When she stepped back from the table and reached toward Alakar, I saw what the object was. Ober had put the powder into a small ornamental locket that hung on a chain. Slipping the chain over her daughter's head, she arranged it carefully around her neck. The little locket hung like a jewel, shining against the dark fabric of Alakar's robe.
“It is done,” Ober said.
“Are you sure it will work?” Alakar asked.
“I know my part well enough if you remember yours.”
“I wish we were rid of them both now,” Alakar said.
“What use would that be? Until we receive word of Kovat's death, we cannot proceed. Time enough then to wed and rule, my girl.”
I strained so hard to catch their words it was a miracle they didn't feel my presence and hear my heart banging away. They also didn't continue their discussion. Instead, the conversation turned to the usual, empty chatter about jewels and robes. I waited, shivering and silent, until they blew out the lamp, before I let the rug slide back into place.
Receive word of Kovat's death?
After the dim light of the room, the passageway was thick blackness. I felt my way along the wall until I reached its end.
A pressure on the spot above the door where Tarvik had touched the rock accomplished nothing.
I touched it again, to the side, then above, then below. Had he tricked me? Had he raised his hand to mislead me, then touched some other stone, the stage magician thing of watch my right hand so you won't see what my left hand is doing? I had barely been able to see what he did. But why would he try to mislead me? Had he guessed I would return this night? Was I an idiot to believe anything he told me? Was he waiting now in his room to hand me over to Ober's guards?
Frantic, I felt around the rock's edge, searching for the latch stone. I could stay here until daytime when Ober and Alakar left their room and then, if I hadn't frozen to death, I could climb through their wall opening. But where would that get me? Guards must constantly patrol the corridor beyond their door.
Or I could return to Tarvik and tell him what I had overheard. And how would I explain why I'd decided to spy on his aunt and cousin? He said he trusted me, which could be useful, and, wow, would my turning up now put paid to that idea.
My fingers touched a smaller stone, set slightly deeper in the wall, and almost at the point I had thought Tarvik touched. I pressed it. The door opened.
So he had not tricked me and my suspicions were unfair. Not much consolation there. It meant Tarvik really did trust me more than I trusted him, which put me in the unpleasant position of knowing I did have an obligation to help him. Hate being obligated, because in my experience, being in some guy's debt is never a good thing.
CHAPTER 12
Have I mentioned that a thousand years ago, when I was sixteen, I dated Rock Decko?
Rock in black leather and chains was, uh, hot. And I was sixteen. Which I hope explains why I thought he was hot.
He wasn't much older than me, two or three years, I think. Rock was into motorcycles, worked in a cycle repair shop, and really, really, really wanted to be a bad boy but had no special skills. I am talking fighting skills. He couldn't possibly have held his own in a Hell's Angels type of dust up. So he hung around the edges when bikers came into the shop, soaking up their wild stories and believing them, then putting himself into the lead role.
I can still hear him telling me, “Babe, this dude came at me, had a knife this long, thought I'd back off, blah, blah, blah.” He had me fooled for about a month. I was really impressed in that teenage nuts way.
“Weren't you scared?”
“Nah, babe, nothing scares me.”
Did I mention he was a really good kisser? Sixteen is easy to impress.
Fortunately, he didn't own a car and neither of us had a room to go to or money to rent one and hadn't figured a path around that little obstacle. Also, fortunately, Rock hadn't yet been tapped to be a wizard. Most smash wizards don't know they are wizards. It isn't genetic, at least not where I come from. It's more accidental, like discovering you're a natural on the oboe. And that happens when a music teacher hands you one and says, “I think you might be good on this.”
With wizard mentality, the line is, “Do you sometimes wish for something and are surprised when it happens?”
Rock and I were a twosome before his big moment. While necking in the back booth of the pizza parlor, because necking on a bike is really hazardous and I have a few scars to prove it, I'd come up for air and tell him about my astrology training, some of it with the local astrologer, some with my gran.
“You can tell fortunes? Hey, can you pick winners, you know, like for a Seahawks game?”
Verboten, every astrologer knows that, not because it is illegal but because one teeny error can earn you a lifelong enemy, so I told him of course not.
That isn't why we broke up. Another guy tried to hit on me, nothing obnoxious, the sort of thing I could have turned off with a polite, “That's my boyfriend over there.”
Rock didn't give me a chance. The guy touched my arm, just touched, didn't grab, and asked my name and could he buy me a beer. I was on my way back to the booth from a rest room run. I didn't even get a chance to tell him I stuck to diet coke because even in Mudflat they card.
The bad boy wannabe saw us and flew out of the booth swinging a chain and then there was this messy bloody mix-up, with the owner tossing us all out into the parking lot. I left and headed home. Buses stay clear of Mudflat at night. I had to walk. Lots of time to think. Sure I wasn't a brain but at least I knew a violent boyfriend could be a girl's worst nightmare.
I told him so the next time he phoned.
Funny thing, that. He didn't argue, didn't say he was sorry. I heard later that some other girl helped scrape him up off the parking lot pavement where Mr. Pick-Up turned out to be the tougher of the two. And so I put Rock Decko out of my mind.
Sure, when my cousin Jimmy introduced me to Darryl Decko, six years later, I mentioned Rock. Darryl said, “My half-ass brother? Sorry you've met him, honey. I don't have anything to do with him and he's not crazy about me, either.”
And I was dumb enough to believe him.
After the Decko boys, and a list of guys in between, is it such a surprise that I avoid letting myself be indebted to good looking young men?
The troll is a different story. And speaking of the troll, old Lor was about as attractive and therefore, yes, I trusted Lor.
Peeking out around the edge of the doorway, I saw it was still night-black. No one guarded the long wall on this side of the castle. I closed the stone door and moved in the building shadow toward the trees.
A shadow separated from the others. My breath stopped.
Old Lor whispered, “This way.”
I hurried to him and whispered back, “We heard Ober send you away.”
“Aye, but I waited.”
We circled around the back of the temple, past the stables and up the other side, watching from the far wall until we saw that no one stood near the gate except two temple guards. Yeah, tonight there were two of them. Had the guards decided that themselves? I didn't know what their rotation was so maybe this was routine, something they did when there were others around. Maybe they didn't like Ober and company any more than I did.
When they opened the gate for me, their torches lighting my way, I glanced back and saw the silhouette of Ober's manservant across the hill, a tall form of hood and narrow cloak. I hadn't had time to do his horoscope and I didn't much want to because I had seen the evil washing through Ober's heart and that was enough.
Lor was right to lead me to the gate. Now no one would suspect secret entrances. They might wonder how I had left Tarvik's room and slipped past them, but this was not their castle. I doubted they knew every exit. They would figure there must be a door from his room to an adjoining room, with that room opening to a different corridor. Or they would believe I was magic.
That's the most useful thing about supers
titious people. They are easy to fool. Oh right, a policeman once said something like that to me about fortunetelling.
Nance waited for me, wringing the hem of her tunic in her hands and blinking back tears. She sputtered complaints about the lateness of my return, then touched me and sobbed that I was chilled through and would probably come down with fever. After wrapping a blanket over my cloak and pushing me down among a pile of sheepskins, she pressed a cup of hot tea into my hands and insisted it would warm me. I sipped at it, wishing it was coffee, brandy, even their bitter mead, almost anything other than tea. When she settled down, I told her what had happened.
“It sounds to me as though Tarvik suspects we also have a secret door, probably because he does,” Nance exclaimed. “Be careful, Stargazer. If he ever discovers our way through the stables, we will become prisoners in this temple.”
“He trusted me with his secret. Isn't that worth something?”
“Who can be sure of Tarvik? He is safe enough now but someday he will rule and marry Alakar. That will change everything. Those who rule do not remember their friends. Think of Kovat. He prayed with the priests of Thunder until the Daughter of the Sun cured him. Then he was quick enough to turn against them. Those who did not escape fell beneath his sword or died in prison cells.”
“Tell me more about this Daughter and her consort. Do you remember them?”
“I remember them, but it was long ago. I was a child when they died. They were both kind to me.”
“Nance, do you know how she cured illness? How did she cure Kovat?”
“I only know what I have been told. Fifteen years ago the Daughter and her consort arrived here from the afterworld, from the home of the gods. I was an infant. Tarvik was four. His mother had already died, as had my mother and father. Kovat lay on his deathbed.
“When the Daughter saw him, she…oh, it is so long since I have heard this tale, let me think. Yes, she lay her hands upon him and prepared a drink for him and the fever left him. He knew then that she possessed great magic.”
About what I'd guessed. She gave him a swallow of tea or mead or whatever, probably used to wash down a dose of antibiotic.
Nance added, “No one can do that but a god. Now tell me what Ober said. And what she did.”
I told her what Ober said. Neither of us was sure what she meant. As for what Ober did, I knew of only one person who could explain that.
“Nance, is there some way we can speak with the magician of Thunder?”
“Speak with him? First you request a secret meeting with Tarvik, now you want the same with the magician. Are you mad?”
“I need to talk to him. He might know what sorts of tricks Ober uses. Knockout drops? Poison? I don't know much about drugs, but some are made from wild plants. We need to tell him what I saw Ober mixing and find out what it is. Can he be brought here?”
Nance did her drama queen thing, flung herself back against her pile of sheepskins and tossed her head from side to side, exclaiming, “Life was so easy for me before you came, Stargazer. Tarvik did not suspect me. Ober's guards did not watch me. I went where I chose when I chose. And no one ever asked me to invite a magician to the temple. Stargazer! His eyes hold terrible magic!”
“Okay. Don't give it another thought.” I gave her my widest smile. “If it is you and me that Ober wants to be rid of, and those were her words, I will patiently await my fate.”
Nance jumped to her feet. Her small fists beat the air. “You are terrible! Wicked! I cannot think why I listen to you! Oh, have your way. But if the magician's eyes turn my heart and mind forever against you, it will be what you deserve.”
“Don't look at his eyes, girlfriend. Let me talk to him alone.”
“And who will keep him from killing you?”
“Why should he kill me? What would it gain him? No, we'll give him something he wants. Besides freedom, what would he want, Nance? Something I can hand him?”
“Food and, oh, I cannot believe I am planning this with you! It is madness! I cannot allow it!”
While Nance moaned and sobbed and shouted her opinions of me, I went outside and heated water over the courtyard fire, carried it inside, washed away the day's dust, and then dried myself with a linen altar cloth. By the time I pulled on a clean tunic and rubbed most of the water from my hair, Nance was almost calm. Not screaming anyway.
She no longer shouted. She merely glared at me.
“You win,” she said. “I can think of only one way to do this and when Kovat returns he'll punish us all. I will send word to Tarvik to order the magician brought to us.”
“Will Tarvik do that?”
“I will not ask him as his cousin. I shall command him as temple priest. I shall say the magician holds knowledge you must have to complete the task Kovat set for you.”
“Clever you. But let me make one change.”
Nance clapped her hands over her ears and cried, “I do not want to hear it!”
I said it, anyway. In the back of my addled brain an idea grew. I needed to know more than what the magician might say in the presence of Nance and Tarvik. “Nance, I don't want the magician brought here. Instead, tell Tarvik to have his guards escort me alone to the magician's cell.”
Her howls of protest should have kept me awake, but it had been a tiresome night and I tuned her out.
Her howls were nothing compared to Tarvik's anger. The next day we spent an unpleasant afternoon stuck in the stale-smelling temple with Tarvik. Nance had made me don temple robes, again, so I felt about as grouchy as he acted. He could hardly believe my request, much less consider granting it.
“You want to see who? Have you gone mad?” he said.
There were a whole lot of hard truths I was tempted to shout at him. But Nance was right. If I was going to get my way, I had to let her win through intimidation. For someone who didn't know that phrase, she had the behavior down pat.
Trouble was, for all I knew the guy loved Alakar, or lusted for her. Hey, he was nineteen and the girl was gorgeous. That bit about not wanting her was Ober's thought, not mine. He tended to treat me like a pet, picking me up to toss me on his horse, tucking in my hair so it would not be noticed, fastening my cloak when I looked cold.
Oh yes, he liked to hug me, and probably any other available female, and might have progressed to grabby if I let him, but it was nothing more than flirting. I knew that. I was entertainment, amusing him with my reactions to his teasing.
“I speak for the Daughter of the Sun,” Nance chanted for the third time.
Tarvik glared. He had left his guards in the courtyard, as requested, and entered dressed in his temple garb of fur-trimmed cape and gold armbands. In his out thrust hands lay his offering, a gold trinket cradled in a soft new temple cloth. Today the cloth was another one of the linen ones I loved. I didn't have much use for jewelry in the middle of the Olympic Mountains, but clean towels? Definitely included on my want list. The silk ones served Nance's hobby nicely but were useless when it came to drying my hair.
Nance ignored his offering.
“The Daughter rejects all gifts from those who refuse her small requests.”
“How can I know this is truly the Daughter's request?” Tarvik demanded.
“The Daughter sent me a vision of the magician speaking with the templekeeper,” Nance chanted. “Do you question my visions, son of Kovat, faithful servant of the Daughter?”
Tarvik thrust out his lower lip. We waited.
At last he said, “What if the magician harms the templekeeper or - or anyone? My father's anger will be toward me.”
Nance repeated the answer I had given her. “If he could do harm, he would have escaped by now. The Daughter knows the courage of brave Tarvik exceeds the powers of the magician.”
Of course we won. We knew we would. Had we argued with Tarvik in the courtyard, dressed in tunics, our faces unpainted, he might have held out against a cousin and a stranger. But here in the musty shadows of the hanging lamps, overseen by the portra
its of his father's gods and faced by two fully costumed priests of the Daughter, he could drag his feet a bit, but had to give in to Nance's demands.
Wish I could have had such power over the magician. With a pouch of food hidden under my cape, I followed an escort guard back to the castle, then through a creaking metal gate, then down a winding stone staircase into the damp smell of basement.
Backed into his cell, the magician faced me with the defiant hatred of a captive who knows where to place the blame. As the guard closed the door behind me, I began to doubt my judgment. Why had I thought I could gain information from this man? I had outdone him in front of a powerful warlord, taken his one chance at freedom. His gaze followed mine around the cell.
“Not pretty, is it? Soon Kovat will tire of you, too, and you will find yourself entombed in a like place.”
Mold sketched odd patterns on the stone walls. Light filtered through a grate far overhead. The cell, a man's height in width and depth, was beneath a courtyard of the castle, reached by twisting narrow stairs and foul-smelling corridors. The magician had no comforts of sheepskins or bench, only the earth floor, cold and hard beneath his body at night.
Remembering the bribe, I drew the pouch of food from the folds of my cape and held it out to him. He accepted it, his bony fingers curling like talons around it. I waited while he ate the cheese. The bread he concealed beneath his tunic before handing back Nance's pouch.
“I accept your gift but I owe you nothing in return,” he said.
“Whatever you give me, you give to protect yourself,” I said.
“Why is that?”
“Your life depends on Kovat's whim. I can probably gain a favor or two from him. Once in command, the lady Ober will have no use for me. Then you'll lose me as your one chance out of here.”
Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic) Page 15