The Sun Wolf and Starhawk Omnibus

by Barbara Hambly

  It was close. He could feel it turning, far out in the desert—dust columns like mountains, black-bellied anger holding night and blotting dawn. His struggle to keep his mind locked against the probing lusts of the demons had left him shaky with fatigue; he had little enough power left to complete the binding-spells. Within the enchanted Circle, he could hear the demons chittering furiously over the fading wails of the dying calf.

  “I can’t turn it,” he said softly. “In any case we may need it...” He hesitated. They would need it for escape, from Nanciormis and his men, perhaps from the demons, if it came before the binding-spells were done...

  There were too many variables, pressing upon his aching mind like the collapsing weight of a tunnel roof. He could sense the anger of the demons now, as they began to scratch and whisper at the rune-circle that held them in. The light of Starhawk’s little fire, far back in the vast cavern behind them, was going, and he knew he had no strength to spare, either to make witchlight or kindle the ashes again. His hoarse voice low to hold it steady, he said, “Take care of the fire, Hawk. I’ll do what I can to finish and get us out of here, but it can’t be rushed.” If the demons got out, the Hawk and Tazey would be in danger, too.

  She said softly, “I know.” Tightening her arm around Tazey’s shoulders, she led her back toward the dying glow of the flames. Sun Wolf stood for a moment, willing strength back into his numbed muscles and shaken mind, as he had willed it on a dozen occasions in the camps of war throughout the years, rallying his men to fight or his own bruised body to haul himself out of some peril or other...They all seemed so trivial now, compared to what he must face.

  He could smell dawn coming, hours away. If there was even a little daylight between the retreating hem of night and the coming of the storm, it would help, but he sensed now there wouldn’t be. Whatever happened, it was going to be close.

  The awareness of the storm grew on him as he dragged out the small pack of implements he had assembled and the battered black Demonary with its crumbling leather cover. The storm’s electricity chewed at his bones as he drew further signs on the floor and repeated the words, marking the runes and the great curves of the power-lines, digging strength and the last glitters of magic from the marrow of his bones to summon and fix the power of the ritual in the air.

  As he had in the snake pit, he cursed his own sloth in pursuit of Starhawk’s meditations, cursed his arrogance in refusing to believe entirely what Kaletha had grudgingly tried to teach him, and felt the power slip with his concentration, even as he cursed. He brought his whole mind back, to center on his work—runes drawn, softly shining in the air, and the sweet resinous smells of the aromatic herbs, the search for which had further delayed their arrival in Wenshar earlier that day. He relaxed into the ritual, willing himself to see the reality of the light-runes that flickered into shape between his hands—the clumsy, heavy-knuckled hands of a warrior, nicked with scars and gummed, like a butcher’s, with blood. He forced each gesture to be calm and unhurried and precise, sinking his mind and thoughts into the soft chant of the words, unfamiliar at first, then stronger as his tongue caught their alien rhythm. He forced his mind not to be caught in wondering contemplation of the glowing ritual itself. That was perhaps the hardest of all.

  He repeated the names of the demons, as they had been known and written over the years by the women of the cult, summoning each, binding each, holding it to the honey-yellow sandstone beneath his feet with the ritual mix of herbed wine and blood, commanding it never to depart from this place, never to walk upon the air, never to seek surcease of its cravings in the dark warmth of men. He felt their anger and their rage shimmering from the pit as he walked the outer perimeter of the Circle and repeated their individual names. And he felt his own exhaustion twist his sinews as he dredged and scraped power from his heart, like a starving man scraping the scum of rice-boilings from the rim of an empty pot.

  He couldn’t let himself stumble. He couldn’t let his cracking concentration break. The demons were swarming against the glowing barriers of the Circle of Darkness now, their arms edged with color and their cold, chitinous bodies burning with smoky phosphorescence, whispering in thin voices that stole like wind through the chinks in his soul. It had grown hot in the temple, the air close and thick with the coming storm. Gluey wind kissed his cheek as he passed between the Circle and the doors, the hot electricity of dust...then, sharply, the smell of horses.

  Starhawk had gone to the door. It was a small entrance, narrow and tucked away; she’d be able to hold it...

  He dragged his concentration back. He could not even permit himself to speculate on how long the ritual would last, could not let that break the silence he held like perilously friable armor around his heart. The demons; the storm; Tazey sitting near the broken protective Circle, feeding twigs to the little fire, her absinthe gaze dark with horror as she saw the ragged heat-swirl of the demons and sensed the tearing cold of the demons’ minds seeking a way into his. The far-off call of voices touched his consciousness, the rattle of weapons, the scuffle near the door, and the smell of new blood. He heard the chittering of demons and the weak groaning—by his ancestors, he’d never have thought the calf would have lived that long in the pit. Arms aching, he traced the signs in the air again, his numbed mind repeating the formulae, thanking all the spirits of his ancestors that the magic took most of its strength from the building power of the rite, not from his own emptied reserves.

  There was another cry from the door and the hiss and clash of swords. He pulled his mind back again as his warrior’s reflexes twitched. There were too many of them for her, even in that narrow way. The demons swirled up like rags of fire above the pit—a glowing holocaust breaking against the ceiling—screamed at him in voices he knew he alone could hear, and reached skinny arms for him. He raised his hands again, his back muscles a twisting spine of flame.

  Then in the darkness deep at the back of the temple, where the second door was, he saw the glint of a crossbow bolt—not aimed at him. Without turning his head he knew where Starhawk stood, sword in hand, silhouetted now against the black rectangle of the narrow entrance, a dead man and a wounded one at her feet.

  He yelled, “DROP!” the second before the iron bow whapped, hideously loud in the echoing temple. Spinning, he was aware of all that fragile creation of magic and light that hung in the air around him shattering like kicked glass. Rocketing iron clashed on stone; footsteps thundered, racing across the temple floor toward him from the inner door. He swung to meet the two men who fell upon him, bearing him backward. The sacrificial knife was in his hand as he made a despairing dive inside the reach of one attacker’s drawn sword. At the last second he twisted, springing aside from the second man’s sword...

  And he felt it, when the next thrust drove him backward over the Circle of Darkness.

  He screamed, “NO!” as he hit the stone floor, and for an instant the demons swirled like hornets around him, a rending glitter of claws. Then the two men in the green leathers of the Tandieras guards were on him. He tried to get up. The knife fell from his bleeding hand as his back struck the stone of the altar; the weight of human arms and bodies twisted him face down on the stone. Edged metal pressed up under his jaw.

  For a moment there was nothing but the smell of blood on the stone where his face pressed it and the thin, sharp push of his pounding veins against the pressure of the razor edge. Then from somewhere Nanciormis’ voice said, “Is there anything in the pit?”

  The soft vibration of boots through the stone under his cheek. No sound.

  Then, “Dead calf, sir. Fair tore to pieces it is. He was sacrificing, right enough.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  More footfalls. Closer now, Nanciormis said, “So. It is as we said. He is the witch.”

  Sun Wolf raised his head from the stone, the blade against his throat giving back slightly as he did so. The commander stood at the pit’s edge, looking down into it; his
full lips thinned in an expression of disgust and horror, but every line of that thick, muscular back reflected satisfaction like a smirk.

  And well he might feel so, the Wolf thought bitterly. His accusations were borne out beyond the shadow of any man’s doubt. Beyond in the darkness he glimpsed the shapes of Starhawk, standing between the black-robed Kaletha and half a dozen guards, and of Tazey, shivering tearfully in the uncertain arms of the faithful Anshebbeth.

  In all the silent blackness of the temple, there was no other movement. On the floor, his own footmarks and those of Nanciormis and the guards scuffed through the lines of the Circle. The smell of blood and smoke hung on the air like the stink of a battlefield, but the demons were gone.

  Chapter 17

  “TURN THE STORM?” Kaletha’s short laugh reeked bitterness, like sweat in a beggar’s rags. “You’d put it to better use if you tied that barbarian thief hand and foot and pushed him out in it. It would save Illyra’s torturer the trouble of flensing the meat from his bones.” Her white hand, like a spider in the darkness against its black homespun sleeve, stroked the rotting cover of the Demonary that she held like a child to her full breasts. “Both of them,” she added spitefully, glancing across at Starhawk, who sat, hands bound, in watching silence. Starhawk met her eyes calmly, without apology. It was Kaletha who looked away. From where he lay Sun Wolf could see her fingers tremble with anger.

  He sighed and let his head drop back to the patterned amber stone of the floor. He was glad only to be out of that haunted temple, though this wide oval chamber deep in the center of the palace maze wasn’t much of an improvement as far as he was concerned. Most of the doors in the old palace had been battered from their hinges by the invading troopers of Dalwirin a century and a half ago; to escape the fury of the storm, whose voice had begun to rise in the canyons outside, it had been necessary to come deep in. The absence of drifted sand and debris had told them that this inner chamber was a safe refuge.

  From the storm, Sun Wolf amended, watching how the torches flickered nervously in the crossing drifts of wind from the ventilation shafts. From the storm.

  Anshebbeth wet her lips and glanced across at the Wolf. “Are you...” Her voice sank, an exaggerated whisper above the conspiratorial murmur of the wind in the shafts. “Are you sure he’s safe?”

  Annoyed, Sun Wolf rolled to a slightly more comfortable position on his back, his shoulders and his arms, bound behind him, piercing him with sharp pain. He’d long ago learned that, when one is tied up, there is no such thing as a comfortable position. “Hell, no, I’m not safe,” he growled. “And none of us is, in this demon-haunted hell hole.”

  “Be silent,” Kaletha snapped. Everyone was on edge. The heat and electricity of the storm plucked and teased at the nerves and set up a throbbing in the brain. Impatient and contemptuous, she went on, “There are no demons. The only thing to fear is your killer’s mind and your stolen magic, and those, yes, are safely bound.”

  Anshebbeth, sitting huddled beside the silent Tazey, looked little comforted, but Sun Wolf could have told her that even without the spells laid on his wrist chains, she had nothing to fear from him. He felt emptied, as if after long sickness or starvation, like grass burned to its roots. In a way, that troubled him more than the binding of his powers. The demons had been summoned, their appetites whetted, not satisfied. They were still abroad in the storm-hot, hazy darkness of the painted halls.

  “You’ve bound my magic, Kaletha, but not my mind. The demons in this place are real.”

  “If you are not silent,” she said, low and perfectly steady, “I’ll have one of the guards come over here and cut out your tongue. Do you understand?”

  One of the little cluster of frightened guards glanced up from their huddle around a small fire directly beneath a vent shaft, then looked quickly away, pretending he had not heard. They might be under Nanciormis’ orders to obey Kaletha, Sun Wolf thought, but they weren’t at all happy about it.

  A gust of wind kicked at the blaze, sending sparks whirling up. Sun Wolf shivered, seeing again how the demons had whirled above the pulsing glow of the pit. The guards drew nervously together—young men and women recruited from the cordillera mining towns, trained to fight, perhaps, but only to fight what they could see. In the unsteady light, their shadows writhed over the honey-colored sandstone pilasters circling the walls and lent to the painted figures on the plaster a subtle and furtive life.

  Though the storm winds did not blow here, the air was curtained with fine dust, which lent a ghastly, muted quality to the firelight and made Sun Wolf’s head ache. In that hideous haze, nothing seemed quite as it should be. All around the room they watched, mocking, from the faded walls—mother and daughter, grandmother and daughter-in-law, crones and girls with dark eyes and too-knowing smiles. He felt them, like ghosts, listening, staring down at the last Princess of the House who sat head bowed, beside her governess, not daring to raise her eyes. Kaletha, too, seemed to feel the pressure of those ironic gazes, but she remained straight-backed as a queen, as if daring them to show themselves.

  And he was troubled with the thought that they might.

  Somewhere the wind sobbed in the corridors; Anshebbeth slewed around to face the empty door from which the sound seemed to come, then edged closer to her teacher. With thin, shaking hands she plucked at the red-haired woman’s sleeve.

  “Please,” she whimpered. “Can you—Can you do anything? This is a terrible place, Kaletha. I know it, I can feel it. We shouldn’t be here. The Captain is right, it is haunted.”

  Kaletha jerked her arm away and rubbed her temples, as if doing so could crush out the splitting pain of the storm-ache within. “You’re the one who’s haunted,” she snapped irritably. Her eyes darted to the door and back again. “Haunted by your own fears, which he plays upon like a common charlatan.”

  “No...”

  “There are no demons.” Her mouth was suddenly rigid with rage. “Even you believe his lies now, as everyone does.”

  Anshebbeth stammered, “No—”

  “Then why are you afraid?” Kaletha cut at her. “He used my magic, stole it, twisted it to work evil out of his own greed and vice. His greed has given wizardry an evil name that shall never be eradicated, leaving me—me—and all who come after to suffer for it. That’s all there is. The power comes from the mage, from the mind, not from some—some desert legend or djinn of shirdar superstition.”

  “But what if he’s right?” Anshebbeth’s eyes, black and liquid, shirdar eyes, flickered from one empty socket doorway to the next. She was shivering as she tried to draw nearer for comfort, and angrily Kaletha moved away. “There were demons in the temple where we found him: I sensed it, felt it. And I felt them...the night Egaldus—”

  “Will you stop whining!” Kaletha swung around, blue eyes blazing in the firelight. “Don’t you speak to me of Egaldus! What would you know about demons or anything else?”

  Spots of red flared on Anshebbeth’s white cheeks. “Just because Egaldus was a more apt pupil than I doesn’t mean I know nothing—” she began shrilly.

  “Apt!” Kaletha’s laugh was like a dog’s bark, harsh and false. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Don’t I?” Anshebbeth’s thin nostrils flared, her black eyes widening with a long-pent boil of fermented rage as the storm triggered her temper as it had triggered Kaletha’s. “And whose fault is that? Because you’d rather have taught him than me...”

  “He had more promise—he had the power—”

  “He had you!” Anshebbeth almost screamed. “Again and again, for all your talk of purity! I heard you tell the Captain that, through your window—I heard it! You taught him because he was a man, because he’d lie with you and pretend he loved you!” Tears flooded the dark eyes. “I love you! I could have given you everything he did...”

  “When? While you were playing the slut in Nanciormis’ bed?”

  The tears spilled over, creeping down the blotched, swo
llen cheeks. Starhawk, sitting unnoticed by the wall, watched the scene with head tipped a little to one side, gray eyes suddenly sharp with interest. Hysterically, Anshebbeth cried, “At least he cares for me for what I am—which you never have—never...”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, don’t snivel!” Kaletha turned away and pressed her hands to her head again. Anshebbeth fell back, her hand rubbing nervously at her throat, her face working with stress and grief.

  Tazey reached out to touch her comfortingly. “Don’t. She doesn’t really mean it. Everyone loses their temper during a storm.” But at that moment footfalls rang in the darkened hall. With a sob, Anshebbeth flung herself to her feet and, as Nanciormis came through the dead socket of the door beside her, fell desperately into his arms.

  For one second Sun Wolf thought the commander would thrust her off him. His thick face, doughy-looking with strain, twisted in revulsion as Anshebbeth’s skinny arms clutched at his shoulders. The two guards behind him went on into the oval room with carefully averted eyes, not wanting to look at their commander and his hysterical, middle-aged mistress; that, too, showed on Nanciormis’ face. He patted her heaving back perfunctorily while she ground her flat breasts and running nose into the soft green leather of his doublet, but the Wolf could see in his face only the desire to get this over with and get her off him as quickly as he gracefully could. Sun Wolf supposed he should have thought better of the commander for taking even that trouble, but suspected Nanciormis would have shown less forbearance without the presence of an audience.

  He turned to trade a glance with Starhawk and saw her gaze, not on Nanciormis, but on Tazey. The girl was watching her uncle and her governess, nauseated cynicism in her eyes.

  “That’s right, go to him!” Kaletha jeered viciously. She had not forgiven the public revelation about Egaldus. “You’ll never see, will you? If I was never able to touch magic within your mind, it was because your mind wasn’t willing—because you had other fish to fry. It was you who lied, not I!”