Dragon Blood-Hurog 2 (27 page)

I caught Garranon's shoulder when he would have continued forward. "Wait," I said. "There's something

wrong."

Other people started feeling the wrongness, too. The space around the stable master grew larger as he continued up the walkway toward Garranon and me. Something fell from his hand and rolled into a brightly lit area so I could see clearly it was a finger. Someone swore. I pulled Garranon back a few steps.

"Valsilva? What do you want?" asked Garranon.

It stopped where it was, close enough for me to see its face clearly. The dark spots weren't dirt or even bruises, but rotting flesh, the smell of which began to seep from the body into the air of the hall. I heard
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
someone gag.

"Garranon," it said clearly.

Garranon's shoulder stiffened further under my hand because he heard it, too. I don't know that I would have recognized the voice of the king's stable master, but I would recognize the voice it now used anywhere.

"Jakoven," Garranon replied steadily.

I caught sight of Tisala, someone's sword in her hand (she hadn't been wearing one), stalking around behind the thing. Her sword looked more useful than the ceremonial short sword I held. The body of the stable master shook its head dolefully, and as I watched, the rot began to spread across its left cheek. "Twenty
years,
Garranon. I gave you
twenty years
and you betray me." I watched its eyes carefully. It saw only Garranon. I doubted if Jakoven even knew where his creature was.

"Yes," agreed Garranon.

The thing began shuffling forward again, saying, "See what happens to those who betray me? See what you have done to this man?"

Before it could touch Garranon, I threw up a shield of magic. After seeing the trick with the door, I shouldn't have been taken by surprise at what happened—though in my defense, watching the accelerated rotting of the stable master was distracting me.

The pulse of magic that hit my shield was stronger than anything Oreg had ever hit me with. Red sparks

flew up and ignited small fires on the great timbers that arched three stories over our heads. Tankards of alcohol burst into flame around us, lighting the hall as if it were daylight. I cried out with the flash of pain it caused and lost hold on my spell. But Tisala ran the creature through with her sword and knocked it off balance, so it stopped short of Garranon. Instead, it stumbled to its knees and gasped in pain.

She'd struck right through the spine, but it began pulling itself toward Garranon anyway. Tisala jerked her sword free for another try, but stopped when it began speaking again.

"I'm all right," it said in another voice that must have been the stable master's own. "I'm just very hungry.

I'll eat and be just fine." As it talked, great clumps of hair fell off with bits of scalp still clinging to it. I tugged Garranon back onto the dais because he stood frozen in horror or guilt. I could feel that breaking my shield changed something, with the creature. The magic that held it wasn't quite as focused.

It stopped to eat a crust of bread that lay in its path. Crumbs fell like snowflakes out the sides of its face where the muscles of the jaw had rotted away. If I lived to see this finished, I'd have other things to dream of than the Asylum.

"Stay back," commanded Oreg from the far side of the room, near the open doorway, and the men who'd drawn their weapons as Tisala attacked halted where they were. "If you touch it, your flesh may well rot way as quickly as his is. Let Ward and me deal with it."
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"What is it?" I asked Oreg, but it was Orvidin who answered, his face gray and drawn.

"A golem," he said, spitting on the floor to ward off evil spirits, a habit that leads the Oranstonians to call

us Shavig barbarians. "I haven't seen one of these since my father offended the Acholynn in Avinhelle, and I hoped to never see another."

"Perhaps," said Oreg, who'd circled the thing and took his place beside me, staring all the while at the remains of the stable master, which finally finished the food on the floor and started to slither forward with

legs dragging behind it.

"Garranon?" The thing sounded bewildered, but its advance was steady, if slow. "The king said I shouldn't have let you go. Did I do wrong?"

Tisala lifted her sword again, but Oreg waved her off.

"Fire, Ward. Not the kind you use to light the kitchen fire, but what you did at Silver Fells." What I'd done at Silver Fells was to call down Siphern, God of Justice, to carry away the souls of the villagers slaughtered by the Vorsag. Not something I'd repeated often enough to know how to do it at a moment's notice.

I tried calling the god as I flung my magic at the stable master. Flames leapt off the animated corpse as if

it had been doused in brandy, but I knew that nothing had answered my call. Alight with the fire eating away at the flesh that remained on the skeleton, the creature hesitated. It shook

its head and muttered—this time in a broken whisper. "Hungry," it said. Tisala stepped in and thrust her sword past the flames and through the blackened head where it slid through the temple and into the eye and stuck there. It was a metal-handled sword and she had to let go as my magic-fueled flames shot up it as if it were a branch of wood.

The golem shifted away from Gammon for the first time. It looked right at Tisala with its good eye.

"Hungry," it said.

"Jakoven's lost control of it," said Oreg, adding his fire to mine, but it continued after Tisala. Tisala backed down the aisle way, keeping her face toward the thing. The golem, far from being affected by the

sword sticking out of its skull or our fire, moved faster until Tisala was trotting backward as Oreg and I followed.

The crowd of Shavig nobles swirled in tension, barely held in check by Oreg's command. I caught a glimpse of Rosem's firm wrestling grip holding Kellen back, and I blessed him for it. All that was needed

was for Jakoven's plaything to run amok amongst all the Shavig nobles. There was none—except maybe

Charva, the wizard, who even stood a chance against it.

Orvidin, who'd managed to get one of the decorative pole arms off the wall, pushed through the crowd and shoved the pike under the crawling stable master and flipped it on its back. It twisted around as quickly as a snake and began to stalk Orvidin.

"Gods," muttered Garranon beside me—I'd thought he'd stayed sensibly behind on the dais.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"Valsilva," Garranon called, trying to attract the creature's attention. Floor coverings smoldered near the burning monster. A spilled mug of ale poured fire like water down the side of a table.

"Ward, that's not working!" snapped Oreg though his magic poured through me to aid my efforts. I called out to Siphern and
reached
—Hurog, not Siphern answered my call. Power flooded into me and had not I immediately sent it away it would have reduced me to ash the way it consumed the poor thing that had once been a man. Still frantically dumping the magic I doused the fires in the hall.

"Oreg!" I called and, bless him, he saw what was happening. His hands closed over my shoulders and he

began to absorb the magic I had no good place left to send.

The power stopped as quickly as it had come, leaving my limbs as weak as water. The smell of rotting flesh was gone, leaving only a sour smoky smell and a strange quiet that Orvidin broke.

"Siphern bless him," he said, leaning on the old pike. He spat on the floor again. "I knew Valsilva."

"Jakoven sent him all the way from Estian," said Oreg. "To give a message to Garranon—and kill him if

possible. A punishment for saving Ward's brother."

Kellen pushed forward looking angry and ruffled, followed by Rosem, who had seen to it that Hurog's hope of salvation had not thrown himself onto the first of Jakoven's monsters. I owed Rosem. Garranon looked at the ashes that were left on the floor and swallowed hard. "He was a good man," he said, then turned on his heel and left the room.

The anger left Kellen's face as swiftly as a slate wiped by a cloth. "I'll go talk to him," he said. "He might

listen to me. Ward, talk with your wizard and be ready to tell me what just happened before we, any of us, seek our beds tonight."

Kellen followed Garranon and I silently wished him luck.

Oreg released my shoulders with an absent pat and said, "I don't need to consult—I know what this is."

"Golem," I said. "But why didn't a normal fire kill it?"

"Not a golem," said Oreg. "At first I thought so, too, but it breathed—did you notice? A golem is, by definition, nonliving. It was a geas."

"A geas that could cause a man to walk all the way from Estian and cast aside barred doors in the process?" said Charva the wizard. He sounded tired and I realized that some of the power Oreg had fed me had been Charva's. "He sounded like Jakoven. Geas doesn't provide for that." Oreg smiled, "If you'll excuse me for disagreeing with you—I'll tell you that geas can do all of this, if there is sufficient power behind the spell. And right now, Jakoven has sufficient power to lay waste to cities if he chooses."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
So Jakoven has managed to activate the Bane, I thought, chills shaking down my spine.

"So you say," said Porshall, a western landholder I didn't know well. He seldom came to Councils, as his lands were in disputed territory and he needed to protect them. "I say that the timing of this attack was interesting."

"Are you accusing my nephew of this?" said Duraugh with icy politeness. Porshall held his hands out as if to forestall offense. "I merely observe that as your nephew has so clearly

demonstrated, he is a wizard. And that, if any Shavigman here was harboring thoughts of supporting Jakoven, this demonstration would cement their support of Kellen." Orvidin, still playing with his pike, let out a bellow of laughter before saying, "Only someone who didn't

know Ward could even think that. Half the problem we've had with the pup in the Council is that he's too

honest … No, that's not quite the word." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Too honorable. He'll lie if it furthers his aim, but his aim,
and
his means, never lie in foul waters. He might create an illusion of a dragon, but you'd not catch this pup hurting an innocent man."

Porshall abruptly shook his head. "I still say—"

"Enough," said Charva. "This was no magic of Ward's. Those of you without magic will have to take my

word that Ward's magic has an unmistakable signature—and this was done by someone else. Jakoven is the most likely source." The wizard looked around the room. "I'd pay attention to this, all of you. If we don't stop Jakoven, the stable master's fate might be kinder than anything we face."
13—WARDWICK

Action is the best cure for despair.

"I thought you swore you'd never fight another war, Orvidin," said someone just beyond my view. Holding a pair of horses, I paused inside the stable to hear what Orvidin would reply. With most of the Council leaving at the same time, my stable master had seen me standing around and handed the horses to me with orders to find then-owners who were wandering around in the bailey.

"A man says a lot of things in summer he doesn't mean in winter," Orvidin said. "Winters are a good time

to make war. The fields are barren, so the crops can't be burnt out. And there's nothing else to do for fun."

Laughing inwardly, because I knew he was serious, I led my charges out, nodded to Orvidin and his man, and finally ran down the men the horses belonged to.

For a while longer the noise and confusion pervaded my home, and then they were all gone. I shivered in

the cold air and glanced at the new green timbers that were being fitted to bar the curtain gate. In his smithy, I knew our blacksmith was working on yet another set of brackets. The bailey hardly felt empty, with the extra people from Iftahar filling the keep and its surroundings to
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
capacity, but with the Shavig lords gone, it was certainly quieter.

"I didn't get a chance to thank you," Tisala said, breaking my reverie. Her breath rose in the cold morning air, and I caught a faint whiff of flowers from her hair.

"For what?" I asked, inhaling deeply, as if I could breathe the scent of her into my soul—then hoped she

hadn't noticed me doing that. It wasn't polite to sniff people, even people who smelled good.

"For not rushing to my rescue last night."

My brows went up in honest surprise. "You were doing fine by yourself," I said. "Although I think Orvidin was brighter than either of us for grabbing a pike. For the most part it was after Garranon, so I guarded him and let you take the offensive."

"But he's a man," she said.

I stared at her and she grinned at my puzzlement. "You're right, we adopted the most logical plan of attack. I had a sword and was behind that poor thing. Garranon was far too stunned to defend himself and was weaponless besides. But I'm a woman and most men would have thought me even more defenseless than Garranon."

I pictured what she would have done if I had abandoned Garranon to protect her and laughed. "So, did you reduce the last man who tried to protect you to a pile of humility with your tongue? Or did you just run him through with your sword?"

She raised an eyebrow. "What do you think?"

I shook my head. "Poor misguided fool."

"Ward, did you hear Kellen this morning at breakfast? He's really upset with Rosem for holding him back."

" 'A girl and an old man fought it off, and you think it was too dangerous for me,' I believe is what he said, though fortunately he and Rosem ate rather later than most of the Council," I replied.

"I've never seen Kellen this angry," she said.

"Rosem was right," I said. "We can't afford to lose Kellen. He's not ready to go fight monsters. He doesn't have the stamina yet."