The Summoner (39 page)

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The darkness seemed to last forever. At last, Tris felt the spirits wane, sated with their kill. He chanced a look skyward, to see the bright disk of the moon obliterated by a dark orb, which gradually slipped sideways, until at last, after what seemed an eternity, the moonlight shone again. The fog, its bloody work complete, rolled reluctantly back toward the forest.

We have kept our bargain, kin of Bava K’aa, the voices howled. None held by force were harmed.

Now, give us our rest.

Gathering the last of his remaining strength, Tris stretched out his arms in blessing. As he began to murmur the words of power, he felt the spirits swirl around him, but their mood was longing, grieving, lonely. He drew strength from the compassion that welled up in him for the spirits’ long exile, their betrayal, their loss and grief, and wove that strength into the final blessing, working the passing‐over ritual. In the plains of spirit visible only to the mageborn, Tris could see the souls that awaited release, and in the distance, at the edge of darkness, felt more than saw the presence of She Who Rules the Night.

Her call to the lost spirits was the sweetest thing his soul had ever heard, although he could never utter it in mortal tongue. Even his own spirit yearned toward it, though his body anchored him from following.

Rest now, Tris said in benediction as the revenants began to slip free of the bonds that held them to the forest. Rest forever.

As if he were suddenly released from the clutch of strong fingers, the spirits left him, and Tris fell to his knees, too spent to feel the ground rush up to meet him as everything went black.

When Vahanian dared to open his eyes, the glade was still. The ghosts of Ruune Videya had 329

taken their vengeance well. Strewn about the camp like broken dolls, the slavers lay in contorted heaps, faces twisted with fear. Heavy wagons were upended like toys amid shredded tents. Tris lay face down in the midst of the wreckage, motionless. Of the captives, there were none in sight, save for Alyzza, who stumbled toward Tris, her eyes bright with madness.

Vahanian signaled cautiously for the others to leave their hiding place, and he heard Carina gasp as she spotted Tris. The healer broke into a run to reach him and gently turned him over.

“Is he—” Vahanian started.

“Alive,” Carina nodded, tears in her eyes. “I don’t know what he did, or how he did it, and I don’t think I want to. But he’s drained himself badly,” she said. “He’s going to have one hell of a headache when he comes around.”

“What about the rest of the captives, are they dead like the slavers?” Vahanian asked as Carroway and Berry spread out among the fallen bodies.

“There is no need to fear for the safety of the other captives,” a voice said from behind them.

Vahanian wheeled, sword in hand, then stared in astonishment at the flaxen‐haired man who emerged from the darkness. “They are safe. They have scattered, but nothing your friend summoned will harm them,” the newcomer vowed, walking closer with an uncanny gliding step.

The aristocratic man stopped an arm’s length from Vahanian and then bowed low in respect.

“Who are you?” Carina asked, although Vahanian would have bet the healer could guess the nature of their visitor.

“I am Gabriel,” the vayash moru replied. “I serve the Dark Lady, our mistress,” he said as if 330

it were a common introduction. “I have been sent for you.”

“Why?” Vahanian asked suspiciously.

“The spirits of the forest obeyed your friend’s command,” Gabriel said smoothly, “But there are other, less natural, beings that serve the Darkness. My Lady has sent me to guide you safely to a place where you might spend the night and attend to your needs.”

“Ah, Jonmarc,” Carroway said, his eyes never leaving Gabriel, “Tris and I had really bad luck the last time a ghost found us a place to stay—”

“You do this a lot?” Vahanian questioned, and Gabriel turned his unreadable eyes on him.

“The Lady watches over her own,” Gabriel replied.

“You know him?” Carina exclaimed. Berry, wide‐eyed, shrank between Vahanian and Carina, wary but fascinated.

“Uh, we’ve met,” Vahanian managed, and Gabriel’s thin lips formed a faint smile.

“Your companions are known to my mistress,” Gabriel replied in a courtly tone. “Their quest is familiar to Her.”

“We can tell by how easy it’s been,” Vahanian muttered.

Behind them, deep in the forest, there was a rustling noise, and a howl not made by any crea-331

ture Vahanian could name.

“Come,” Gabriel said. “Dawn is not far off. Follow me.” He leaned down and lifted Tns’s motionless body as if he were a sleeping child, carrying him effortlessly at a brisk stride.

They followed in silence down a path all but obscured by the thick branches of the forest.

Without prompting, the group packed closely together in the center of the trail. It was as if the forest itself were watching them, Vahanian thought. He was as relieved as any of them when they finally emerged and saw a crossroads ahead, and just past it, the welcoming lanterns of an inn. Gabriel led them up the back stairs, to a room large enough for the group, and laid Tris on one of the beds.

“I will make arrangements with the innkeeper. You will be safe here,” Gabriel said.

“Just like that?” Vahanian asked. “You’re going to leave us here?”

Gabriel nodded. “We will meet again. You have far to travel before your quest is complete. But this message I bear from the Sisterhood. Tris must not pass the Dhasson border. Arontala spelled the border, and called the beasts that threaten the northern kingdom. The spell is particular. Should Tris try to cross into Dhasson, the beasts will mass. He will not survive.”

Unbidden, memories of those beasts came to Vahanian, far too real. “Then where—”

“You must travel to the Library at Westmarch,” replied Gabriel.

“I was supposed to get paid in Dhasson,” Vahanian said levelly.

Gabriel slipped a signet ring from his left hand and gave it to Vahanian. “The ring alone is worth 332

your trouble,” the vayash moru said evenly. “Consider it a downpayment. After Tris has gained what he needs at the Library, you will go to Principality City. There, my accounts—and King Harrol’s—are more than sufficient to pay what you were promised.”

“We weren’t going to Principality City,” Vahanian said edgily.

“No?” Gabriel said with an unsettling smile that showed the tips of his long incisors. “The bounty on your head in Margolan rivals even the royal bounty for your life in Eastmark,” Gabriel replied,

“and you are… shall we say, ‘unwelcome’… in Nargi. The border of Dhasson swarms with magicked beasts. Where would you hide, Jonmarc, except in Principality, with its mercs and its hired swords?”

At Vahanian’s stare, Gabriel chuckled. “Do not marvel that you are known to the Sisterhood. For now, at least, Tris’s road and yours is the same.”

Vahanian turned away with a curse, slipping the ring onto his left hand. Gabriel looked to the others. “I will aid you were I can. But now, rest. You need fear no more from the slavers.”

“Milord,” Carina interjected, addressing Gabriel. “Please let me add something. I am called Carina Jesthrata, and my brother and I were also heading to Dhasson on an urgent mission,” she continued, her voice fervent. “We traveled from Isencroft, where I was… am… healer to King Donelan. The king lies under a wasting spell, and he is dying. Kiara Sharsequin, his heir, sent us to find the cure. We know that the Sisterhood has a great citadel in Dhasson, near Valiquet, where some of their best healers are said to be. We were traveling there to see if they might have a cure.”

Gabriel looked thoughtful. “The Dark Lady indeed has her hand in this,” he murmured. “M’lady,”

he said respectfully, “I am sorry, but I cannot assure your safe passage to Valiquet.” He paused.

“There is, however, a smaller holding of the Sisterhood in Principality City. If you traveled with 333

the group, perhaps the Sisters could advise you.”

Carina looked crestfallen.

“There is something more to consider,” Gabriel went on. “The Library at Westmarch is renowned for its books. You may find some healing knowledge in the wizard’s library.”

Carina nodded slowly. “If the Library is controlled by the Sisters, perhaps I can find someone there who can help me, or get me to the Sisters in Dhasson.”

“There is one more thing,” Gabriel continued. “The beasts hunt the forest between here and Westmarch.” Gabriel looked at Vahanian, and his gaze implied more than the mercenary cared to acknowledge. “They fear only fire. Take pitch and make torches and arrows that can be lit at a moment’s notice. Only then can you turn the beasts.”

“Easy for you to say,” Vahanian murmured acidly.

“Thank you,” Carina replied. But without seeming to pass among them, Gabriel vanished.

“Does it matter if I don’t like this at all?” Carroway groused.

Berry bounded up beside Vahanian, and he marveled that after everything they had survived, the girl was actually skipping. “Do you believe that?” she exclaimed. “A real vayash moru, and he knew Jonmarc, and he didn’t eat us or anything!”

The girl’s open excitement brought a tired smile even to Vahanian. “Stick with us, Berry, you’ll be amazed,” he quipped. But the smile faded and as the fighter looked at Tris’s still form.

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“What are you going to do?” Vahanian had taunted not long ago. “Darken the moon? Tame the vayash moru? Raise the dead?” Tonight, Tris had done just that. Come their arrival in Principality City, that knowledge would force a choice. If, as Vahanian had sworn so many times, he truly wished for his vengeance on Arontala, committing his loyalty to the young exiled mage might give Tris a fighting chance. Vahanian looked away, not yet ready to make his decision. It might, he thought darkly, be made for him, and for all of them, if the will of the Lady was not to be denied.

CHAPTER TWENTY‐ONE

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Jared Drayke reined in his skittish stallion, jerking back on its bit so hard that the animal reared.

Around them, the smoke from the burning village hung in a haze over the winter afternoon, and the fires that still flamed high above the remaining structures made the courtyard unnaturally warm.

“That’s the last of them, Your Majesty,” the captain reported with a crisp bow.

“Are you certain?” Jared asked, surveying the destruction.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the captain repeated. “There’ll be no vayash moru from this village to 335

plague the rest of us, you can be sure of that,” he said with a satisfied smile.

Jared watched the thatched roof of one of the buildings give way in a shower of sparks. “Good work, captain.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” the soldier replied, bowing once more. “Orders, Your Majesty?”

“You know what to look for,” Jared replied, bored with the charade he was committed to maintain. “Burn the monsters out, and any who give them aid.”

The captain nodded. “Yes, Your Majesty,” he answered, then turned to round up his scattered soldiers as Jared wheeled his horse and re‐joined his bodyguards.

“A good day’s work, don’t you think, Your Majesty?” asked his companion, a baron recently come into his title.

“Just a drop in the bucket,” Jared replied ill‐temperedly as they rode toward Shekerishet. “You should hear the petitions that come pleading for my help,” he said, watching the credulous baron out of the corner of his eye. “Filthy monsters stealing children, slaughtering livestock, laying waste to entire villages. And all with the help of that shadowy Sisterhood,” he added.

“Never trusted them,” the baron added fervently. “Probably spirit the children away themselves for blood rites or some such thing.”

“Would you like to see one put to the test?”

“A Sister?” the baron gasped. “You’ve captured one?”

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“I’ll be interrogating her when I return to the palace. Care to join me?” Jared enjoyed the look of utter anguish on the baron’s pudgy face, torn between the request of his king and his own fear.

“If it would please my king,” the baron choked out finally, his jowls atremble.

Jared turned to hide the amusement that curled his lip. “You may find it… enlightening,” he said, spurring his horse on faster so that his guards rushed to follow.

The baron followed Jared hesitantly into the stables, and remained as far behind as protocol would allow as they made their way down the sharply twisting stairs into the lower regions of the palace. Carved into stone with solid rock jutting high overhead, Shekerishet was built into the cliffs, and its dungeons descended into caves deep beneath the mountain. For almost five hundred years, Shekerishet watched over Margolan, a brooding, silent fortress, unbreached by any enemy.

It was to its deepest regions that Jared led the baron. This was the realm that Arontala claimed as his own. It was here that the most useful captives were brought for interrogation—those suspected of magecraft, or the unfortunates truly likely to be genuine vayash mora.

The pudgy noble was white with fear, his hands trembling so badly that he was forced to hook his thumbs in his belt. Jared admitted to himself that he had more than an inkling of the same uneasiness. A good deal more, he thought, given that he alone knew just how powerful Arontala had become, growing stronger with every wretch he tortured and killed. Arontala was adept at dampening the powers of his captives, preferring most often to drug them with wormroot—a potion that disassociated their powers.

So it was that their captive awaited them. She knelt, bound hand and foot, bent over at the waist so that her forehead nearly touched the ground, resting or asleep, or perhaps just drugged beyond the point where she could hold herself upright. Matted brown hair spilled from beneath her cowl, and the brown robe that marked her as one among the Sisterhood was torn and 337

muddy, testimony that her capture had not come easily. Nor cheaply, Jared thought with a frown, as he recalled how many guards had died in the attempt to breech the mages’ strong-hold.

Arontala waited for them, greeting them with the barest nod of his head, almost one the shadows that danced along the cold stone walls in the torchlit chamber. Around them, the instruments of inquisition littered the benches and tables, stained dark with the blood of past victims. Another figure, the inquisitor, stood silent and formidable in his dark tunic. Jared saw the fat little baron swallow in fear and step backward, until the solid wall blocked his way. This one doesn’t even require a hostage to know his place, Jared thought with a smile. A glance from Arontala would have him groveling for an easy death.