"You'll know," I said. "And you'll know too, Fin, that I'm taking your honor on faith--faith in Tada. She believes in you, so I guess I have to. But if I'm wrong, if she's wrong, you'll be sorry. You understand?"
Fin gave me a steady look. "I hear you."
Not bothering to probe him, I relaxed the shield I'd held against every witch except for my mother and Raym, revealing everything to both of them--all but the Sea Star, which I had deliberately put out of my mind so that even I wasn't conscious of it. I'd examined my belongings before coming out to join them. Krinos's purse was gone. My father's was intact, and the Sea Star hadn't been touched. I'd left it all those days ago under a spell that Mani must have penetrated, but he hadn't taken it, and he'd obviously not called Kai's or Riga's attention to it, or it would be gone.
Now both Tada and Fin left what they were doing and came to sit at the table. Tada reached across and touched my arm, as if to approach my feelings even more closely.
I held nothing but the Sea Star back, showing them even the Great Shift, even Raym and what he'd been to me, what we'd almost been to each other.
Fin's eyes widened and then suddenly darkened, and he let down the guard he'd held against me. What I saw of him I won't say, but I grasped his hand and after a moment he nodded. The three of us sat in silence. I regretted, but only a little, that I'd had to keep the one thing a secret from them. It wasn't to protect the Sea Star but to protect them. The fewer who knew about that, the better.
After a long silence, Tada spoke. "What we'd heard, and we had reason to believe it," she said, "was that some witch from your country, where King Maltuk's pirates have conducted raids, was in league with the Lady at court. We feared it might be you. Mani, as he told you, believed it was not, but he knew we'd want to examine you, so he brought you here. And he hoped you'd help him against the Red Prince. You know. You read him. He told you everything, and Riga wasn't sure. It frightened her."
Yes, I thought, jealousy is a form of fear. The intensity of Riga's attack on me had borne out what I'd already guessed about the woman. She was filled with passionate hatred, and her desire for revenge against its object was so great that it had become part of her every emotion. If she ever managed to achieve this revenge, I thought, she'd be emptied out, no longer a witch, scarcely even a person. She'd disabled me with what might have been a killing blow, not because she feared I was in league with Orath but because she recognized my greater guile and feared I might reach Orath before she did.
"Why does Mani hate Maltuk so personally?" I said. "If you want to tell me."
"Mani himself would have told you," said Tada. "The Red Prince caused his mother's death. It was nothing personal to Maltuk, but Mani has sworn revenge."
"I see. And what did Orath do to Riga?"
Tada and Fin glanced at each other. "You use the Lady's name," Fin said. "Then you don't fear her?"
"Oh, I fear her, all right. That is, I have a healthy respect for her, shall we say? I've felt her glimmer after it had faded; still, I felt what she is. But since I'm going to have to face her, I don't want to be quaking in my boots to do it. So I won't quake. Anyway, I think it's a form of superstition not to call her by her name."
He sighed. "The young are rash."
"So I've been told." I laughed a little. "I might as well take advantage of it, since I can hardly help it. And you haven't answered me. I know that Riga hates the woman more than she fears her. She couldn't conceal that. If I'm going to help them in any way, it'd be useful to know why."
They looked at each other again. "Let's eat first," Tada said. "Then I'll tell you the story, Vivia. It's no secret to Fin and me, or to Kai I think. Mani probably doesn't know all of it, but there's no reason you shouldn't. It's a sad one, though, and I don't want to ruin your appetite." The meal was broiled fish with lemon sauce, greens, and the biscuits. It would've taken a lot to ruin my appetite after four days of fasting.
But Tada's story, I had to admit when I'd heard it, might have come close.
Riga had felt the awakening of her guile, as most girls do, not long before her entrance into womanhood, but for a year or two she'd told no one of it. She'd been the daughter of a noble family, courtiers to Maltuk, and apparently a girl of some spirit and charm. Her parents had hoped for her marriage into a wealthy clan, but they'd been remarkably permissive. They had betrothed her to no one, allowing her to form friendships with whomever she wished within their circle, thinking to let her fall in love with the young man of her choice. Instead, she'd confided to her mother at last that she felt a call to the guilish life. Horrified, her parents tried to talk her out of the notion, and when that failed they sought the advice of the Lady Orath.
"Bring her to me," Orath had told them. "If her guile has promise, I'll teach her to perfect it, and she'll be a greater honor to you even than if you'd married her to the Prince himself. If not, no harm done, and you can make arrangements for her as you will."
"The Lady, one hears, can be very pleasant," Tada said. "Very persuasive. And Riga's parents were naÏve."
"They let Orath have her?"
"Yes. Riga was flattered. She felt what Orath was, but she was as unsuspecting as her parents. She thought she could learn from the Lady without becoming like her. It didn't occur to her that Orath would be jealous."
Tada paused and tapped a finger on the table top. "Riga was very powerful, Vivia. I know that from what's left to her, even now. She must have been as strong in guile as you, as strong perhaps as the Lady herself."
"Which Orath must have felt, right away," I said.
She nodded grimly, and went on with the tale. Orath had met with Riga, inviting her to her private apartment in the Prince's palace. She had seemed to be pleased with the girl and had taught her a few tricks, meanwhile gauging the depth of Riga's guile and gaining her trust, which I gathered hadn't much been withheld in the first place. I thought of how I'd been, older than Riga, when I first went to Raym. Could I have resisted that kind of flattery and deceit? I hoped so, but I had to admit I wasn't entirely sure.
After not long of this "teaching," Orath implied that it was time for something special. Riga, foolish girl, had guessed that she was to learn the Great Shift, and she told her parents, who were both thrilled and frightened. They'd been singled out for Maltuk's favor during those weeks, something they attributed to their daughter's success with Orath. The idea that she was to become a real witch still scared them a little. But she assured them, as Orath had assured her, that she'd be an important person at court. Their fortune would be made.
So, on the evening of the great day, Riga went to Orath's apartment in a flutter of excitement. Orath gave her a glass of wine, which she said would be calming and would also help with the procedure that followed. After a few minutes, Riga realized that the wine was drugged.
"It wasn't a merciful drug that would have deprived her of consciousness, for she was aware of everything that happened, although in a helpless sort of way. A man came into the room. Riga didn't know who he was, for Orath had masked him with illusion."
Tada guessed it had been the Red Prince himself. Or perhaps there had been several, for Riga was raped not once but many times. But probably there was only Maltuk, for the Lady was able to influence men beyond their normal powers.
"Orath had done something to influence Riga too, for she was forced to participate in her own degradation. Afterward, she remembered Orath laughing. And when the night was over and Riga had managed somehow to get back to her own home, she found both her parents dead."
Tada closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head, her mouth a grim line. "A double suicide, it was called, but Riga knew--because it was one of the things Orath had promised to teach her from her own store of guile--that influence can be trained to reach far beyond the distance at which it's exercised by most witches."
I couldn't repress a shudder. From the first time I'd felt Orath's glimmer, I'd known the Red Prince's witch was evil. But hearing Tada's story brought t
he depth of that evil home to me, as it must have done afresh for Fin and Tada. For a minute after Tada finished speaking, we were all silent.
Some of us, as Harken had told me, are able to preserve our guile even after the loss of virginity. This was partly true of Riga who, as I'd seen, was still a witch, although a sadly depleted one. Tada found her, half a year after her ordeal, begging in the streets, sick and in despair, and had brought her home. In another month there was a stillborn child. Tada said she'd prayed for the little thing's soul but had been glad it hadn't lived. It was Maltuk's son, the one none of his wives had ever given him.
The baby wouldn't have lived long, in any case, I knew. Riga would have killed it.
After a minute, I said, "From what Mani showed me of their plan, there were to be two of them, Mani and one of the women. Why did all three go?"
"A compromise," said Fin. "Kai's stronger in guile than Riga, obviously, and she has a cool head. But it was Riga's plan, and she wouldn't be left behind."
"Well," I said, "it was a bad enough plan to begin with, if only Kai and Mani had gone. But at least there was a chance that Orath would've missed what was happening for a while, since Mani would probably be just as closed to her as he was to me, and she wouldn't recognize Kai. But she'll feel Riga coming from miles away."
Tada had tears in her eyes. "I tried to tell them, but they wouldn't listen, none of them. Mani saw it as his best chance for revenge, and Kai's committed to Riga. There was nothing either Fin or I could say to change their minds." She reached across the table and touched my hand. "Will you help them, Vivia? At least to get back, after they fail?"
"I have to tell you the truth. I doubt I can help. But I guess I have to try."
I left the next morning. They had five days' start on me, and I hoped they were taking their time. They had the purse I'd taken from the pirate. Their plan had been to hire a coach for most of the journey. On the last day, they would walk, make a camp within a few hours of the court, and there Mani would prepare himself to seek an audience with the Red Prince, armed with a new suit of clothes, his own charm and confidence, and of course the greater part of the money. Not a lot to go on, and I hoped that, when Mani actually came to the point of carrying out the scheme, he'd have second thoughts, or at least drag his feet a bit.
I myself would not take five days. Once outside the city, I shifted into the form of a swallow, a bird that appeared to me to have boundless energy--given a vast supply of insects, that is, but I reasoned there were as many of those to be had flying in one direction as swooping in circles. After a day of skimming and gliding, of seeking out wind currents and thermals. I was nearly there. I recognized the landmarks Fin had told me to look for, a range of hills covered thickly with evergreens, a north-flowing stream, a broad, shallow lake.
There, near where the stream flowed into the lake, I would stop, shift back, and mask myself as well as possible from Orath before resting. I had originally intended to approach her unshielded, but now it seemed better to keep her from sensing my advance if possible.
But even before I resumed my own form, I was aware of something amiss. Orath's glimmer had not been discernible at Ladygate even when she'd been an hour's walk away, yet she'd not been masking it at the time. Now, though, hours from Maltuk's stronghold, her aura boomed in the air like thunder from a long way off, wave after wave of power and malevolence. I'd never felt anything like it. Somehow the level of her guile had increased greatly, and she was advertising it.
Standing on the bank of a little stream and surrounded by the terrible show of force Orath was displaying many miles away, I shifted. After kneeling to drink from the stream, I stood up again, trying to sense the presence of Riga nearby under the great witch's glimmer. I wasn't far from where the three had planned to camp, and I knew that Riga couldn't mask herself from me. And indeed, after a few moments I felt something, but it wasn't Riga's presence. It was Mani. I'd never felt his glimmer, but it was so like him, honest and vibrant and courageous, that I recognized it now. He was only a little way downstream from me, and in great distress. Quickly I followed the signal he was sending, and in a few moments I saw that I'd come too late.
The three of them had made their camp and were apparently ready to build a fire when Orath's guile had struck. It was the same manner of influence she'd used on Riga's parents. The bloodied weapons were all around, stones from their fire pit, a poker, a hatchet, knives from their kitchen pack. Mani lay a little way from the two women, blinded in both eyes, terribly wounded in every part of his body, dying. Kai and Riga were in each other's arms, dead.
Orath must have withdrawn her influence at the last moment, allowing them to become themselves again and to know, before they died, what they'd done to one another.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Several hours had passed, I guessed, since it happened. I had no idea how Mani had managed to survive this long, and I wished for his sake that he hadn't. But he was conscious and, hearing me moving nearby, terribly agitated. I lay down on the ground beside him and spoke softly into his ear. "It's Vivia, Mani." I didn't know what else to say. I poured influence over him to ease his pain, felt him grow calm.
Now he will die.
But instead he moved one arm toward me, a fraction of an inch, and whispered urgently, "Vivia--"
I took his hand as gently as I could. "Yes, I'm here."
"Listen. Orath... I felt her..."
"It's over, Mani. She's gone." Although she wasn't. Or rather, never having been there in the flesh, she still sang horribly around us. I hoped he didn't hear her.
"Wait," he said, and stopped to gather breath. I waited. "She made them, made them..." A long pause. "You..."
"I know. I'll be all right. She won't touch me, Mani." I hoped it was the truth.
"Listen," he said again, after a moment, weaker now. "In my pack, money. Sorry." He was talking about Krinos's purse, I thought. Sorry he'd taken it.
"It's all right, Mani. You did your best, and you left me what was fair. Now it's my turn. I'll get her. I'll get them both. You rest now."
He'd turned his head until his face, crusted with blood, was inches from mine. "Both?"
"Yes. Believe me."
"Ah," he said. The glimmer he'd always been able to mask so well flickered and went out like a snuffed candle, and he died.
For a minute, no longer, I lay beside him and wept. Then I got up. It was near sundown and I was weary from my Shift, but there was work to be done. And I'd just made a promise that I'd now have to do my best to keep.
I slept that night on top of the shallow grave I'd put them in, scattered over with earth and heaped with branches. I'd made a fire, not by guile but with matches and sticks, and I woke occasionally to feed it. The wolves or wild dogs would dig through to them tomorrow night, but already their spirits were in the Mystery. Riga, I thought, wouldn't resent that I'd buried Mani with her and Kai. She was past bitterness now, in peace.
Krinos's purse was in Mani's pack, as he'd tried to tell me, along with several of my father's, and Jareth's, most beautiful bracelets, rings, pendants, and brooches, which Mani had apparently liberated from the pirate's cabin before leaving the ship. I put them all in my own pack the next morning and walked away from the bloody campsite. A rain or two would wash the place clean, after the wolves and ravens and magpies had done their jobs. By winter there'd be nothing left to show what had happened there.
I'd used no guile since shifting into my own form, except to cloak myself as well as I could against discovery by Orath. I suspected that the range of her discernment had increased along with that of her influence and glimmer. Now, since time no longer mattered, I walked back in the direction I'd come, feeling that terrible glimmer slowly grow less intense, until at last I could sense it no longer. I walked another hour for good measure before stopping to rest. Finally, taking a deep breath, for I was committing myself to a course of action from which there'd be no turning back, I let down my shield almost completely. There would be n
othing to stop Orath from feeling my approach, whatever she might make of it, as soon as I was within her range.
I kept a few things well hidden: my acquaintance with Raym, my affiliation with Ladygate, and my skills--although my gift itself I didn't hide. And of course the Sea Star, which I'd buried in the forest before starting that journey, in a place where I'd find it again or no one would. I knew that what she'd sense of my strength would get her attention. Hopefully it would puzzle her enough, because of my apparently total openness, that she wouldn't notice there were things I wasn't showing her.
And I hoped, of course, that Raym was not the accomplice Tada and Fin and the others had heard about. If he was here, he'd recognize me before he saw me. If he was in league with Orath I'd be walking into a very unpleasant trap. But unless the scene at his house had been staged to lure me on, he hadn't accompanied Orath willingly. I felt none of his glimmer. The rumor of a Monsaran accomplice was very likely only a rumor. Maalians, even Tada and Fin, were so frightened of Orath and the tyrant she served that they'd be ready to believe almost anything they heard.
Turning back, I took a slightly different direction from the one I'd come. This route would take me a few miles to the south of where I'd buried Mani and the two women and, by afternoon, into the outskirts of Tukha, the city that surrounded the walls of Maltuk's court. There I would rent rooms at the best inn I could find. My plan had changed only slightly from the one I'd thought out on Krinos's ship. I intended to present myself to Orath as a would-be acolyte and sincere admirer. Especially after learning poor Riga's story, I knew better than to imagine she'd actually accept me as a pupil, Perhaps I could flatter her with a bit more sophistication than Riga had demonstrated, and this would tempt her to keep me dangling longer than she had Riga.
I was planning to put my new wealth to good use, spending lavishly--that part would be fun, anyway--and suggesting that there was plenty more where this had come from. Maltuk was chronically impoverished. Maybe Orath could be persuaded to tolerate me for that reason if no other, at least until she'd devised a way of getting hold of the rest of my money.
A Glimmer of Guile Page 10