What if Tobin had fallen that day? For an instant he imagined the two children watching him from behind those peeling shutters, united in death, as they should have been in life.
“I’ll go mad here,” he muttered, scattering the lentils for the birds.
Hoping to shake off his dark mood, he made his way down to the practice yard and watched Tharin working with Tobin. Here was a man who knew how to teach a boy.
Both of them were grinning as they moved back and forth with their wooden blades. No matter how hard Tharin worked Tobin, the boy strove to please him, worshiping the big warrior with an openness that Arkoniel envied. Tobin had put on a battered leather tunic and tied back his hair with a thong; a dark miniature of fair-skinned Tharin.
Arkoniel had come to accept that these lessons captured the boy’s interest in a way that his own lame attempts could not. He’d never meant to be a tutor and suspected he was making a poor job of it.
Part of the problem was Tobin’s distrust. Arkoniel had felt it since the day he arrived, and things had not changed much for the better. He was certain that the demon had something to do with this. It remembered the events of its birth; had it told Tobin? Nari didn’t think so, but Arkoniel remained certain the demon had somehow set Tobin against him from the start.
In spite of all these obstacles, however, he found himself growing increasingly attached to the child. Tobin was intelligent and perceptive when he chose to be, and around anyone else except Arkoniel he was pleasant and well mannered.
Recently, however, something new had given the wizard pause and filled him with a mix of wonder and unease. The boy had shown a few flashes of what appeared to be foreknowledge. A week earlier Tobin had claimed that a letter was coming from his father, and waited all afternoon by the gate until a rider appeared with the message that Duke Rhius was not coming home in time for Tobin’s name day after all.
Stranger still, a few nights ago he had frantically woken Nari and Tharin, begging them to go into the woods to find a fox with a broken back. They’d tried to reassure him that it had only been a dream but he grew so upset that Tharin had finally taken a lantern and gone out. He’d returned within the hour with a dead vixen. Tharin swore the fox had been too far from the house for Tobin to hear its cries and, when asked how he’d known, Tobin had mumbled that the demon had told him, but wouldn’t say any more.
This morning he’d had a furtive air and Arkoniel guessed he’d had another vision, and that it might have something to do with the way Tobin had squirmed so inattentively through the aborted lesson in mathematics.
While foreknowing in a future ruler was an undoubted advantage, what if it presaged the first blossoming of a wizard’s gifts? Would the people accept a wizard queen, unable for all her power to bear a successor?
Leaving Tobin and Tharin to their practice, Arkoniel crossed the bridge and wandered down the road into the forest.
As the keep disappeared from sight behind him, Arkoniel felt his spirits lift. The crisp autumn air cleansed him of the tainted atmosphere he’d been breathing for the past month, and he was suddenly grateful to be away from that strange house and its haunted people. No amount of repair and fresh paint could mask its underlying rot.
“That baby still sit heavy on you heart,” an unmistakable voice said behind him.
Arkoniel whirled around to find the road as empty as before. “Lhel? I know it’s you! What are you doing here?”
“Be scared, Wizard?” Now the mocking voice came from a thick stand of yellow-leafed poplar on his right. He couldn’t make out anyone hidden there, but just then a small brown hand appeared—not from behind the trees but out of thin air just in front of them. The forefinger crooked, beckoning, then disappeared as if it had been pulled back through an invisible window frame. “You come here, I take your fear away,” the voice wheedled, almost at his ear.
“By the Light, show yourself!” Arkoniel demanded, intrigued in spite of his surprise. “Lhel? Where are you?”
He stared into the trees, looking for telltale shadows, listening for stealthy footsteps. Nothing came to him but the patter of leaves in the wind. It was as if she had opened a portal in the air and spoken to him through it. And put her hand through it.
It’s a trick. You’re seeing what you want to see.
But what if it wasn’t?
The more important question right now was what she was doing here at all after all these years?
“Come to me, Arkoniel,” Lhel called to him from behind the screen of poplars. “Come into the woods.”
He hesitated just long enough to summon a protective core of power deep in his mind, strong enough—he hoped—to keep away any creatures of darkness she might summon. Gathering his courage, he pushed through the screen of branches, following the voice into the forest beyond.
The light was muted here, and the ground rose gently before him. Laughter came from up the hillside and he looked up to see the witch floating beside a large oak tree a dozen yards from where he stood. Lhel smiled at him, framed by a long oval of soft green light. He could see rushes and cattails swaying around her, bathed in the rippling shimmer of light reflected from unseen water. The vision was so clear he could even make out the exact demarcation between the illusion and the surrounding forest, like a painting hung on the air.
She beckoned coyly, then the entire apparition collapsed like a washday soap bubble.
He ran to where she had appeared and felt the tingle of magic in the air there. He breathed it in, and felt a long-forgotten memory stir.
Years earlier, while still a child apprentice, Arkoniel had thought he’d seen a similar miracle. Half asleep in some noble’s hall, he’d awakened in the early light to see men appearing silently out of thin air at the far end of the room. The sight had both frightened and excited him.
When he told Iya of it later that morning, however, he was heartbroken to learn that it had simply been a clever trick of the eye, using a painted wall and the placement of a tapestry in front of a servant’s entry.
“No such spell has ever existed in Orëska magic,” Iya had told him. “Even the Aurënfaie have to walk from place to place, just as we do.”
The disappointment had faded, but not the inspiration. There were spells aplenty that could move objects like locks or doors or stones; surely there must be some way of translating these. He’d toyed with the notion for years, but had come no closer to making it a reality. He could push a pea across a carpet with ease, but he could not make it pass through a solid door or wall, no matter how he meditated and envisioned the act.
Arkoniel shook off the reverie with suspicion. This was some witch trick, coupled with the memory his mind had fastened onto in the shock of the moment.
Lhel’s faint call drifted down to him again, leading him to a trail that wound off to his right through a thick stand of fir. The ground fell away sharply from here and he came out at last at the edge of a marsh.
Lhel stood waiting for him at the water’s edge, surrounded by cattails and faded marshworts, just as he’d seen her earlier. He stared hard at her, trying to pierce whatever new illusion she was practicing on him, but her shadow fell across the wet ground just as it should, and her bare feet sank into the soft mud as she took a step toward him.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I be here, waiting for you,” she replied.
This time it was Arkoniel who stepped closer. His heart was racing, but he felt no fear of her now.
She looked smaller and more ragged than he recalled, as if she’d been hungry for a long time. There were thicker streaks of white in her hair, too, but her body was still rounded and ripe, and she moved with the same challenge in her hips that had so unnerved him. She took another step toward him, then tilted her head and set her hands on her hips like a fishwife, regarding him with a combination of heat and wry disdain in her black eyes.
He was close enough to smell herbs and sweat and moist earth, with something else mixed in that
made him think of mares in heat.
“When—when did you arrive?” he asked.
She shrugged. “I be here always. Where you be, all these times? How you take care what we make, be gone so long?”
“You mean you’ve been here, near the keep, all these years?”
“I help the lady. I follow and keep watch. Help that spirit not be so angry.”
“You haven’t done much of a job of that,” Arkoniel retorted, holding out his splinted wrist for her to see. “Tobin’s life has been a misery because of it.”
“It be worse, I don’t do as the Mother show,” she retorted, shaking a finger at him. “You and Iya, you don’t know! A witch make a spirit, she …” She held her wrists up, crossed, as if she were bound. “Iya say, ‘You go home, witch. Don’t come back.’ She don’t know.” Lhel tapped her temple. “That spirit call out for me. I tell her, but she don’t listen.”
“Does Rhius know you’re here?”
Lhel shook her head and an earwig squirmed loose from a tendril of hair and skittered away down her bare arm. “I close always, but not to be see.” She smiled slyly, then faded from sight before his eyes. “You do that, Wizard?” she whispered, behind him now and close enough to his ear for him to feel her breath. She’d made no sound as she moved, nor left any mark on the ground.
Arkoniel flinched away. “No.”
“I show you,” she whispered. An invisible hand stroked his arm. “Show you what you dream.”
The memory of the men emerging from the air intruded on his thoughts again.
She was doing this.
Arkoniel jerked back, caught between the water and the invisible hands that tried to stroke his chest. “Stop that! This is no time for your petty teasing.”
Something struck him hard in the chest, knocking him backward into the mud at the water’s edge. A weight settled on his chest, holding him down, and Lhel’s musky unwashed scent overwhelmed him. Then she was visible again, squatting naked on top of him.
His eyes widened in wonder. The three-phase moon—a circle flanked by two outfacing crescents—was tattooed on her belly, and concentric serpent patterns covered each full breast. More symbols covered her face and arms. He had seen such marks before, carved into the walls of caves on the sacred island of Kouros, and on rocks along the Skalan coastline. According to Iya, such marks had been old long before the Hierophant came to the Three Lands. Had Lhel somehow hidden these markings before, he wondered, unable to move, or were they another illusion? There was certainly considerable magic of some sort involved. Strength greater than her small body could account for held him flat as she took his face between her hands.
You and your kind dismiss my people, and my gods. Her true voice intruded into his mind, devoid of accent or stumbling grammar. You think we are dirty, that we practice necromancy. You are strong, you Orëska, but you are often fools, too, blinded by pride. Your teacher asked me for a great magic, then treated me with disrespect. Because of her I offended the Mother and the dead.
For ten years I have guarded that spirit, and the child it is bound to. The dead child could have killed the living one and those around her if I had not bound it. Until its flesh is cut free from the one you call Tobin, it must be so bound and I must remain, for only I can do both unbindings when the time comes.
Arkoniel was amazed to see a tear roll down the witch’s cheek. It fell and struck his face.
I have waited alone all these years, cut off from my people, a ghost among yours. There’s been no full moon priest for me, no harvest sacrifice or spring rites. I die inside, Wizard, for the child and for the goddess who sent you to me. My hair turns white and my womb is still empty. Iya put gold in my hands, not understanding that a great magic must be paid for with the body. When she first came to me in my visions, I thought you were for me, my payment. But Iya sent me away empty. Will you pay me now?
“I—I can’t.” Arkoniel dug his fingers into the earth as the meaning of her words dawned on him. “It … such intercourse … it takes away our power.”
She leaned over him and brushed her heavy breasts across his lips. Her skin was hot. A hard brown nipple brushed the corner of his mouth and he turned his head away.
You are wrong, Orëska, she whispered in his mind. It feeds the power. Join with me in flesh and I will teach you my magic. Then your power will be doubled.
Arkoniel shivered. “I can’t give you a child. Orëska wizards are barren.”
But not eunuchs. Slowly, sinuously, she slid back until she was straddling his hips. Arkoniel kept silent, but his body answered for him. I need no child from you, Wizard. Just your heat and your rush of seed. That is payment enough.
She pressed against him and pleasure bordering on pain blossomed through his groin as her heat seeped through his tunic. He closed his eyes, knowing she would take him if she chose. There was no way to prevent it.
But then the pressure, the heat, the hands were gone. Arkoniel opened his eyes and found himself alone.
It had been no vision, though; he could still taste her salt on his lips, smell her scent on his clothes. In the mud on either side of him the prints of small bare feet slowly filled with water.
He sat up and rested his head on his knees, drawing in the musky woman smell that clung to him. Cold, aching, and strangely ashamed, he groaned aloud as he conjured her warmth pressing against him.
I thought you were for me.
The words made the breath catch in his throat and his groin pound. He forced himself up to his feet. Mud and pond slime oozed from his hair and dripped down inside the front of his tunic like cold little fingers seeking his heart.
Illusions and lies, he thought desperately, but as he made his way back toward the rotting keep, he could not forget what she’d shown him, or the whispered invitation; Join with me, Wizard—your power will be doubled.
Chapter 23
Tobin’s head started to hurt during his sword practice. It ached so badly it made him sick to his stomach, and Tharin sent him up to bed in the middle of the day.
Brother came without being called and crouched on the end of Tobin’s bed, one hand pressed to his chest. Curled on his side, cheek pressed to the soft new coverlet Father had sent from Ero, Tobin stared at his baleful mirror self, waiting for Brother to touch him or weep as he had in the dreams. But Brother didn’t do anything, just stayed there gathering darkness around himself. Queasy from the headache, Tobin slipped into a doze.
He was riding Gosi up the forest road toward the mountains. Red and gold leaves swirled around him, bright in the sunshine. He thought he could hear another rider just behind him, but he couldn’t see who it was. After a moment he realized that Brother was sitting behind him with his arms wrapped around Tobin’s waist. In the dream Brother was alive; Tobin could feel the other boy’s chest pressing warm and solid against his back, and Brother’s breath against his neck. The hands clasped at his waist were brown and callused, with dirt under the nails.
Tobin’s eyes filled with happy tears. He had a real brother! All the rest of it—demons and wizards and strange women in the forest—it had just been one of his bad dreams.
He tried to look at Brother, to see if his eyes were blue like his own, but Brother pressed his face to Tobin’s back and whispered, “Ride faster, she’s almost here!”
Brother was afraid, and that made Tobin feel scared, too.
They rode further into the mountains than Tobin had ever gone before. Huge snow-capped peaks surrounded them on every side. The sky grew dark and a cold wind whipped around them.
“What will we do when it gets dark? Where will we sleep?” Tobin asked, looking around in dismay.
“Ride faster,” whispered Brother.
But when they rounded a bend in the road, they found themselves at the bottom of the meadow below the keep, heading for the bridge at a gallop. Gosi would not take the rein and stop—
Tobin woke with a start. Nari stood over him, rubbing his chest. It was nearly dark and the room w
as very cold.
“You’ve slept the day away, pet,” she told him.
It was only a dream! Tobin thought, heartbroken. He could feel Brother somewhere nearby, cold and strange as ever. Nothing had changed. He wanted to roll over and escape back into the dream, but Nari hustled him out of bed.
“You have visitors! Get up now, and let’s change that tunic.”
“Visitors? For me?” Tobin blinked up at her. He knew he should send Brother away, but it was too late now, with Nari fussing over him.
She pressed the backs of her fingers to his forehead and clucked her tongue. “You’re like ice, pet! Ah, look—the window’s been open all day, and you with no covers. Let’s get these clothes changed so you can come down to the hall and warm yourself.”
Tobin’s head still hurt. Shivering, he let Nari pull off his rumpled tunic, then wiggled into the stiff new one with the embroidery on the hem. This had come in the same package as the coverlet, along with another suit of good clothes, better than anything Tobin had ever worn, and other fancy things for the house.
He caught sight of Brother in a dark corner as he turned to leave the room; the demon was wearing the very same new clothes, but his face was paler than Tobin had ever seen it.
“Stay here,” he whispered. Following Nari downstairs, he wondered what it would feel like to have a living brother walking beside him.
The hall was dark except for the hearth fire and a few torches. Still beyond the reach of the light, Tobin could see the people standing by the hearth without being seen. Arkoniel, Cook, Tharin, and Mynir were all there, speaking softly with an old woman in a plain, travel-stained gown. She had a brown, wrinkled face and wore her thin grey hair in a braid over one shoulder. Was this the “she” Brother had spoken of? She looked like a peasant.
Mistaking his hesitation for fear, Nari took his hand. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, leading him down. “Mistress Iya is a friend of your father’s, and a great wizard. And look who she’s brought with her!”
As Tobin came closer, he saw that there was another stranger hanging back in the shadows behind the old woman. Iya said something over her shoulder and this one came forward into the light.