Turning Points (26 page)

He stared for a moment, tasting desperation.

Again, he glanced over his shoulder through the branches above his head. There was no moon to see—only fog.

Securing his sword with one hand, he slipped and slid down the embankment, finishing the descent on his backside before he hit the water with a splash. He didn’t worry about the noise. The drumming covered any sound he was likely to make. He began to swim with fast, furious strokes.

Quanali pahabaril maha elberah yora
. Aaliyah stole into his thoughts like a warm wind, soothing and reassuring him.
Each time we part, my heart cries
. He remembered the first time he said that to her, how she slipped her arms around him and laid her head on his chest. It had become their ritual farewell, but he had forgotten to tell her before he left the shop tonight.

Quanali muriel maba elberah canta
. She was in his head, in his heart and blood.
Each time we meet, my heart sings
! Only a month ago, he’d found her searching for her brother along the Nis border. She’d looked—Ronal had put it rightly—lonely and strange, more than a little lost.

A splash interrupted his thoughts, and a moment later, a softer splash. Under the muffling blanket of fog he couldn’t tell what direction the sounds came from. It might have been Ronal behind him, or it might have been one of the Nisi warlocks swimming to intercept him. It might have been both.

He reached the opposite shore and crept out of the water. With the enemy so near now, his natural stealth reasserted itself. Crouched, he stole along the edge of the bank and angled toward the fire, stopping behind a thick tree trunk to observe. The underbrush and foliage had been cut away or pulled up by the roots to form a sizable clearing. Spyder counted the dancers weaving among the fires, then the drummers, who sat in a circle to one side. They beat their drums with a hysterical passion, and their bodies gleamed with sweat and fire-sheen. As if they could see through the fog, all their gazes were turned skyward.

Regan Vigeles, called Spyder
. Rime’s voice slipped into his mind like a sharp knife.
Know that you have failed again. It is time. All the power of the Nisi globes will be mine, and there is nothing you can do to prevent it
.

He didn’t know why he turned toward the Vasalan ship and caught his breath. With regal grace, the Grand Witch of Nis strode down the gangplank. Her beauty dazzled. Though bred in Hell, her form was something far more heavenly. Black hair swept down her back over her hips and to her knees. Large eyes glittered over perfect cheekbones and a lush mouth. A diaphanous skirt loosely encircled her waist. Rather than hiding her loins, it seemed to enhance and emphasize them. She wore nothing over her breasts but jewels. Dozens of necklaces sparkled with rubies, emeralds, diamonds, sapphires, nuggets of gold, and gold circlets banded her upper arms.

As she walked down the plank, she held her left arm rigidly at right angles with the back of her hand turned outward. The only jewelry that mattered tonight shimmered on her middle finger—a band seemingly of purest silver. But the firelight caught the metal and played strangely upon it so that at some moments it seemed liquid, not solid at all.

The Ring of Sea
—
and Fire
.

As she moved into the clearing the dancers ceased their gyrations and threw themselves to their knees. Naked, they were covered in mud and filth, their hair matted. With their lips almost to the ground they chanted her name.
Rime! Rime! Rime
! As far as Spyder could tell, none of them bore any weapons at all.

“Looks more like
grime, grime, grime
, to me.” Ronal whispered as he drifted from behind another tree to Spyder’s side. “You want your cloak back?” He held out a wad of dripping cloth.

When Spyder put a finger to his lips for silence, Ronal shrugged and dropped the sopping bundle. He eased his sword from its sheath. “Is there a plan?” he asked.

“Kill everyone,” Spyder said. “But not until I know where the boy is.”

Ronal pointed. “You must have something in your eye,” he said. “Look closely, there on the ground right in front of the fire where the lying whore is standing.”

Spyder’s gaze narrowed. On the ground right at the fire’s edge, barely visible against the glow, was a white shape. It lay so still, but as he watched, the form twitched ever so slightly within the limits of its severe bindings. Lisoh—wrapped like a mummy!

He knew where the ring was. Now, he knew where Lisoh was, too. “Stay hidden,” Spyder said to Ronal. “You’ll know when I need you.”

“You need me,” Ronal muttered. “Wait until I tell ‘em at the Broken Mast you finally admitted that.”

Drawing a breath, Spyder walked into the clearing. The drummers saw him first, and the drums fell silent. When the drums stopped, the chanters also stopped and stared wide-eyed at him.

Rime also stared with disbelief and fear.

Then she laughed.

“I told you my knife was at your back, Witch.”

“But how can that be,” she answered, her voice deeply seductive, “when you are standing before me?”
Indeed, when you are kneeling before me
!

Her power hit him like a hammer, and he felt his knees start to buckle. But he resisted, drawing another breath, gathering his strength as he took a step forward. “My knives are many, Rime,” he answered. A pair of her coven brothers seized his arms, but he ignored them. “They are everywhere! They strike from everywhere!”

She laughed again. “You’re… !”

Her mouth gaped, and her eyes shot wide with pain before she could finish. One of the dancers screamed and leaped up to catch her elbow as she faltered and sank to one knee. Rime looked at the dancer. Then she looked at the bound form by the fire. A red spittle bubbled on her lip as she hissed, “Burn him!”

But the dancer was staring beyond Rime, and he wore a look of horror as he pulled the dagger from her back.

Indeed, Ronal always knew when Spyder needed him. The former gladiator ran into the clearing, his gaze focused on Rime. The witch was down, but not yet dead. The drummers leaped up. One of them threw a drum at Ronal’s legs before he could reach his target. He dodged it, but they were on him. He cut and slashed with an expert fury.

Spyder twisted and drove his knee into one of his captors. He’d distracted Rime while Ronal worked his way behind her. Now, nothing but sheer ferocity would win the game. Freeing his sword arm, he drew the Enlibar blade and slashed through his second captor. Two more Nis rushed at him. He cut them down ruthlessly.

But a ring of witches had encircled Rime, and within that ring still another ring of witches. He rushed at them, then staggered under a chaotic assault of hastily cast spells. Some commanded him merely to stop; some ripped the breath from his body. Pain spells, blindness spells, even love spells. For a moment, he felt himself drowning on dry land, the next moment he saw his sword turn into a serpent in his grasp, then back to steel. There was no order to the assault, and one spell interfered with another, so that all of them lacked sufficient power. Still, he reeled.

Then he screamed as a pair of witches in the inner ring lifted Lisoh’s squirming, mummy-wrapped body.

A terrible cat-cry ripped the air, a scream louder than his own. High in a tree at the edge of the clearing, a pair of eyes gleamed with green anger. A panther, sleek and black, poised on a branch with its gaze fixed on Rime.

Spyder cried out, “
Shahana
!”

The panther sprang, landing on the back of an inner-circle witch. But that one was not its prey. In an instant, the creature was on Rime. Its jaws closed savagely on her neck. One powerful rear leg raked open the witch’s belly. Necklaces broke, and jewels scattered like colored rain.

Still, the Nis sought to close ranks around their mistress. Two hurled themselves at the panther, oblivious to the death-dealing claws, and the two bearing Lisoh lifted him and threw him into the flames.

If the boy screamed, he could not be heard over the screams of the witches, the panther, and Spyder, himself. He waded into the witches, blind with hate and rage and shame. Even when the witches finally broke ranks and tried to flee, he chased them, cut them down mercilessly.

And the panther, with teeth and claws, claimed as many lives.

When no foes remained standing, his rage still not spent, Spyder seized a brand from one of the fires and flung it at the Vasalan ship. The flames caught in a coil of rope, spread along the deck, touched the furled sail and climbed the mast.

Only then, with the heat of the burning vessel scorching his face did Spyder drop his sword and sink to his knees. “I’m sorry,
Sha-hana
,” he cried. “I promised you, but I failed!”

The panther padded slowly to his side.

“Regan! The beast… !” Ronal called from the far side of the clearing where he sat leaning against a tree unable to stand.

Spyder looked into the panther’s eyes and touched its blood-matted shoulder. The beast hung its head and gave a low growl. Then, its form shifted, stretched, and transformed.

“I’ll be damned,” Ronal said quietly. “I knew there was something strange about her.”

Aaliyah and Spyder fell into each other’s arms and wept together, and Spyder wondered how they could ever share love again through so much pain. He hadn’t known the boy, Lisoh, but he knew what Lisoh meant to Aaliyah. And he had promised—he had promised. Through his tears, he looked up. The fog had melted away. In the sky, the moon was past full eclipse.

With an effort, Spyder got to his feet and, picking up his sword, went to Rime’s body. Her mouth, though caked with mud, seemed turned up at the corners as if the bitch were still laughing at him. For a long moment he stood there letting the rage wash over him again, then the grief, then a terrible emptiness.

He raised the sword once and cut off her right hand. The untem-pered ring went into his pocket. It was evidence for Jamasharem. Unless he decided to keep it.

A second time he raised the sword and cut off her head. That was for spite. Then he cast hand, head, and her entire body into the flames to burn with Aaliyah’s brother.

The rest of them could rot in the mud.

“She’s a shapechanger,” Spyder explained quietly. He didn’t feel obligated to tell Ronal that he was the witch, or rather, the warlock, and that the weird weather tricks had been his. Perhaps in time. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust his friend, but some secrets were best kept. Especially in Sanctuary.

Ronal sat on the couch with his swollen left leg in a swath of herbal poultices and bandages. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said after a pause. “That knife-toss should have found the witch’s heart.”

“You did well, Ronal.” He turned and stared from the rooftop parapet out toward the bay. Half to himself, he added, “My knives are always where I need them.”

His knives. His agents.

After another long pause, Ronal asked, “Are you going to keep the ring?”

Spyder pursed his lips. Though the ring was untempered and would never be as potent as it was intended to be, it was not entirely without power. He wasn’t sure yet if he wanted to hand that unexplored power to Jamasharem. “For now, it’s safe in my vault. I may destroy it.” He had no idea how to accomplish that, but he was certain it would take more than his meager talent.

Aaliyah appeared at the top of the stair with a tray of food and a fresh jug of wine. She set them on the table by the couch within Ronal’s reach and went to Spyder’s side. He slipped his arm around her and drew her close. “
Quanali muriel maha elberab canta
,” he whispered.

A sudden chill touched the air, but this time he wasn’t the cause.

“It’s beginning,” he told her as he glanced toward the sky. Slowly the sun began to weaken and fade. He swept his gaze over the harbor below, then westward toward the Maze and the Bazaar, then toward the palace.

“Why do I have a feeling you don’t mean the eclipse?” Ronal said as he bit into a roll.

“Witches, wizards, demons—even shapechangers.” He forced a smile as he tilted Aaliyah’s face toward his and kissed her forehead. “The Nisi covens are finished for good, but the things I’ve seen in two weeks’ time. The things I’ve heard. We’re all being drawn to Sanctuary again. It’s as if we’re being assembled for something. For what, I don’t know.”

The sky grew sullen and cool. Birds took to the air and flew in confused circles. Dogs barked. Everywhere Spyder looked people stood in the streets, on the docks, or on their own rooftops. They watched, too, with an uncharacteristic hush.

Slowly, the sky darkened, and the shadows of Sanctuary twisted into strange shapes as a black disk crawled across the sun. When it was finally in place all that remained where the sun had been was a flickering blood-red ring.

Spyder was not looking up, however. The placid, almost mirror-smooth surface of the bay held his attention. It reflected the spectacle in the sky with an uncanny precision. He wondered if anyone else saw it. He wondered if Aaliyah noticed.

On the bay was another ring of sea and fire.

“Thank you, healer,” the gray-haired woman whispered as the potion took effect. Pel Garwood straightened his long back and stood up, taking the empty cup away from her lips.

“That should ease your back for a good week, until the full moon. You can chew this then,” he held up a twist of green and gold herb strands, “to take away the pain for a day or two. I need the moon to make a potion that will last you a whole month. I can’t cure what ails you, you know. I can only ease it.”

“It’s the penalty for living so long,” Sharheya said. “I’m too old to expect miracles. I’m grateful for the relief.”

“How much?” asked Carzen the sawyer, Sharheya’s son-in-law, eyeing the apothecary warily. Pel’s mass of black-and-silver hair and smooth face confused people as to his age, but his calm bedside manner gave him the air of a sage, too dignified to argue with.

Pel held up long fingers to count. “Nine padpols for today, another for the twist. A bright silver soldat for the month-long cure.”