Feast of Souls (18 page)

“How?” he demanded.

“Fearsome tricks. Legends of demons, and worse. Things that will have them arming against the shadows themselves, rather than turning their attention south to your border. Humans are easily manipulated through fear, High King… and my kind is adept at such games.”

“Few of them admit it so openly,” he said quietly.

“Yes…” A faint, cold smile flickered across his face. “You will find that I am… atypical.”

“So you favor my expansion?”

“It is the natural condition of a great state to expand, Your Majesty.”

Danton snorted. “Not all of my advisers agree with you. Some claim the kingdom has reached its natural limits—whatever that means. They warn me that any power spread too thin will, in time, collapse.”

The stormy eyes glittered. “All things collapse, High King… in time. The greatest empire of the First Age was no more than dust a millennium later. The greatest empire of the Second will someday be the same. Against such a heartbeat of existence politics are played out, the ebb and flow of human hungers driving them… no different than among animals, really, save that we clothe our instincts in prettier raiments, and sometimes use words in the place of teeth and claws. And sometimes… not.”

The gray eyes fixed on Danton; power stirred visibly in their depths. A lesser man might have quailed, but the High King knew the importance of standing his ground, particularly in such an interview; the statements made this night would establish what Kostas would be to him for as long as they both walked the earth.

He met the eerie gaze without flinching and said, “Go on.”

“We are beasts at heart, every one of us, though clad in more fragile flesh than most beasts. We play games of ‘civilization’ and pride ourselves on having created things like poetry and music, but inside we are as territorial as wolves. The desire of the ruling male to expand his hunting range, to control resources, to spread his seed as far as possible, are drives born of primitive animal hunger… whether he expresses it by pissing on trees that were marked by a rival or sending forth a royal army to rape the neighboring domain, the end result is the same.

“That the hunger is strong in you is clear from your history. That you are capable of doing it justice is equally clear. Few men can claim both.”

“Few Magisters speak in such terms.”

“As I said, I am not typical.”

“Those who are I have sent away.”

The gray eyes glittered. “Perhaps that was wise.”

Danton studied the man again, noting every feature of him, tasting his essence through the inspection. It was his gift to be able to read the hearts of men, even those of seemingly unlimited power. This one was… hungry. Just as hungry as the kings he spoke of, or the beasts that howled for blood within men’s souls. It was a dangerous hunger, to be sure, and rarely were a Magister’s true motives anything that a king might understand. But Danton had figured out Ramirus well enough to control him, and had manipulated his kind adroitly enough to insult two dozen of them and survive it—a feat most monarchs would not even attempt—and now, he thought, he would learn to control this one. For no matter what this Kostas had experienced, no matter what the taste of unlimited power had done to him, no matter what secrets immortality had whispered into his ear, he was, at his core, human. That, Danton had learned, was the secret of the Magisters that they tried to veil with mystery and legends. A tiger, no matter how powerful, could never become something other than a tiger. So it was with men. They might change their bodies at will, and even live forever, but they were still men.

He turned back to the map and regarded his territory once more. Finally he brought down a finger to rest upon the border of Corialanus. The bloodred ruby in his ring glittered darkly as he moved it along the River Kest to the heart of that troublesome state.

“So,” he said quietly. “Let me hear what my Magister Royal would advise.”

Shadows, shadows are all around. At first Andovan cannot make out any shapes among them, only random patterns of mottled unclarity, and then they resolve, slowly. He sees trees, outlined darkly against the night sky. A woman, among the trees. She is wrapped in blackness, clothed in blackness, so that nothing of her is visible. Moonlight picks out cool highlights along the jagged evergreen branches, but it cannot reach her.

She is watching him, he knows that. She is always watching him. He can feel her gaze upon him and it tastes of death. He screams his protest with all his might It is an empty yell, impotent, that leaves his body like smoke. He shuts his mouth but cannot stop the flow. More and more smoke follows, and as it leaves him he grows weaker and weaker. He struggles to turn away and run from her, but he cannot.

The woman waits, silent, eternally patient. There is no sign of emotion in her, but she puts out one pale hand and the smoke comes to her like a tame dog… and then she wafts it toward her mouth and begins to breathe it in, absorbing his strength, his life while the evergreen shadows watch all in silence…

* * *

Andovan awakened suddenly. A cold sweat was upon his brow, and for a moment he just lay there, grateful to be back in the world of real things, freed from the harrowing nightmare.

It was not the first night he had dreamed of the shadow woman. In fact he had done so every night since Colivar first laid the spell upon him, that sorcery which would supposedly draw him toward the source of his illness. Toward his would-be killer.

He saw her every night, but he could not make out her face.

He screamed at her each night, but did not know her name.

The nightmare was worse each time he dreamed it, the pain of his dying more real. Did that mean that Co-livar’s sorcery was working, and he was getting closer to her? Or was it a warning that the life was draining out of him like sand through an hourglass, and he had very little time left before all searches were ended?

I will find her
, he told himself. It was his morning mantra. I
will win my life back, whatever it takes, and make her pay for what she has done to me
.

He tried to move, to get up out of bed, but a sudden blinding pain forced him to fall back, gasping for breath. His limbs felt like lead, and his head felt as if it had been split in two. For a moment he just lay there with his eyes closed, trying
to
master the pain. Trying to remember what had caused it. But the memory would not come, and when he opened his eyes he saw a ceiling overhead that was unfamiliar to him, He turned his head painfully to one side—the motion took several long minutes, his head throbbing hotly with each new inch gained—and he realized the rest of the room was likewise unfamiliar. Some sort of crude log construct, artlessly patched with mud and straw, that he had never seen before.

Where in the gods’ names am I?

Then the throbbing gave way to a sharper pain at the side of his head, and he managed to raise up a hand to feel for the source, though it seemed to him his hand was made of lead. Bandages. There were bandages. Wound around his head. Coarse linen, from the feel of them, one or two layers, tightly wrapped. He pressed his fingers against the fabric, seeking more information. The source of the pain was a spot over his left temple, and fire pierced through his skull when he probed there. Over that spot, soaked into the bandages, was a thick paste. He thought at first it was half-dried blood, but when he drew his fingers away to look at them he saw crumbling bits of herbs in a white, vinegary-smelling paste. Some kind of healing salve, most likely. So… someone had taken care of him. But who? And where was he? What had happened to him?

He tried to sit up but his body would not respond.

So instead he tried to remember. That at least allowed him to shut his eyes, which was a small mercy. Even the small bit of light seeping through the small windows was painful to him.

There’s sour ale in his stomach, food too old for human consumption, peasant fare at its worst refusing to be digested. He walks back toward the woods, thinking he would rather make his bed in the wild tonight than rely upon the hospitality of strangers. One more night in an ill-kept hovel, with the smells of a chamberpot filling the place and the accumulated reek of a lifetime’s sweaty labors closing in about him, and he may well become sick with more than the Wasting. No, the forest is clean and fresh and the ground has provided a bed enough nights during his hunting expeditions that it will seem like home tonight. Perhaps he will even puke up his vile dinner and then can catch himself something fresh to take its place. The sunlight is not completely gone yet, which means the nocturnal animals will be coming out to look for forage or prey… if he is lucky he can find some deer… hunting would refresh his spirit, he thinks, and his stomach would certainly welcome the change of fare
.

How long does he walk, towards that hidden place where he left his horse tethered, before he realizes that footsteps are shadowing his own? He stiffens, not unlike deer when a hunter approaches. Then for a moment he pauses in his walking, reaching for one of the leather straps of his pack as though he would adjust its weight on his shoulder. There are no footsteps when he stops to listen. Of course, for they ceased walking when his own did. But he can sense the people who are behind him by the odors they exude, and he can hear their shallow breathing. The fools probably think they are being silent, Andovan muses. But he is used to stalking game far more stealthy than any human can possibly be, and his nose is as finely tuned as a wolfs. By animal standards they are making enough noise to scare off a deer at thirty paces, and even a wolf with a headcold could not miss that reek.

He starts walking again, listening now for the false echo of matching footsteps behind him. Yes, there is no mistaking it. Slowly, carefully, he brings his right hand forward, to the hilt of the hunting knife he always wears at his belt. They will wait for him to get to the edge of town, he guesses, where they are unlikely to have wit-nesses to whatever it is they are planning to do. Such is the way of cowards and thieves. His horse is sheltered in the woods just beyond; he had approached the town on foot. Do they know he has a mount? Will they wait until he reaches it before making their move?

Briefly he wonders if Colivar might have betrayed him, getting him away from the castle so that he might be assassinated without consequence. But no, that makes little sense. Andovan has done nothing to offend the southern Magister, and besides, it would have been just as easy for Colivar to kill him that night at the castle, after they had made arrangements to fake his death, as now. Why wait? And use such crude human tools, when sorcery could do the trick in perfect silence?

Besides, Colivar wants something from him. That much is patently obvious. Ostensibly it has something to do with the woman that is killing Andovan
—
that much he told the prince
—
but Andovan is willing to bet there is much more to the story than he is being told. Magisters never confide their true purpose to morati, every prince worth his salt knows that for a fact. And as for anyone else being behind this… in theory they all think he is dead now. So no one is going to send out assassins after him. Least of all sloppy, smelly assassins
.

He walks slowly down the muddy road, his senses alert for every clue they can pick up. He estimates that his trackers are maybe ten feet behind him, no more. If he turns quickly and steps forward he’ll be upon them before they know it. Boars do that sometimes when you hunt them, and they are deadly adversaries for it. One almost gored him when he was younger, teaching him that lesson.

He begins to turn, grasping the bone handle of his knife tightly
—

—
and suddenly a wave of sickness comes over him. It is like the attacks he has had before but also unlike them. This attack is a hundred times more powerful than those paltry weaknesses, and it turns his legs to jelly beneath him without warning. For a moment the whole world swims before his eyes like a dream gone mad, and it seems he lacks even the strength to breathe. He falls forward onto his hands and knees, dropping the knife in the mud as he does so
. Not now, not now!
What is happening? The worst of his attacks have never been like this before
. Not here!
He can hear footsteps coming toward him, swiftly now, and he struggles to reach out for his knife, but his hand is like a dead thing that has neither feeling nor strength and it will not obey him. It is as if all the vital tissue has been sucked out of his flesh, leaving him trapped inside a shell with no sinew inside
. I refuse to give in to this!
Other times he had been sick sheer determination won the day, for his strength of will is no small thing, but this time the weakness is so terrible he cannot manage the slightest triumph over it. The arms and legs that are holding him up begin to fold, even as his vision begins to blacken. Figures move in from the surrounding shadows but he can no longer see them. For the first time in many, many years he is truly afraid
.