Rhoslyn leapt forward, seized the hair of the last man, pulled his head back, and slit his throat. She had not realized how sharp the knife she carried was. The throat was slit far more thoroughly than she intended so that the man’s head came loose and he fell forward, fountaining blood and striking the man ahead of him. That man shouted and turned, thrusting instinctively with the sword he carried.
Fortunately Rhoslyn was already staggering backward because a second levin bolt flew down the stairs. It was a shimmering silver, not a hard, glowing blue like the first. The man attacking Rhoslyn screamed and staggered but did not fall, somehow twisting to face where the blow had come from. That was just as well because, between shock and pain, Rhoslyn’s spell failed and she lay in the corridor momentarily exposed and defenseless.
Pasgen had not found Albertus at Otstargi’s house. The mind of the servant told him, however, that Albertus had been there and that he nearly always returned just about sunset when he sent the servant out to buy food and sometimes drink. Pasgen decided to wait. He occupied himself pleasantly enough with some of the books he had purchased years before to give verisimilitude to Otstargi’s study. Some of the human misconceptions about magic recorded in those books were amusing, and here and there he had found a spell or a concept that was new and of value.
As the light dimmed, Pasgen became aware of the tension in his lindys. He put the book down and concentrated. Ah, Rhoslyn had found Denoriel and Aleneil together. He tensed, starting to grow angry at the thought they might expel her without a hearing, but then the lindys grew calmer, although not in its full resting state. Apparently they, or at least Aleneil, were listening to what Rhoslyn had to say.
Pasgen went back to his book, although half his attention was now on the lindys, but it was quiet, no more than mildly tense, as it would be if Rhoslyn was talking to those with whom she was not perfectly comfortable. Eventually, however, he set the book aside and frowned.
He had been distracted by fearing for Rhoslyn’s hurt, but now the fact that Denoriel and Aleneil were together in the house on Bucklersbury reminded him that that was what Albertus was waiting for. And Pasgen knew it was not common. Likely one or both would be gone on the morrow and it might be long before they were again together in the house.
Pasgen glanced out the window. He had been reading for longer than he thought. It was past sunset. Mortals would consider it dark, and Albertus had not come back to Otstargi’s house, which according to the servant had been his custom. The break in Albertus’ habitual behavior indicated a strong probability that he had seized his chance and sent out the men he had hired that very night. Pasgen stood up, irresolute. Had Albertus gone with his hired killers to the house on Bucklersbury or was he waiting in whatever place he had used for hiring them to hear of their success?
Should he go to Bucklersbury? Pasgen’s lips thinned. If he showed himself in the middle of an attack, Denoriel would be most likely to spit him before asking why he was there. But— Then the lindys under his collar convulsed. Pasgen ran to the door and was halfway up the stairs to the Gate in the bedchamber before he realized the creature was quiet again. He stopped on the stair and concentrated.
Dark. Ahead of him an open road, empty and silent. Rhoslyn was no longer in the house with Aleneil and Denoriel. What could have caused that spurt of fear? He tried to “see” through the senses he had bespelled into the lindys, but there did not seem to be anything to see and the intense fear was gone. Rhoslyn was uneasy, but not from any threat to her.
He stood on the stair, half turned to go down and pick up his book again. He was aware that Rhoslyn had decided something; she was in movement. He went down two steps, shook his head, and looked upward. He thought that Rhoslyn was on her way back to the house on Bucklersbury. What a fool she was! Had they not already turned away her offer of help?
He and Rhoslyn had done their best and tried to give warning. If those high-nosed Seleighe Sidhe would not listen, their hurt was on their own heads. But if there were an attack and Rhoslyn mixed herself into it … Pasgen spat an oath and began to run up the stairs.
Rhoslyn could create, but she had long ago lost her taste for pain. She had not even ridden in the Wild Hunt for years. She was no warrior. He had better be ready to go to her defense … and the Gate in the house on Bucklersbury had been designed by Treowth.
Pasgen spit another obscenity as he closed Otstargi’s bedchamber door behind him. He had once tried to divert the termini of one of Treowth’s Gates to the holding cell in his domain and had been finely scorched for his temerity. Would he be able—not to change anything; he would not try that again—to convince the Gate to let him pass through it? His body resonances were much like those of Denoriel, half brothers as they were.
He had to find the Gate first, Pasgen thought. He began carefully, bringing up the pattern-taker in his own Gate and searching through it for the feel of Treowth’s work. He found a flicker, but it was very faint, something far distant. He tried again, felt a shiver of response which then slipped away.
Had he not been specially attuned to Gates he would not have caught it at all. Now more slowly he felt for a pattern, felt, sensed … And it was there, so clear, so sharp, and yet so very, very narrow that in his surprise at finding it so strong, he lost it again.
It was easier to find the second time, although it nearly slipped away from him again as he took a breath. Carefully, he touched it, seeking its resonance. And it was gone again! His sense of it had slid to one side or the other. Marshaling his patience, because haste and anger would lose the thread entirely, he scanned once more.
Knowing for what he was looking brought him to the band of magic more quickly. He found it, seized it. Listened … And his lindys went mad!
He could not concentrate on the lindys to see what was wrong with Rhoslyn and hold the Gate at the same time. Cursing, he fixed his mind on his sister, saw her watching shadows slipping into an opened door. Pasgen uttered a few more choice words. She did not fear for herself but for those Seleighe idiots. At the moment Rhoslyn was in no danger.
Now he would need to begin searching for that thread of a Gate all over again. But it was not at all difficult this time. It was as if the Gate was coming to know, to accept his touch. The lindys while not convulsing was highly agitated. Pasgen set his teeth and ignored it, striving to bring the pattern of Denoriel’s Gate into the pattern-taker of his own Gate so that he would have a sure and permanent entry.
A flare of heat. Pasgen released the Gate pattern immediately. For a brief moment before he steadied them, his lips trembled. Treowth’s work was so far beyond his own. He had no idea what protections the Magus Major had put upon Denoriel’s Gate. And when Pasgen had applied to study with him, Treowth had refused him. He had said that to teach an Unseleighe Sidhe with Pasgen’s talent more magic was an invitation to catastrophe.
No oath Pasgen had offered to swear had changed Treowth’s mind. Pasgen had found himself, quite suddenly, back in his own domain. How Treowth had been able to place him there, Pasgen had no idea. Even Rhoslyn did not actually know where his domain was, only a path that would take her there.
The movement of the lindys was growing more and more violent. Pasgen spared a moment to look again. Saw Rhoslyn take up two knives and begin to follow on the heels of the invaders. No! Pasgen shouted mentally, cursing himself for not bespelling Rhoslyn’s lindys as completely as his own.
He swallowed hard and pushed away his sense of what Rhoslyn was doing to feel again for the pattern of Treowth’s Gate. This time he found it immediately, just as the lindys almost pulled itself free of its tether to his tunic. He had one searing vision from it of Rhoslyn fallen, of a body spewing blood nearly at her feet, of a man with a sword twisting above her …
Pasgen threw himself into his own Gate, holding the resonance of Treowth’s Gate fiercely in his mind. He fell through darkness but not into light. He was lost in the Between! He was dead! No, not yet. Holding with all his strength to the pattern of
Treowth’s Gate, he forced himself physically forward in the darkness and slammed into something hard that fell with a loud crash.
Chapter 14
The collapse and shattering of Denoriel’s very costly cheval glass startled the three men who had driven him back against the wall of the upper corridor. Denoriel himself was too far gone in pain and exhaustion to be startled. His mind was fixed on the only thing that could save him—if the destruction of his ability to do magic could be called salvation. But it was not only his own life that power could save. Aleneil was rapidly failing before the attack of the fourth thug.
In that one moment of distracted attention of the three men menacing him, Denoriel reached for the thin white line of power within the diffuse cloud of energy that was the exhalation of mortal life. He drew it in, crying out as the power seared through the channels in his body. The desperate dragging weakness that had been growing worse with each parry to ward away the steel weapons of his attackers, was suddenly gone. The sword, which had begun to feel as heavy and unwieldy as a full-grown tree, was again light and lithe, an extension of the hand that held it like a long, deadly finger.
Denoriel beat away the most immediate threat, that of the man to his left. He scored on the hand that held the sword, but not deeply enough to make the man drop the weapon. And he was desperately aware that the man to his right was about to thrust with the hand in which he held his dagger. If the steel touched Denoriel’s body, he would be lost. Then, incredibly, the door of his bedchamber flew open and a blue bolt struck the attacker, who did not even have time to scream before he fell.
Pasgen uttered a foul oath. He had not meant that levin bolt to save Denoriel; he had meant it for the man turning away from Aleneil to menace Rhoslyn, who, shaking with pain and weakness, was nonetheless climbing the stairs, knife in hand. But Pasgen was disoriented. He had thought himself lost in the Between that linked Gate to Gate. He had given himself up to a most horrible death, until he was aware of pushing physically against the solid wall of darkness that imprisoned him.
Physically? One could not move physically when traveling by Gate. The crash Pasgen generated when he overturned the cheval glass, had jerked his eyes open. He had not realized that he had closed them in his fear of invading Treowth’s Gate. The utter blackness he had thought was Between, lightened at once into a dim bedchamber. With his last image of a man, sword in hand, turning on Rhoslyn, Pasgen drew lavishly on his inner strength to form a levin bolt. And when he burst out of the door of Denoriel’s bedchamber, he loosed that bolt at the first sword wielder he saw.
The wrong man! Denoriel had been driven to the left along the passage almost into the corner. The stairway, rising along the wall of the kitchen, was more central. The man turning to menace Rhoslyn was to Pasgen’s right. Pasgen drew a hard breath, already aching with the closeness of all that bared steel, and found he had not sufficient power to form another bolt. Yet Denoriel, who had been at his last gasp of energy, was now fighting his two remaining opponents like a demon. What had renewed him?
At that moment, Rhoslyn cried out with pain as she managed to block the attacker’s sword thrust with the long knife she carried. But though the weapon did not touch her, it had some inimical effect. She staggered down a step, still clinging to the rail, but her hand was already loosening its grip. Pasgen reached for his sword—and realized that he had not worn it, since he did not fear Albertus. He had no weapon and the steel sword was drawn back to thrust at Rhoslyn again.
Desperately Pasgen cast the feeble amount of energy he had dredged up and then almost fell to his knees. He had never been so drained, so empty of power. The man, struck by the stinging but essentially harmless flickers of energy, howled and swung around …
And the front door burst open, admitting a furious-looking mortal, sword in hand, who rushed up the stairs, shoving past Rhoslyn, to engage the thug.
“I knew it! I knew it!” the mortal cried, slamming aside the attacker’s sword, and driving his own weapon into the man’s chest with such ferocity that the point jammed on some bone.
Cursing violently, the mortal pushed the wounded man to the floor, put his foot on the screaming thug, and yanked his sword free. Without a second glance, he left the shrieking man lying on the floor while he rushed toward Denoriel, who was still engaged with two opponents.
Meanwhile Pasgen had gathered enough strength to stagger to the stairs. He found Rhoslyn still clinging to the banister and trying valiantly to crawl upward.
“Knife,” she whispered, her eyes running tears of pain and weakness. “Give Aleneil the knife.”
She thrust the thing into Pasgen’s hand, which had started to shrink away. But even as the knife touched him he realized that it could not be a steel weapon or Rhoslyn could not have held it.
“Hold your weapon,” he said. “I—”
“I have another,” she said, her voice a little stronger; her hand went to her belt. “Save Aleneil.”
Knife in hand, Pasgen stood. Aleneil, although barely able to keep erect, was in no immediate danger—no danger at all, really, as Denoriel had just thrust his sword through one attacker’s throat, releasing a river of blood. Pasgen could see his half brother grimace as a spray of the blood hit him, but he did not wince away, holding himself ready to support the mortal who had come to his aid.
It did not look to Pasgen as if the mortal would need support, but the one he had left on the floor was now only groaning and had begun to fumble for his sword. It occurred to Pasgen that it would be much better if none of the thugs survived. Questioned, they would set a trail to Albertus and through Albertus to Otstargi’s house. He took two steps, turned his back so Rhoslyn could not see, and thrust the knife he carried through the thug’s eye into his brain. All sound and motion ceased.
Almost simultaneously the mortal fighting against Denoriel’s second opponent thrust into the attacker’s chest as he had before. This time his aim was better. The thug only had time for a single gasp before the sword pierced his heart and stilled it. By the time Denoriel’s swordsman had pulled his weapon free, his opponent was dead.
“God’s Grace, Joseph,” Denoriel said, “you come most timely. I—”
His voice checked abruptly as he saw Pasgen, with the bloody knife in his hand. His sword rose slightly, then dropped when his eyes went to the man Pasgen’s levin bolt had killed. Then his eyes passed Pasgen to Aleneil, wilting but intact against the wall and to Rhoslyn limp on the stairs.
“Aleneil! Rhoslyn! Are you all right?”
“In a moment.” Aleneil’s voice was shaky, but not faint. “See to Rhoslyn … and … and Pasgen. They saved us.”
“Why are you still standing, Denoriel?” Pasgen asked.
He had backed down the stairs, away from the steel sword and knife that lay near the dead man.
“M’lord!” the mortal’s voice was loud and very angry. “If you would take your—your guests into your study, I’ll get Cropper and we’ll take care of this trash.”
“Good God, how?” Denoriel asked.
“Mostly by calling the watch and telling the truth, that these men got in and attacked us. They’ll get the constable and he’ll have the bodies taken away.” Clayborne grimaced suddenly and his hand clenched on the sword he still held. “Tell me, m’lord, how did they get in?” he asked intensely. “Was it through the front door, which wasn’t barred?”
“I don’t know,” Denoriel admitted.
“They came in through the back,” Rhoslyn said faintly. “There was a child who unbarred and unlocked the door.”
“A child?” Aleneil echoed.
“Pfui!” Clayborne exclaimed. “Those ‘foreign’ servants of yours are perfect cods-heads where children are concerned, m’lord. They are forever taking in every child beggar and feeding it and giving it any coin they can come by. Really, m’lord, they must harden their hearts …” His voice faded and then came again, loud and angry. “But what did they want? It does not take six armed men to rob a house, and—a
nd there is little here… .”
Denoriel shook his head. “I fear it is to do with Lady Elizabeth, Joseph. But I would prefer that you did not use that reason to the authorities. Blame it on that exceptional sale we had last week.”
“Yes, m’lord. I know what to say.”
While they had been speaking, Joseph had wiped his sword on one of the victim’s clothing and sheathed it. Now he came down the corridor, shooing Denoriel before him, and offering his arm to support Aleneil. Denoriel barely glanced at Pasgen as he passed, but paused to help Rhoslyn to her feet and to support her down the remainder of the steps.
As soon as they had entered Denoriel’s study and Joseph had closed the door behind them, all the Sidhe began to recover from the pain and weakness the steel caused. There was no iron in Denoriel’s chamber. What metal had been used was silver or silver alloy and the plaster and lathe walls kept out the noxious influence from Clayborne’s room.
The four stood for a moment just staring at each other, then Denoriel led Rhoslyn to the sofa and seated her in one corner. Without invitation, Pasgen sat in the other corner. Aleneil sank into one of the tall-backed chairs, and Denoriel went to throw some new logs on the fire, which was burning very low. Pasgen, who was pressing his hands against his thighs to still their trembling, watched.
“Thank you,” Aleneil said. “I do not understand, but I will ask no questions. Just, thank you. Denoriel and I are alive by your mercy.”
“Whatever our differences, you are blood of our blood.” Pasgen’s voice was harsh. “I would not see you ended for a whim of our … ah … gracious prince.”
“I thank you also.” Denoriel did not sound as warmly grateful as Aleneil had, but his voice acknowledged debt. “Can I bring you some refreshment? I have only mortal fluids here, but the claret is sweet and pleasant.”
By Slanderous Tongues Page 22