A weary smile flickered across Fergus lips and went slack. The breath rattled from his lungs. Kynyr reached and closed Fergus staring eyes; and then gave him the kiss of farewell to the dead, forehead, cheeks, and lips.
"He's gone."
Kynyr left the room, trying to hold in a fresh wave of grief. He went to his rooms, snatched the bottle of whiskey from a cabinet, and settled at the small table in the antechamber, swigging from the bottle with a morbid light in his eyes.
Todd appeared, grabbed a pair of glasses, and pried the bottle from Kynyr's hands before settling opposite him. That's no way to drink it."
Kynyr leaned his head back, staring at the ceiling. I wonder who's going to close my eyes after I'm dead. Or am I going to rot on the battlefield like so many have."
"Don't go fey on me, Kynyr. Todd poured and pressed a glass in Kynyr's hand.
"Isn't that how the story goes? The prince always dies."
"That's why you and Kady went to the clerk?"
Kynyr gave a faint nod. I never really expected to go home from here ... except in a box."
"Is that why you were so willing to wear Tarrant's ring?"
"Maybe. Kynyr sipped the whiskey, turned his hand up so that the ring showed and ran his finger over the crest. I don't really know. There's this big empty hole in me that I'm afraid to look inside."
"Tarrant said the same thing to me when he was your age."
"If you don't mind ... I'd like to be alone. There's a lot I want to think about before we leave for home tomorrow."
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
ROOTS OF ALL EVIL
In the middle of the bed lay a sleeping bitch, the folds of her traditional robe revealing the pregnant rounding of her stomach.
Pandeena studied Clodagh, who lay locked into a dream from which she could not awaken until someone released the spell imprisoning her. The priest flicked her forefinger up and down against her pursed lips. Clodagh seemed an odd choice for Caimbeul to have fallen in love with. She was completely different from any of the lycan bitches that Pandeena's ex-husband had ever shown an interest in, soft and gentle rather than strong and aggressive; round-faced and pleasantly attractive, but not beautiful. She wondered if age had finally mellowed the old dog out.
Caimbeul's stasis spell on Clodagh prevented her from dying of a death spell lodged in her brain by the Butchering Serpent, a sa'necari with a long history of lycan genocide. That Caimbeul could cast spells astonished Pandeena: he had never shown the slightest ability during the years of their marriage. She should have suspected it, since he had inherited fireborn blood from his father's side.
"I can't believe he's fallen in love again. You must be an impressive bitch."
Pandeena warded the room and Jumped to the Lawgiver House. She materialized in his bedroom startling him, and he spun with a blade in his hands.
Her eyes narrowed, taking in the impressive length of the wicked fighting knife in his hands. To her knowledge, Caimbeul had not wielded one since their son was killed nearly a century ago. Is that any way to greet me?"
His eyes went angry. You've left her alone."
"I warded the chamber. If anyone touches her locked door, I'll Jump back and stop them."
Caimbeul sheathed the knife at his hip, ran his hand through his thick hair, and settled heavily into a chair. I barely slept last night. I kept having nightmares."
"You? Nightmares?"
"Oh stop the shit, Pandeena. You've never forgiven me for our son's death. And yes, it was my fault. I've spent years trying to deny it. But I can't any longer. Caimbeul's face turned to expressionless stone, yet his eyes leakedthe only sign of his feelings.
Pandeena's eyes softened, and her cheeky attitude faded. You're finally going to tell me what really happened?"
Caimbeul's shoulders slumped. If I don't tell you now, I may never get to. I'm gambling my life on a throw of the dice, on the chance of seeing the Serpent's face. The only thing standing between me and him is your mark. He opened his shirt and touched the Godmark of the Second Mother of the lycan raceonly he knew that the Pandeena of the legends and his ex-wife standing before him were the same mon. The rest of those who dwelled in Wolffgard simply thought that she was named for the Second Mother as so many daughters of their people were.
Custom and law constrained them both with iron fetters. They had to catch the Butchering Serpent without breaking the laws of the clan that Pandeena, her mother Navaryn First Mother, and her grandmother, the god, Tala, Mistress of Wolves, had given them when they first turned wolves into myn. To do otherwise invited chaos and unwanted change.
Pandeena knelt beside his chair and folded her arms across his knees, giving him a look of sorrow and compassion. Tell me."
He managed a tiny nod, tight with emotion. I knew it was dangerous. I don't usually deal with clan quarrels amongst city wolves. They begged me to arbitrate. The feud had cost many lives on both sides ... had been for years. It's always a tragedy when clan battles clan. So I went. Gwythyr wanted to go with me. I had been training him so very long, Pandeena. He had grown impatient. I refused. He followed me."
"That much I knew."
Caimbeul's mouth twitched and his jaw tightened. I could have sent him packing at that point. But I gave in. You were away so much of the time. I knew what I was getting into when I married a yuwenghau ... I'm not blaming you. My hubris was that I thought I could handle it. I filled his head with stories, legends ... history. He wanted to be a hero. Caimbeul sucked in a breath to steady himself.
"Except that, Pandeena, I never stressed the fact that heroesheroes die young. Caimbeul paused in his story, breathing heavily. We rode into Skeleton Creek. I spoke to both sides the first night we were there. They seemed willing to negotiate. I arranged a meeting between the chieftains. But there was something not quite right about it. It nagged at me and I disregarded it.
"Gwythyr was so excited to be in a city for the first time. We took in the theater, attended several musical performances, and shopped. I bought him a new bow case and quiver Caimbeul turned his face away, pressing his hands over his eyes. I buried it with him."
Pandeena reached up and pulled him into her arms. You don't need to go on, if it hurts you this much."
A single sob broke from Caimbeul's throat, and he swallowed back the next one. I kept thinking it was all too easy, and then pushing those thoughts aside because ... I was the great Padruig Caimbeul, everyone wanted to listen to me. No one could compare to me. I was the wisest, the strongest, and the best. And I never saw it coming."
She stroked his head, ran her fingers through his hair, and kissed his tears. Saw what?"
"There was a third side. There was a third bloody side! Caimbeul screamed and began to tremble violently in her arms. Sa'necari ... manipulating both clans. They came to the meeting shielded, passing themselves off as lycans. They were from a minor family, but strong and knowledgeable. They wanted the clans holdings, but weren't positioned to take them outright. They knew about the fireborn blood in Gwythyr and myself. We were sitting at the table, talking with the chieftains. I sensed the raising of their powers and looked about.... Caimbeul's face twisted up into a mask of hopelessness, and another sob escaped. I gathered my power ... I killed two of them ... and then I saw Gwythyr falling ... three blades in his back ... runed for killing fireborn and coated with Devil's Silver. I went into an unthinking rage. I lost all sense of myself. Gods, Pandeena. I have no memory of how I got out with his body. When I came to myself, I was on a horse, riding with him in my arms ... his horse in tow, and that wonderful quiver and bow case that I buried him with. Oh gods forgive me, forgive me."
Caimbeul broke down completely and all that Pandeena could do was hold him.
* * * *
Malthus arrived for dinner with his wife, Merissa on his arm. They arrived last, as always, and his father-in-law, Claw Redhand, glared at him from the head of the huge trestle table. He seated Merissa, pushing her chair in for her. She folded her hands across
her hugely swollen belly and cast her eyes demurely before her. A flicker of uncertainty in her eyes reflected the tension between her and Malthus.
Claw's sisters, Fianait and Searlait, sat at his left hand; his wife and daughter on his right. Malthus was seated beside Merissa, and Belgair, the Captain of the Guard, sat opposite him.
The table could have sat forty with ease. However, lycan chieftains did not usually maintain a court or Privy Council that would have filled the tables at human king's abode, although they did, from time to time, entertain guests. Claw had not had guests in several years. He discouraged most visitors because Merissa had borne an out of wedlock child, Darmyk, by a sa'necari. There had been a time when lycan custom would have stoned Merissa to death for bearing a sa'necari child. It still happened in some of the more isolated villages on clan lands.
Darmyk ate at the far end, bracketed by Malthus two young nieces, Ros and Lyrri.
Nibari slaves waited upon the table.
Malthus gaze slid along the table and he smiled when he recognized the label on the bottle of rum Claw had brought to the table with him from the liquor cabinets in the Blue Room. The rum was from Ildyrsetts, very expensive, and a gift to Claw from Malthus.
Searlait cut up all of Fianait's food for her, and gestured for Kissie to fill Fianait's wine glass. The way they all catered to Fianait, babying her endlessly, irritated Malthus.
Claw poured himself a second glass without offering any of his prize to the others. When Brock gets here, I intend to make a lot of changes."
Belgair stiffened, his expression souring. He started to say something and bit it back, eating in stony silence. Making a scene at dinner was not allowed. Aisha, Claw's wife, rigidly enforced the no quarreling at the table rule, and Claw usually backed her up.
"Are you sure he's coming? Fianait asked with a trace of wistfulness in her voice. He's been gone so long."
"I sent for him. He's coming. This exile was his own pig-headed decision. Not mine. The irritability with which Claw spoke ended that discussion before it started.
They all knew that Claw had rescinded the edict of exile on Brock within a month of their father's death. They had expected him to come home then. A century later, they were still waiting. Stubbornness ran in the Redhand family, as much a curse as a virtue.
Malthus watched for an opportunity to excuse himself and leave. The chance came as the conversation moved to sheep, goats, and whether fences needed mending.
Until Claw's last heart attack, he would have been on top of it all. Now he was dependant upon Belgair to oversee that, and it showed in the sharp manner in which Claw kept asking questions throughout the meal.
Malthus began to lose patience. Please excuse me, but I need to go hunting. The Sanctuary has run out of meat again."
Claw scowled. All you do is fuck my daughter and hunt for that damned refugee camp. You should take more interest in the needs of this household."
Malthus sucked in a breath to hold back an aggravated reply. I promised Beth, before her death, that I would see to the needs of the camp."
"Go on then, Claw snarled.
Aisha frowned at Claw, anticipating an outburst, and quieted him with a glance.
Malthus rose, went upstairs, and changed into his hunting leathers. Then he went to his study and took a string of carrying globes from a drawer. It looked like a simple necklace of baubles, and he never told anyone different. He buckled on his knife belt, shoved the necklace into a pouch, and picked up his bow case. Then he departed the manor.
* * * *
Ros sat at the table in the Blue Room, drawing on sheets of cheap paper with wax crayons. Her sister Lyrri played on the floor with her dolls. Searlait came in and watched them a moment.
"Girls, this isn't the playroom. You were told to go to bed after dinner."
Ros licked her lips, and then wagged her tongue up and down inside her cheek. Where's Darmyk?"
Searlait glanced around and failed to see him about. I assume he's in bed. He's an obedient cub."
A flash of meanness twitched across Ros face. That's not what Uncle Malthus says."
"Don't talk back. Get on to bed."
Ros and Lyrri gathered their things and walked to their suite.
Lyrri flopped onto her bed. Those old bitches are mean."
Ros shrugged. They're lycans, she said as if that explained everything.
Ros got out of her clothes and laid them neatly across the back of a chair near her bed. She took a pink nightgown from the drawer of her dresser and pulled it over her head.
Lyrri watched her sister closely. You going to bed?"
"No. Put your nightgown on."
Lyrri obeyed, sensing that Ros was up to something.
Ros went to the outer door to their suite and peered through a crack, listening. It's clear. Come on, Lyrri."
After nearly six months in manor, they knew all the best hiding places, the nooks and crannies into which they could dart on hearing someone walking toward them. They made their way across the second floor to the servants stairs, situated in a narrow stairwell.
"We going to play with Timerly, Ros?"
Ros let her fangs down and licked them. I'm hungry.
A sa'necari prodigy, Ros had been born with her fangs instead of developing them at puberty, which was still at least five years off. She drank blood with her milk as an infant.
They stole up to the third floor where most of the nibari rooms were and slipped into the room where four nibari male children slept. Three of them had been sterilized as unfit for stud purposesthey did not castrate them, but clipped and cauterized the vas deferens. Timerly lay beneath the window, wrapped in many quilts against the mid autumn chill.
Ros stroked Timerly's cheek, waking him. She flashed her fangs in the dark, catching a sliver of moonlight on their whiteness.
Timerly slipped out of bed and followed them down the hall to the playroom the nibari children used. He slithered out of his robe and smiled as Ros pushed him onto the floor and bit him.
* * * *
Malthus rode north through Wolffgard and then took the west fork at the end of town, which led to the Camp. There he continued on to his old cottage along the outer edge of the ground belonging to the camp, screened by pine trees from the view of the others.
A table with sat in front of the cottage with tree rounds set around it substituting for chairs. However, the meeting would take place inside the cottage because of the chill of the evening and the lessening of credible concealment since the deciduous trees had shed their leaves for the season.
This was the only habitation on the grounds built in the human style. The rest were traditional lycan longhouses and a few scattering sheelings of woven fibers, currently uninhabited because the disappearance of nearly a third of the females and children a few weeks ago had left enough houses vacant to move everyone out of the sheelings and into the warmer housing.
Malthus poured mead into mismatched tankards and sketched spells along the sides that blazed for an instant and then faded into the metal. The spell would make the Lycamornots more open to his suggestions, unlike the ones he had placed upon the bottles of expensive liquor he had given to Clawthose were keyed to the old chieftain, a curse that weakened his heart and body and would eventually kill him.
Preece and Rheu arrived first. They wore knives belted at their waists that Malthus had coated with Devil's Silver and other arcane poisons a week ago. They carried elaborate animal masks in their hands.
One by one the others arrived, similarly prepared.
"So we're going to do it tonight? Preece asked, fondling Rheu.
Malthus nodded with a tiny smile. Tonight we kill the lawgiver and the priest, and we get Clodagh back."
* * * *
Darmyk Redhand stole through the manor of his grandfather, the lycan chieftain Claw Redhand. Fear rode his heels, crawling up and down his spine, and twisting the muscles of his neck. Somewhere in the darkened hallways, two terrifying little girls name
d Ros and Lyrri were stalking him again.
Once this had been a happy place, a safe place, a place where he played without fear, basking in the love of his mother, grandparents, and two doting old aunts. Then his mother had married Malthus Estrobian, who had come to live with them, bringing his two orphaned nieces along: seven-year-old Ros and six-year-old Lyrri. Since then it had become a place of hidden dangers and every shadowed niche and cranny seemed to promise fresh horrors.
Before her marriage his mother, Merissa, would have put him to bed and tucked him in with a kiss. Now half the time she forgot about himexcept for when his stepfather was away. She was tired and distracted all the time, her belly so swollen in pregnancy that she looked like a farmer had filled her with watermelons.
No one had come to look for him when he fell asleep hiding in a cabinet in the drawing room they called the Blue Room. When he had woken up, all the candles had been blown out. Darmyk had been so frightened at first that he wanted to cry. After gathering his courage, he had headed for his rooms, only to hear the ominous step, drag, step, and drag sound of Ros bad leg somewhere in the darkness.
He scrambled a little farther, heading for his rooms that the priest, Pandeena, had warded after Ros nearly killed him a few weeks ago. They hadn't known it was Ros. They had thought it was a vampire. Yet the wards held and Ros could not enter his suite.
Down the corridor and around a corner he ran as lightly and soundlessly as he could, wishing he had been born lycan, and not sa'necari, because as a wolf cub he would have moved faster and quieter. He paused to listen again, trying to discover where they were. After swallowing several times, he bolted as far as the edge of a linen closet and crouched near the door.
Lyrri stepped out of the closet in front of him with a small laugh. What are you doing out of bed?"
His heart leaped into his throat and Darmyk felt backwards onto his bottom. Before he could gain his feet, Ros appeared, and unshielded a candle lantern. Blood rimmed her mouth. More food."
He whimpered in fear, feeling the coercions that Ros had placed in his mind tighten.
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