Shadowdance (31 page)

"The Witch is really Kyrin's sister?" he whispered at last. Minarik didn't look at him, though Innowen was sure that he heard. It didn't matter. His silence was answer enough. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The rigidity flowed from Minarik, and he sagged, seeming suddenly older than Innowen had ever seen him. He folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes briefly. He looked at Innowen at last. When he spoke, emotion weighed heavily in his voice. "How could I tell anyone that the woman I loved and made love with was also my niece?"

Innowen's lips drew into a tight line, and he rubbed his brow with a thumb and forefinger. "She must have known, or did you find it out some other way?"

Minarik looked up at the treetops, and a faint smile flickered over his face. "Oh, she knew," he answered. "But incest was not such a crime in Mikono, where she was raised, and by the time she told me, I was too deeply in love. She teased me about it, but she wouldn't let me go, and I was too weak to leave."

"But you did leave eventually," Innowen said. "Taelyn told me that part."

Minarik went stony again, straightening his spine, turning away from his foster son to seek the ghosts of his memories in the fog. Innowen stayed with him a while longer, trying to discern for himself those vague spirits of the past, but his thoughts were too full of present concerns and fears for the days to come.

He broke the silence with an old question. "You know her name," he said softly. "Tell me her name."

Minarik shook his head. Anger surged up in Innowen's breast, and he clenched one fist. How could Minarik deny him? For five years he'd searched for the Witch, five years of his life spent on a quest as much Minarik's as his own. "Damn you!" he said, full of bitterness at his father's refusal. "Damn you!" He turned and strode away, leaving his father alone with whatever it was in the fog that so held his attention.

He almost stumbled over Riloosa. The unfortunate former advisor slumped against the boll of a tree, bound fast there with a stout rope passed several times around his waist. He said nothing when Innowen knelt down beside him, but his pain-glazed eyes rolled up sluggishly and fastened on Innowen's face. He covered his injured arm protectively.

"Let me see it," Innowen whispered, touching Riloosa on the shoulder as gently as he could. It occurred to him that he could set the broken bone to spite Kyrin and Minarik both. He had the skill; he'd learned in his travels. He could use sticks for splints and bind them in place with strips of cloth. Kyrin was nowhere in sight. If he worked quietly, and if Riloosa cooperated, he could be done in no time. The difficult moment would come when he manipulated the bone into place. Riloosa might scream and attract attention. "Let me see it," he urged again, trying his best to sound reassuring.

Riloosa pulled up the sleeve of the injured arm. Innowen bent closer, then caught his breath as he recoiled, covering his mouth and nose with one hand. A splinter of bone poked through the puffy flesh just below the elbow. The arm was nearly twice its normal size, and the skin had turned dark. A vein of black ran from the wound all the way up the inside of Riloosa's bicep and disappeared in the folds of his garment. From the puncture around the bone fragment, a thick puss oozed.

"There's nothing you can do for me," Riloosa sighed as he lowered his sleeve. Still cradling his arm, he closed his eyes once more and sagged back against the tree.

Innowen got to his feet and resumed his wandering through the encampment. Riloosa was a dead man, and it was Innowen's fault. Sure, the advisor had hated his employer, even wanted to kill him. But having a desire and acting on it were not the same. Riloosa might never have tried to harm Kyrin, no matter how he loathed him, if he hadn't seen the dance in the garden. But with sight, desire became deed. Innowen had made him attack the king as surely as if he had put the sword in his hand.

He found Rascal awake when he returned to their little camp. Wordlessly, he sat down cross-legged and stared at the fog. Razkili didn't say anything. He just draped an arm around Innowen's shoulders and pulled him closer.

Innowen began to shiver. In the swirling mists, vague shadows started to move, barely seen forms that flitted and slithered through the cool vapors, with faces too far away or too concealed to recognize, yet familiar. They whirled and leaped, floated or flew in the eddies and currents of the fog, dim creatures on the barest edge of his perception. But if he couldn't see their faces, he saw their hands plainly, dark-veined and bloated things that crooked their blackened fingers and beckoned to him.

"Leave me alone," he whispered to them, trembling.

"What's that?" Razkili said uncertainly.

Innowen stared outward, watching the shadow-play. "Nothing," he said, wide-eyed. The fog, the mist, the vapor danced for him, a slow, shifting, sensuous dance that chilled and fascinated him. "Sometimes, I think I see things," he confessed to Razkili. "Maybe it's a side effect of the Witch's healing. But most of the time I think, maybe, I'm just going mad." He sagged back into Rascal's embrace, weary of the interminable rain and the fog and the darkness. For some reason, he thought of Dyan and what he had done with her in the mud and the rain. Then he pushed the thought from his mind.

"Hold me," he begged softly, "hold me."

Chapter 13

The small village outside Whisperstone's walls had grown in the five years of Innowen's absence. Many people had moved closer, counting on Minarik's protection to save them from the raider bands and rebels that scoured the countryside, and hoping for his charity and the bounty of his stores to save them from starvation.

There were crude cottages and tents along the road, and farther off lay broad fields, which showed the visible scars of failed attempts at cultivation. Unfortunately, those fields were silvery sheets of water now, and the few scraggly plants that still poked up their heads offered little hope for any real harvest.

The villagers came out to watch as the troops rode past. They were a ragged lot, and hard times showed on their thin, gaunt bodies and threadbare clothing. Women and children turned up their faces, hunting for husbands and fathers that had joined Minarik's army for the few coins it paid and for the grain that service earned their families.

A low moaning went up from some of the women, and from someone, a shriek. From others came cries of relieved greetings as some of the crowd began to run alongside the horses of loved ones who had come home. Atop the gate and along the wall, sentries began to shake their spears and cheer, and more soldiers joined them there, adding their voices as their lord at last returned. Innowen was too tired to care. He leaned back in Razkili's arms and watched as the massive gates cranked back. Ahead of him, Minarik and Kyrin were first to enter. Straight across the main grounds and to the steps that led to the keep's main doors they rode. Whisperstone's guards pressed around them, taking their reins as they dismounted, reaching up to bear Innowen down and to help Dyan from her horse. Then he was in Rascal's arms again and up those steps and through those great doors. With a muffled boom they closed.

A tomblike quiet filled Whisperstone. A line of slaves and servants stood mutely, ready to take instruction. Innowen ,recognized none of them as he studied their aged and weather-worn faces. The servants were all old men, recruited, he guessed, from the villagers outside the walls. They had the looks of farmers and herdsmen and lacked the crisp formality of trained slaves or hired domestics.

Still, they moved with swift efficiency as Minarik gave orders. One collected all their cloaks. Another led Kyrin and Dyan away to private chambers, while two others hurried ahead to prepare hot baths. One departed for the kitchens with instructions for the staff there. One led Razkili and Innowen to quarters, while another pair began to clean up the mess the arrivals had made in the entranceway.

Innowen could feel Razkili's fatigue in the way his friend carried him as they ascended a flight of stairs. They both needed rest. He couldn't remember ever feeling so weary or so depressed. He was hungry and dirty, but more than anything else he wanted a soft bed and a chance to close his eyes and forget everything for a while.

They followed a servant, a gnarly old man with neatly cut hair and a white, well-groomed beard, as he led them through the corridors. Innowen half smiled, remembering how magical he had thought Whisperstone was when first he'd come here, how it had seemed more like a labyrinth, its passages dark and unknowable and other-worldly, how the very frescoes that lined the walls had appeared alive to him.

Now, the place seemed dank and oppressive. The dust that covered the floor and hung in the air had a flavor and odor that irritated his senses, and he was acutely aware of the ponderous weight of stone above his head. Shutters that had been closed against the rain had not yet been thrown back, and the smell of stale oil and lamp smoke wafted thick and heavy.

Maybe it had only been his innocence those five years ago that had made it seem such a wondrous place. After all, what had he ever seen of the world, then, but some woods and the four walls of a one-room cottage. He could easily remember the excitement and fear he'd felt that first night here. What a wide-eyed little boy he'd been, what a child.

Or, perhaps, Whisperstone was still a special place. He bit his lip and considered dimly. Maybe his weariness prevented him from seeing it truly, from savoring its mystery. Maybe after some rest, it would once again fire his imagination and fill him with some sense of awe as it once had done. Maybe the tawdriness would melt away, and he would discover that the keep was just as magical as he had found it that first night in all his innocence.

That word kept coming back to him.
Innocence.
Like a small voice inside his head, it mocked him, called his name.
Innocence, Innocent.
He mouthed it, moving his

lips soundlessly, matching the cadence of Razkili's footsteps.

He bit his lip again, then laid his head on Rascal's shoulder. He wanted so badly to sleep. He was too tired to think, too tired, so tired....

* * *

A faint, pitiful scream shattered Innowen's dreamless sleep. He sat straight up in bed, the hairs prickling on his neck. The sound came again, raking through Whisperstone's darkness like the edge of a blade on rock. Innowen flung back the sheets and swung his legs over the edge, barely aware that life had returned to his limbs. He stood and took a step with his hands out before him and kicked a stool with his unprotected toe. Damn, there was no light!

He waited a moment for the scream to come again. His heart thundered in his chest, the blood pounded in his ears. He waited, listening. And waited. At last, he started again to feel his way through his quarters. His hands located the shutters of a window, and he threw them open. A welcome breeze danced over his bare chest, but little illumination spilled inside from the few watchfires that burned along Whisperstone's wall.

"Rascal?" he whispered, turning slowly in the gloom. Where was his friend?

He turned back to the window. Along the wall, the sentries stood in pairs as they kept watch. If there was danger from attack, surely there would be more activity on the wall. What was that scream, then? He leaned a little further out the window and looked as far as he could in all directions. A circle of guards had gathered in conversation near one of the watchfires, and a few others strolled lazily across the main yard, perhaps off duty.

A pervasive quiet returned to Whisperstone, and his fear began to subside. If the sentries were unafraid, then he, too, could remain calm. He would wait for Razkili. Razkili would know what had happened.

He stared beyond the wall. A few lights burned in the windows of some of the more distant cottages in the village. A few gray wisps of smoke curled upward into the night.

Innowen's lips drew into a thin line. Whisperstone had changed forever. Never again would it be an isolated keep. The families that had built their homes in the shadow of its walls would stay, and their children would raise families here, and their children, too. The village would grow into a town, and the edge of the woods would be pushed farther back to make room for larger fields.

He closed his eyes and listened. Yes, he could hear the rustle of the leaves as the wind shivered through the trees. He opened his eyes again. Hard to say if he could actually see the woods. It was so dark. But he could feel it there, old and patient and pervading, part of him, for he had grown up in its heart. He could smell the bark and the dry leaves and the moist earth, though the odors of the forge and the slop barrel mingled in the air, too, like a taint.

Behind him, the door opened, and lamplight suddenly brightened the room. Without leaving the sill, Innowen looked over his shoulder.

"Innocent?" Razkili peered at him, the little flame he carried casting an upward light that limned his face with an eerie chiaroscuro. He moved halfway into the room and set the lamp on a small table. "You're awake," he said needlessly.

"What was that screaming?" Innowen asked as Razkili came toward him. "Where've you been?"

"You passed out as soon as you hit the bed," Razkili told him, "and I was afraid if I slept, too, we might both sleep through the night."

Innowen bit his lip. He knew what that would have meant, and it touched him that Rascal had thought of it.