Four and Twenty Blackbirds

Revaner had used his magic to coerce women who didn't cooperate with him—which was another violation of secular law, twice over; first for using coercion inside the Faire boundaries, and secondly for using magic as the instrument of coercion. Then there was the violation of Church law in using his powers and his position to further his own ends.

Altogether he was a very naughty boy.

Revaner had enjoyed himself to the fullest, with nothing more than merest rumor to alert his superiors to the fact that he was a lawbreaker so many times over that he would be doing penance until he died if he was caught.

The blatant misuse of everything the Church gave him would have had even the most corrupt of them livid. Not to mention the amount of keep-quiet money they would have had to pay to his victims.

They did not even knowwho the cause of the rumor was; he had managed to keep his identity secret. But he had already made one fatal error, and that had been when he had checked to see who the Prior of the Abbey of the Justiciars at Kingsford was without also making the effort to discover who his underlings were. The Prior was lazy and subject to a venial sin now and then of his own—but immediately beneath him in rank was Justiciar-Mage Ardis, already known for dispensing the purest justice without regard for rank, privilege, or station, and it was Ardis who was truly in charge of the Faire Judiciary. Then, after three weeks of enjoyment, Revaner had made his second fatal error.

He had approached a Gypsy Free Bard named Robin and was rebuffed, publicly, vehemently, and in such a way as led to a great deal of humiliation on his part and amusement on that of the witnesses. But his success had bred overconfidence and inflated his pride, and his pride would not tolerate such a blow. Obsessed with the girl and angered at her contemptuous refusal, he had conspired with a Guild Bard named Beltren, one of his cronies, to kidnap her.

Even that might only have earned him exile to some distant, ascetic Abbey in a harsh and unforgiving climate, constant penance and prayer, and perpetual confinement to his cell if he had been caught—but his pride was too high to merely use her and discard her. No, he had to triumph over her and keep her as a private trophy. He had used his magic to transform her into a man-sized bird of gaudy plumage, placed her in a cage, and compelled her with further spells to sing for his pleasure. Then he displayed her for all the Faire to see.

Pride and folly went hand in hand, and he was bound to fall over such a blatantly stupid action; Revaner was found out, of course, and he was condemned by the Justiciars to the same condition he had forced upon the Gypsy girl. Transformed into a black bird of amazing ugliness, he was displayed in a cage above the gate of the Abbey as an example to others. And since he was a bird, without access to his wealth, his connections, or his persuasive tongue, no one was tempted to try to defend him.

When fall came that year, he was taken down and lodged in a cell in the Abbey until the warmer weather arrived, in larger, if not more luxurious quarters. But when spring came, it was easier to keep him there instead of putting him back on display. Eventually, he became a fixture in the Abbey gaol.

Then came the Great Fire, and the revolt within the Abbey itself. And, presumably, during the confusion or perhaps out of misguided compassion, someone left the cage door open and the bird escaped.

The Gypsy transformed into a bird had not been able to fly, but even as a bird, Revaner was still a mage, and he could use his magic to aid his wings. He had put as much distance between himself and Kingsford as possible, ending up at last in Sandast, a trade-city situated below a cliff riddled with caves. There Revaner had made a home, stole food, and attempted to work out how to change himself back.

That much Orm had managed to reason out for himself. What he didn't know was how Revaner had learned that the key to transforming himself back to a man was the death of someone else, and it was the one thing that he was not likely to ever find out. There were only two people who had ever known that, and Revaner's first victim was the second. Short of bringing back the dead spirit to speak, Orm was unlikely to discover what the circumstance had been.

Orm had recently removed himself to Sandast from the vicinity of Kingsford until a certain party returned to his homeland. A business deal had gone awry, and it wasn't particularly healthy for Orm to linger in the vicinity of Duke Arden's city. Although his original customer was no longer available, it had occurred to Orm that the information he possessed could easily be sold elsewhere. Sandast, for instance. And it was in the course of trying to find a buyer for that information that he had come upon Revaner in the moment of his third attempt at transformation.

Now, there had been rumors of a madman stalking the streets at night and murdering unwary victims by driving an enormous spike or spear through their chests, but Orm had dismissed it. After all, such a person would hardly be inconspicuous, loping about with a spike the size of a small tree trunk over his shoulder! So when his search for a client took him out into the dense fog of a typical Sandast evening, he wasn't particularly worried about coming across anything worse than a pickpocket or back-alley assaultist, either of which he could handle easily.

Not until he rounded a corner and found himself in a dimly lit cul-de-sac, facing a scene out of nightmare.

Filtered light fell down from windows above onto the murderer and his latest victim, and the murderer was a great dealmore conspicuous than a madman with a spike. A huge black bird, with the body of a street-singer impaled on its lancelike beak, glared at Orm out of angry red eyes. Blood was everywhere, turning the dust of the street into red mud, plastering the feathers of the bird in sticky tufts, splattered against the peeling walls of the buildings surrounding the cul-de-sac. Orm had been so startled, and sofascinated, that instead of running, he had simply stood and stared.