The Magehound (22 page)

“Red lightning. That’s never good,” muttered Tzigone. She began to edge toward the yellow awning of the fishmonger’s stall nearby.

Suddenly the lightning sizzled back, retracing the path of the spell of seeking. The light and power of the bolt seemed greatly increased in power, it was brighter and somehow weightier.

Matteo frowned. He hadn’t expected this conclusion to the spell of seeking. Few wizards could travel along the path forged by the seeking magic. The wizard he was soon to face was more powerful than he had anticipated.

He placed his hands on the hilts of his daggers as the wizard manifested before him, not drawing them but prepared to defend himself if need be.

The victim of Tzigone’s latest theft was a tall man, exceedingly long of limb and narrow through the shoulders. His lanky frame was swathed in the black-red robes of a necromancer, which swirled about him like storm clouds at sunset A faint odor of a charnel house clung to him, whispering softly but unmistakably of death. By some coincidence of fate, the man was paler than a corpse, a true albino, with eyes the color of water and skin whiter than the underbelly of a fish. The black robes cast grayish shadows on his skin.

With almost theatrical menace, the wizard began to advance, one thin hand leveled at Matteo. His skin grew paler still, so that the flesh became as clear as crystal and the skeletal form beneath was revealed.

“Behold the fate of the hands that touched my spellbook,” intoned the wizard.

“Sure, give or take sixty years,” Tzigone muttered from somewhere behind Matteo.

He shared her confidence-as a jordain, he was immune to most spells. But he wondered briefly how Tzigone might explain her own resistance to magic. After all, the spell of seeking had not worked when she carried the bag, either. The necromancer made a sharp, quick gesture with his skeletal hand and then waited expectantly. His grim hauteur quickly changed to anger when no one obliged him by withering away to bone.

He followed with a series of quick, impatient gestures. At his command, dozens of smooth, polished sticks rose from a basket in a nearby stall, all of them edged in tassels-juggler’s tools sold in groups of three as toys for children. The sticks flew into the midst of the now-empty square and clattered into formation. An odd, angular skeleton, the bones of a creature that had never known life, began to advance on Matteo.

Matteo quickly adjusted his stance and his strategy. He had never faced such a foe before, but he reasoned that every creature, alive or dead or fabricated, was held together in much the same way.

He dropped and spun as the wooden skeleton advanced. As he turned, Matteo slashed out at the joints where one of the knees might have been. The silver blade cut deep into something he could not see-not flesh, but an energy that was almost as palpable. The magical bounds were strong and did not sever entirely, but the necromancer’s creation seemed to be effectively hamstrung. It stopped suddenly, listing hard to one side as its “arms” flailed about in a quest for balance.

Matteo ducked under the wildly swinging limbs and wedged one dagger between two joints of the construct’s wooden spine. He held the blade firmly in place as he kicked the other leg out from under the magical creature. The skeleton went down with a clatter and lay twitching, but it was no longer able to move its parts. The magical flow that held the thing together followed much the same path as the energy that coursed along a living man’s spine. Sever that, and the rest was all but over.

The necromancer shrieked with rage. He advanced upon Matteo, gesturing wildly. In one hand, he held a thin strip of ripe and reeking fish. The disgusting thing flapped about as the wizard formed the gestures of his spell, gradually dissolving to an eerie, greenish light that leached into the necromancer’s hands.

For a moment Matteo froze. He didn’t recognize the spell or know how to counteract it.

But Tzigone took inspiration from the necromancer’s attack. She snatched up handfuls of eels from the fishmonger’s baskets and hurled them at the wizard. The snakelike fish tangled about his ankles, stopping his advance and distracting him from his spell. He nearly tripped, and his bobbling attempt to regain his balance would have been comical in less grim circumstances.

The necromancer ripped the entangling eels away and flung them aside. The touch of his hand turned them a glowing green and left them as rigid as sticks. One of the eels shattered against a tree trunk with a sound like breaking crockery. Shards of eel flew like a volley of arrows, bespeckling the necromancer’s robes with glowing green.

“Hey, dragon snot! Over here!” hooted Tzigone, waving her arms and attempting to draw the wizard’s attention from Matteo.

This affront to the wizard’s dignity enraged him as much as the theft of his spellbook. Crimson light began to gather in his colorless eyes, and he kicked aside the last of the eels and lunged at her.

Matteo felt the rush of cold as the necromancer closed in, and he understood the nature of the spell. A rare few necromancers could summon a lich’s touch, a dangerous spell that copied the paralysis of limb and spirit caused by the touch of an undead wizard. But Matteo stepped between the wizard and Tzigone and seized the glowing hand that reached out to seize her.

He accepted the terrible numbing chill, an attack that would have frozen most men in place as surely as the blast of an ice dragon’s breath. Forcing aside the icy pain, he tightened his grip on the wizard’s hand and gave it a hard, quick twist. The delicate bones gave way with a sickening crunch.

It was a cruel defense, one Matteo hated using, but he knew of no other way to stop the wizard’s magical offensive short of killing him.

The necromancer howled in pain and fury, a lingering sound that rose in pitch to become an eerie wail. He fell away, backing off from the jordain and quite literally shrinking as he retreated.

He also began to change. Bones creaked and popped as they took new form. His nose bulged, then snapped outward into a long muzzle. His robes fell away, and white hair sprouted from his pallid skin. In moments the wizard’s human shape was entirely gone, replaced by that of a lean and ghostly wolf.

It was a reasonable strategy, one that Matteo had anticipated. Although the wizard’s spellcasting was finished for quite some time by the injury to his hand, any necromancer of power kept several spells at the ready, magic that could be activated without word or gesture. And now, as a wolf, the wizard would not need magic to attack.

Apparently he’d also had the foresight to unleash magic designed to leave Matteo vulnerable to fang and claw. As the jordain raised his daggers into guard position, he noted that the tips were beginning to glow with heat. He quickly tossed them aside, steeling himself to do what he would have to do.

The ghostly wolf’s lips curled, baring preternaturally long, sharp fangs and an expanse of blackened gums. The creature snarled and crouched for the spring.

Matteo timed his defense, then leaped forward to meet the wolf-wizard. He spun on one foot and kicked out high and hard with the other as the creature rose to the apex of its leap.

His booted foot caught the creature squarely in the chest. He danced back as the wolf dropped to the ground, a look of human surprise on its pale face. But no breath stirred the great white chest, and the wolf-wizard never uttered another sound. The heart stopped on impact and would never beat again.

Numbly Matteo watched as the wolf slowly melted back into human form. If possible, the waxen, white body of the wizard seemed even more inhuman than the abandoned wolf shape.

He was aware of Tzigone edging close. The girl prodded the still figure with a tentative foot, then touched her fingers to the silence pulse on the necromancer’s white neck. She rose and stared at Matteo, her eyes huge.

“You killed him,” she said incredulously. “With one kick, you killed him.”

“I could have stopped him without great injury had he permitted me the daggers,” Matteo said shortly, mistaking her astonishment for disapproval.

In truth, he was far more stunned than Tzigone by the ease of the man’s death. Matteo had trained for battle since he was old enough to hold a wooden pole without falling on his backside, but this was the first time a man had died by his hand. It seemed to him that such a thing should not have been so easy. Something so momentous, so final, should have been harder to do, and it should have taken far longer. Perhaps then he would have had time to reconcile himself to his actions. Perhaps then he would not be standing here staring at the dead man, marveling at the cold hollow place the unknown man’s sudden absence left within his own heart. It seemed to him that a hidden room within him had been opened, one whose existence he had never suspected. He could kill. He had killed.

“He need not have died,” he said softly. “I wish that he had not, even though he meant us harm.”

“Poor bastard,” Tzigone said in full agreement. For some reason, her cavalier choice of words grated on nerves left strangely raw.

“The man is dead,” he said coldly. “He died trying to retrieve his rightful property, which you took from him. I do not expect you to take any measure of responsibility for his death, but I will not listen as you deal him further injury. Who are you to malign his name so foully?”

Tzigone fell back a step. For a moment she stared at Matteo, her painted eyes huge in a face gone suddenly pale. She couldn’t have looked more startled and betrayed if he’d dealt her an open-handed blow.

She recovered quickly, gave another of her expressive shrugs, and disappeared around the corner with a speed that Matteo, had he not seen some of her other tricks, might well have considered magical.

Zephyr reached into his pocket for a coin. It was a small task, one that should have been easy, yet the elf jordain was hampered by his palsied hand and the slow, tremulous movements of extreme age.

He marked the impatience on the urchin messenger’s dirty face and cursed his own frailty. Of a certainty, he had lived too long.

Yet the information the street lad had brought him was worth the fee, worth the trouble it took to retrieve it, and perhaps even worth the terrible chore that living these last few years had become. According to Zephyr’s informants in the markets, the girl who now called herself Tzigone had been spotted in the city wearing the garb of a street performer, and in the company of Procopio’s newest and most earnest jordain.

This was an unexpected stroke of luck. Zephyr was certain Matteo would tell him what there was to know. He doubted the young man was capable of dissembling even if he wished to do so.

With a personal link to Tzigone established, Zephyr would have her in hand in no time. Then he would be able to pass the girl along to Kiva, and the terrible evil that the two elves had set in motion nearly two centuries past would finally be destroyed.

The thought cheered Zephyr considerably. It was for this purpose that he lived, and only for this purpose. When the laraken died, Zephyr could leave his worn-out body and travel to Arvanaith, the final homeland of the elves.

An almost overwhelming flood of emotion swept him, carried by the beckoning voices of all those who had gone before so very long ago. The elf squeezed his eyes shut and fought against the ways of nature and his own deepest longings.

With difficulty, he composed himself and dismissed the urchin, then hobbled off in search of his patron. It was his job to provide Procopio Septus with information, but on occasions such as this, it was far more important to control what and how much the wizard heard. Matteo’s involvement was a mixed blessing. The young man might be able to help Zephyr find Tzigone, but it wouldn’t do to have Procopio inquire too closely into his counselors’ affairs.

The elf found Procopio in the kitchen garden, admiring the silhouettes of the serving girls as they stretched high to pick fat crimson pods from the bean trellis.

The old jordain sighed. His patron had children enough, born on both sides of the blanket. While it was true that a future king needed heirs, a surplus of potential successors seldom boded well for a kingdom. Some other time, Zephyr would have to remind Procopio of his history lessons.

The elf saw no real need for urgency, in his opinion, Procopio was no king. Nothing about the man suggested Zalathorm’s fabled judgment and foresight. Zephyr considered Procopio Septus to be reckless and impulsive and far too open with his ambitions. But then few humans had an elf’s patience, and few elves possessed Zephyr’s resolve. The old jordain knew only one other elf willing to work for more than two centuries to right an ancient wrong.

The old elf firmly put aside such thoughts and hobbled into the gardens. It was wise to bury one’s secrets before entering the presence of a Halruaan diviner.

The real reason for Procopio’s presence among the kitchen servants soon became apparent. A basket of doves stood ready for plucking, and several more of the birds flew circles about the tall, hive-shaped dovecote that dominated the south side of the kitchen gardens. Auguries were usually read from the random flights of wild birds, but Procopio had devised a way to read the future in the flight of birds lured in for table use. The diviner was quite fond of roasted dove, so the spell served two purposes at once.

“What counsel do the doves offer, my lord?”

The wizard glanced up at Zephyr’s hail, and his satisfied smile broadened. “Enough to know that you have news for me.”

The elf acknowledged this with a slight bow. “That is true, my lord, but bear in mind that no news is entirely unmixed. The birth of spring heralds the death of winter.”

Procopio dismissed this cautionary proverb with an impatient wave. “This much I know from the birds: There was a disturbance in the market, one that can shift the course of my future. From you, I require detail.”

“Your auguries tell true.” Zephyr briefly related the story of Matteo’s misadventure.

Procopio paled when he heard of the challenge between his new counselor and a jordain employed by his most serious rival for Zalathorm’s throne. As Zephyr hoped, Procopio was too concerned for his own political future to inquire into the identity of the young woman who had played the part of alchemist in this particular brew.