Something whooshed overhead and struck the bear in the face.
The huge creature roared as it fell backwards to writhe against the mountainside. It bellowed madly as a second sparkling attack struck its belly. Shuddering sheets of red fire crackled across the fur, and the creature dissolved into black mist that sank into the ground.
“Prince Terrell?” said a voice behind and above him.
Terrell spun around, barely kept his footing, and stared.
The storm had opened as if a wedge of clear air had been driven into it. To the left and right the clouds were rolling back. A brightly patterned carpet floated in the air only a dozen feet away, level with his chest and undulating slowly. A man in heavy robes with a fur-trimmed hood sat crosslegged on it. He pushed that back with a mittened hand to reveal his face. Wrinkled brown skin, brown hair and beard shot through with gray, the features were Silbari.
“I hope I don’t sound ungrateful for your help, but who are you?” Terrell demanded, lowering his sword.
The man bowed deeply, sat back up and smiled. It deepened the creases in his worn face but also made him look younger. “I am the Wizard Inin of the Ilvar clan, your Highness. My colleague Shimoor summoned me and my folk to aid you and yours. I am sorry that we were not here sooner.”
“Your timing looks fine to me.” Terrell glanced left and right. He saw more men on carpets driving back the storm, at least a dozen in all. Shimoor’s protection spell had faded back to its normal near-transparency. Soldiers were getting horses back under control and straightening up the line of march. “You saved us from terrible damage.”
“My duty, Your Highness. I swore my oath to one of your grandfathers. But please pardon us while we complete the task. We’ll meet you in the meadow by the lake.” He bowed again, and the carpet sped away to join the other air wizards battling the storm.
Terrell mounted on his horse as Pen came charging back with Irreneetha in his right hand. Terrell raised his own hand to forestall questions.
“He said his name is Inin of the Ilvar Clan and he’ll meet us by the lake. Let’s get everybody safely there before it gets totally dark. And find me the Brigade’s mapsman as soon as possible; I need to know more about these wizards. A clan of fliers that could fight my grandfather to a draw is bound to be important.”
“Ah.” Pen looked thoughtfully at the swarm of carpets driving back the storm. “Very good, My Lord.”
* * *
“The Shadows of Storm Pass rarely take on flesh these days, so we have grown less attentive than we should, Your Highness,” Wizard Inin apologized two hours later. He had grounded his carpet on a log before Terrell’s tent and reshaped it as a seat. Campfires crackled nearby, venison roasting and stew cooking in large pots. Parts of that were gifts from the Wizard and his companions, all of whom appeared to be highly-accomplished air mages at the least. They’d beaten back the storm, created this pocket of clear air within it, and ferried in extra food from their own redoubt somewhere to the northwest. Terrell held court from another log facing the wizard, with his own entourage gathered around him.
“Shadows?” Terrell asked. “Those were lesser demonic manifestations, right?”
“Of a sort. Unlike regular demons, Shadows are usually a manifestation of the land, sometimes quite dangerous, but because they are rooted in the terrain they occupy, they have a sharply circumscribed reach. Those Shadows lurk only along this road.”
“I’d been told Storm Pass is haunted, but none of the tales had anything like I saw today.”
“That was an extraordinary manifestation.” Inin made an expressive gesture with his hands halfway between a shrug and an appeal to heaven. “To my knowledge they have never attacked any group even half as large as your entourage, your Highness. I suspect they were goaded, though at the moment I have no idea how. Magic of the flesh and spirit my clan has through our wives, but even they have little command over manifestations of the land.” The wizard’s eyes travelled to Dona Seraphina sitting at Terrell’s left hand and he inclined his head slightly.
“I banished one of them,” the priestess reported. She sat on another log, wrapped in blankets and visibly trying not to look over her shoulder at the tents behind her. Her exhausted husband had been put to bed by two of her underpriestesses and one of the Healers tended him. Merritin had sensed Shimoor’s spell weakening and recklessly poured his own personal power in to help support it. Terrell suspected only iron duty kept her here, away from her husband’s side. “But there had to have been at least twenty more. I am confident that it is as you have guessed; those Shadows were recently manipulated by women’s magic.” Her gaze shifted to Terrell and she added, “Druidic, I expect.”
Klairveen, Terrell thought but carefully did not say aloud. Her last try before I pass beyond her reach. I hope.
The wizard nodded deferentially to her and said, “These Shadows have fed on the local creatures for centuries, Your Highness, as well as any unfortunate human they could trap. They are more than half alive now when they take material form, and thus quite dangerous.”
“But they can be cut, and they know pain.” Terrell nodded grimly. He remembered the shock of his sword meeting bone, and the lack of blood. When he had examined the blade later it had been dry and unstained.
“The price of equipping themselves with claws and strength, your Highness.” Inin’s smile turned cold for a moment. “It makes them easier to drive off, so long as one can prove one is decisively stronger.”
“My mother once told me about the Ilvar clan. She said her father charged your folk with keeping Storm Pass barred to the Empire during the Conquest.”
“My father led that struggle.” Pride glowed in the Wizard’s face. “I served as his right hand in those days. Your Imperial Grandfather’s wizards were skilled, but we knew the winds and the rocks of Storm Pass better than they did. That struggle lasted long and began before they built the Warburg, but we won. They never did invade over Storm Pass.”
“And today I understand why.” Terrell nodded and unfolded the map that DiCervi had provided. “Wizard Inin, you have my grateful thanks. When I take up my rule in Aretzo, I will confirm the oath between your clan and my House. I only ask that you continue your good work here at Storm Pass and, when you can spare men for it, such additional patrols in east Silbar as you can manage. The Brigade’s staff tell me that there are small nodes farther south in these mountains, not presently granted by the Crown to anyone. If I enlarge your granted fief to include these two. . .” He tapped the map. “Would you be able to expand your watchfulness to the valleys north of Arbatax?”
“We have enough men, your Highness.” Inin grinned. “My sons and nephews are a very promising group, and twice as numerous as their elders. We would be honored to be assigned such a task.” The Wizard added some detailed suggestions to which DiCervi nodded his own approval, and Terrell readily agreed. Shortly the wizard took his leave.
“Well done, Highness,” the general told him. “I’ve been worried about that gap in Silbar’s protection for years but saw no way to persuade your father to deal with it.”
“Because it is not in Gwythlo’s interest that Silbar be better protected from Gwythlo armies,” Terrell answered. “But the moment I crossed that pass I ceased to be responsible for Gwythlo’s concerns and became responsible for Silbar’s. This will only be the first of many changes I will make, General. We’ll discuss these issues later, for tonight I think everybody needs sleep.”
DiCervi’s smile broadened and he bowed and left for his own tent.
Terrell detained Dona Seraphina a moment longer. “Do you think she’ll try again?”
“Inside Silbar?” The priestess shook her head. “That will be far harder to hide, and easier to block; the Hierarchy has skilled priestesses in every village. No, she’s made her last throw, your Highness. Directly, at least. Now she’ll have to work through other means. Exercise other influences.”
Such as my brother, Terrell thought. He to
uched the scar on his face left by the river battle. “We’ll have to deal with those as they come.”
CHAPTER 11: KIRIN
“Gather round, DiUmbras!” Grandfather called from the head of the stairs.
Kirin alighted from his trapeze onto the high platform as Grandmother and Carmella and the rest of the family members that weren’t currently practicing in the attic crowded up behind Grandfather. The troupe’s leader waved a parchment in the air to beckon everybody to him. Kirin somersaulted into the net and scrambled out to join the rest.
“We have a contract!” Grandfather DiUmbra crowed. “A performance in three tendays!”
“Wonderful!” Carmella exclaimed as a dozen other voices chattered. “Where is it?”
Kirin strained to hear while he prayed for success. He had told Uncle Sevan what he’d done. Maia’s father had pitched Mother Gee’s suggestion to Grandfather, carefully keeping her name—and Kirin’s—silent.
“At the Millago family’s mansion in Cliffside!”
Yes! Kirin thought happily.
Grandfather looked around. “Where’s Maia?”
“Here,” she answered.
Kirin looked over his shoulder to see her walking towards the family from the women’s changing room. Her steps were unsteady and her face looked gray. Has she been throwing up again? He rushed to her.
The troupe’s leader frowned as he watched her approach. “Maia. Are you sick?”
She shook her head and almost lost her balance. Kirin leaped to catch her as she stumbled. She grabbed his hand, righted herself, and defiantly declared, “I’m fine, Grandfather.”
Kirin tried to divert the old man’s attention by saying to her, “Grandfather gave us wonderful news! We have a new job performing for a rich shipping magnate!”
It worked, sort of, as Grandfather turned the frown on him. When Kirin and Maia rejoined the group, the old man said, “How did you know that our client is a rich shipping magnate?”
Kirin fumbled. “Umm. I must have heard his name before, Magister, ‘cause it’s familiar.”
Grandfather stared from him to Maia and back again. Pieter put a hand on Kirin’s shoulder, silently comforting. Carmella had gone to Maia’s other side to lend her own support. The rest of the family went quiet; several of the cousins stared nervously, sensing something wrong.
Kirin remembered that day Pieter had brought him home, battered and scratched from Gerlach’s abuse, and told the family he had adopted a son. The same doubt that the old man’s eyes had held then, looked at him now.
Sevan moved to join Pieter at Kirin’s shoulder. Grandfather’s frown deepened.
“Maia.” The old man dropped her name into the stillness like a pebble into a pond. “Are you pregnant?”
Maia’s hands covered her belly protectively. She raised her chin and said, “Yes, Grandfather, I am.”
Kirin put an arm around her and braced himself.
“You promised me you wouldn’t.” Grandfather’s voice had gone very soft, but his gaze had become as fixed as a wolf staring at a rabbit. “The family was counting on you, Maia.”
“I . . . I know, Grandfather,” Maia answered in a tiny voice.
Her grip tightened on Kirin’s hand. He saw how her eyes fell, no longer able to meet her grandfather’s gaze. His own heart felt squeezed in a giant’s fist. He wanted to shout defiance.
But he could only tremble.
Sevan made a noise in the back of his throat as if struggling to talk, but nothing came out.
“I’m very disappointed in you, Maia.” The old man’s reproachful gaze widened to Kirin as well. “Very disappointed in both of you. You know the family’s need. We counted on you to be the stars, to bring home the money that supports your kin, as we did when you were children. Instead you two put your own selfish desires ahead of the rest of us.”
Maia clutched Kirin’s hand so tight that her blunt fingernails dug into his skin. He forced words out through a tight throat.
“It’s my fault, grandfather, not hers. My Shadow broke her protection spell and I didn’t notice. Don’t blame her, blame me!”
“I do blame you, you pale imp,” Grandfather growled. “You and your sly lust wormed your way into her heart and her belly like a scheming snake! Are you happy with what you’ve done? Stolen her chance at greatness, pinned her down with the weight of your unholy seed? What viper have you planted in her womb?”
“No, no—” I’m not a demon, I’m not! Kirin’s Shadow churned under his heart and he fought a losing battle to hold it inside. Seraph Haroun, help me!
“That’s enough, Father!” Pieter snapped. “This is my son!”
Grandfather glared at him. “You brought this treacherous cuckoo’s egg into our family, this Shadow-carrying sneakthief—”
“This star flyer and loyal worker,” Pieter recklessly interrupted. “Who has carried his share and more, seen to your comfort, made our lives better!”
Grandfather’s face showed his shock; nobody in the family ever interrupted him like that. Before he could speak Carmella took up the refrain. “How long has it been since we were plagued by lice or bedbugs? You know how much it used to cost to have a Priestess drive the vermin out of our quarters. Kirin spares you that! Has he ever shirked carrying even one bucket of water? Failed to clean your chamber pot when his turn came? Taken a single copper more than his due?”
“Tricks of the Pale Seraphs!” Grandfather sneered. “Now is he revealed! All he gives he will take away again—including your daughter!”
“A baby takes less than a year, Father,” Maia’s own father interjected quietly, stepping next to his wife. “This time next year Maia can be back performing. The family will survive a year without her in the act.”
Grandfather looked at his eldest son like a betrayer. “You approve of this—this unnatural spawn of Salim befouling your daughter with his foul pale seed despite all promises—”
“Enough, Father.” Sevan the Elder’s voice remained quiet, but his gaze had grown iron hard. “Kirin is not the man who murdered your mother. Stop punishing him for something that happened before his birth.”
Kirin sat stunned. He had never known Maia’s great-grandmother, and only now understood why the family said so little about her. Pieter must have known when he adopted me.
Grandfather had rocked back in pain and outrage. “I told you never to speak of that!”
“I have been silent long enough; perhaps too long,” his eldest son answered. “Father, let the past go and greet the future. I expected and welcomed children from Maia and Kirin from the moment she told me she wished to marry him. I admit that I had hoped they would wait a few more years, but what’s done is done. I will celebrate the arrival of another grandchild with joy and love—as should you. For my brother’s adopted son is now my son too and has been since he married my daughter. It is past time that you treat him so.”
A strange feeling ran through Kirin’s heart as his father-in-law spoke. His Shadow quieted itself and sank back inside. Pieter and Sevan the Younger both squeezed his shoulders and smiled.
Grandfather stared from Sevan the Elder to Pieter and back, tried to reassert his dominance. “You two league against your own father!”
“Oh, stop arguing with your boys, Grigor!” Grandmother said, tugging on his elbow. “We have a thousand things to do to get ready for the new performance. Did you and Sevan measure the space? Can we set up our trapeze there or will we need to use tightrope only?”
“Are there lamps that will be in the way?” pragmatic Carmella asked him. “How well lit is this new hall?”
“If Maia can’t perform, we can’t meet our contract,” Grandfather growled. “In thirty days, how big will she be? The whole soaring scene will have to be scrapped. The play gutted! Our new client will be disappointed, and you know where that will leave us!”
“His ceiling’s too low for the soaring scene and I already told him so,” Sevan the Elder answered his mother. “We’ll substitute a dan
ce. He already knows we must rewrite the play to fit his hall, so he’s prepared for changes. We can still do all the important parts.”
Grandfather glared at Maia and Kirin. “The DiUmbra reputation is riding on this show. If Maia can’t perform, we’ll be begging on the streets.”
“I can do it, Grandfather,” Maia said steadily.
“We’ll make it work, Magister,” Kirin promised recklessly, clutching her hand.
The old man stared at the two of them coldly, and said, “You had better.”
CHAPTER 12: CHISAAD
Chisaad growled and pushed his scrying contraption aside. He had risen at dawn specifically to check the early bazaar performers on the chance that his target did not have a lease to perform in the afternoons.
“Nothing!” He snarled as he glowered down at the sprawling open-air market.
In the past tenday he had examined every one of the dozen-plus performance spaces in Aretzo’s pulsating heart. Literally hours of watching, and not one of them had a halfbreed actor or acrobat or bard or even juggler. He had found nobody remotely similar to the one he’d seen outside the cemetery gates. Nor did any of the performers quite look like the other members of that troupe that he’d glimpsed.
For a moment he paused, considering. The others had been an obvious family based on similarity of features. Could the halfbreed have been merely a fellow traveler, not part of the troupe at all? But the young woman had rushed to his side and embraced him like a mate, and the other men had gathered close as if ready to defend him.
No, he decided. They were all one family. He must be a bastard got upon one of their women by some soldier during the Conquest. He looked to be about the right age.
For a moment he knew a degree of sympathy for the mysterious youth. Both of them bastards in a nation and a people that held little tolerance for their kind. But he drove the thought out.
Sympathy is a seductive delusion. It must have been created as a subtle trick of the Pale Seraphs.
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