***
The woman took time to explore a bit before the slave returned with their supper. The room she had been given was the last in an ell of the inn. The rest of the rooms on the hallway were empty, with gaping doorways, and the window at the end of the hall showed scabrous fields and woods without.
The window in her room was barred and she spent several minutes loosening two of them in case a quick exit was needed. This, in addition to a brief wash, filled the time until Danald returned with their meal.
He edged with particular care into the room. As soon as he was inside, the woman closed and barred the door behind him.
That sound in the hallway just as the bolt fell home could have been rats, she supposed with a secret grin. At least the two-legged variety.
Danald had ignored her actions in his attentions to their meal. A heavy tray contained a scrawny bird roasted with some nameless herbs and a tureen of soup that sent up whiffs of not unpleasant steam. The two bottles of wine the woman had requested had grown to three, she noticed, but they were unopened. Bread and potatoes completed their meal.
Danald had received a brief but adequate washing in his absence. Though traces of dirt lingered here and there the overall effect was a pleasing change. His hair, which had been a matted brown mess, could now be seen to be fair. His hands were quite clean and even his feet had acquired only a faint patina of grime on his trip back.
He displayed the food with loving attention.
"Look, here is stew and bread and a guinea and fried potatoes. And wine! But only one plate," he ended, dispirited.
"Nonsense, there are lots of plates. Here is one beneath the bread and a big one under the bird. That must be yours."
With adroit fingers the woman slid the roasted bird onto the tray and began filling the empty platter with food. A huge chunk of bread, three potatoes, most of the guinea and a generous helping of the thick stew followed each other, Danald watching intently. She set this down before him and handed him a spoon.
He seized the spoon with reverence, then moved his eyes slowly up to her face. A tentative smile, a mere fetus of a smile, pulled at the corners of his mouth. For a fraction of a moment something not slave-like glimmered deep in his eyes.
"After you, m-my lady," he said in a different tone than she had heard from him, his eyes locked onto hers.
Far back in those pale blue eyes the woman could see—no, it was gone almost as soon as she noticed it and well before she could decipher it, but it called to her.
"No, I thank you," she said, breaking contact but satisfied with what she had almost seen, "you begin without me. I will join you soon."
He began shoveling food into his mouth, that other person who had peeked out from behind his eyes gone for now. He watched unquestioning, chewing like a starving animal, as the woman slid the foot of the bed against the door that she had just barred. The she removed the two loose bars at the window.
"Arghghgh?" he inquired around an immense mouthful.
"Your pardon?" she replied with scant attention as she placed her sword, unsheathed, and all her traveling paraphernalia near at hand to the window. Hands on hips, she glanced about the room, checking off some sort of internal catalogue in her head.
At last she nodded with a sigh of satisfaction and turned to him.
Danald had continued to eat in a sort of entranced detachment as he watched her every move. As she approached the table, he moved back, fear once more evident in his eyes.
"I beg your pardon. I'm afraid I was not attending to what you were saying," began the woman with great politeness while choosing to ignore his withdrawal. "I have a tendency to become involved in my own affairs. A nasty habit, it's often been pointed out, but I fear I continue without avail. Pray, have another potato?"
As she chattered in a soft calm tone, she filled a plate with some of the stew and tore off a piece of bread. Placing her plate across the table from him, she took one of the bottles of wine and withdrew the cork. After sniffing with deep suspicion at the lip, she tipped a portion into the single tankard and pushed it toward him. Then, upturning the bottle, she took a healthy swig. An anticipatory grimace turned to a surprised look as the wine proved drinkable.
Danald looked at his plate with dismay. All that remained of a noble repast was a fragment of gristle and a pile of well-chewed bones. He took the tankard in both hands as though he were a child just learning to drink alone. A few small sips and it was returned to the table. He gazed at the remaining food, wiping his hands in an absent fashion on his ragged shirt.
"I see we were not provided with napery. How surprising in an establishment of this quality," the woman commented dryly as she began to eat, interspersing each bite with long drinks of wine. "You really should wait for a while before you eat any more or you're liable to lose what you've already had," she continued after a bite of stew, "and that would be a pity."
One bottle emptied. Another was opened.
Danald still had most of his wine left. He reeked, he glowed with satisfaction. The warmth of the room, the unaccustomed food and bit of wine had submerged most of his fears. He watched the woman as she drank and ate. She ignored him. She seemed to be listening to something he could not hear.
"How long have you been here?" she asked, her attention returning so suddenly as to make him jump.
A hand rose, hesitant, protective, warding off a blow that never arrived.
"I can't remember," he whispered.
"Yes, yes, I know. You're stupid," she interrupted, but in so calm a voice that he did not even flinch. "But surely you remember something of your past? How you arrived here, who brought you perhaps? Or, if not that, then what you did, who you were before you came to this place?"
Her soothing tone, rising and falling in hypnotic cadence, engrossed his attention almost as much as the food had done. He stared deep into her storm-grey eyes, his own becoming brighter and bluer as she talked. His head swayed, as a hare charmed by a snake sways. A feeling of power, a presence of something beyond the mundane, the ordinary, filled the room to bursting point.
"Who are you...where are you from...who are you . . where are you from . . who are you.... "
The sounds rose and sank, rose and sank, becoming meaningless and yet rich with subtler nuances of significance.
A crash, as of metal against wood, broke the spell. Danald jumped, the intensity of his eyes not fading but disappearing like the snuffed flame of a candle.
"Damn," observed the woman in a thoughtful tone. Her own eyes lost a bit of the uncanny light that had animated them. The atmosphere in the tiny room returned to normal as she rose and strode to the barricaded door. Jerking the bed from its skewed position, she flung open the door.
An empty hallway. Nothing visible to have caused a sound.
Nothing visible. Yet the window was open. She was sure it had been closed. Ragged curtains billowed in a slight breeze. There was a smell of cinnamon and burnt feathers.
Slamming the door closed and barricading it took but an instant. The odd smell did not enter the room. Only the smell of food and fire and an indefinable something remained.
She turned to Danald. He trembled though the room was warm. His eyes were dazed.
The woman stood for a long moment, hands on hips, her attention on something beyond the room. Then she strode to him and seized his head, tilting it to look into his eyes. The light which had animated them was still discernible, a faint flicker far in the ice-blue depths.
Encouraged, the woman asked, "Are you all right? Did the sound frighten you?"
Danald blinked for a second, the light in his eyes dying away to nothing. Then, unexpectedly, it was back. It blazed up from him and into her face, into her eyes, with a power even she had not expected.
Danald smiled.
"I know you," he whispered.
The woman smiled in return.
"Of course you do. You have known me for ages; we are old, old friends."
He con
tinued to smile sunnily for a brief second longer, then all joy disappeared from his face.
"But I can't remember your name," he lamented, "I know you but I can't remember your name."
"But not because you're stupid. You can't remember my name because, when you do, you'll remember everything else. And someone is not ready for that to happen," she finished grimly.
As the last word lingered in the air, the fire in the grate died, taking all light in the room with it. Darkness flowed over the two like a smothering blanket, tainting the close air with the smell of terror. A shrill whine arose seemingly from the walls themselves, and a wild wind shrieked outside the window.
Danald seized her hands, which had remained on his face.
"Tell me your name," he pleaded in a low frightened voice.
"I cannot," she replied, calm and still as though nothing unusual were happening. "You must remember it on your own, or you—"
The whine wove itself into words around them.
"Or you are doomed!" it screeched in long wails.
"Please, Omron, spare me your theatrics," murmured the woman, the tranquility of her tone startling in the midst of cacophony. "You always had that tendency for melodrama. It can be quite a failing, you know. If I were you, I'd be a bit more careful or you could end up frightening someone one day."
The whine rose to a peak of peevish frenzy. Danald heard an anger beyond anger.
"How dare you speak to me so, bitch?" a voice screamed. "I am all power, all strength, all cunning, all fury! I can destroy you and your companion with but a thought!"
A surge of sound lifted Danald in the dark, snatching him from her, flinging him backward off his chair. He skittered about on hands and buttocks, trying to find purchase on the uneven floor, seeking the physical contact he sensed he needed.
"Then why don't you?" Danald heard the woman ask. "Why have you not before now? If all power, all fury and so forth is yours, then why have you held him here in this condition when you could have simply killed him?"
Danald could hear her moving toward him, could hear the table between them sliding aside. He stopped his scrabbling about the floor and was rewarded when he felt her hand grasp his ankle, then his hand and arm.
She pulled him to his feet. They stood, hands clasped, as she continued her dialogue with the disembodied voice in the intense darkness.
"I will tell you why," she offered, her tone as placid as a clear summer sky. "You know what you call your 'power' is all noise and smoke. To kill him, you would of necessity have had to be a real wizard and we all know that to be a jest, do we not? And if you had somehow managed to harm him, you knew that I would not rest until I had made you regret such a blunder. And regret it you would, unto a thousand years, you useless wizardling."
A blaze of light burst from the fireplace, cold and furious, illuminating the tiniest details of the shabby room. Each crack in the ancient floor, each stain on the uneven wall, each fold of the disordered bedclothes was delineated by the unearthly glare.
Floating above the bed, suspended in empty space, Danald saw a being so bizarre in outline that his eyes at first refused to accept it as real.
A head grossly large contained a single bloodshot eye fully half its size and was supported by a stringy neck. The neck merged into a shapeless mass that could only be called a body by the position it occupied; arms or legs, thick and bulky, sprouted haphazardly from the stocky carcass in uneasy profusion. They sprawled and squirmed and slithered, reaching and grasping at nothing. A smell of diseased flesh and something less appetizing emanated from the form in waves of nausea.
"Omron," Danald heard his companion say, "you're looking well. Lost a bit of weight, haven't you?"
A scream of fury was the only reply. Danald felt his companion's hand tighten on his.
"You are dead, you witch, and your precious toy as well! I used him to draw you here where my force holds all sway! I knew you would search until you found him and, when you did, I would be ready to repay you for the pain you have caused me! But you won't die quickly, no. You will see him go first."
"Really, Omron," the woman yawned, "must you be quite so emotional? If you intend to kill me—and mind you, I don't believe for a moment that you're capable of it—then do proceed. All this shouting is giving me a pounding headache."
Danald could feel the tension throbbing in the hand that held his. But the mocking words drove the hideous creature into a frenzy of jittering rage. He—it—raised three stubby digits. The sense of force in the tiny room increased with each movement. A pressure ballooned about them, so intense that Danald nearly jerked his hands away to press them against his ears, but the woman gripped his hands tighter, more fiercely.
The creature over the bed muttered strings of arcane gibberish, the weaving motions of the digits growing faster yet more controlled, more involved. Words, indecipherable in meaning yet somehow familiar to Danald, rose about them in shrieks. The fire in the grate began to crackle in time with the words, answering the demonic cacophony with ever more hellish racket. Swirls of unnamable colors appeared in the midst of the flames, drowning the ordinary reds and oranges with obscene paler hues. Winds wailed outside the open window, shaking the loosened bars, and the battered door bowed noticeably inward as it creaked on its hinges.
Danald gripped his companion's hand as though clinging to a raft in a maelstrom. He could hear nothing above the pandemonium but drew strength from the firmness of her clasp.
Then, with her free hand, the woman began to weave her own patterns in the air. Each movement left streaks of white light in its path but instead of dispersing they remained, taking on a life of their own. A web of enchantment grew round them, a protective ensnarling of white against the malefic pigments surrounding them.
As the white grew more intense, the sounds increased in volume. But now, there was fright beneath the hellish clamor, fear in the fiendish din.
Danald shook, but at the same time he was accustomed somehow to all that was taking place. Surely he had heard such sounds before, seen almost the same unearthly colors, mingled with shreds of white?
Surely all these amazing sounds and furies were not new to him?
And this woman who held his hand, calm yet fierce amidst such tumult, with her pale tawny hair and eyes grey as old coins, surely he remembered her as well?
The events of his life at the inn, of the hunger and the blows and the filth of the only life he could remember, swirled in his brain like mist on a cool morning...and were blown away like mist by the heat of the hand in his.
"Rhia!" he shouted. "Rhia! I know you!"
He flung his other hand up into the air, the fingers beginning their own pattern. Filaments of white seeped slowly at first then more rapidly out to join those already about him.
He could see her smile, a crooked grin, one side of her mouth lifted higher than the other. He remembered—he remembered!—how next one eyebrow would quirk sardonically and rejoiced to see it hoist on schedule. Memories flooded into his brain so fiercely that the noise around him seemed to dim.
Then he realized that it was dimming, sinking under the combined power emanating from the two of them. The white blazed up and the other hues cowered and died. The uproar within and without receded to a whimper, submerged in a groan.
Abruptly the room was as normal and as shoddy as before. The apparition over the bed became a small man standing on a shelf above it. His oversized head drooped, his ungainly hands hung loose at his sides, his undersized legs trembled as though just able to support his weight.
The dwarfish figure raised his massive head, eyes blazing.
"Damn you, Rhia, this time you should have died," he squeaked in a passion. "This time you—"
"This time, Omron, you will die," Rhia replied, as calm as though she asked for a drink of water. "I could forgive a test, a game, a joke. But I cannot forgive what you have done to him."
"Cannot forgive? Cannot forgive?" cackled the tiny man, his great head
falling from side to side. "All I did was to make him a slave for a little while. How can that compare to what you have done to me for years, for decades? Look at me, damn you!" He flung his arms out from the slight body, the huge hands flapping, the short legs trembling, head shaking with an agonizing anger.
"Look at what you have done to me! Is this a game, a joke, then? He will recover from his little blows, his tiny hungers, but when will I recover from this? When will I ever be the man I once was, before you decided to make me into this?"
"I made you into nothing, Omron," Rhia shook her head. "This is how you have always been, all your life."
"But you rejected me!" shouted the minuscule man in a frenzy. "You rejected me for this long-boned laughing thing! I have more abilities than he can acquire, live he never so long, study he ever so hard. We should have been together, you and I, to become great in the Arts! But you preferred that smiling face, those supple muscles, those dancing eyes, to me!"
"I rejected you long before I met Danald," Rhia sighed, as though she had said the words a thousand times. "I rejected you for your ugliness, yes. The ugliness of your nature, your mind and your attitudes. Your desires did not coincide with mine, Omron. Blame not me, nor yourself. We are no more at fault than Danald."
The dwarf scrambled down onto the bed and seated himself on its edge. He clasped his hands in his lap and slumped in a dejected heap.
"If I had been tall and beautiful—" he whined, but Rhia interrupted, her tone as sharp as glass.
"If you had been exquisite, yet sought the same dark power, I would have turned from you as quickly and fled from you as nimbly. Know this, Omron. I see your spirit as clearly as I see your form. One is as warped as the other."
The dwarf threw his head back and howled in pain and fury. The last vestiges of force fled from the room. An icy wind whirled under the door and through the window, chilling Danald's very heart with despair.
But Rhia was adamant, her own heart frozen in rage. She strode to the bed and seized Omron by his misshapen shoulders, holding him high above the floor as she sought for one last time in his eyes a saving grace. Then, with a shake of her tawny head and a muttered word of power, she flung him savagely toward the fireplace.
The instant he left her grasp, her fingers began to form the intricate convolutions of a deadly spell. The rough-stacked rocks that formed the hearth shimmered and glowed then opened in an instant into or onto a dense black vortex, swirling with lines of power. Omron struck the center of this eddy and was at once swallowed up into the blackness. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, snuffed out of existence…and Omron with it.