Clearwater Dawn (43 page)

Through narrow slats, the mage and the warrior watched the movement in the library below. A dozen figures in the same dark leather as the sentries outside worked with a silent efficiency as they tore through the shelves. Already, scrolls and bound volumes were strewn so thickly that they hid the floor. Scúrhand could only stare.

“That’s a duke’s ransom in lore they’re stepping through,” the mage hissed. “What in fate’s name are they looking for that would make them discard that?”

Barrend’s Bane…

Clear in Morghan’s head again, an echoing voice, his own and not his somehow.

“What is Barrend’s Bane?” Scúrhand whispered, and Morghan had to glance over to the mage’s questioning look to realize that he’d murmured the name aloud.

A year before, in the midst of a long string of days spent trying to forget, Morghan had seen the boar’s head along the Myrnan docks. A sigil on a cloak, black on red. The image locked into place in his mind, scribed from the searing memory of a lash wielded by an arm that wore the same insignia. The memory of the pain was knife-sharp across his back, his chest.

The stone-faced warriors who wore the black boar on Myrnan had been led by a woman with hair the color of deep sunset. She and all the others were strangers to Morghan. But over the week that followed, he’d spent a fair percentage of the coin he brought out from the ruins to discover their names and mission. The secrecy that had carried them to the Sorcerers’ Isle was impressive even against the routine secrecy of most of those who sought Myrnan’s hidden riches. In the end, though, all information had a price.

It was at a weaponsmith’s stall along the muddy tracks of Claygate Keep’s old Portown where Morghan found what he sought. The pale hair and sky-blue eyes marked the smith as Norgyr stock, his accent betraying him as not that long gone from the northlands. The flame-haired woman and her guard had visited him twice while Morghan tailed them, but when it came his turn to step inside the stall, the smith met his inquiries with a sullen silence. Morghan noted the boar’s head marked in ink at the smith’s bare shoulder, a faded clan insignia beneath it.

In the dusky glow of the forge, the warrior pulled his sleeve down to reveal his own shoulder. Then he told a story. When he was done, the dark rage in the smith’s eyes was one he recognized. He gave Morghan a name.

“What is Barrend’s Bane?” Scúrhand asked again, but Morghan was moving. Shifting silently along the lattice of narrow beams, he strained to hear the voices filtering up from below.

“…the vault,” a woman was saying. She was the leader of the searchers to judge by the way she spoke. Her hair was flame-red in the pale light, bright as it had been when Morghan first saw it in the dawn glow of the Myrnan docks. “Start again, top to bottom. Check every door, every passageway. Search for diaries, journals. What you can’t read, bring to me.”

The smith in his dockside shed had first seen the hidden mark on the shield at Morghan’s back as he and the warrior drank at the hearth. He told a story of his own, of Barrend who was weaponsmith to the magical court of the Sathnari, masters of the Sorcerer’s Isle a thousand years before the island-castle was raised.

“You came out of Eltolitinus?” the smith asked gruffly when his story was done. “With this?” He touched the shield almost reverently as Morghan nodded. “I lost count of them that died trying to be you, lad.”

The ruins of Myrnan were named for Eltolitinus, who legends said had transformed the entirety of Myrnan to a vast island-castle three thousand years before. A demigod of magic in centuries past. The greatest of the many mages who had tried to claim the Sorcerers’ Isle as their own. It was the aftermath of the dungeons of Eltolitinus that had pushed Morghan to wandering alone, hoping to bury the memories of the dark month he and Scúrhand and all the others had spent beneath the earth.

Avenge them…

As he watched the soldiers in black tear through the library, the voice in Morghan’s mind was the voice of the smith suddenly.
Barrend’s mark is what they seek. Weapons of the old age, secrets of craft long lost. Magics that can’t be made by mortal hand no more.

“Seek the signs of Barrend’s Bane,” the woman called from below.

Those who know it will kill for this mark.

“The lore we seek will be found or we do not return, by Arsanc’s orders.”

As the woman’s voice echoed, Scúrhand saw a sudden darkness twist through Morghan where he watched.

Those who claim it lay claim to the power of kings.

Then the mage saw the warrior fall.

With a groaning crunch, the lattice of the ceiling gave way beneath Morghan’s weight, the first arrows from below nocked and fired wild past him before he even hit the ground. Without a thought, Scúrhand launched himself into the air, cloak clutched tight and spread behind him as he soared silently to the apex of the arched ceiling. There was room in plenty to fly, the library huge, four passageways wending out of it where the great stairs ended in their twisting path down.

The figures below didn’t notice him, understandably distracted as Morghan landed with sword in hand, carving his way through them. Scúrhand saw three down already, the rest pressing, but the warrior moved with a speed and grace that belied his size.

Then all at once, a pulse of white light wrapped Morghan like a shroud. The warrior’s battle-scarred voice was choked off with a sudden finality. Rigid, he stood locked in place, blade gripped tight in the midst of a backhand blow, held unwavering where he was frozen fast.

Scúrhand alighted on a section of shelf he hoped was sturdy enough to hold him. He saw the red-haired woman step up, hands still twisted in the complex gesture of the incantation that had taken Morghan out, another spell already on her lips that Scúrhand didn’t want to wait to see the effect of.

“Stand down or die consumed by arcane fire!” he called with what he hoped was suitable bravado. He saw reflexive movement below, bows drawn and arrows nocked with a common bead on his heart, but he was already airborne again. He extended one fist, the plain copper ring there spouting flame to wrap his hand. He saw uncertainty in the eyes of those closest to him, fire flowing up his arm to the shoulder now. Where it billowed around him, the black cape gave him the imposing tone he’d hoped for, enough to hopefully hide the fact that the ring presented less threat to the foes scattering below him than if he’d simply fallen on them.

It was a relic he’d claimed when he and Morghan first met, happenstance travelers who found themselves fighting at each other’s backs when a cache of unguarded gold they’d pursued independently on the frontier had turned out to be less unguarded than was publicized. The ring’s power was defensive, its dweomer swallowing the heat of mundane flame and eldritch fire alike, but its presentation had proved almost as effective at keeping him out of the thick of combat as any blade might prove within it. Since that day he and Morghan met, the thick of combat was a place Scúrhand preferred to leave for the warrior whenever humanly possible.

On the floor below, the red-haired woman took a step toward him, and in her bright gaze, Scúrhand saw suddenly the youth she was trying hard to hide. “If you wish to parlay, say your piece,” she said in the Imperial tongue. A tone of authority in the words but no strength in her voice to back it up, barely an apprentice’s age by her look.

Her accent marked her as Norgyr even if her features didn’t. Not like the others, pale hair and blue eyes watching him coldly. The mage responded in the speech of the northlands as a hopeful token of concord. “My partner and I mean no trouble nor harm. On the contrary, depending on your business here, we may find ourselves in a position of mutual benefit.”

“Your partner has a unique way of introducing himself.” Scúrhand caught the dark looks of the three wounded men behind the girl, but the fact that they were merely limping was more than fortune. More times than the mage could count, Morghan had demonstrated a ruthless taste for the blood of those who deserved to shed it. However, Scúrhand had just as often witnessed the warrior’s almost preternatural ability to leave less threatening foes standing, if a little shakily.

“My partner was set upon by your overzealous associates before being given any chance to explain his untimely entrance. Having watched him make it, I assure you that gravity was at sole fault. No one here intends murder. Least of all you.”

The comment wasn’t subtle, but the sudden darkness of the face beneath the rough-cut red hair told Scúrhand it had worked. Not much of a gamble, given that of all the magic she could have cast, this one had chosen to simply freeze Morghan in his tracks rather than attempt to kill him outright. But before she could respond, from behind them both, a third voice barked out suddenly.

“Presume to know another man’s intent often enough, and it’ll eventually be the last mistake you make.”

The tone was imperious, edged with a dark smile that Scúrhand could feel even before he saw it. He caught no sign of surprise from the soldiers, but the girl flinched. Scúrhand glanced back, careful not to move too suddenly.

A figure in silver mail strode up through the shadows at the back of the library, a squad of six archers arrayed to either side, shortbows drawn on the mage where he hovered. Scúrhand fought the urge to lift for the ceiling once more, dropping with a flourish instead, the cloak swirling in a calculated display. He managed not to stumble as he touched down.

“I am Naethdraca, called by some the Stormhand.” It was the common translation of Scúrhand’s patronymic that he never used himself, but which he had long practiced speaking with just a hint of menace. The girl and the newcomer ignored the theatrics, but a look of sudden unease among the troops behind them told Scúrhand it had done the trick. They were old names, both promising power that the mage had yet to fully live up to. “That is Morghan,” he said. “Our business here is research, nothing more.”

“Ectauth,” the mailed figure offered by way of a name, blue eyes ice-bright beneath a shock of pale hair. “My overly talkative servant is Thiri.” Scúrhand nodded to the girl, her green eyes the color of wet leaves in the glow of the evenlamps. “Our business here is none of yours.”

“Nor would I seek to know it,” Scúrhand said evenly. “But if it please you, accept my services. I could not help but overhear that you search for some key within the lore here — lore in which I am well versed. If my skills and knowledge can in some way smooth over the potential for conflict, they are yours.”

Ectauth made to speak, but the girl Thiri cut him off. “Take the mage up on his offer, my lord. The sage’s death has cost us time.” She appraised him carefully, Scúrhand patient, ignoring the silver warrior’s dark look. There was an odd dynamic here, one he wasn’t quite certain of. The girl’s skill with the spellcraft that held Morghan fast was good enough, but her demeanor marked her as a scholar, not a warrior.

Ectauth was another matter, though. The careful set of the armor, no weapon at his waist. Mail sleeves cut back of the wrist so that the movement of his hands would be unobstructed. He was a combat mage. A battlecaster of the Norgyr, his magical craft was focused and honed as a weapon. And so whatever information might be hidden here, whatever this troupe had come in search of, it would be beyond Ectauth, leader though he was. He was thus obliged to depend on the girl’s scholarly arts, Scúrhand decided. An obligation bound to rankle a combat mage.

“I expect you intended only to threaten the sage,” Scúrhand said carefully. Another speculation, but a correct one from the reaction in the pale blue eyes. “Let us take the arrival of my companion and I as fortune, then. Or at the very least, let us get on with our research and leave you to yours.”

Where he stood, Morghan watched and heard it all, motionless within the grip of Thiri’s spell. His intact senses focused past the paralysis that the warrior suspected felt far too much like death would someday, and which was fading with each slow step Ectauth took around him. For all Scúrhand’s postured tact, Morghan knew that the mage’s words were also designed to fill up as much time as possible, allowing him to fight the effect of the dweomer that bound him.

From the start, the warrior had still been able to feel the sword against his fingers, the faint warmth of life pushing through his arms even as he forced himself to keep the blade steady in its interrupted stroke. As Ectauth considered Scúrhand’s words, Morghan could feel sensation return to his legs as well, fought to stay steady. Thiri was watching him, though, where she paced around him. Cautious of any first sign that her binding was close to the breaking point.

Where the shield was slung to Morghan’s arm, he could see the faintest sign of the green eyes straying down to the mark there as the Myrnan smith’s had. A thing that only one who knew it would notice, the dark rune all but invisible.

Those who know it will kill for this mark.

Morghan couldn’t shift his eyes without giving away that the spell’s effect had passed, but at the edge of his vision, he saw the look of shock on the girl’s face.

Ectauth saw that look, too. Saw the black rune that had inspired it. With a shout, he twisted his fingers in a silent summoning of spellpower, a blade of white light suddenly erupting in his hand to stab for Morghan’s heart. The warrior was already moving, though, finishing the stroke he’d held for long minutes, driving the battlecaster’s eldritch blade wide and catching him hard on the backswing as he wheeled away.