The Magehound (38 page)

But there had been other wounds, and he felt them now as he and the centaur circled each other warily. Several ribs had been cracked. One had pierced a lung. He was drowning in his own blood even as he fought.

But fight he did, as best as he could, while Kiva hurled spell after spell at the small woman in the tree.

A flicker of fear went through the wemic as he considered the probable result of the spell battle. As he feared, the laraken reared up, sniffing the air like a tired wolf who scents an easy meal. The creature turned away from the fighters and began to wade toward Kiva.

Mbatu roared in protest and leaped directly at the laraken’s throat. He held on with his leonine fangs and his claws, not expecting to deal a death blow but hoping to hold the creature off long enough to allow Kiva to escape.

But the laraken plucked the wemic from its throat and gave its latest tormenter a single hard shake. Mbatu’s spine snapped with an audible crunch. The laraken tossed him aside and advanced on the elf woman and her nourishing magic. As it moved closer, its many wounds started to heal and spears dropped away as knitting tissue expelled them.

Kiva’s fireball spell fizzled into smoke as the creature drew near. Her hands faltered, and her copper face began to pale as the laraken drank in her magic. In a heartbeat, she was weaving on her feet, her eyes fixed on the approaching creature as a mouse might eye a swooping hawk.

Matteo saw the course of battle reversing before his eyes. If the laraken regained strength, they could not destroy it. Again he ran up the spine of the laraken. Desperate now, he flung one arm around the creature’s neck. Pulling his dagger, he reached around and pulled the dagger hard toward the laraken’s face. He steeled himself for the crush of those lethal fangs.

But his aim was true, and the dagger plunged deep into the laraken’s eye with a sickening pop and a hot gush of fluid.

The laraken roared, twitching and pawing at its head. Claws raked Matteo’s arm, slashing through sinew and grating on bone. Bright pain darted through his arm and exploded behind his eyes. He let go and fell, rolling aside and barely escaping the pounding feet of the frantic laraken.

The creature rushed instinctively toward the spring, brushing past Kiva in its desperation to feed and heal. The elf woman was tossed aside like a leaf in the wind. She came up on her hands and knees and began to chant.

Instantly the stream began to boil, and bubbles as large as men rose from the water. The laraken dived into one of the bubbles and disappeared.

Kiva, pale as death, lurched to her feet and staggered toward the spring, brandishing a square of dark silk. She tossed this over the bubbling water. The silk turned dark as water soaked it, then sank into the spring. Water and silk disappeared, leaving a bed dry and empty except for a few fish that gasped and floundered in the thin air. Kiva sank to her knees, wavered, and then fell heavily onto her face.

Tzigone slid down the tree and raced over to Matteo’s side. He struggled to a sitting position and she dropped to her knees beside him. For a long moment, she regarded the deep gashes that ran from wrist to elbow.

“Well, that’s pretty disgusting,” she announced.

Matteo chuckled weakly. “Get Andris. He knows how to clean and stitch wounds.”

She rose and looked around for the tall jordain. Andris was bent over one of the wounded men, his touch deft and sure as he bandaged a wound. He, too, had suffered from the attack. His form still retained its distinctive colors, but it was translucent. Looking at him was like looking at a rainbow in human form.

Tzigone hurried over and grasped his elbow, relieved to find that he still felt solid. “Matteo needs you.”

Andris quickly finished his work and came to his friend’s side. His expression was somber as he examined the wound. He took out needle and fine gut thread and began to stitch. Tzigone paced as he worked.

“Well?” she demanded.

“Deep, but clean. There is little tearing across the muscle. Fortunately the talons on that creature were sharp as knives.”

“How lucky can a man get?” she muttered. “Will he be all right? I know how quickly a wound can turn bad in a swamp.”

“He’ll be fine,” Andris assured her in a soothing voice.

Tzigone stopped and prodded the translucent jordain with her foot. “Don’t lie to me,” she warned him. “I can see right through you.”

“Tzigone,” Matteo said wearily. “Go check on Kiva.” That struck her as an excellent idea. She went over to the elf, seized one of her limp coppery hands, and jerked her over onto her back. Stooping, Tzigone placed her fingers against Kiva’s throat.

“She still lives,” she said in a flat voice, and then she pulled a knife from her boot and lifted it high.

Andris darted forward and seized the girl’s wrist in a translucent hand. “No,” he said softly. “I will not argue that she deserves to live, but consider the good of the land.”

“He’s right,” Matteo agreed. He rose painfully and made his way carefully through the tangle of fallen men. “Kiva didn’t close the gate. She merely moved it. We must find out where. Let her live, under the guard of the church of Azuth, until she recovers enough to submit to Inquisition. If it is vengeance you seek, her own kind will deal with her less kindly than you would.”

Tzigone gave him a baleful look. “Is that true?”

“I swear it. Magehounds are seldom merciful, even to their own kind.”

“Hmmm.” She considered this and then nodded. “Maybe I could get to like magehounds after all.”

But Matteo noticed that she still gripped the knife, and she eyed Kiva with a fury than went beyond hatred. He gently took her wrist and eased the blade from her fingers.

“Our task is done,” Matteo said softly. “The swamp has been contained, the laraken is gone. There is a balance in that. Halruaa is well served.”

“But what about us?” Tzigone said passionately. “Who among us have been well served?”

Matteo looked at his friends and at the men whom Kiva had tricked or conscripted into service. Even the brave wemic who died defending her had no doubt been stolen as a cub and trained to Kiva’s service. He considered what had been taken from all of them. And try as he might, he could not hold Kiva solely guilty.

“I’m not saying that what Kiva did was right or justified,” he said softly. “But who knows what wrongs she sought to avenge? If such grim measures were taken to mold the jordaini, what else might Halruaa’s wizards have done? What evils gave birth to what we have fought today? This is something we must know.”

Andris gathered up Kiva in his translucent arms. The tiny elf woman seemed almost to float. “That is no task for a jordain,” he said. “It is our duty to serve Halruaa’s wizards.”

“It is our duty to seek truth,” Matteo said with quiet determination. “From this day on, I will follow no other master.”

Kiva awakened to the chant of morning prayers. Moments passed before she realized she was in the care of the Temple of Azuth. Memory returned in a rush, dimming the pain that throbbed through her every bone and sinew. And worse still was the terrible void in her mind and soul.

She had been stripped of magic. Not entirely-no elf could be entirely devoid of magic and live-but her wizardly power was gone beyond recall. She wouldn’t have felt half as bereft if she’d lost sight or hearing or touch. The elf lay back on her pillows and fought against her rising despair.

There might yet be something she could do. In fact, the loss of her magic made her quest for the treasures of Akhlaur even more imperative.

But she had few defenses now, and fewer allies. Who would rally to the cause of a magic-dead magehound? Mbatu was dead-Mbatu, who would have stood beside her if she had been halt and lame and hideous. Mbatu, at least, she had not betrayed. The wemic had gone into battle honestly, knowing the risks and accepting them for love of her. Kiva took some comfort in that, especially in the face of what she had to do.

With great effort, she managed to reach the silver bell that stood on the bedside table. A cleric of Azuth answered her call, a tall man wearing a saffron tunic and a frigid expression.

“So you have awakened. Good. I will summon servants to bring broth and bread. You will need your strength to face the coming Inquisition.”

Kiva propped herself up on one elbow. “What I did was done at the behest of the queen,” she said, knowing that this would slow the Inquisition until her claim was investigated.

“Queen Beatrix bade you to subvert the jordaini? That is difficult to believe.”

“The queen suspects the jordaini order,” Kiva continued. “I slew Cassia at her command. This was my right, for Cassia was tainted by magic’s touch.

“And she is not alone in treachery,” the magehound continued. “Zephyr, the counselor to Procopio Septus, is another hidden wizard. He must be destroyed.”

The cleric gazed at her. “Many of Halruaa’s wizards might have been destroyed if you’d had your will in Akhlaur’s Swamp.”

She waved this aside impatiently. “The whole story hasn’t yet been told. When you question Zephyr, he will tell you that he wanted the laraken to die. But ask him who sired the laraken! He cannot deny his part in this. He is a soft old fool who could not kill a thing. He will deny this, but I swear before Azuth that Zephyr told me he wanted the laraken to live. He wanted all of Halruaa to suffer at the laraken’s hands.”

“But if he’s a wizard, then he would die as well.”

“Zephyr is over six hundred years old,” she said flatly, “and though that is not so old for an elf, he was greatly aged by the magic worked upon him by the wizard Akhlaur. Ask him about Akhlaur. Ask what was done to him, and then tell me that Zephyr had no part in this vengeance.

“He wishes to die,” Kiva said, speaking true at last. “But not until a great evil is avenged. Test me now. I will repeat these words, and you will see that they are true.”

The cleric hesitated, but Kiva gave a firm nod. He left the room and returned with an inquisitor. When the silver rod touched her forehead, she repeated her claim. The truth of her accusation-or at least, a damning partial truth-rang through her words like temple bells.

When the men had left to send word that Zephyr was to die at once, Kiva fell, exhausted, against her pillows. She didn’t regret this betrayal, for it was a necessary thing. Zephyr suspected her. She’d sensed that for some time. When he heard she had fought to release the laraken upon Halruaa’s wizards, he wouldn’t rest until he ferreted out the rest of her plans.

She reached for the cup of broth the servant left and forced herself to take sips of it. When some of her strength returned, she slipped out of bed and padded over to the window.

They hadn’t thought to bar it, for without her wizard’s magic, she was deemed helpless. But trees grew close to the windows, and Kiva had been raised in the jungles many, many years ago.

Moving carefully, struggling against the weakness in her limbs and the lightness in her head, she eased herself into the branches. Her strength returned as she moved, as if it flowed from the living tree into her body. For she was an elf, and as long as she lived, the magic of the forest was hers to call.

And so she escaped, fleeing into the trees as her ancestors had done, as she herself had done so many years ago, when the accursed wizard Akhlaur had stripped her people of their lives and their magic.

Matteo and Tzigone strolled down the promenade, enjoying the fine summer twilight and watching as magical lights winked on in the city below. Much had happened since the battle in Akhlaur’s swamp. After taking Kiva to the Temple of Azuth, they had gone to House Jordain and presented themselves at the Disputation Table. Dimidis had at first been reluctant to accept Matteo’s story, but his tale was bolstered by the presence of the eleven surviving men, most of them jordaini. And there was no disputing that Andris, who had “died” before their very eyes, lived on, albeit in a strangely altered form. Men who had been tested and condemned by Kiva submitted to another magehound’s tests and were found utterly free of magic’s taint.

Wizards had already begun to venture into the Swamp of Akhlaur, and they returned with tales that supported Matteo’s claims. The laraken was gone, and the encroachment of the swamp seemed to be halted. A great service had been done to Halruaa and her wizards.

All of the survivors had been pardoned from any offenses and heaped with honors. The jordaini immediately went into service to some of Halruaa’s greatest wizards. Tzigone, however, remained strangely secretive about her plans. But Matteo noted the abstracted expression on her face and suspected that she was ready to speak at last.

“I’ll be leaving Halarahh soon,” she said abruptly.

Matteo sent her a quizzical look. “The road beckons? You have not yet learned of your mother’s fate. I suppose you plan to seek her.”

“In time.” Tzigone hesitated and gave him a sheepish, sidelong glance. “Actually, I thought maybe I should learn a few things first. Get some weapons before going into battle, so to speak. I took an apprenticeship with Basel Indoulur.”

Matteo burst out laughing, drawing a glare from the girl. “Repeat after me: I am no wizard. Better say it as often as possible while you still can.”

“Very amusing,” she grumbled. “I’ve got all this magic, whether I like it or not. Maybe once I find what my true gifts are, I’ll be able to trace my parents. Looking now is seeking a coin in a dragon’s hoard. But what about you? Will you continue in the queen’s service?”

He gave his answer careful thought. “All my life, I was raised to serve a wizard patron. But I have vowed to serve truth as my own man, and will do so regardless of my circumstances. From this day, my only master is my own conscience.”

“The queen might not like that.”

“The queen might be part of the problem,” Matteo said quietly.

Tzigone considered this. “So you’re going to stay in Halarahh and seek truth amid those who shape it to their will.” She gave him a wry smile. “We’re changing places, you know.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I’m going legitimate, albeit reluctantly. You’re becoming a rogue. Of the two of us, you seem happier with the path ahead.”