We can’t just let him suffer like that!” Carensa argued.
But before she could protest, Osten’s shapeless body began to shudder violently, then started to come apart. Not in an explosion, but as if the invisible bonds that held his form together decided little by little to let go, scattering him in small, quivering bits, until he gave a final moan of agony and disassembled completely into a thick slurry on the stone floor.
Vigus never vetted the object before he gave it to Osten, Carensa thought with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach. The artifact Osten used was corrupted. It wouldn’t have worked for anyone. So I’d best be careful with the pieces he thought were safe to give me. But by Esthrane, I’ll find artifacts to help me bring Vigus down when the time is right. For Osten’s sake—and all the others.
Quintrel gave a frustrated snort, and turned on his heel. “Somebody get a mop and clean up the mess,” he said, striding past the astonished onlookers and out of the workroom.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
IT’S NOT HEALING.” KERR SAID IN A WORRIED voice.
Vedran Pollard eyed his longtime valet with frustration. “Then try something else. There’s got to be a poultice to set it right.”
“Perhaps a healer—”
“No one else must know about this,” Pollard said, meeting Kerr’s gaze. “No one. Do you understand?”
Reluctantly, Kerr bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Of course, sir.”
Pollard looked down at the open wound on his chest, right over his heart. The wound had appeared a week before, in a moment of blinding pain. Pollard had taken many an injury on the battlefield, some that had taxed the abilities of healers to mend, but nothing had been so agonizing. He collapsed, and when he regained consciousness, he found the raw, red wound.
“Does it look any better—or worse?” Pollard asked. By now, Kerr was used to his tempers and moods. If he heard the hint of anxiety that colored Pollard’s voice, Kerr knew better than to show it.
“There doesn’t appear to be any change, sir,” Kerr reported. “I’m stymied as to why it refuses to heal, yet hasn’t soured.”
“Could it be magic?” Pollard wondered aloud. “The way it appeared out of nowhere, along with this damn itching.” Beneath his sleeves, his forearms were scratched raw from a persistent itch that no balm soothed. The rest of his body, except for his face, fared no better. Pollard was no stranger to poisonous plants and biting insects. Nothing he had ever encountered was as maddening as the red pinpricks that now covered his body.
“I’ve heard of nothing like it among the troops—either the wound or the rash,” Kerr replied. “Surely if it were mage-sent, they would have wanted to incapacitate the army and not just the commander.”
“Perhaps,” Pollard said. “And if it were something here in the manor, then it should have affected someone else as well.”
Kerr shook his head. “I haven’t heard of anything, sir. And if it were something catching, I would have caught it from tending you.”
Pollard let out a long sigh. “It’s worst at night. Woolen shirts are no help at all.”
“Perhaps once the weather warms, some heat and sunshine will help,” Kerr offered. He gathered the supplies he had brought, tucking them back in a canvas bag. “Shall I bring you another pot of tea? That variety is supposed to be quite good for the skin.”
Pollard nodded, and buttoned up his shirt. “It helped, a bit.”
“Very well, then,” Kerr replied. There was something desperate about his stiff formality, but it was a ritual to which they both clung, through wordless agreement. Proper etiquette was one of the last vestiges of a civilized time that was gone and might never come again.
When Kerr left him alone in the parlor at Solsiden, Pollard permitted himself the luxury of collapsing into one of the wing chairs. He had a private theory about where the wound and the rash had come from, and that it was the same source as the nightmares that had troubled his sleep every night since he had collapsed.
Word had come, in a tersely written note delivered by messenger, that Pentreath Reese had received the judgment of the Elders, to be staked through the heart and confined in an oubliette for fifty years. That was the night the wound appeared. Pollard’s right hand went to cover the raw, round ulcer. Just the circumference one might make a wooden stake, above where one might slip such a stake. Pollard was certain that the strong kruvgaldur bond he shared with Reese was responsible for both the physical marks and the terrifying dreams.
Since the wound appeared, Pollard’s dreams had verged on madness. Images came to him of people he did not know, places he had never visited, and times long before his birth. So much blood. The darkness was suffocating, and the hunger and thirst overwhelmed him. If this is what I can look forward to for the next fifty years, I may as well fall on my sword, he thought bleakly.
“There has to be some way to free him,” Pollard muttered, thinking aloud. Self-preservation, more than loyalty, added urgency. He had come to an additional realization that he would not speak aloud: If the bond is this strong, then if Reese dies, so do I.
Agitated, Pollard shifted in his chair. No position was comfortable, but some were more tolerable than others. He went to scratch his shoulder, then barely restrained himself. Even with his nails clipped short there were bloody trails across his skin where he had given in to the unrelenting itch and later came to regret it.
It’s the price to be paid for the other parts of the bond, he thought, forcing down his fears. Even Kerr and Nilo have commented that I’m aging more slowly. I’ve got the vigor of a man ten years younger. Reese told me the kruvgaldur would extend my life and strength. But with as often as he’s fed from me and as deeply, I don’t doubt that my soul is bound to him.
Kerr coughed to announce that he had returned, and set a tray with the tea on a table between the two wing chairs. He poured a cup for Pollard and set it aside. “Captain Nilo is here to see you, sir. Shall I show him in?”
Pollard straightened and reached for the tea. Tea for the skin, and whiskey for the dreams, he thought. “Send him to me.”
Kerr went to fetch Nilo, and Pollard finished his tea, then stood and poured himself a slug of whiskey.
Outside the damaged manor house’s stone walls, the wild winds blasted down from the northern plains, rattling the broken glass in the upstairs windows and slamming the splintered shutters against the masonry. Solsiden had not fared well in the Cataclysm, and the storm that battered it now was likely to increase the damage.
“Nasty storm,” Captain Nilo observed as he entered. Nilo’s cloak and his pants were sodden and his face was reddened with cold.
Another gust of wind battered the manor. Pollard sipped the glass of whiskey and stared out the window in the study. Tonight’s storm sounded as if it might rip the slate from the roof. “At least we’re not in a tent on some godsforsaken field,” he muttered.
Nilo smiled and took a sip of his own drink. “Hennoch’s sparing us some of that. Although we’ll need to go back out soon enough.”
Pollard nodded. “I know. I’m just not looking forward to it.”
Overhead, through the ruined windows on the second floor, the wind howled and sent something crashing to the floor. In the few months since Pollard had taken Solsiden for his own, the scarce resources had gone toward fortification, not toward restoring the damage the old manor had sustained since the Great Fire. Parts of the upper floors were badly damaged, but the main floor and cellars were usable, as well as the sturdiest barns and dependencies. Now the old manor served as a headquarters for Pollard’s army and a depot for crucial supplies.
“How long do you expect Hennoch to keep his word?” Nilo asked. He walked away from the fireplace and settled into one of the worn wing chairs still within the warm glow of the fire.
Pollard shrugged moodily. “For as long as we keep his son alive—or until he decides he can make do without him.”
“The storms are getting worse,” Nilo observed. “Magic caused them; now the question is, can they be stopped?”
“If so, my mages don’t know how,” Pollard said with a sigh. “Nothing they’ve done has worked, and two died in the trying.”
He paused. “I have some of Reese’s brood searching out the mages who haven’t aligned with other warlords. They’ll bring the mages across, which binds their fealty to us. If we couldn’t keep the magic from coming back, now that it’s returned, we need to be able to hold our own.”
“If the magic doesn’t function the way it did before, perhaps the weather won’t, either. This could be ‘normal’ for the foreseeable future,” Nilo replied.
Pollard shuddered. “Let’s hope not. Makes it miserable to field an army when it’s like this.”
“I have a report from the units,” Nilo said, drawing out several pieces of folded parchment from inside his jacket. “About Hennoch and Lysander.”
Pollard crossed to a small table and topped off his whiskey, then paced near the fire. “Give me the gist of it. I don’t have the patience to wade through the rest.”
Nilo unfolded the parchment and scanned down through the lines of cramped writing. “One of the reports comes from Hillard, our man inside Hennoch’s troops. He’s with the healers, so he moves freely around the camp and on occasion gets pretty close to the commander.” Nilo gave Pollard a pointed glance. “Which will co
me in handy if Hennoch stops cooperating.”
Pollard nodded. “Good. Go on.”
“They’ve had some problems with the Arkala twins, the brother warlords to the northwest,” Nilo replied. “The area north and east of Mirdalur is still disputed. The Arkalas want it, and so does Karstan Lysander, as well as Hennoch.”
Pollard raised an eyebrow. “My money’s on Lysander.”
Nilo shrugged. “Too soon to tell. The Arkalas have a small army, but they’re well trained and they have a knack for making lightning raids where they score their objective and then disappear.”
“Talishte?”
Again, Nilo shrugged. “Apparently not, since the raids occur in the daytime as well. From what Hillard says, Hennoch is getting annoyed at the Arkalas, because they’ve been disrupting supply lines. Hillard believes Hennoch will want to make a strike sometime soon against the Arkalas.”
“Interesting. What about those damn Tingur?”
Nilo scanned down through the missive. “Jonn believes Lysander is behind them. He says that there are a lot of small groups wandering the roads since the magic storms and the Great Fire.”
Pollard frowned. “How are the wanderers turning into Torven fanatics?”
Nilo sat back and took another sip of whiskey. “Jonn thinks Lysander is sending spies who pretend to be holy men among the wanderers and telling them that Torven will save them if they demonstrate their devotion.”
Pollard gave a humorless chuckle. “Amusing. And apparently effective.”
Nilo shrugged. “Apparently, Lysander’s men put on a good show.”
Pollard grimaced and began to pace. “Lysander’s smarter than I gave him credit for. The Tingur give him a large number of disposable soldiers to wear down his enemies.”
“Where’s Lysander himself in all this?” Pollard asked. The whiskey and the fire warmed him, but the old manor was drafty enough that the harsh winds outside leeched any heat from the building.
Nilo gave a wolfish smile. “According to Jonn, the man in Lysander’s army, Lysander has his eye on the entire north. He’s been using the Tingur to probe for weaknesses, and for good measure, he’s sent them into all the other warlords’ territories to make trouble.”
War of Shadows: Book Three of the Ascendant Kingdoms Saga Page 17