Kingmaker's Sword (Rune Blades of Celi) (30 page)

“I’ve heard of it,” I said hoarsely.

“My mam had magic,” he said confidentially. “Celae magic. Some came to me. Not enough. Nae, not enough. Be taking a lot of Celae magic to beat back the black sorcerer.”

I looked at him in shock, a sudden, cold sensation in my gut. I saw the smooth, unwrinkled skin around his eyes and covering his forehead and the high cheek bones. Not an old man, after all? But gods, surely not only twenty-seven. Surely not only three years older than I.

He dragged a hand through his hair, sensing my discovery. He cackled in delight. “Magic,” he told me. “Magic did this, boy. Magic be hard to control. He tried to take my magic, the black sorcerer. He tried but I tricked him. Burn me, it did. Burned him, too. They say it addled my wits. But I be alive and others be dead and he can’t find me now. No, he be thinking old Jeriad be dead.” He winked and chortled again. “We won’t be disabusing him of that notion, will we?”

I shook my head. “Of course not,” I said. “Tell me about your mother, Jeriad.”

“She be’d Celae,” he said and laughed. “She be dead, too. Dead these fifteen years past. Escaped him that way, she did.” He sprang up suddenly. “Rabbits be cooked,” he announced. “Be ye hungry?” And he skipped away.

I tried to organize my spinning thoughts. Jeriad a prince? Gods, he appeared no more capable of being a prince than a fox is capable of flying. But twenty-seven? He could not be that young. Surely he could not be Kerri’s lost princeling. But his mother was Celae, and he had magic. I had lost the sword, but was it still leading me? Leading me to this? To Jeriad?

Oh, Kerri, I thought bleakly. Kerri, I think I’ve found your lost princeling, and he’s a travesty. I’m so sorry,
sheyala
. But what will I do with him? And what do I do now?

***

He brought the meal to the small room in shallow baskets, together with an ewer of fresh water. He ate with all the fierce concentration of a wild animal, discouraging all conversation. My own concentration was hardly less intense. The simple food was good and I was more than hungry enough to do it justice.

Half-way through the meal, I heard the faint but unmistakable sound of metal clinking against stone and the soft whicker of a horse. I froze, and Jeriad grinned widely around the rabbit haunch as he continued, unconcerned, to gnaw at it. He glanced up through the fringe of his hair, black eyes glinting, and reminded me sharply of a hawk peering through a thicket.

The horse’s foot clanked against a stone again. I sat, unmoving, hardly daring to breathe as I waited for the shout of discovery outside the stone walls. But it did not come, and Jeriad grinned wider than ever.

Presently, Jeriad cocked his head to one side and listened intently. “They be gone,” he announced calmly. “They be wanting you bad, boy. But they be gone now.”

“Why did they not look in here?” I asked, curious and puzzled as well as vastly relieved. Then I shivered. “Did you use magic?”

“Magic?” He hooted with delighted laughter. Even his beard seemed to curl upward with mirth. “Nae, nae. No be magic, boy. Show you on the morrow, I will. On the morrow after noontide when you be feeling better.” He fixed me with that shrewd raptor’s gaze. “And mayhap you be telling me why the black sorcerer’s men be looking for a young Tyr nobleman, will ye not?”

“I’ll tell you now,” I said. “I’m called Kian dav Leydon ti’Cullin.” My name obviously meant nothing to him. I had not expected it would, but I owed it to him. “Two of the men out there are Falian nobles, my enemies. The others are Maeduni mercenaries. They’re General Hakkar’s men.”

He nodded. “Aye, the black sorcerer. I’ve had dealings with him, I have. A wicked man. Heart be black as his name. He tried to take my magic.” He frowned, then grinned slyly. “But he failed. He failed. Old Jeriad tricked him. Why they be hunting you?”

I told him the story, including how Drakon had gleefully informed me of Cullin’s death, and how Kerri died. Jeriad listened carefully without interrupting, nodding now and then. His intense, watchful gaze never left my face. When I finished, I found my hands clenched so tightly, my fingernails had dug bloody half-moons into my palm.

“These be wicked times,” he said, shaking his head. “Be sad and terrible times.” He gestured to the food in my lap. “Eat, boy. Be good food there. Don’t be wasting it.”

I looked down at the half eaten meal. I had lost my appetite. “I’m not very hungry,” I said apologetically. “I’m sorry. It’s good, but...”

He snorted in derision. “How ye be expecting to heal if ye no be eating?” he demanded.

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

He bounced up and took the small basket. “Be good for breaking yer fast, then,” he said cheerfully. He put his hand on my forehead. “Sleep then,” he said quietly. “Sleep be good, too.”

My eyelids suddenly felt too heavy to hold open. In spite of myself, I began to drift off into sleep. I heard his voice as if from an incredible distance.

“Others be searching for you, lad. Not the black sorcerer’s men. Others be coming to look for you.”

***

The next afternoon, Jeriad changed the dressing on my shoulder and pronounced me fit enough to get out of bed for a short while. The wound had already begun to close and appeared to be healing well enough. I saw no signs of wound fever, and the skin felt cool and healthy when I placed the inside of my wrist against it.

When he had finished with my shoulder, he brought me my clothing. The boots were dry, but stiff as jerked venison. The shirt, wrinkled but clean and neatly mended, was ragged at the bottom where he had torn the strip to bandage my shoulder and patch the corresponding rip in the shirt. It still boasted its cascade of lace at throat and wrists, but the lace was tattered and frayed as a wind-flayed leaf. The kilt and plaid were in little better shape. He had mended the rents as best he could with threads drawn from the fringed end of the plaid, and the regular pattern of the tartan was skewed over the mends. I was not about to complain, though.

I dressed quickly, and tried to thank him, but he merely cackled with glee and waved away my fervent expressions of gratitude. When I tried to give him my plaid brooch, he looked first at it, then at me, exasperation plain in his eyes.

“Now what would old mad Jeriad be wanting with the likes of that?” he demanded. “I be having no need of pretties.” He beckoned. “Come. Come. I be showing you why those accursed riders never be finding old mad Jeriad. Come.”

He ducked through the skin door covering, then held it open for me, beckoning again. I followed him through into another semicircular room, this one half full of jumbled rock. A few feet from the opening, a curving stone staircase, the risers broken and cracked, hugged the gentle arc of the wall. Half way around the curve under the stairway, a rough arch opened. I had to stoop to see into the opening.

The chamber appeared natural, the walls made of rough, raw stone. Sand white as snow covered the floor. I heard the hollow, musical sound of water dripping slowly far back within the cave. A fire blazed a few meters from the entrance, and the smoke wafted gently toward the back of the cave. It explained part of my question of the night before. Drakon and Mendor’s men had not been able to smell the fire because the smoke had dissipated long before it reached the open air. It was a very clever arrangement for a man who did not wish to be found.

Jeriad tugged at my arm to urge me out of the underground chamber. He scampered up the steps and stood waiting for me at the top. I followed cautiously, a little more unsteady on my feet than I would have liked to be, and mindful of the broken steps.

When I reached the top of the stairs, I looked around in astonishment. I stood against the crumbled remnants of the walls of what had once been a tower. Behind me, the undressed stone rose twice the height of my head, a tall triangle of rock, thrusting out of the ground like a broken tooth. Ahead of me was another tumbled pile of stones. Jeriad scrambled over them, waving me forward, a wide grin splitting his face.

A little less agile than he, I climbed the pile of rock and found myself standing in the ruins of what had been the main room of the tower. It was hardly recognizable as such now, though. Except for the one section of wall by the steps, the whole tower lay in a scattered heap, covered by thick growths of bracken, moss and wild flowers. When I turned around, even though I knew the entrance to the lower floor was there, I could not see it. All that was visible was a pile of rocks. The pattern of light and shadow hid all signs of it.

“You see?” Jeriad chortled. “You see? Old mad Jeriad be more clever than they think.”

I grinned. “Not so mad,” I said. Somewhere in the distance, water flowed noisily between narrowed banks. There was only one place I knew of on the Shena where the water boiled and seethed over rock-strewn rapids—Pagliol’s Needle. I was back in Isgard The river had carried me a good five leagues from the Maeduni border. It had served me well. I turned back to Jeriad. “I will have to leave soon,” I told him.

“Not yet,” he said, shaking his head. “No, not yet. Ye be needing more healing first. Two days. Mayhap three. Then go. Not yet.”

I nodded. “No, not yet,” I agreed. “But soon. I have to think where I’ll go and what I’m going to do.”

“Two days,” he said, holding up the corresponding number of fingers. “Three.” Another finger came up. He shrugged. “Then you think. Now you rest and heal.”

I nodded again. “Now I rest and heal. And I thank you.” Rest and heal, I thought. Just this short excursion out into the open air had tired me. I didn’t want to admit it, but I needed the time to grow stronger before I set out after Mendor and Drakon. And to think about what I was going to do if this strange, bird-like  creature really was the lost princeling Kerri sought. “Mayhap you’ll tell me about your mother.”

He grinned at me. “Mayhap,” he agreed. “You go and rest now.”

Even as he spoke, weariness spread through me. I was weaker than I had thought.

***

Grey sky, drifts of grey ash.

I threw back my head and shouted until my throat was hoarse. “No! No, you cannot make me come here. Your magic cannot hold me.” Rigid with effort, I fought against the ensnarement.

Then I saw it. A dark haze on the far horizon. Panic leapt in my belly. He was coming, spreading darkness before him as a cloud spreads shadow. I heard his laughter even as I turned to run.

“You cannot avoid me.” His voice boomed like thunder all around me. “I am stronger than you are now.”

“No!” I shouted, struggling through the treacle-thick layers of ash. “I weakened you. You have no power.”

His laugh echoed through my skull. “Then stay and face me, Tyr. Stay and test my power.”

My limbs were made of wood, clumsy and unresponsive. When I shot a glance over my shoulder, my heart surged in terror. The darkness claimed fully half of the land behind me. Searching tendrils snaked out, reaching for my legs that creaked like a reef-wrecked ship as I floundered through the ash.

“You are weaker than I, Tyr,” his voice thundered. Black, glowing eyes glittered in the midst of the darkness. “Turn. Turn and meet your death.”

I brought both my fists up to my head. “No!” I shouted. “You cannot take me. I will not let you—”

“You have no choice….”

A tendril of the thick, sticky fog reached out and wrapped itself about my throat. Pain and fever flared like a pine torch.

I came
thrashing and gasping out of sleep to find Jeriad kneeling beside the pallet, his hand resting gently on my forehead. My breathing came in great, laboured shudders and my heart knocked against my chest like a blacksmith’s hammer. Sweat rolled in thick, viscous streams down my forehead into my eyes, across my cheeks and throat, and the furs beneath me were disagreeably slippery and wet with it.

“It be the darkness they put in ye, boy,” Jeriad was saying, his voice soft and gentle. “It be only the darkness. Ye be safe now. Safe here with old Jeriad. Rest ye. Rest ye now.”

I fell back against the sweat slick furs, my breathing easier now as my heart slowed to a pace nearer normal. Jeriad let his hand slip from my forehead.

“It be the darkness takes ye to evil places when ye sleep,” he said quietly. “It be the darkness, boy. I be not a good enough healer to banish it.”

“Darkness?” I repeated blearily. He had mentioned it before, I remembered, shortly after I awoke the first time. Or was it the second? It was too difficult to think properly. My head felt thick, as if it were stuffed with wool. Then I remembered how I had found only a bleak and empty void, a black abyss, when I had tried to reach out for the quiet, healing place within me. Was that what he meant? “What darkness?”

“Sorcery,” he said. “The black sorcery. They put it there, deep within you, boy. Old Jeriad be not good enough to cut it out of ye. It be taking stronger than my poor magic to defeat it.”

“Dergus,” I muttered. “Dergus put it there. And I haven’t got the sword to help me now.” Where was my sword now? Did the General have it? And Kerri’s? I shuddered. Two Celae Rune Blades in the hands of a man like the General. Could he pervert their magic to act for him?

Jeriad rooted around behind him, then turned back to me holding a steaming cup. “Drink this, lad,” he said. He grinned. “Nae, it be not the vile one. This be sweet and soothing. Takes the ache out.” He pushed the cup into my hands. “Drink now. This be helping to keep the darkness at bay. Drink ye, and I be guarding yer sleep for ye.”