Master of Crows (13 page)

Shadows swayed and slithered across the courtyard as the sun fell below the hills surrounding the dale.  Instinct warred with compassion.  An inner voice howled at her to run.  Run hard, run fast.  Gnat waited on the hillside, and Silhara’s sacrifice had bought her time to escape.  Again, Martise touched his face, gaunt and lifeless in the eldritch moonlight.  He might be dead, but she couldn’t leave him.  Not here in this bleak pit where time and wind would reduce his body to a desiccated shell, rejected by the very earth on which it lay.

Muscles already bludgeoned by the Half-Death spell burned in protest when she rose and slipped her hands under his arms to lift him.  She dragged him past the withered gardens, keeping a wary eye on the lich’s tumbled-down lair.  Silhara had said the creature was right behind them after the first time they escaped through the spell’s spectral doorway.   The memory of its shrieking fury when they escaped made her shudder.  She prayed it still lurked within the keep, searching for its elusive prey.

Her prayers went unanswered.  Intent on getting Silhara out of the courtyard and to the relative safety of the hillside, she didn’t see the soul eater’s ghostly haze until too late.  The creature struck, hurling Martise across the path with unseen hands.  She slammed into one of the dead trees, hard enough that black spots danced before her eyes.  Rough bark tore her tunic and scraped her back with a serrated caress.

She shook her head and tried to stand, staggering as the courtyard tilted and whirled around her.  The mist encircling her transformed, patterning itself into a grotesque shape both human and arachnid.  Tendrils of icy cloud spun out from the shadow of a bloated abdomen and wrapped around Martise’s ankles and wrists.  She yanked on her tethers, clawing at the gossamer ropes that curled around her arms and held fast.

Images of the last victims to fall before the lich’s hunger loomed in her mind.  Martise understood why their decayed faces wore such tortured expressions.  She wanted to scream as well, over and over until the effort warmed her freezing blood and reminded her she still lived and breathed and held on to her life essence. Wisps of mists trailed along her arms—fine hairs on a spider’s legs as it skittered closer to its entrapped prey.  Her cries hung in her closed mouth, and she twisted her head away from the snaking line curling toward her nostrils.  Her efforts were futile.  The lich invaded her, pouring into her body and spirit with malevolent purpose.

She screamed, a thin wail lost in the miasma permeating every pore.  A draining sensation weakened her limbs.  Were she not bound upright in the lich’s web, she would have fallen.  The coldness flowed through her veins, replacing warm blood as the lich fed on her.  Her heartbeat quieted, drowned out by a high-pitched keening that seemed to come from hundreds of voices.  Gray, wavering shades fluttered before her vision, beating their fists against invisible walls—memories and remnants of men sucked dry of their souls, forever lingering in an eternal despair.

“Not like this,” she thought.  “Not like this.”  All she had risked coming here—a chance at freedom, a life lived unbound, even possible death, but a clean death—scattered before her, lost to an immortal parasite.

The mist around her thickened, fed on the force of her spirit and the rise of her desolation.  Martise thought of Cumbria, his smug features when he held her spirit stone before her eyes, the ultimate bait to lure her into doing his bidding.  The lich wouldn’t have all of her.  The High Bishop of Conclave possessed a part of her spirit.  An invisible and binding chain, broken only by her death or the sacrifice of the Master of Crows.

Through the opaque shroud enveloping her, she saw Silhara sprawled on the parched ground, bloodied by his own spell.  The lich hadn’t touched him, and an inexplicable grief melded with hopelessness.  He was dead, brought down by his attempts to rescue them from this monstrous feeding to which she was subjected.  Anger and the will to remain unbound had saved him.

“Better dead than enslaved.”

Those words echoed in her frozen thoughts, acting as a catalyst to free her from the lich’s strangle-hold.  She didn’t want to die, but this horror was far worse.  A white fire burned away the numbing cold pulling her into the lich’s bottomless well.  She wouldn’t die.  Not like this.

“NOT LIKE THIS!”

The protest, bellowed from a throat clogged with foul smoke, wasn’t hers.  Deeper, broader, it surged from some hidden cache of strength, carrying with it the strange sentient force that had awakened at the touch of Silhara’s cloaking spell.  She screamed again, this time in triumph as her Gift burst from every pore.  It flowed in waves of amber light, encircling the pallid mist.  She felt the lich’s shock, its surprise at being confronted by this unknown force.  It ceased to drain her, sliding out of her nose and mouth on icy puffs of breath.

Martise huddled before the fierce power surging out of her.  Her fury fueled its frenzy, and she rode the tide, instinctively sensing that whatever she’d called forth in a last cry of desperation worked its own will.  It attacked the soul eater, seizing the sinuous mist in an unyielding grip.  Imprisoned souls fluttered like moths within a crumbling cage as her Gift struck and struck again at the lich, ripping at it with all the viciousness of a wolf pack on a ewe.  The cage finally broke, split apart beneath her magery’s uncontrolled vengeance.  Wraiths, trapped for centuries uncounted, flew past her, through her.  She gasped as the touch of each left trace impressions and memories.  Thieves and lost travelers, wandering nomads, even prisoners brought to Iwehvenn to suffer a merciless penalty for their crimes—all gave brief flashes of their identities, glimpses into windows of lives cut horrifically short.

A last thin screech signaled the lich’s final destruction before the mist roiled in on itself and burst into a rain of dust that cascaded over her hair and shoulders.  No longer half-blinded by its possession, Martise had a clear view of the courtyard.  She shook off the dust, quaking in revulsion.  Within her, her newly awakened Gift pulsed.  Stunned by the aggressive power she’d wielded, she fell to her knees and raised her hand cautiously, staring at it as if it were a new appendage.  The amber light encasing her faded.  She was half afraid her Gift would disappear again and half afraid it might turn on her.  Many untrained Gifted had died due to the uncontrolled potency of their talent.

Faint sounds reached her ears, moans more than words.  Martise struggled to her feet and limped to Silhara’s supine body.  She knelt beside him, groaning from the ache in her bones.  The faintest breath caressed her face when she leaned close.  Elation raced through her, followed by terror when he didn’t breathe again.

His head lolled when she lifted him in her arms.  Ribbons of blood slid toward his ears from his nose.  Martise brushed a lock of gore-soaked hair away from his cheek.  “Master,” she said softly.  “Stay with me.”  She leaned closer, her nose bumping his.  Her awareness shrank and sharpened, centered on his half-opened mouth, the fragile rise and fall of his chest against her breasts.  Her Gift stirred, pulsed with her heartbeat.  His lips were soft, tasting of salt and iron.  “Stay,” she whispered into his mouth and closed her eyes.

Unlike the turbulent river that rushed forth and swallowed the lich in its wrath, her Gift now flowed in a lazy stream, connecting her to Silhara in the brush of a kiss and the press of her hands on his cool skin.  A faint heartbeat thudded in her ears, growing louder and stronger as she held him.  Her senses were swamped—blood and heat, hate and loneliness, and above all, a Gift more powerful than hers, leashed by an implacable will.  She fell into him, breathed with him, grasped his hard-edged spirit standing on the brink of an abyss and embraced him.

A rushing kaleidoscope of gray light spun around her, slinging her back into the reality of dirt, tortured muscle and the scent of blood.  She opened her eyes and immediately sought Silhara.  His features were no longer so pale or shrunken, and his chest rose in slow, even breaths.  Feeling as if a herd of galloping horses thundered through her skull, Martise winced.  A tickling below her nose made her look down.  Blood dripped, splashing onto Silhara.  Her blood this time.  She wiped her nose on her dusty sleeve and cleaned him as best she could.

He opened his eyes, obsidian pools that caught the starlight and drowned it in their depths.  “What are you?” he rasped.

Uncaring that they huddled in a cursed dale or that he would likely flay her alive for the action, Martise hugged him and laughed in joyous relief.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

She smelled different.  Standing next to her, loading orange crates onto the rickety wagon, Silhara caught Martise’s scent on the dry breeze circling the grove.  The tang of citrus oil mixed with soap and the faint musk of warm female teased his nostrils.  A slow heat centered in his groin.  Months had passed since he’d brought a woman beneath him and taken his pleasure.  None he’d ever bedded smelled as tantalizing as the small woman working beside him.  The scent of sorcery, sharp and clean, like the air before a thunderstorm clung to her hair and skin.

All the Gifted smelled of it when their birthright first manifested.  He leaned toward her and sniffed audibly.  She stopped, hands hovering over the oranges in the crate closest to her and eyed him askance.  A thin trickle of sweat slid down her jaw from the hair plastered to her temple.  The imagined taste of salt tickled his tongue.

“You smell like the newly Gifted now.”

She straightened abruptly.  He jerked away just before the top of her head clipped his chin.  Her copper eyes glinted in the sun, a wary hope flickering in their depths.  She brought her palms to her nose and breathed.  “Are you sure?  I only smell oranges.  The corners of her mouth turned down.  “And Cael.”

“I’m certain.  The scent’s unmistakable.  I reeked of it for months after my Gift manifested.”

Neither unpleasant nor overpowering, it was a signature mark that had once alerted every priest of his whereabouts in the Redoubt and made the Conclave mage-finders go berserk in their pens every time he passed.  The scent on Martise wasn’t as strong, but Cael had clung to her more tenaciously than lichen since their return from Iwehvenn, his eyes glowing crimson the moment she stepped into the same room with him.  Even now, he lay by the wagon, tongue lolling as he panted in the afternoon heat.

“A lot of good such perfume does me now.  I no longer feel the Gift as I did at the lich’s keep.”

Silhara wasn’t so pessimistic.  Her power might choose to hide behind the shadow of her soul or slumber to regain its strength, but it hadn’t deserted her.  The effects of her Gift’s touch remained with him, along with the essence of the woman.  A warmth like silk and water bathed him from the inside, gave him strength and replenished his Gift.  He’d nearly died at Iwehvenn Keep, saved only by his apprentice’s mercy and untested talent.

He bent to heave another full crate into the wagon, only to have Gurn almost yank it out of his hands.  Silhara snarled at his servant, keeping a tight grip on the hand-holds as Gurn tugged.  “Do you mind?”  He wrested the crate away and slung it into the wagon bed.  Oranges fell out of boxes and rolled across the beaten boards.  Martise reached out a solicitous hand toward him but snatched it back at his warning glare.  “Leave off.  I’m not a damned invalid!”

Invoking Half-Death had been an act of desperation, the surest and fastest way to escape the lich’s clutches.  Such powerful magic took its toll.

They’d managed to find their way back to Neith where he’d collapsed on his doorstep, feverish and delirious.  Two days of painful muscle spasms and vomiting blood into a chipped basin had kept him bedridden.  Only now, after a full week, did he feel strong enough to resume his work in the grove and prepare for their delayed trip to market.  Unfortunately, his servant had yet to abandon his role as nursemaid.

He ignored Gurn’s short, precise hand motions. “Horse’s ass” didn’t take much translating.  Martise’s stifled giggle faded when Silhara smiled thinly.

“Come with me.  We’ve a lesson to conduct.”

He didn’t wait to see if she followed but snapped out instructions to Gurn as he walked back to the manor.  “Since I’m still too fragile to work, you can finish loading the wagon.  My apprentice and I have some unfinished business.”  Cael rose to follow and stopped when Silhara pointed a finger at him.  “Keep him here.  He smells foul.”  The mage-finder bared his teeth and slinked under the wagon to sulk.

He led her to the library.  Precious papers, brought out of Iwehvenn with deadly spell work and sheer luck, were neatly stacked on one table.  He had yet to look at them, but Martise had already begun her translations.  A sheet of notes, written in her precise hand, lay next to the ancient papers.

“We’re not having the lesson in the great hall?”

Her voice warbled.  Silhara cocked his head, puzzled.  The same woman who’d grappled with a soul eater and snuffed it out like a candle flame still feared his lessons.  Regret surfaced, annoying and unwelcome.  He’d had his reasons for subjecting her to harsh treatment when she first arrived.  She’d withstood everything he’d thrown at her.

Brave and surprising.  That abject passivity was an act.  Martise might be afraid of her lessons, but she had grown comfortable enough in Neith now to reveal glimpses of a more forceful personality.

She stiffened when he approached her.  Silhara stood close enough that the brim of her hat folded against his chest.  He removed the hat and tossed it to the floor, leaving fly-away bits of hair sticking out from her head in an auburn halo.  Rumpled and sun-burnt from working beside him in the grove, she was almost pretty.

“The light isn’t good enough in the hall.  I want to see what happens when we do this, and I prefer this room.”

“Please, Master.”  He frowned at the plaintive tone in her voice.  “Don’t summon another demon.”

Her eyes were downcast, hidden by the curve of her dark lashes.  Silhara tipped her face up to his with a forefinger.   Her gaze implored him, the first time she’d asked his mercy in any way.  His stomach twisted.

“Martise,” he said, stroking the underside of her chin with a fingertip.  Finer than costly velvet and just as warm, her skin heated to his touch.  “What I want to summon resides within you.  It destroys demons.” 
And saves mages.
  “Do you not want to feel your Gift once more?”

Excitement replaced dread in her eyes.  "Can you do this?"  She worried her lower lip against her teeth.  The other lessons didn't work."  Her jaw tightened against his finger.

“I used the wrong bait to coax your Gift to manifest.”  His finger drifted lower, hovering over the hollow at the base of her throat before coming to rest against the fragile line of her collarbone peeking out from the top of her tunic.  “A good thing I think.  I may not have witnessed what your power did to the lich, but anything that can destroy a soul eater is formidable.  I’ve no wish to suffer the same fate.”

He’d danced with death while the soul eater fed on her.  Her Gift, hostile, sentient and determined to destroy what endangered its host, had made quick work of the lich.  By contrast, that same violent power had saved him, gentling as it poured into his body and soul like cool water over parched earth, shimmering with life and fertility, green things and sun on the grove.  All laced with the fascinating quintessence of the woman who wielded such power.   She had drawn him back when he teetered on the edge of darkness, restored his spirit by giving him the strength to help her bring them both home.

More than a sorcerer’s curiosity drove him to seek her Gift a second time.  He craved its touch, its clean brilliance.  So different from the tainted shadow left by Corruption’s rape of his dreams.

“What will you do?”

He met her gaze.  Her heartbeat thrummed beneath his fingers, quick and erratic.

“I want to coax your Gift, but I’ll need your cooperation.  Have you ever seer-bonded?”

She tried to back away.  “No!  I’d be less vulnerable if I stood before you naked.”

Silhara’s eyebrows rose.  He halted her, hand resting on her waist in a light, warning clasp.  Visions of her bared back and his dark hands against her paler skin played in his mind.  “If you’re suggesting both, I’m more than agreeable.”

She blushed.  A faint smile lifted the corners of her mouth despite her protests.  He understood her reticence.  Seer-bonding was invasive, a lesser form of what the lich had done to her and what her Gift had done to him.  But he felt certain nothing else would make her talent emerge once more.  At least nothing it wouldn’t try and attack.

He dropped his hand and stepped back.  “Your choice, apprentice.  I gain nothing from the effort.  My magic will not suffer either way.”  He headed for the door.  “We’ve a harvest to get to market.  You’re wasting my time.”  He was almost in the hall when she called out to him.

“Wait.  Please.”  A wary acceptance flickered in her eyes.  “I want to try.”

As he suspected, she might not trust him enough to initially agree to his proposal, but she couldn’t resist the allure of her Gift.  She’d risk a harsh spell to bring her magic forth once more.

He moved close and breathed in her scent.  “I once seer-bonded with the High Bishop.”  An old anger made his blood burn.  “I’d been a year at Conclave.  Two priests bound me to a chair and gagged me.”

Martise’s features blurred before ugly memories.  He recalled the agonizing fire raging in his skull as Cumbria strove to tear down his emotions and thoughts.  He still felt the blow of the bishop’s fist against the side of his head when the bonding finished, the darkness that followed and the taste of dirt in his mouth when he awakened on the cold floor with a rat scrabbling through the tangles in his hair.

“They forced you.”  Compassion, laced with revulsion, deepened her seductive voice.

He traced an invisible line over her collarbone.  “Are you so innocent to believe the priests are above such things?  You were a novitiate.  Surely, you saw or experienced them?”

“Not like that.  Mockery, lashings, fasting, yes.  But never a forced bonding.”  She cocked her head, questions in her gaze.  “Why?  The high priests don’t usually bother acknowledging the lower orders.”

She had small bones, and the exposed skin of her neck glistened with a thin film of perspiration.  Silhara ran his tongue over his lower lip.  “Cumbria and I have a unique and long-standing relationship.  We hated each other even before we met.”

“What is unique about hatred?”

His fingers pressed into her flesh, the first layer of the spell silently invoked.  Faint vibrations of power swirled up his arm.  “So sayeth his servant.”

She paled.  “His ward.  And I meant no disrespect, Master.”  She glanced down at his fingers.  “You’ve begun the bonding.”  She closed her eyes briefly.  “It doesn’t feel like the lich’s touch”

“How did the lich’s touch feel?”

“Cold, empty.  Like falling down a dry well.”

Silhara sensed a stirring, a tendril of awareness calling to his own Gift in recognition.  “Seer-bonding is different.  Wielded harshly, it’s agonizing.  There’s no need for such measures here.”  He liked her smile.

“You’re kind in your way.”  Her voice slurred as the spell’s effects took hold, potent as Peleta’s Fire.

He placed his other hand at her waist to hold her upright.  “No.  I am merely cautious.  Your Gift responds to a caress, not a beating.  I’ve no wish to end up like the lich.”

Nearly drunk on the bonding, she swayed in his arms, held by the hand at her waist and the one touching her neck.  Her eyelids drooped, and her lips parted.  Silhara pulled her closer, wrapping an arm around her back.  He wanted to sway with her, to sink in the pool of heat enveloping him as he sank into her essence.  He thrust against her skirts, aroused by the mating of spirit and will as she opened to him.  His vision blurred, his surroundings transforming to a sea of amber and ruby.  His heart matched with the beat of hers until a single pulse echoed in his head.

Power flooded his soul.

His magic surged in a wave, fed by the well of Martise’s Gift.  He groaned, drowning in the intense sensation of pure life, laced with a woman’s grace, pouring into him.

Had Corruption used such seduction from the first, he would have hosted the god and done his bidding with a smile.  Instead, the lure it used made him flinch away despite the promises of revenge and unlimited dominance.  Martise’s Gift, however, offered no such promise, only strengthened his Gift and asked nothing in return.

“Open for me, Martise.  Bring me deeper.”
  He wasn’t sure if he spoke the words or only thought them.  His hunger for more of her overrode his coherency.  She obeyed, opening wide the ethereal door that sheltered her Gift and allowed his spirit full access.

He took her, fed on her, sucked in the force of her power until his head swam.  The faintest whimper reached his ears, almost smothered beneath his craving for more of her life force.  He fought his way to consciousness, breathing hard.  What met his gaze made his heart stutter.

Martise slumped in his arms like a broken doll.  Her head lolled, and blood trickled from her nostrils, bisecting her wan cheeks.  The whites of her eyes peeked beneath her lashes.  A jeweled light enveloped them both, burnishing his skin.

Horror washed through him, banishing the consuming sense of well-being.  The sharp burst of pain behind his eyes made him wince as he broke the bond between them.  Martise convulsed in his grasp.  The light faded, leaving traces of a crimson shimmer on his clothes.

“Martise!”  He shook her hard, uncaring that her head snapped forward then back.  The pain behind his eyes grew when he recited a simple awakening spell to revive her.  She moaned and raised a weak hand to swipe at the blood on her face. Silhara gave silent thanks to gods who’d never before heard him invoke their names in prayer.