Master of Crows (23 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He dipped his fingers in the unguent.  “More apologies.  What for now?”

She giggled at his exasperation and sucked in a breath when the cold salve touched her sore back.  The discomfort only lasted a moment, replaced by a warmth that eased the pain as Silhara spread the salve over her abrasion.  His hands were magic in more ways than one.

“What are you sorry for?” he asked.

She hid a yawn behind her hand, lulled by the caressing circles he drew on her back.  “This sore.  I can’t lie on my back now.”

The circular stroking halted.  Silhara snorted.  “First, that scrape is my doing, not yours.  Second, your Balian, for all his bragging, obviously lacked imagination as well as intelligence when he taught you the pleasures of the flesh.”  She raised her buttocks automatically when his hand slipped between her thighs and cupped her cunnus.  He kissed her shoulder while his fingers teased her.  “I don’t need you on your back for anything, Martise, unless you want to go star-gazing with me.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Silhara positioned the ladder against the bookshelves and cursed as a rain of dust cascaded on his head.  He squinted and waved the cloud away from his face.  “Martise is right,” he muttered.  “We’re drowning in dust.”

He climbed the ladder to the topmost shelf and swiped at the intricately spun spider webs covering the line of grimoires.  The library at Neith contained books and scrolls Conclave refused to archive.  He and his predecessor had no such reservations.  Manuscripts that told of the magery of the Waste were shelved next to books on the proper protocol for sacrificing a victim and calling up a demon.

Today he searched for tomes on the black arcana, forbidden spells and invocations, curses and possessions.  Despite Conclave’s assumptions and his reputation, he merely dabbled in the darker spells.  The curse magic lingering over the oaks at Neith’s entrance and the deadly enchantments surrounding the grove’s stone enclosure were the only things he’d ever pulled from these dusty books and employed for his use.  And they sucked the strength out of him.  Dark spells, powerful and effective, demanded a high and constant price.

His fingers traced the spines of the books, skin tingling as he touched the leather-bound pages.  The covers were smooth and faded, worn by time and made of hides whose origins he didn’t want to guess.  Finding the one he wanted, he climbed down the ladder and found a place by the window to read.  Somewhere, in those cryptic passages, was the answer to the puzzle of Martise’s Gift.

There was nothing dark about her talents.  He had never felt more alive or cleansed than when she shared her Gift with him.  Nor as powerful.  The last had given him his first inkling of where he might find information about the nature of her Gift.  Something that strong was coveted, and not always by benevolent forces.

Sunlight streamed through the windows, and clouds drifted in a cerulean sky.  No hint of the storm he’d called down two days before remained.  Even the mud in the shaded bailey was drying.  Silhara stared, unseeing, at the books before him, lost in the seductive memories of the hours spent in his bedchamber with Martise while the rain fell.

Bedding her had only increased his hunger for her, and even now, he grew hard at the recollections of her body bathed in candlelight and the feel of her surrounding him.  The scrape on her back didn’t stop him from taking her time and again through the day and into the night.  She was adept at making him gasp in mindless ecstasy when she mounted and rode him hard.

When they rested together, panting and sweating from a bout of lovemaking, he’d tucked her against his side and satisfied his curiosity about her life at Asher.

He raised her hand and ran a finger over the toughened skin of her palm.  “This isn’t the hand of a pampered woman.  And you didn’t earn these calluses at Neith.  Cumbria doesn’t think much of his less fortunate relations, does he?”

She followed the path of his fingers with her eyes and shrugged.  “He didn’t pay much attention, and he was more often at Conclave than Asher.  He sometimes called me back to Conclave if he wanted me to translate something private, but that wasn’t often.  His wife saw to my care when I was at Asher.”

He imagined just what kind of “care” the mad Dela-fé doled out to those subjected to her will.  He also imagined pinning the woman to his bailey fence with a few well-planted daggers.  “I’m sure she did.  I’m surprised you have no whip marks on your back.  Even the most obedient servant couldn’t escape that woman’s malice.”

“She was skilled with the switch and could draw blood without scarring.”

“A talent I’m sure she bragged about to all her aristo friends.”

Her bottom was smooth beneath his palm, and he spread his hand over the rounded curve.  “What did you do at Asher?”

Only the faintest stiffening hinted at her unease at his question.  Her voice was uninflected, and she even smiled a little.

“Much as I do here at Neith.  I cleaned, laundered, made soap, took care of livestock, harvested olives, worked in the presses and served at formal dinners.  I also acted as the bishop’s scribe.”

She wasn’t telling him something.  Cumbria might not have cared how Martise managed at Asher, but she was of value to him—beyond the mundane labor of a servant.

“How old were you when you became a novitiate of Conclave?”

She caressed him as he did her, running her hand along the length of his leg and over his hip.  He savored her touch.  She felt good—right—in his arms.  “I was twelve,” she said.  “A high priest visited Asher and brought a mage-finder with him.  The dog snapped his leash trying to get to me.”

Her fingers tickled where she ran her hand along his jaw before resting it against his cheek.  “They never spoke of you at Conclave.  Neither the priests nor the students.  At least not by name.  There were rumors of a student banished on threat of death from the canonry.  Was that you?”  Her copper eyes reflected the glow of the brazier’s dimming light.

“What?  They aren’t singing my praises at dawn prayers?”  His lip curled.  “They considered me too dangerous to let loose so they sent me here to Neith, to the Master of Crows.”

“You mentioned a first Master of Crows once.  Did you inherit the title?”

“The title, the reputation and Neith itself.”  He pressed his cheek against her hand.  “Make no mistake.  I’ve lived down to the insult and its notoriety.  Conclave thought they sent me to a carrion mage who’d use me as demon bait.  My mentor had other plans.”

Her eyes closed for a moment.  When she gazed at him again, a deep-seated anger, tempered with sympathy, sparked in her eyes.  “I see why you hate them—the priests.”

If she only knew just how deep that hatred ran.  He banished the dark thoughts and contented himself with caressing her warm body.  By rights, he should despise her as well.  She was an instrument of Conclave, sent to Neith to spy on him, and she might well succeed in her endeavor, but he didn’t despise her.  Far from it, and the emotion welling within made him shy away from those thoughts quicker than his ruminations over the god.

Her lips parted beneath his, supple and yielding.  She wasn’t the beauty the
houri
Anya was, but she was brave and witty, learned and exceptionally observant.  She fit in his arms like no other.  Long after she returned to Neith, he’d remember her—and yearn for her.

He growled into her mouth and rolled over so that she sat astride him.  Her hair curtained him in fragrant waves.  A quick lift of her hips and he was inside her, sinking slowly into a tight, welcoming heat.

Martise’s eyes gleamed, and her voice was breathless.  “Can you star-gaze now, Silhara of Neith?”

He gripped her hips in his hands as she rode him, letting her set the pace until he was maddened with need.  He brought her down to him, kissed her until they were both breathless and shaking.  He plunged into her over and over, desperate to get closer, desperate to possess.  So intense was his desire that his Gift rose of its own accord, summoned not by the working of a spell but by the ferocity of his passion.  And hers answered.

Her Gift, unhampered by her developing control, surged forth.  The tell-tale amber light surrounded them, and he breathed it in.  Her very spirit filled him.  She was strength through endurance, resolve and compassion, all overlaid by a faint melancholy—and love for him.  His climax struck him like a storm tide, coursing through him in a hot river until he arched and groaned, almost bucking Martise off him.  She held on and followed after him, her softer cries fading with his as she collapsed on his chest.

His limbs shook beneath her, convulsive shudders accompanied by black spots that danced in his vision.  He raised his hand, saw the corona of light shimmer around his fingers and pressed them to her back.  His softly murmured spell was lost in her hair.  She twitched and raised her head to stare at him.

“What did you do?”

He rubbed his thumb over the smooth skin where her abrasion had been.  “I healed your back.”

She reached behind her, touched the spot he caressed.  Her eyes widened and she gave him a beatific smile.  “You’re amazing.  Thank you.”  Her eyes darkened for a moment.  “I envy you, you know.  Not so much for the power you possess, but that you can command it at will.  I wish my Gift would do that.”

Silhara said nothing, only stroked her hair when she laid her head on his shoulder and fell asleep with him still inside her.  He held her tightly.

He was exhausted.  Even the force of her Gift couldn’t fully replenish the strength the storm and the hours of lovemaking had taken out of him.  He needed to sleep.  He needed to possess her again, and when she drained him enough to shave a decade off his lifespan, he’d go to the library to verify a terrible truth.  His suspicion regarding the nature of her Gift had become a surety.  He knew what she was.  Martise’s Gift wasn’t a blessing; it was a curse.

A loud crack against one of the library windows snapped Silhara out of his musings.  He looked in time to see a spiraling flutter of wings as a crow fell to earth.  He shook his head.  “Cael will enjoy that one.”

The book he’d taken from the high shelf, sat unopened on the table.  Runes decorated the leather, mysterious symbols that stung Silhara’s fingers when he traced their outlines.  Yellowed pages crackled as he opened the book and began to read.  It didn’t take him long to find the passages he sought, and he read them in bitter triumph.

“Ah Cumbria, you have no idea what you’ve turned over to me, do you?”

Such information would devastate Martise.  He ran a hand through his hair and sighed.

He found her working in a corner of the bailey with Gurn, hanging newly laundered clothes and linen on lines to dry.  Partially concealed by the flap of damp blankets, she was unaware of his presence until he spoke.

“Apprentice, I need you in the hall.”

She straightened on a gasp.  “You surprised me.”  Her tentative smile faded at his somber expression.  She nodded and dried her damp hands on her skirts.

Painted in pale light and dust motes, she faced him in the great hall, her features set as she waited for his commands.  He read the grim resolve in her eyes.  She expected some unpleasant lesson from him.  Regret twisted his stomach into more knots.  He’d practiced a calculated cruelty on her in this hall when she first arrived.  His attempts at frightening her away had failed, but the fear he’d instilled in her remained, even beyond the intimacy they now shared.

He didn’t know how to reassure her, especially when his purpose in bringing her was to offer up a bleak truth.

“Summon your Gift, Martise.”

Her eyebrows rose, but she did as he asked.  He could watch her call up her Gift a thousand times and still not grow tired of the spectacle.  He’d never seen a Gift manifest in such a way—a shimmering radiance that encompassed her and lured him to her.

“And now?”  Even her voice changed, resonating with the sensuality that sent heat licking down his spine.

“Now, I want you to break the glass in these windows.”  He gestured to the tall panes of glass, frosted with years of dirt.  “You know this spell.  Conclave always teaches it to the beginners.

She frowned.  “Are you sure?”

Her question spoke of her confusion.

“I’m sure.”

The spell was simple, a harmless exercise used to introduce very young novitiates to the art of control and manipulation and familiarize them with their own power.  But even that proved beyond her ability to execute.  She recited the spell twice without so much as single spider-crack appearing in a window pane.  Her shoulders hunched in defeat.

“This is futile.  It’s like before.  The spells don’t work with my Gift.”

Silhara circled her, the click of his boot heels echoing in the room.  “They work, just not in the way we thought.”  He recited the same spell and the glass cracked in three windows.  “A simple breakage spell.  Good for creating mischief and not much else.”

He took her hand.  Her Gift rushed through him, drawing down her essence so that it sang in his veins.  He was swamped with power, by the force that made his own Gift hum in response.  He dropped her hand before he fell to her allure and began to feed off her Gift and her soul.

“Watch.”

Silhara recited the spell once more.  Martise covered her ears as a concussion wave twisted the air around them.  An explosion of sound followed as every window in the hall shattered, blasting outward toward the courtyard in a shower of splintered shards.  Broken rainbows caught on the jagged pieces of glass still attached to the window frames, and sunlight flooded the hall.  Outside, Cael howled, and Silhara heard the door to the kitchen fly open.  Martise stared at him as if he’d gone mad.

He clapped his hands twice and uttered one sharp word.  Gurn raced into the hall just in time to see glass fly up, snap together and hold to the window frames.  The windows looked untouched save for the dirt caked on their surface.  The hall returned to its gloomy state.

“Gurn.”

The servant stood beside him, staring up at the repaired windows.  He glanced at Silhara.

“Go back to the bailey.  I have something to tell Martise.  Alone.”