contact with the Isle of Horses.
It mattered little. If he was truly master of the guild of thieves now-ha, he thought, it’s but some trick Cutbill’s playing, as he’d been thinking all day-then he could afford the surcharge. He leapt into the little boat and grabbed up its oars.
He’d never cared much for rowboats, since you couldn’t see where you were going when you rowed. Yet this time he was almost glad to be pulling himself backward across the Skrait’s slow current. The Isle of Horses was none too easy on the eyes. It had been named for a calamity long passed, during a very rainy year when the Skrait had swollen and flooded its banks and was far too wild to navigate. Still, ships had tried, for Ness was the richest port in Skrae, and paid well for cargo. One ship foundered just inside Eastpool, run aground on a shoal. It sank with all hands and all its goods aboard, yet somehow a consignment of horses managed to escape the wreck and make their way onto the only available piece of dry land. Every attempt to retrieve the animals failed in the foaming water of a bad storm, and for days the people of Eastpool had been forced to listen to the screams of terrified beasts as the water rose, every hour coming a foot closer to washing the island away altogether.
The island survived, but no one found any trace of the horses when the storm had passed. The locals considered the tiny scrap of land haunted now, and neither landed there nor used it for any purpose. It was one of the few uninhabited parcels of land inside the city’s walls, and that should have made it invaluable as the city’s population grew and crowded every available square foot. Yet no one had ever tried to live there-until Coruth claimed it for her own.
Barely six feet above the water at its highest point, the Isle of Horses was choked with gorse and bramble. Coruth’s house was its only salient feature, a shack made of driftwood from which odd lights were often seen by night and sometimes noises issued that could not be explained. The perfect home for a witch.
Malden pulled at the oars until his boat grated on the rocky beach below the house. Because he had not announced his arrival-he knew no way to contact Coruth save to knock on her door-he stood awhile in the boat, letting himself be seen, before he stepped down onto the strand.
When there was no response from the house, he tried calling out, shouting that it was Malden and he wished to speak with Coruth. That elicited no response either.
So he jumped down from the boat, onto the pebbled shore, and started walking toward the house.
He’d taken no more than a half dozen steps before a rope, half buried in the pebbles, shifted under his foot as he trod on it. Instantly he felt the rope shift as it took up tension and he cursed silently. A trap-a trap he should have seen, because this was no magical ward. It was one of the simplest traps he’d ever encountered. The rope stretched away toward a post to which hundreds of cockle shells had been loosely nailed. As the pressure of his foot tightened the rope, it waggled the post and the shells chimed together-a soft, pleasant sound that was lost in the sighing of the wind. Having tripped enough alarms in his life, he knew someone would hear it.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Walking through the brambles surrounding Coruth’s shack was disincitement enough, Malden thought, to keep most intruders away. Yet he now knew there would be other, less passive guardians to deal with. He tried to be on his guard.
Yet when a horse snorted close to his left ear, he still jumped. He wheeled around, half expecting to see some spectral animal gnashing its big ghostly teeth at him, but there was nothing there.
He had dealt with the supernatural often enough to respect it, and to avoid it whenever possible. He was willing to give up, to return to his boat and row away, his original purpose thwarted. He would come by at some later date when Coruth was prepared to receive him. However, when he tried to retrace his steps toward the shore, he heard a great rumbling thunder of hooves treading the flinty soil, directly between him and his rented boat.
“All right, witch-show me how to leave, that’s all I ask,” he said aloud.
The neighing of horses all around him was like laughter.
He could see nothing. The ghosts of horses left no hoofprints in the soil, it seemed. Nor could he smell any animals. Yet whenever he tried to lift a foot, or move his hands, he heard them all about him as if they were pressed very close, ready to stampede and trample him.
If he remained very still, he thought, perhaps he would be safe. Perhaps the ghostly trap was only meant to keep him where he was, until such time as Coruth chose to collect him.
But then he heard the noise of a great charger running straight toward him, every hoof falling like thunder. He could hear its great infernal breath snorting in and out of its undead lungs, even hear the brasses slapping and ringing on its sides. If he didn’t move, if he didn’t flee, it would surely run roughshod right over him Unless, of course, this was one of those traps that only fooled you into thinking you were in danger, when in fact you were perfectly safe the whole time. Typically such traps were designed to startle you into running away, right into an actual hazard you could have easily avoided.
Malden tried to stand his ground. Yet as the sound of the galloping horse came closer and closer, never deviating in the slightest from its course, clearly intent on his destruction, even his devious brain stopped thinking and started reacting.
Shouting in his fear, he turned and ran.
Horses were on either side of him, their heavy feet crashing down so fast and so frequently he was certain they would step on him at any moment. He felt their hot breath on his neck, could hear nothing but their whinnying and snorting and the enormous noise of their rhythmic running. He threw his arms over his head for protection and ran he knew not where. If he ended up running right into the cold waters of Eastpool, that was fine. If he was being herded back to his boat, he would give great thanks, if Something very solid and very real smacked into his face and nearly broke his nose. When he dared open his eyes again he saw he was standing on the porch of Coruth’s shack in the middle of the island. He’d run right into her front door.
He could no longer hear the sound of horses from any direction. The salt wind barely moved through the thorny vegetation behind him. The silence was like deafening laughter, and he felt his cheeks grow hot.
Then the door of the shack opened with a creak. Light and warmth spilled out across him, and then Cythera was standing before him, speaking his name, a look of utter confusion on her face.
He grabbed her up in a feverish embrace and kissed her deeply. She did not resist-not here, where there was no one to see it.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
He kissed her again.
“Sweet kisses,” she laughed, “do not an explanation make.”
“Just glad to be alive,” he told her. “Your mother’s illusory guardians are most compellingly believable.”
“The horses?” she asked.
“The horses,” he said. “Though-now that I can think again, I have to wonder. Why not something more immediately frightening? Like basilisks, or demons?”
“I seem to remember the first time you sat a horse,” Cythera laughed. “You were certainly frightened then!”
Malden smiled. “It wouldn’t stop moving. I was certain I would fall.”
Cythera laughed again. “If you must know, witchcraft doesn’t work that way,” she told him, ushering him inside. “Certainly a sorcerer could create the illusion of dragons swooping down, spitting fire, or whatever the sorcerer could imagine to scare away interlopers. Sorcery draws power from the pit and its denizens, but they have to be repaid for their gifts-you’ve seen the way they distort a sorcerer’s soul.”
“Not to mention his face,” Malden said, thinking of some of the sorcerers he’d met. No natural deformity could match the freakish countenances of wizards. In public, they always wore black veils to hide their features.
“Witches use the power of the world around them. They make subtle changes in what is already there, that’s all. This is the Isle of Horses, so horses it must be.”
“I see,” Malden said, though as usual when someone tried to explain magic to him, he had the creeping suspicion that the parts that seemed to make sense were only glosses on a text far beyond his comprehension. “To actually answer your question,” he said, putting matters of philosophy aside, “I’ve come to see your mother.”
