Master of Crows (31 page)

He closed the distance between them.  Martise leaned into the warm hands clasping her waist.  His breath tickled her throat.  “Any man?” he whispered in her ear.

Her eyes closed, and she slid her arms around him, gathered him close so she felt every tense muscle.  “Especially you.  You more than anyone.”  His hair was silk against her fingers, and she breathed the scent of oranges.  “You don’t love me, but I love you.  I will never betray you.”

Silhara kissed her, tongue teasing and coaxing.  He tasted of desperation and Gurn’s blackberry tea.  Warm hands skated over her back and across her buttocks.  Martise moaned in protest when he broke the kiss.  One hand rose to her face, long fingers caressing her cheeks, the bridge of her nose.

“Were I a rich man, I’d buy you from him.”

His bleak smile mirrored her equally bleak thoughts.

 “Cumbria of Asher wouldn’t sell you a tattered blanket if he thought you wanted it, even were you the wealthiest man in the world.”

“Does the High Bishop even own tattered blankets?”

“I don’t think so.”  His heart beat strong beneath her hand—the heart of a beggar king.  “Why didn’t you tell me the bishop was your uncle?”

He went rigid, and his seductive mouth compressed into a tight line.  “Because I never think of him as such.  He was my mother’s estranged brother, nothing more.”

Martise disagreed.  Silhara might lay claim to only a surface recognition of his relative, but there was far more between them—things dark and painful.  “Why do you hate each other?”

Silhara gazed over her head.  “We both blame the other for her death.  He hates me because I’m the reason he wouldn’t allow her back into the family embrace.  She married a Kurman savage against their wishes and shamed the Asher name.  I hate him because his pride forced her to live a short and brutal life.”  His lip curled.  “Of course, that is but first in a long list of reasons why I loathe Cumbria of Asher.”

He moaned softly when she pressed her lips to the puckered skin of his scar.  “Cumbria was one of the priests who watched as you were garroted, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.”

She reeled inwardly at such heartlessness.  That a man could stand by and watch as the child of a once-beloved sister struggled against an executioner’s hands bewildered her.  Life sometimes dictated harsh choices.  Her own mother had sold her into slavery, but out of desperation and a need to feed six other children.  Cumbria, wealthy beyond measure, suffered no such hardship.  No wonder Silhara hated him.

His black eyes gleamed triumphantly when she told him “You have trumped him at every turn.”  That light dimmed when she continued.  “And yet you will ultimately give him what he most wants.”

Her fingers dug into Silhara’s arms.  The carved angles of his face blurred.  “Please, I beg you, do not sacrifice yourself.”  She kissed his unyielding mouth, and her voice shook.  “I’d rather have the god in the world than you gone from it.”

“Sweet woman, I’m dead already.”

Silhara lifted her off her feet, enfolding her in an embrace that threatened to break her ribs.  He kissed her eyes, her nose, her mouth—heedless of her tears that made his lips glisten.  Martise tried to summon her Gift, offer a last connection and take something of him for herself.  The swell of power rose within her, and the back of her eyelids tingled with the warmth of the eldritch light flowing through her body.

Silhara set her down, grabbed her wrists, and pulled her hands from his face, abruptly severing the connection to her Gift.  “No.”

Martise started, surprised at the vehemence of his denial.  He softened it with a wistful smile.  “And don’t think I’m not tempted to take what you’re offering.  But you can never summon your Gift for any reason—not if you want to keep it secret from your master and his masters.”

He kissed her palm reverently.  “I’m sending Gurn to Eastern Prime.  He’ll be a day or so behind you.  If you need him, go to the Temple of the Moon.”  Her eyebrows rose.  Silhara chuckled.  “The beautiful Anya was kind enough, and quite eager, to offer him temporary shelter.”

“He won’t leave willingly.”

Silhara shrugged.  “But he will leave, even if I have to break both his legs and throw him onto Gnat myself.  He can return to Neith in a week’s time if he wishes.”  His dark gaze bore into her.  “You could return as well if you were free.”

Martise smeared the tears from her cheeks.  “Free or not, there will be nothing here for me in a week.”  She clutched his scarlet robe, the worn threads shredding under her hands.  “I will beg you on my knees.  Don’t do this.”

He peeled her fingers off the robe and brushed his lips across hers.  A kiss of farewell.  “Your master awaits you in the courtyard.  I won’t see you off.”  He turned away and strode to her door, pausing when she held out a supplicating hand and called his name.

“Silhara…”

His broad shoulders remained stiff, nor did he turn back to her.  “Fortune favor you, apprentice.”  The door closed with a final click.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Silence hovered over Neith, mingling with the last streamers of light as afternoon gave way to evening.  Silhara strolled across the courtyard, skirting the graveyard of broken stone and scrubgrass.  Dried twigs and shards of rock crunched under his boots as he passed the iron gates.  They hailed him in a thin wail of squeaking hinges, swaying gently in the hot breeze rolling off the surrounding plains.  His cloak fluttered behind him, the ragged ends caressing the rails and stiles of a splintered staircase as he passed.

For as long as he resided here, this part of Neith had always been quiet.  The ghosts of her builders rested peacefully, untroubled by the march of time and fate that had turned her into a crumbling ruin.  Ruin or not, Neith was home.  With her curse-laden wood, broken walls and an orange grove filled with battling crows, the manor and her lands were a haven to him, far from the teeming filth and misery of Eastern Prime’s wharves and the bleak cruelty of Conclave’s ancient seaside fortress.  His spirit always calmed at Neith, the jagged edges of his bitterness blunted by her windblown isolation.  Until now.

Silhara stopped to gaze at the shadowed oak wood and the sliver of road that cut a straight scar through its heart to the wide plain beyond.  Gurn was well on his way to Eastern Prime, guiding Gnat and a wagon loaded with livestock—Neith’s only true wealth—through a swaying ocean of giant dropseed grass.  He pictured Cael, his scruffy coat decorated in grass seed, the tip of his whip-like tail snapping back and forth as he trotted next to the rolling wagon.

He hadn’t resorted to crippling Gurn to make him leave, but he’d come close.  The servant’s melancholy at Martise’s departure turned to confusion when Silhara ordered him to pack anything of value and ride for Eastern Prime.  The confusion gave way to disbelief and fury when he questioned what Silhara’s real plans for the priests entailed.

The two men sat across from each other at the kitchen table.  Silhara sipped a cup of Peleta’s Fire, welcoming the slow burn licking his throat and ribs.  “You’ve already heard the real plans, Gurn.  I’m to meet Conclave at Ferrin’s Tor in two days.  We destroy the god and save the world.”  He shrugged and drained the last of the Fire.  Eyes watering from the spirits' effects, he raised the now empty cup to his servant.  “And I die a hero,” he wheezed.

Gurn clutched his cup of tea in a large hand.  Tension fractures blossomed across the cup’s surface beneath his tightening grip.  His free hand slashed the air in sharp motion, and his face turned red.

Silhara shoved his cup and the bottle of Fire to the far end of the table. 
“We’ll
do nothing more than load the wagon and harness Gnat.  You’ll drive it to the city.  Take Cael.  I’ve already made arrangements for you to stay with your
houri
friend Anya for a week, or longer if you wish it.”  He smiled at Gurn’s flushed features.  “You must possess considerable skills beneath the blankets.  She’s sent a message expressing her eagerness for your visit.”

Gurn didn’t return the smile, only slammed his large hands on the table hard enough to make it rock, and signed frantically.

The numbness swelling in Silhara’s heart since Martise rode off with the priests worsened.  The Fire bubbled in his belly.  He’d lost the woman he loved and now the friend he admired.  Gurn had been more companion than servant—one who understood a need for solitude but helped keep years of loneliness at bay with his quiet presence.  Silhara appreciated his loyalty, was grateful for it.  How had he, a wharf rat, managed to engender such faith in a servant turned friend?

“You can’t stay, and you can’t help.  Not here.  If you’re my friend as you say, you will do me this last favor.  When you reach Eastern Prime, find Martise.  See that she’s well.”

More angry hand waving, and Gurn’s face paled and turned pleading before Silhara’s implacable will.

Silhara frowned.  His words came out harsher than he intended.  “I’m strong, Gurn, but not invincible.  And I’m only a man.  You didn’t see what I subjected Martise to under the god’s influence.  The question isn’t if Corruption will possess me, but when.  I’m no better than lich bait, and I won’t live as a puppet.  I want you gone by sundown.”

Gurn’s mulish resistance surprised him, and Silhara was finally forced to lay a geas on him to make him leave.  Tears of frustrated rage and sorrow streamed down the giant’s cheeks as he stood by the loaded wagon and faced his master and friend a final time.

Silhara clenched his jaw, finding it difficult to speak.  “I’ve said it countless times. You’re a piss-poor servant.”  He gripped Gurn’s forearm as much in farewell as to stave off an embrace that might crush his ribs.  “Live long, my friend.  Live well.”

As with Martise earlier, he didn’t watch Gurn leave but retreated to his chamber and studied the afternoon shadows as they stretched across the orange grove.  He’d burned down two bowls from the
huqqah
before emerging to walk Neith’s inner boundaries.

A vast surge of power rushed through him when he lifted the curse wards off the wood.  The dark magic, no longer a steady drain on his strength, beat like storm tide in his blood.  Staggering against the sudden influx of power, Silhara breathed hard.  Black lightning shot from his fingers, singeing the dry scrub grass at his feet.

The wood, free of the warping curse that kept visitors at bay, brightened with waning sunlight.  Whatever darkness filled it in an hour’s time was of the sun’s descent, nothing more.  Silhara curled his hands into fists, tamping down the residual waves of magic.  He needed every bit of strength he could muster.  If such means included leaving Neith’s front entrance unguarded, so be it.

He left the courtyard and returned to the house, striding through the empty corridors until he reached the door leading out to the grove.  Ghostly echoes followed him—Martise’s alluring voice, the clatter of pots and pans as Gurn puttered in the kitchen, the staccato click of Cael’s claws on the floor as he patrolled the house.  Silhara paused a moment and listened.  Silence.

He sighed and made his way to the grove.  Like the woods at Neith’s entrance, he’d warded the orchard walls with powerful spells.  Again, Silhara absorbed the heady swell of power when he lifted the enchantments.  Entire tribes of thieves could scale those walls now and pick his trees clean.  Anger shot through him at the thought before he smothered the emotion.

The house welcomed him back with its cool shadows and pervading isolation.  Silhara closed the door to his chamber and made his way to the balcony.  Hanging low in the deepening indigo of encroaching twilight, Corruption’s star shone its brightest since it first appeared.  Silhara stared at the god’s celestial manifestation and turned his magic inward.  His thoughts, his emotions, every aspect of his spirit were locked down, shoved behind an ethereal door of warded strap hinges and mage-born locks.

Corruption would break through, but not before Silhara had him imprisoned within the shell of his body and bound to the priests who meant to destroy him.  Martise’s pale features rose in his mind’s eye.  At the edge of the night horizon the al Zafira constellation made her steady climb with her sister stars.  He smiled.  He’d done the right thing by not telling her of the symbol.  He’d be honored for sacrificing himself for a world.  None would know he’d done it for himself and one plain, enslaved woman.

The god’s star pulsed in recognition of his regard.  Silhara spread his arms wide and faced his chosen destiny.  “Shall I whore for you now, Corruption?” he whispered.

He knew little else beyond those words save a wrenching agony, as if a massive hand broke every bone in his body and ground the remains beneath a boot heel.  Darkness exploded in his vision, and he went blind to the world around him.  An ancient malice, bred of a thousand years of sleeping hate, filled him, pounding at the door guarding his soul.

Silhara blinked and saw before him not his orange grove or the indigo sky, but the bleak landscape of a familiar nightmare.  He was back on the black shores of a dead world, facing an equally lifeless ocean.  In the spill of silver-capped waves, the rise and fall of a massive dark shape, edged against a moonless night, surfed the water.  It drew ever closer to lure him into the waves.

He answered its silent summons, wading into the surf.  The tepid waves swirled sluggishly against his legs, and he struggled against their push and pull as if he swam through blood instead of water.  A whisper of sound from behind made him turn, and he trod the water, sensing the approaching leviathan at his back.

A wraith in a white leine stood on a strand of ash and burnt bone and raised a beckoning hand.  Above the dull rhythm of waves lapping against his face, her voice called out—entreating, spun of vanquished starlight.

“Come ashore, my love.”

Silhara wanted to answer, wanted to swim back, but the pull of the tide drew him steadily out, away from the shore and that last pale remnant of hope.  Water closed over his head, drawing him down, down into the yawning maw of the creature awaiting him.

Caught in a vortex of madness, he closed his eyes only to open them immediately.  This time he was back on his balcony, facing a landscape strange and warped.   He saw layers of motion and color, movement and time as if through a filter of dirty water.  His vision, altered by the god’s possession, showed him the warmth of summer stripped of its vibrancy.  Golds were faded yellows, greens only dull ash.  The twilight sky was nothing more than shades of gray dotted by the sickly gleam of dying stars.

Corruption’s sweetly poisonous greeting echoed within him. 
“Welcome, Avatar.  I have waited a long time for you.”

Silhara, his voice clear and free of the scarring rasp, inhuman in its clarity, answered.  “I’ve come willingly.  The priests of Conclave seek to destroy us at Ferrin’s Tor.”

The god laughed. 
“Then we shall play their game.  They fooled me a thousand years ago.  Not this time.”

Silhara watched his crows flutter and settle in his trees for the night.  Corruption stilled inside him, and he sensed the god’s measure.

“I will reward you, Avatar
. 
A world at your feet, kingdoms under your rule, immortality beyond your imaginings.”
  A shocking cold burned Silhara’s veins. 
“But first, a punishment for defying me.”

As if pulled by strings, Silhara’s arms rose.  Magic, more powerful than anything he’d ever wielded, roared through him.  White fire arced from his palms, spilling in cascades that raced across the ground and shot through the trees.  His grove, proof of his triumph over a lifetime of obstacles and recipient of his greatest care, burst into an inferno of charring trees and screaming birds.  Behind the protective door, Silhara’s broken soul wailed in anguish.