City of Sorcery (31 page)

“Better get to bed,” Jaelle said. “Who knows what might be up for us in this place? Keep your knives handy.”

Vanessa looked at her in shock. She said, “I thought you said we were as safe here as in the Guild-house, with Arlinda - “

“Even a Guild-house can catch fire or something. Arlinda’s changed from when I knew her ten years ago. Sitting shaking in a corner while the old beldame bullies her guests - ten years ago she’d have slung Aquilara, or whatever that so-called
leronis
calls herself, out into the street on her backside.”

“You don’t think she’s a
leronis
?” Magda asked.

“Hell, no, I don’t.” Jaelle lowered her voice, glancing cautiously around as if she thought Aquilara might be lurking unseen in a corner.

“She took a lot of pains to impress us with how much she knew about us already. About Camilla having lived as a man, for instance. Anything she
could
have used against us, she would have used to put us at a disadvantage.” Jaelle stopped and glanced from Cholayna to Vanessa.

“But she couldn’t even guess that you three were Terrans. What the hell kind of
leronis
is
that
!”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

You’re right.” Magda frowned, trying to decide what this might mean. “She misses things that even Lady Rohana would have picked up. This ‘great
leronis
‘ would appear to be rather lacking in mental abilities, although,” she added grimly, “she obviously has some physical ones.”

Camilla was still sitting on her bedroll looking stunned. Magda went to her.

“
Breda
, did she hurt you?”

For a frightening minute Camilla did not reply and Magda had a brief memory picture of Arlinda, maundering suddenly like a senile old woman. Then Camilla drew a long breath and let it out.

“No. Not hurt.”

Vanessa asked, “What precisely did she do to you, Camilla? I could not see… “

“How should I know? That devil-spawn in the shape of a woman but pointed her finger at me, and it seemed that my legs would no longer hold me up; I was falling through an abyss torn by all the winds of the world. Then I found myself sitting here without wit to open my eyes or speak.”

Vanessa said, “If
that
was a representative of your Sisterhood, I do not think very highly of them.”

Cholayna, in her guise as a professional, was doing a mental analysis. “You say, Jaelle, that she hasn’t the mental abilities one would expect from most of the Comyn. The physical abilities she displayed could be duplicated by a stunner. She seemed to rely on presence and the old ‘I know what you’re thinking’ trick. She reminded me of someone running a confidence game.”

“You’re right,” Vanessa agreed. She drew herself up and solemnly intoned, “Trust me, dear children! I am the personal representative of the One True Goddess; I see all, know all; you see nothing, know nothing.” She dropped the pose and looked thoughtful. “She said we would be
summoned
. What do you suppose she meant by that?”

“I have no idea,” said Jaelle, “but I would go nowhere - not out of this house, not to the next room, not to the
cristoforo
heaven itself - at
her
summoning.”

“I don’t see that we have a choice,” Cholayna said. “If she, whoever and whatever she is, has Anders and Rafaella, or even knows where they are… “

Jaelle nodded bleakly. “Right. But we’ll hang on here as long as we can. For the moment we should get some rest, be ready for whatever it is they may be planning for us. Want me to take first watch?”

Cholayna put away the little book in which she had been writing. Vanessa tied her braided hair into a scarf and snuggled down in her sleeping bag. Camilla backed herself up against the one wall of the room where there were no doors, and said to Magda in an undertone, “I feel like a fool; yet for the first time in many years I am afraid to be alone. Come and sleep here beside me.”

“Gladly,” Magda said, positioning her sleeping bag so that Camilla lay protected between her and the wall. “I’m sure that creature - I refuse to call her
leronis
- would send us nightmares if she could manage it.”

The fire burned low; Jaelle had kept one of the lamps lit, and she was sitting up on her sleeping bag, hand ready to her knife. Magda touched the hilt of her own knife… Jaelle’s knife; years ago, they had exchanged knives, in the age-old Darkovan ritual binding them to one another. It was familiar now as her own hand.

She thought, now that we are safe here I should try and let them know, in the Forbidden Tower, that we are safe. And I would like to know that the children are well and content. She composed herself for sleep, one hand touching the silken bag at her throat where her matrix rested. Drowsing, she let her mind start to range outward. An instant later she was in the Overworld, looking down through grayness at her apparently sleeping form, the motionless bodies of her four companions.

But although she tried to move outward, into the gray world seeking the landmarks of the Forbidden Tower, something seemed to hold her in the room. She hung there motionless, vaguely sensing that something was wrong. She found herself glancing toward each of her companions in turn, tensed for flight but held there by some force she could not overcome. She was not accustomed to this, and while, out of her body, she was free of physical sensation, she felt an anxiety, a hovering fear that simulated real pain.

What could be wrong? All seemed normal; Jaelle, sitting quietly alert; Vanessa and Cholayna, the older woman lying on her side, her face hidden in the pillow and only the pale shock of hair visible, Vanessa burrowed under her blankets like a child. Camilla was asleep too, tossing and turning unquietly and muttering to herself, her face twisted into a frown. Magda silently damned Matera in every language she could think of.

Softly at first, then louder, she heard a small sound in the silence of the overworld; it was the calling of crows. Then she could see them, hooded forms, misty images gradually becoming more defined. For an instant she had a formless sense of well-being.
Yes, this is the right path. We are doing what we were born to do
.

Then the uneasiness came back, stronger than before; the crows squawked their alarm cry, raucous, shrilling through the overworld. Then a sharper scream rang through the room which was not really the room at all. Hawks! From somewhere, dozens of hawks were in the room, angling, stooping down on the crows in every direction. A great wave of emotion, combined of anger, frustration, and jealousy, emanated from the hawks - it reminded Magda of the Terran legend of Lucifer and his fallen angels, cast out from heaven and forever trying to keep others from what they had lost for themselves.

A pair of hawks, feathers falling, speckled with blood, made a dive at Camilla, and Magda snapped back into her body as Camilla woke screaming.

Or had there been any sound at all? Camilla was sitting bolt upright in her sleeping bag, her eyes wild, her arms outstretched to ward off some invisible menace. Magda touched her shoulder, and Camilla blinked and truly woke.

“Goddess guard me,” she whispered. “I saw them; ten thousand devils… and then you came, Margali, with… ” she stopped and frowned, and at last said in a confused whisper, “
Crows
?”

“You were dreaming, Kima.” The rarely used, rarely permitted nickname was the measure of Magda’s disturbance.

Camilla shook her head. “No. Once before you spoke of the emissaries of the Dark Lady as taking crow form. I am not sure I understand it… “

“I don’t either.” But as she spoke Magda had a sudden vision of Avarra, Lady of Death, mistress of the forces which break down and carry away that which is past usefulness; crows, scavengers and carrion birds, cleaning up the debris of the past.

Hawks; raptors, preying on the living…

Vanessa mumbled in protest, burrowing deeper into her sleeping bag. Magda glanced with compunction at her companions. She should not disturb them. She got up and went to the fireside, kneeling beside Jaelle.

She asked in a whisper, “Did you see anything?” and Jaelle started from an unquiet doze.

“Ayee - ! What a guardian I am! We could all have been murdered in our beds here!” She made a nervous gesture at the fire. “I saw in the flames… women, robed and hooded, with the faces of hawks, circling about us… Margali, I do not like your Sisterhood.”

Magda beckoned Camilla forward.

“We saw. Both of us. I think the hawks are - are Aquilara’s crew, if that makes any sense to you, and that they have nothing to do with the
real
Sisterhood. But the real ones are near us. They will protect us, if we listen. But if we listen to Aquilara and her threats and summonings… “

“Yes,” said Camilla gruffly, “I too have had a warning. If we stay here, we might better have died at the hands of the robbers. It is not our bodies in danger this time; they strike at the inner bastions of our minds. Our souls, if you will. It is not Arlinda or her girls that I fear, but they have somehow let this place be opened… ” she stopped and said in confusion, “I do not know what I am talking about. Is this what you two mean when you speak of
laran
?”

Jaelle looked from one to the other, dismayed. She said, “What do you suggest that we do?”

“Get the hell out of here,” Camilla said, “not even waiting for daylight.”

“A poor return for hospitality,” Jaelle said, hesitant.

“Hospitality indeed,” Camilla said dryly, “loosing such a sorceress - I will not give her the honorable title of
leronis
- upon us.”

But Jaelle was still troubled.

“Cholayna was so far right,” she said. “If Aquilara has Rafi - and Lieutenant Anders - I do not see how we can afford to leave them in her power. If she can guide us to them - “

“I think she lied, to deceive us into following her,” Camilla said.

“But in the name of the Goddess herself, for what reason?” Magda asked. “What would she want with us, and why would she try to deceive us anyhow?”

“I don’t know,” Camilla said, “but I wouldn’t believe a word she said. If she told us Liriel was rising on the eastern horizon I would look at the sky to be certain.”

For seven years it has distressed me that Camilla would not use the
laran
to which she was born. Now when she does I am trying to argue with her
, Magda thought. Yet from Jaelle she picked up the very real concern; on their actions in the next few hours, the very lives of Lexie and Rafaella could depend.

She thought,
damn them both
, and quickly retracted the thought. She had known for years that a thought was a very real thing. She did not have the
laran
of the Alton Domain, where a murderous thought could kill, but she realized wearily that she did not want any harm to come to Rafaella, who was Jaelle’s oldest friend. She felt that she would like to box Lexie’s ears, but she did not really want to see her hurt or killed. What they had done was unwise, foolish, and tiresome, but death or damnation would be too great a penalty.

What then was the answer?

“Just supposing that she told the truth - even if her purpose could have been to confuse us like this,” Magda said, “and that she really does have Lexie and Rafaella? What do we do then?”

“Wait perhaps till she comes back, and I will guarantee to get it out of her,” Camilla said; she put her hand on her knife, then let it fall, her face grim. “I was not so good at getting it out of her that way, was I?”

Jaelle said, “No. We can’t fight her like that. I think that kind of fighting would be the worst thing we could do. She would be able to use the - the emotion of it against us. Do you know what I am trying to say, Magda?”

“She could make us fight among ourselves. Against each other. That may be all the mental power she has, but I am sure she could do that or something worse. Look what she seems to have done to Arlinda.”