Mage's Blood (36 page)

The three men walked to the edge and cautiously peered over. Elena leapt down lightly, wary of any movement, or the sudden expenditure of gnosis-energy. The others landed behind her, and as one they sucked in their breath.

Arno’s eyes flickered open. A gurgle came out of his mouth, then a gout of blood. As clearly if he had spoken aloud, she heard, <
Elena – I should have … sensed you
.>

<
Sorry, Arno
.> She could almost feel the dreadful pain he was enduring.

<
Why did you … do it, Elena? Wasn’t your share … big enough?
>

<
It had nothing to do with money, Arno. It was about love, and right and wrong
.>

His eye widened slightly, incredulous, then a sharp burst of agony nearly took him. Elena lifted her hand, gnosis-fires kindling. <
Do it, Elena. Kill me
—>

<
Sorry, Arno. Not quite yet
.> She raised her blade and cleaved his neck in two. His head rolled clear in a fount of blood. She bathed her ghastly trophy in healing-gnosis, sealing enough blood inside his head to keep his soul locked into his skull, steeling herself against Arno’s horrified mental cries.

The men above her gasped as they saw his lips and eyes moving, and Lorenzo asked, ‘What are you doing?’ His expression was horrified.

‘You’ll see.’ She took the head and rolled it into the waterproofed leather satchel she had brought for the purpose, then hefted it over her shoulder. Lorenzo looked at her and she saw his illusions about her begin to die. She felt a curious sense of loss. Faces peered out of the lean-tos, and a Jhafi warrior appeared, one of Harshal’s
contacts. He saluted her wordlessly with his scimitar and vanished again.

She looked at the men. ‘Okay, one down. Four to go.’

Which one next, Lady?’ Artaq asked her quietly.

‘Sordell. Like Arno Dolman, his whereabouts is predictable. Rutt is like a man with a scab that itches him so badly that he cannot help scratching it. That scab is called paranoia, and the way he scratches it is to try and see into the future.’

‘He can do that?’ Artaq looked impressed. Luca made some primitive warding gesture.

‘Many magi can, but it’s not easy and it’s very unreliable. I like to think of it as a way of clarifying planning and rounding out the data. I did some divining myself before we left to fine-tune my plans.’

‘Did you see us as successful?’ Lorenzo asked.

‘Well, of course – but that could just be because I can’t conceive of losing, so I wouldn’t take it too seriously. But Sordell does: he’s one of those nervous types, and he can’t make a move without Gurvon holding his hand. He’ll be terrified that something will go wrong on his watch, so he’ll be up there in the Moon Tower, trying to see what it is.’

‘Will he see us coming?’ Luca asked perceptively. ‘With his spells?’

‘Perhaps. But one magi can usually hide from another, and from spirits set to observe them. A good diviner can play games with another too, feeding them wrong data.’

‘Are you a good diviner, Donna Ella?’

Elena smiled down at the little Rimoni. ‘Better than Sordell, actually, but I don’t like to boast. He thinks I can’t do it at all.’

Luca looked at her appraisingly, not the way men usually looked at women, but as if trying to strip away the flesh to the powers that lay beneath. ‘Do you have any weaknesses at all, Donna?’

‘A good cheese from the Knebb Valley gets me every time.’

The Rimoni chuckled and shook his head appreciatively. ‘Do you have a weakness for shorter men?’ he grinned.

She laughed and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Not usually, but you’ll be the first to know, Shorty.’

The starlight was sufficient to guide them as they wound their way through the pre-dawn. She wondered where Gurvon was – even the swiftest of windships wouldn’t have got him to Pontus yet if he was travelling back from Rondelmar.

‘What about we men, witch-lady?’ asked Artaq. ‘Do we survive this night, from your divining?’

She paused, losing her levity. ‘Without a scratch,’ she lied. ‘Let’s go.’

The outer limits of Brochena were alive with Gorgio patrols during the day, but at dusk they pulled back to the Inner City to provide tighter night-time patrols for the bureaucrats who made their homes there. But Elena was an illusionist and the men were used to moving stealthily. By the second hour after dusk they were in place. So far it looked like no one had noticed Arno Dolman was dead.

The palace of Brochena was a square with four great towers, each rising like a cathedral spire into the darkness. The Sol Tower was the dwelling of the Royal Family; Elena and the children had lived on the upper floors. Its golden roof caught the light like a beacon; it was the first thing people saw when they journeyed across the plains to the capital city. The Dorobon had built the towers, part of an ostentatious building programme which had nearly bankrupted the realm. There was already a pale luminescence coming from the ghostly Moon Tower, which was roofed with crushed quartz. The uppermost floor was open to the elements. Elena pointed: that’s where Rutt Sordell would be, worrying at his fears. The chief knights of the Guard were in the Angel Tower, and the Jade Tower housed the guest-quarters for visiting dignitaries, as well as Elena’s
Bastido
, in the top room.

Elena led them up the walls, creating footholds with Earth-gnosis as she went. She slipped behind the sentry at the foot of the Angel Tower. A single blade flashed, and as he fell, she muffled the sound with gnosis. He looked about seventeen, but Elena felt nothing but relief at having silenced him without giving themselves away. Lorenzo’s eyes narrowed as he looked at the dead sentry, and his
glance at Elena was troubled, but he stepped into his place without a word as Luca and Artaq dragged the body aside.

Sorry, Lori, but I was never the woman you thought I was
, Elena thought regretfully. She took the leather bag from her back and took out Arno Dolman’s head. The mage’s eyes flickered open as she turned it in her hands. He was too far gone to speak, but that didn’t really matter. Vedya had once told her that the Sydians used to be head-takers, believing they gained the strength and knowledge of those men whose brains they consumed; she had talked like she’d tried it herself. To a magi, the brain housed the gnosis, and that meant she held Arno Dolman’s waning powers in her hands. His intellect was fading, but for a short while longer his powers were hers to command, if she had the stomach for it.

She glanced up at the tower and along the walls: there were sentries, but none were too close: the Gorgio had grown complacent, confident their enemies were far away and that Gyle’s magi would keep them safe, a mistaken notion, and one she intended to correct. She looked at the Moon Tower, grey under the starlight without Mater-Luna to wash her opalescent walls white. It had been one of the first things she had noticed when she came here four years ago: that the towers of Brochena Palace stood over sixty yards tall, but only forty yards apart. She smiled and went to work with Dolman’s head.

Rutt Sordell was nervous. It was a familiar feeling, this perpetual state of queasy unease, that somewhere, some unexpected factor was about to make itself known. Right now he was concerned about the Jhafi relations: the blithe contempt of the Gorgio lords for the race that outnumbered them eight to one irritated him. All through dinner Alfredo Gorgio had stroked his silver goatee with self-satisfaction as he voiced his ambitions for the return of the Dorobon and the restoration of his family’s dominance beneath them. His smugness was sickening.

Some days Sordell wished their mission was to ruin the Gorgio instead, but then he remembered he despised the Nesti equally, albeit for different reasons.

Abruptly he decided all these Gorgio lordlings around him were unendurable. He stood and without a backwards glance stalked away. If that wasn’t ‘diplomatic’, well bugger them and rukk Gurvon too, for going off to Bres at this crucial stage of the plan. He waved to Benet and Terraux and his acolytes fell into place behind him as he stomped out of the hall. They were recent graduates from an Argundian college, his own picks, neither yet twenty. The dining hall fell silent until he and his acolytes were out of sight, then redoubled in noise, but he didn’t care. He was a weak-chinned man with lank hair. Worry was ageing him early, lining his pallid brow, plucking at his retreating hairline. He had shaping-gnosis, and when he exerted it he could make himself look younger, more handsome, but it took so much energy that he could rarely be bothered. And he could be charming if he felt like it, but he rarely did – what did the opinion of lesser men matter to someone like him? Let lesser beings like Vedya Smlarsk barter their powers for beauty; he had a higher purpose. Tonight he wanted the company of the stars, not mere humans. He needed to examine the future, see what the latest events portended.

He wondered what Elena Anborn was doing. He loathed her, for so many reasons. He hated that she was senior to him in Gyle’s cabal despite being only a half-blood. That sickened him: that he, Rutt Sordell, a pure-blood mage of an old house, was forced to play second fiddle to a mere woman just because she spread her legs for Gyle, who had always been blind to her faults. He hated the way she was always undermining him, pouring contempt on him whenever he made even the smallest miscalculation. It had given him a real feeling of satisfaction to see her show her true colours in betraying them. Now, at last, he had been recognised as Gyle’s number two. Arno Dolman had never been in the running, but he had worried that Vedya would use the same wiles as the Anborn bitch to win preeminence – but fortunately Gyle had seen sense.

Gyle’s absence worried him – what if something had happened? He glanced back at Benet and Terraux. They were good enough at parlour seductions and blackmail or blasting helpless spearmen, but they’d be no use in a real fight, not against someone like Anborn.
He’d been divining furiously all week, but despite being almost certain she was penned in Forensa, the worry persisted.

Fuls was the guard at the door of the Moon Tower, a fellow Argundian, his flowing brown hair half-covered by his traditional conical helm. He let Fuls start reaching for his keys before unlocking the doors himself with a small gesture. He enjoyed these little demonstrations of power; they set him apart and made people nervous to be around him: they made up for so many things.

Benet was laughing at one of Terraux’s quips. He glared at them, gesturing at them to hurry up, then, fuelled by nervous energy, bounded effortlessly up the stairs, leaving his acolytes behind.

The Moon Tower’s top room had three great windows. Though they looked as if they were open to the skies, they were permanently warded, preventing birds, insects, even the wind, from intruding. Divination worked best under starlight – it was all to do with energy flows and disruptions; he’d written his thesis on it in college … ah, he missed the college where he had been regarded as heir-apparent to the headmaster until that unfortunate event when he’d been caught practising Necromancy – but they were
orphans
, not even real children … All those lost years, wasted years, until Gurvon Gyle had taken him in, restored his periapt, given him a new purpose. Gyle deserved his loyalty for such friendship, for valuing him properly. One day he would replace Gyle, when he retired, but he was prepared to wait, not like others, who’d made foolish plans to take over. They’d always resulted in bloody demises; Gyle always knew when someone was plotting against him.

He shut the door on Benet and Terraux. Tonight he needed to concentrate: there were rumours of Harkun movements in the north, where they were seldom seen. He lit the brazier in the centre of the tower room, added powders to the flames, then used the currents of smoke to channel his questions into visions. Time soared by unnoticed as he conjured visions and interpreted them carefully, determining the status and hostility of the natives. News flooded in from the spirit world: visions of campfires in the deserts, of Jhafi moving in larger than normal numbers – it was worse than he had thought.
He would advise Alfredo Gorgio to send some of his men back north, maybe even send one of the team. Arno perhaps? But the walls … He cursed. Vedya, then. It would be well to get her out of the capital before she damaged relations with the Gorgio further through her mindless promiscuity.

He registered in passing the tiny flare of Dolman’s Earth-gnosis-powers, over to the west, beside the Angel Tower, but his mind was scanning the future, trying to determine where the Jhafi might be massing, where they might strike, who might lead them … suddenly some deep instinct made him look up, just before the Angel Tower lurched and he heard men screaming as the whole tower fell towards his own Moon Tower with irresistible, inevitable force. A more resolute mage than he might have had time to act, but he was frozen, both body and mind, unable to make the transition from the metaphysical to the material before all around him disintegrated as one tower struck the other.

Elena was already running above the courtyard, on a path formed from Air-gnosis, her three warriors following the trail of sparks she left, not daring to look down as they ran on nothing, held aloft by her powers alone. She had marked exactly the right spot on each of the towers, years ago, and now she had called up Dolman’s fading gnosis and expended most of it on the Angel Tower, to set it toppling in just the right direction. The Angel Tower wobbled, and for a moment it looked like it could go either way, before falling exactly as planned. She caught her breath as horrified screams erupted from inside, echoed from without as the men patrolling the battlements became aware of the unfolding destruction.

The cupola of the Angel Tower struck the Moon Tower a third of the way up, shattering against it and sending debris flying outwards, over the moat and into the plaza beyond. She felt lives being extinguished as people were crushed and prayed they were the enemy, not innocents. A crossbow bolt glanced off her shields and spun away. ‘Keep up,’ she screamed over her shoulder, trying not to think,
One counter-spell and I’ll lose all three of them
. She plunged into the
clouds of dust billowing from the ruined edifices and out to the plaza before the keep, where the Moon Tower had fallen.