In either case, the Empress congratulated herself, the messy business of killing a wizard of unknown innate power directly by magic had been neatly avoided.
But then more pressing matters intervened and Ouriána was forced to give up her new plaything. An entire fortnight passed during which Sindérian never once crossed her mind. And even when interest revived, it was only as a matter of idle curiosity, so confident was the Empress of her own success.
After so long a period of neglect, the homunculus had gone dormant. When Ouriána opened the little silver casket in which she had stored it away, she found that it had returned to its former lumpen, shapeless, condition—more closely resembling dirty candle drippings than anything human.
She sprinkled the thing with water and wine, repeated her former spells, and so, in the course of time, brought the doll back to a semblance of life.
But the moment the effigy climbed to its feet and began to scamper about on the tile floor amidst the symbols and diagrams of dreadful import, Ouriána’s alabaster skin went whiter than ever; her green eyes narrowed. Gazing down at the little tallow figure from her superior height, she shook back her fiery hair, ground her teeth, then looked around the room for someone she could punish.
If the evidence of the homunculus was to be believed, a change had come over Sindérian. No longer angry, terrified, and on the brink of self-destruction, she was glowing with life. The face that had been growing every day colder, more sullen and withdrawn, was mobile and expressive again. Either the girl had resources not immediately apparent, or someone or something considerably more powerful must be protecting her.
And it was then that Ouriána remembered her initial misgivings, the presentiment that whatever Faolein’s daughter might be, in and of herself, she was almost certainly a part of something much, much greater. For a moment she could almost see a pattern of most subtle design, linking Nimenoë on her deathbed, the child who was whisked away, and this young healer—But no, whatever it was, she had failed to fully grasp it, and it slipped away.
I have been too tender, too merciful, she thought. Regarding the chit as a possible tool, I aimed to seduce rather than destroy. But no more. No more.
Yet even now, she reminded herself, it would not be wise to do anything rash, anything too overt. Not while her understanding of the situation was still imperfect.
But then the bolder, more dangerous, infinitely more cunning part of her said, You know what to do. Against one pattern, create another. Against one web of circumstance, fashion a curse of your own.
Ouriána hesitated. What that inner voice suggested was a spell born of deepest malice and deepest pain. It could never be created except at great cost. Nor was it anything that, in the normal course of events, she would ever consider waging against so insignificant a figure as Sindérian, daughter of Faolein.
But would you, then, brook defiance of your will—and from such a minor wizard? Make an example of her. Let whoever or whatever is guarding her know: you are not to be balked in even the smallest particular. Work the spell. It may be that her protectors will also be involved in her doom.
Again, Ouriána felt the fury building inside of her. She would not be balked. She would not allow any wizard, great or small, to live once she had willed their destruction! This girl would be but the first of many.
In a whirlwind of temper, she began to pull energies out of the earth, out of the air, and spin them into filaments stronger than iron, finer than silk. On the table beside her there was a dagger with a slender, wicked blade, all made out of bone. Catching this up, she opened a vein in her arm, tempering the strands with her own heart’s blood.
Then she began to weave the aniffath, and set Sindérian’s name at the center of her spell.
Two days later, Sindérian and her friends were in the grassy flatlands where the tiny, isolated farms of the hill country gave way to vast herds of shaggy white cattle and sleek grey horses. Sometimes there were orchards, or fenced-in land where sheep grazed peacefully. Sometimes they passed by ancient stoneworks—cromlechs, standing stones, and stone circles so heavy with age they were sinking into the earth.
And sometimes, riding past some barrow or passage grave covered in flowering weeds, Sindérian thought she could see out of the corner of her eye the pale spirits of long-dead kings and warriors: figures of mist and shadow, showing here and there a glittering armring, a jeweled circlet, a glimpse of bare bone.
For Arkenfell (Faolein told her) was a haunted land. Every village had its tutelary spirit, every graveyard and barrow its guardian. Marsh lights appeared where there was no standing water; any traveler on the road after nightfall was likely to see uncanny things. The Men of the north practiced ancestor worship, glorifying their forebears in songs and sagas; they left out offerings of milk and ale for the recently dead; so ghosts were inclined to linger.
That there were more hostile things than ghosts abroad in the flatlands soon became evident. Bandits harried them, skinchangers stalked them, farmers and villagers threw stones wherever they went.
The footpads who attacked on three different occasions were small bands of hungry-looking ragged men who leapt out of ambush, and were so readily discouraged by mounted men with better armor and weapons that Sindérian could only marvel they had found the courage to attack in the first place. She could almost believe that some will not their own was influencing them.
But the skinchangers were a more serious problem altogether. A pack of werewolves followed the travelers for several days, slinking through the shadows morning and evening, often unseen but never quite absent, as the horses could sense them at all times, growing increasingly skittish as the days went on.
Such glimpses of them as Sindérian had chilled her to the marrow. It was odd and disquieting to see the eyes of men staring out of those bestial faces, above those dirty grey muzzles; unsettling to watch them loping along with their unnaturally long legs and their grotesquely clubbed hand-paws.
And if the creatures kept their distance at first—having, it would seem, no love of fire—they eventually attacked in broad daylight, coming in from all sides at once, some on two legs and some on four, hamstringing one of the pack animals and inflicting much damage on Sindérian and the horses before the Prince and his men were finally able to slay the entire pack.
Afterward, winding yards of linen bandage around her own badly bitten and savaged ankle, then hobbling over to see to the injured horses, Sindérian felt her first stirrings of sympathy for the angry, unfriendly farmers and villagers.
Prince Ruan was right, she thought. Hard times do breed hard hearts, and the people here have good reason to be wary.
While she tended the surviving horses, the men made a pile of the shaggy grey bodies and gathered wood to make a fire. Horribly, one of the creatures had died in the process of changing, and his corpse was a disturbing mix of skin and fur, beast and man. What patches of skin showed through were very fair, and tatooed with strange patterns in blue and scarlet. When Prince Ruan finally set the pyre ablaze, no one could bear to look at that one body; the idea of watching it burn was simply unsupportable.
The stench of burning followed Sindérian for many days, for the smoke got into her hair and her clothes; nor did any amount of brushing or rubbing with sweet herbs make the least difference. She could smell it on the horses and on her fellow travelers until it nearly maddened her. When she sat down to eat, she tasted it in the food and water they carried with them. She began to wonder if she would ever be free of it.
Meanwhile, the mauled ankle was slow to mend. For all Sindérian’s efforts to heal it, the wound wept and throbbed incessantly. One of the horses, less seriously injured than she was, died. It simply stopped in its tracks and fell over, dead as a stone. Though she said nothing to the others, she feared hydrophobia. Healers were not all-powerful, there were some things they could not cure, and the bite of a rabid animal was one of them.
There came a night when Sindérian found sleep impossible. Ev
ery time she closed her eyes and started to drift off, she thought she could hear voices and movements under the earth. But when she opened her eyes again all was still, all silent.
Finally, she gathered herself up off the ground and limped over to speak to Aell, who had been assigned the first watch. Offering to take his place, she settled down cross-legged by the fire.
There, she spent the next several hours studying the sky, marveling at the changing patterns of the Hidden Stars: a half year’s movement, under ordinary circumstances, compressed into a single night. She was still trying to puzzle this out when the falcon fluttered up and landed in the grass by her feet. He, too, was wakeful and anxious.
Tearing her gaze away from the heavens, she caught a glimpse of something moving just beyond the circle of firelight. With a creeping sensation she saw that while she was stargazing a host of pale, insubstantial figures had formed a ring around the camp.
Her own heartbeat seemed to shake the silence. Though the dead seemed curious and watchful rather than openly hostile, she could not believe that their presence meant anything good.
What do they want—do you know? she asked Faolein.
I think, he answered, that they wish only to speak with us—though why they should single us out I’m not certain.
Sindérian frowned. These were not the spirits of men who had died in peaceful times, or in their own beds. Their faces were seamed with scars; many were missing arms or legs. Some were hardly more than a collection of blurred and confused features, with bones shining through. Perhaps they had been dead so long, they had forgotten how they looked in life. One wore—in place of his own head—the skull of a horse that had been buried with him.
The falcon took several sideways steps. I do not think it would be wise to rebuff them—not without learning first exactly what they want.
Sindérian scowled. Yet her trust in her father was strong. If he said they should speak with the dead—
Nevertheless, this is hardly the place, Faolein continued. I think we should go a little apart, away from our sleeping friends—what the dead have to say to us may not be meant for their ears.
Still frowning, Sindérian rose reluctantly to her feet. Limping through the high, moon-silvered grass, she left the circle of firelight far behind, trying to keep pace with the falcon as he swooped before her. The dead followed after, rank upon rank, their numbers seeming to swell the farther they walked from the camp.
At last, in a grassy dell screened from the fire by brambles, the falcon settled on Sindérian’s shoulder and the gruesome parade came to an end.
By then there were dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds. They had come in their winding sheets and earth-stained shrouds, their armor and antique finery. Not all of them were men. There were shield-maidens and archers, tall and well formed, carrying long white knives and great yew bows.
The breeze did not stir any of their garments, nor did moonlight reflect from their eyes. They brought with them no taint of corruption, no reek of the grave or the tomb. If the air smelled of anything, it was of green and growing things: pastures and woodlands; hayfields and cornfields under the sun; roots clotted with earth. They had all been dead for so long, their fleshly parts had melted into dust and returned to the soil.
Yet seeing that they had all been so very long dead, Sindérian could not help wondering what business they could possibly have with the living—and especially with two foreign wizards, passing as it were by chance through these lands.
As if he sensed her question, the man wearing the horse’s head took several steps forward and spoke in a hollow, windy voice. “The world is changing. Things that were bound by magicians of old have cast off their bindings, and the banished creatures of the Dark are beginning to return. Things that have no place in this world are slipping through from Outside. They have formed an alliance with the men of Eisenlonde, and they go to wage battle against our cousins in Skyrra.”
Another took up the tale, a tall gaunt man in armor of gilded leather and an iron crown: “Long ago, years beyond counting, we fought a great battle. We won a great victory against the Dark, but only because our kinsmen came from across the channel and fought alongside us, brother to brother. When the battle was over, we swore a most binding oath that we would aid them in similar circumstances. Now we wish to fulfill that oath. We must do so, or we will never rest.
“Yet the Necke lies between,” he went on. “And the dead who have been buried and returned to the earth have not the power to pass over such a great body of water. We cannot do it without the help of the living.”
Sindérian could scarcely credit her ears. “You want us to take you to Skyrra with us?”
“Yes. It should not be beyond you, sorceress and wizard. Will you not help us?”
If we were to help you, said Faolein, much to her surprise and dismay, you would have to swear again, swear no harm to living man or woman. Otherwise, we could not, in good conscience, loose you in Skyrra. Could you keep such an oath?
One of the shield-maidens moved a step closer. Her hair was the color of ripe wheat: but there was a spear embedded in her chest, and someone had horribly mutilated her face. “We wish only to fulfill our oath, to meet our ancient enemies in battle. What are the battles of the living to us?”
Sindérian turned toward her father. You cannot truly mean for us to do any such thing. Sweat was gathering in the palms of her hands, it was dripping down her sides. Do we even know how? And you said we were not to work any spells while we are in Arkenfell—still less should we attempt what sounds like necromancy!
Yet none would be bound against his or her will, he answered mildly. In a sense we would be setting them free—free from constraints that bind and frustrate them.
Yet still she hesitated. Every instinct urged her against it. So recently and so narrowly had she escaped the seductions of the Dark, she could not trust herself to take part in any such thing and suffer no harm.
Sindérian, said Faolein, if we don’t do this, they may yet find someone else to do it for them. Someone less scrupulous, someone who might set conditions we would not wish to see fulfilled. Do you understand me?
Reluctantly, she nodded.
I cannot do this alone, he continued. I know the spell, but I have no hands to make the signs, no voice to say the words.
Sindérian released a long, bitter sigh. It seemed that all things were in favor of her doing this, save only her fear and revulsion.
But my father has never led me astray, she told herself. Nor would he—nor would he! He is older and wiser than I.
“Very well, I will do it,” she said at last. “But you must instruct me.”
There was a stir of approval, like a gust of wind, from among the ranks of the dead.
You will need a sack or pouch, Faolein told her. One of the bags that you use to carry herbs will do very well. Empty it out and bring it back here.
Sindérian went back to the camp, where she found the Prince and his men still sleeping. Trying not to imagine what they would make of this unseelie bargain, she knelt by her saddlebags and rummaged through her packets and pouches of herbs. Deciding that pennymint was the one she could most easily spare, she loosened the drawstring, upended the bag, and watched the dried leaves trickle to the ground.
And again she wondered how Faolein had ever learned any such spell. They did not teach spells like that at the Scholia on Leal.
Yet, she remembered, he had wandered far as a young wizard, and no doubt he had seen and heard many strange things during those years. He might have gone anywhere and done anything—how was she to know? That thought made her father a stranger in a way that his present form never could.
She returned to the place where she had left Faolein and the wraiths, to find that the falcon had been busy during her absence, pulling up the grass with his beak and scratching up the dirt with his talons. He had a little pile of moist earth already waiting for her.
Put this soil in the bag. Enough to fill it near
ly full. Then you can conjure the dead inside.
Sindérian frowned at him. What—all of them? she asked incredulously.
Yes, all. They could fit into a space much smaller than that, were it necessary.
It took so many hours that the night was nearly over before she was done. Already long before that, she grew hoarse from speaking the words that Faolein had taught her, haggard with lack of sleep. Yet finally the ordeal ended. One last time she recited the verse, conjured one last wraith into the sack.
Sindérian looked around her with a weary and jaded eye. Only she and her father remained of all that multitude. While she was busy the first light of sunrise had appeared on the horizon; the Prince and his men might already be waking. It was time and past time to return to the campsite and tell them exactly what she and Faolein had been doing, during the night while they slept.
And though she dreaded the outcome, she thought with a sigh, there was really no use in putting it off.
24
Winloki woke to a confusion of men and horses milling in the half-light all around her. Her first thought was: Eisenlonders! We are under attack! Panic ran like ice water through her veins.
This last week had been one endless heart-wrenching nightmare, as skirmish after bloody skirmish followed the first clash between Kivik’s army and the barbarian hordes. There had been ambushes and night attacks as well, so it was natural by now for Winloki to expect the worst. But this time she heard the quiet voices of her guards speaking somewhere to the right of her, and the thunder in her blood subsided, her breathing slowed. If there were any immediate threat, Haakon and the others would have already wakened her and hustled her into the saddle.
Groaning for her stiff neck and dry, leathery mouth, she rolled over on her side, burying her face in the crook of her arm. It can’t be dawn, she protested inwardly. Not so soon. Not already.
The Hidden Stars Page 31