Shadowborn (13 page)

“I’ve had a late, unwelcome thought,” he said. “Should have had it long since. There was one man of Mycene’s I’ve not met, supposedly laid low by a sausage. We know a Shadowborn was in th’city: maybe he came down in Mycene’s train.”

She nodded. “I’ll have someone—two someones—check,” she said. “But what we need to know—”

From the east corridor an alarm began to ring, its rate frantic. Along the halls he heard a shout of “Fire!” His first thought was of the munitions, and the men waiting by them. He said to Laurel, “I’ll go.” Stranhorne was just emerging from the side gallery, his one-armed aide at his side. Striding by, Ishmael said, “Don’t know; going t’find out.”

The rhythm of the alarm told him it was on the third floor of the southwest corner of the manor; the Stranhornes had anticipated the difficulty of tracking sound through the ancestral pile. He had an unpleasant feeling he knew which room. Collecting seemed to go with the Stranhorne blood. In recent generations, it had expressed itself in bibliophilia, but several of the past barons had collected hunting trophies, including trophies of Shadowborn. Stranhorne’s grandfather had offered the collection to the national history museum in the city. Given that Shadowborn defied orthodox taxonomies, the museum had declined most of those, so they were kept in a long gallery and storeroom off the south hallway.

Which made this arson what? Editorial comment? Revenge? Sick prank? Ish supposed he should be grateful the interloper’s sense of humor or strength did not extend to animating them, setting the pack of false-toothed balewolves and mangy-pelted scavvern roaming the halls.

Smoke, harsh with burning straw and fur, and Shadowborn magic brought him to a halt just before he collided with the milling mob of manor staff, reservists, and ambulatory refugees summoned by the alarm. Boris Stranhorne was in the midst of the horde, valiantly trying to impose order and purpose. He didn’t have the mass or the voice. Ishmael did. A lungful of air gave him the volume, and smoke in his throat gave him an ominous rasp. “We need th’hose run from the main water tank now!” he bellowed, making those nearest him bend away like wheat under a downdraft. “And a bucket chain from the main scullery.” They probably couldn’t reach the former taxidermist’s workroom, which was off the gallery, and furthermore he had no idea how long it had been since anyone had worked the taps in there; rust-locked taps or sludge-filled pipes would do them no use. “And all who’s not got a clue how to drive a hose or pass a bucket need t’get yourselves out of this corridor. Now!”

Several staff members and reservists, wielding buckets, had already arrived. One reported, “We’ve gone for the hose, Baron. Where should we—”

Where indeed? It wasn’t just his roaring that had cleared the bystanders: the smoke was thick enough to stir, and the heat, when he put his face around the open door, was ominous. The air roiled and twisted as his sonn reflected from the interfaces between ribbons of heated air. It was hideously reminiscent of the day he had been caught in the burning Rivermarch, having gone to ground after an encounter with the Shadowborn in a brothel incongruously called the Rainbow House. As far as he knew, he had been the sole survivor of all the ladies and clients. He closed the door on the blaze, hoping to contain the smoke and starve it of air. “We’ll not quench this one without th’hose,” he said. “Soak the walls. Soak the floor—and we need to soak the floor upstairs. We need t’make sure it doesn’t spread.” To Boris he said, “Tell th’ones who’re running ammunition to keep their senses about them—we need to know if there are any others kindling—and get any of th’other youngsters who still have their wits about them t’help.”

A bucket chain had formed, with buckets passed hand to hand down the line. At least they did not have a carpet to worry about; Stranhorne, like Strumheller, was furnished for the wear of a large household that was a center of government, industry, and defense. Overhead, Ishmael could hear running feet, furniture being dragged, and urgent voices, as the rooms overhead were cleared so that the floors could be soaked. He set his back against the wall, staying out of the way, keeping his chin down to mask his hard pulse. The reaction was a response to the bite of smoke in his throat and the memory of the Rivermarch. At least outside was still dark and not daylight—if a night full of Shadowborn could be said to be less murderous than the sun.

As a crew from the stables came dragging the fire hose—already spurting water over floor, wall, and people alike—the alarm began to peal again, signaling that the Shadowborn had renewed their attack.

Boris clutched at Ishmael’s left arm. Ishmael winced, though he kept his voice light. “D’y’get the feeling that this is just not our night?”

He pulled Boris away as the fire-hose crew threw open the door into the gallery and turned the hose full on the interior, and a great belch of smoke and heat rolled over them all. He dropped to a crouch, bracing himself on his throbbing arm, alert to their coughing and ready to move in if any were overcome by smoke. Boris half fell down beside him. Ishmael said hoarsely, “Get down t’your father—tell him what’s happening. Then spread word about a fire watch. Soon as they’ve control here, I’ll move on. I need to find who’s causing this.”

The laminated outer door of the baronelle’s study led into a vestibule between inner and outer wall, with an ironbound outer door as stout as the one into Strumheller. Balthasar wept silently as he wrestled down the two heavy bars bracing it, wept for his futile belief that he could evade this ensorcellment, and now for his remorse at what he was about to do. He could not stop himself: could not stop himself lifting the bars, turning the handle, setting his shoulder and then all his weight against the door, falling outward into the rain.

He tried to cling to the lintel, but even so, the ensorcellment was driving him forward. It came to him that this must be something akin to what Ishmael felt as he struggled against the Call. How could he ever have prided himself that his skills would be of any help, any help at all . . . ?

The ensorcellment harried him across a garden, turned wild in the storm. It punished him as he lost himself among the hedges. Beyond the wall he could hear wolves howling. Overhead, stone split and stone chips sprinkled over him; the snipers had tried to range on the sound. He scrambled along the base of the wall, almost on all fours, as bullets ricocheted. High in the air something screeched, drawing the snipers’ fire.

And there . . . was the gate. His sonn caught the hard, rough profile of the arch, the smoother finish of the gate. It was a wide gate, but still not wide as a street. Yes, it might pass an army, but not all at once.

Two-handed, he forced the key to turn, felt a mechanism yield and the dead bolts draw in with a ragged thud. He felt the gate shudder as a body threw itself against the other side, and heard claws grind.

“Balthasar Hearne—stop!”
cried a woman’s voice.

The gate flew inward as something lunged at it from outside. He heard a tearing snarl, heard a shot. A bundle of fur and bristle skidded past his feet; he recoiled from its snapping jaws.

Twenty yards away stood Laurel di Gautier, alone and exposed, head bared, skirts bound to her legs by the wind, rifle to her shoulder, lips drawn back in a face stony with intent. Ishmael had praised her cool head, and Balthasar understood why as she shot and shot again into a gateway seething with Shadowborn with a calm precision he would not even have expected in his own capable wife. He crouched in the lashing rain, helplessly arguing with the ensorcellment that orders to
open
the gate did not preclude closing the gate, counting the shots, and wondering how long before she needed to reload, how long before the rain penetrated her rifle, how long before she missed, how long before one of those flying Shadowborn . . . Laurel slung the rifle on her shoulder, no time to reload, and in the same motion drew a revolver right-handed, and the next Shadow-thing through the gate gained but one bound on her before she put it down. She took a pace forward. She meant, he realized, to clear the gate and close it if she could, before she shot her last. He willed her on, even if he could do nothing to help her.

Something dropped out of the sky to her left. She pivoted and fired, then managed to catch the next wolf with barely a beat. Another Shadowborn landed to her right, between Balthasar and her. He discovered then the limits of
open the gate and warn no one
. He surged out of his crouch with a rock in his hand, and with all his strength—and knowledge behind it—drove the pointed end of the rock through the fragile bone in the Shadowborn’s temple.

She gasped, “What—” and shot and shot again into the gate.

There was no explaining, not in these circumstances, even if he could struggle sufficiently free of the ensorcellment to do so. He cast into the air, his sonn dissipating in seething rain and wind, but still catching at its limits something up there. He flung the rock at it. While evading the landings, she had lost all the distance she had gained. “Inside,” he begged.
“Please.”

“No,” she said.

He threw himself at her, intending to manhandle and drag her if he must—no planning, no timing. She swung her revolver; he did not hear the shot or feel it except as something like a punch in his side. He found himself half turned and down on one knee. More by reflex than by any urgent need, he put a hand to his side and felt the cold rain turn warm. There was strangely little pain.
Traumatic anesthesia,
the clinical part of his mind noted.

Behind him, the archway and wall blew in, as though struck by an immense fist, collapsing in a jumble of falling stones and blocks almost at his heels. The hem of a wet skirt flickered in his sonn, and he heard her take the first few running steps before rain and wind swallowed them.
She shouldn’t be running,
he thought absurdly,
not in her condition,
and started to get to his feet. Stones ground behind him. Something huge and bristled set its paws on the dead thing beside him, and he froze, still as a rabbit. The wolf—larger than any wolf he’d ever heard of—sniffed speculatively at the belly of the dead one and then extended its head to nose Balthasar’s bleeding side.

His sonn caught a small female shape, a hand reaching out to cuff the wolf’s muzzle. “Mayfly, leave that alone. You can eat it later.”

Rubble crunched as a second person moved up beside him. A man’s voice said, “Not him, Midora. Sense the ensorcellment.”

“So he is here. Little
bastard.
Where’s
Jon
? If he were in trouble and Sebastien ran—”

“Enough, Midora; Jonquil’s dead,” the man said, calmly. “We all felt him die. And without him, without his knowledge, what could Sebastien do alone in Minhorne?”

“Let’s get this over with,” the woman snarled.

Balthasar started to turn his head, to sonn the speakers, and felt a man’s hand resist the motion. He flinched, trying to keep skin from contacting skin, opening him to the touch of what was surely a mage. “Best not draw attention,” the man advised. To his companion: “Let me deal with Sebastien. He may be unpredictable, and he has obviously been learning.”

“That little half-breed—”

“Ariadne’s son,” the man said flatly.

“Why bother? You won’t keep him alive, after this. Emeya’ll have him roasted—and with your blood for a sauce, if you’re not careful.”

A hand rested lightly on Balthasar’s gripping fingers. “You’re hurt,” the Shadowborn noted, dispassionately. Then, startled, said, “That profile:
Hearne
. No. You must be another relation. The brother, perhaps. Well, well, well. I think we’ll just—” Searing agony spread out from his wound, as though the Shadowborn had applied a cautery iron. Balthasar would have bucked or screamed, had he been able to move; instead, and this time in truth, he fainted.

Ishmael came headlong down the stairs, impelled beyond all caution by the nearby sense of Shadowborn magic. He reached the door to the baronelle’s private study as Laurel burst through it into the hall, slamming it behind her, and caught woman and rifle as she stumbled, keeping them both upright. She was bareheaded, hair and dress soaked, revolver in hand, shaking as though fevered. She took a drowning sailor’s grip on him. “Please be Ishmael,” she gasped.

“Aye,” he said. “I’m th’one y’told you loved Jeremiah Coulter.” It had been a brief, intense, and fortunately one-sided infatuation when she was eighteen; he had never told anyone else what she confided.

She pressed her wet head against his chest and let him support her. “Something just destroyed the wall into Mother’s garden,” she gasped. “It doesn’t make
sense
. Why’d he open the gate if they could destroy it that easily?”

Like her father, always thinking. “Why’d who open the gate?”

She lifted her head, taking her own weight again. “Dr. Hearne—or something in his shape. The corridor was unguarded.”
Drawn off by the fire,
Ishmael thought, now understanding that mischief. “I got there too late to stop him. Things were coming through; I shot, trying to clear the window t’get the gate closed. Two of the flyers had a go at me. I killed one, Hearne got the other with a rock, but then he came at me. I shot him—pure reflex, and a wound only, I think—then the wall blew in and I ran. I just left him. I don’t know what he was—But I—But why’d he open the gate if they could destroy it that easily?”

If it were Balthasar, then he had been ensorcelled or otherwise coerced, and might already be dead. Even if he were not, it would be death to open that outer door. “We’ll get t’him as we can,” he said. “But y’did the right thing. They could be through th’outer wall any moment, but at least they’ve chosen to force th’entrance best for us. Get the word t’your father. He’ll want to sound the bell for the muster. Y’need to check the main way’s clear.” He eased her away and took the revolver from her hand. “I’ll buy y’all the time I can.”