limbs tipped with hooked claws. Its skin was the pallid color of a serpent’s belly, shot through with writhing blue veins. Tiny, batlike wings drooped from its shoulder blades, and a bony tail snaked out from its backside, tipped with a stinger the size of a spearhead. A caul covered its oversized head, stretched tight over sunken eyes, upturned nose, and a mouth full of jagged fangs. The body floated on the surface of the pool, arms and legs flopping as the roiling water rolled it over and over.
Andras stared in horror. He had not known what would come out of the pit, only that something would. Now that he knew, part of him wanted to send the hideous thing back to whatever depths it had risen from.
He didn’t. Stooping down, he reached out over the pool and caught hold of one of its legs. The imp was clammy and rubbery and hung limp as he dragged it from the water.
Cringing, he reached out and pulled away the caul. It came off the
As soon as it was off, the creature began to choke. Water sprayed from between its teeth, then it took a raspy breath, its arms and legs moving listlessly. Its eyes opened-cat’s eyes, glowing yellow in the gloom. They were eyes that hated and knew nothing else.
It will kill me, Andras thought, watching venom drip from the stinger as the tail twitched. It will kill me if I don’t do something.
He knew what that was. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he lowered his maimed hand to the
Fistandantilus chuckled. “Well done. How does it feel to be a mother?”
Andras could make no reply. The sensation of the thing drinking his blood made it impossible to form a thought. All he managed was a low groan.
“I will leave you now,” said the Dark One. “I have my own work to do. You can see to the rest, when they come.”
When the archmage had gone, Andras pulled his hand away from the
A bubbling sound caught his attention. Another body had risen to the pool’s surface. As he watched, a third came up to join it. Looking down, he saw more pale shapes beneath the surface.
Andras picked up the first
CHAPTER 8
Leciane was in the Lordcity for less than a week before she departed again, accompanying the Kingpriest and the rest of his court. That suited her fine-she was glad to leave. Not that Istar wasn’t every bit the wonder she’d heard it was. Its citadels and gardens made mighty Daltigoth seem squalid by comparison. She could have gladly lived the rest of her life within its walls without tiring of it.
The problem was, if it were up to the good folk of Istar, the rest of her life would be decidedly short.
When she first realized the knight His Holiness had sent to her was to be her personal escort, she’d nearly laughed aloud at his paranoia. To think the Lightbringer was so worried she might be a danger that he had assigned a watcher to her … now, she knew different. Sir Cathan kept near her side not for others’ protection but for her own. Even with him present, folk glared at her and made warding signs wherever she went. Witch, they called her, and godless whore. Some even spat, and once, in a crowded marketplace, someone had hurled a rotten persimmon in her face. That worse hadn’t followed was more Sir Cathan’s doing than her own. The knight had been able to talk the people into backing down-just barely. That was good, because she could not defend herself. Using magic against the mob would turn Istarans against all sorcerers, no matter what color robes they wore. With persimmon juice stinging her eyes and dripping from her chin, however, it had taken an effort of will to hold her temper.
After that incident, she’d kept more to the Temple, but while no one there threw fruit, it was no more hospitable. The clerics, from the lowest acolyte to First Son Adsem, all looked nervous or suspicious whenever she was around. Quarath glowered at her practically every moment they were within eyesight of each other. The Divine Hammer were no better. In fact, only three in the Temple ever spoke to her directly: Sir Cathan, Grand Marshal Tavarre, and the Lightbringer himself. The rest tried to avoid her as much as possible.
Things didn’t improve much once they were on the road. The Kingpriest’s entourage were mostly the same priests and knights who had despised her in the Lordcity, and the people of the cities and towns they passed through thought no better of her than anyone else. In Bronze Kautilya they had turned her away from the towering bathhouses, and at one smaller village in the province of Gather she had woken in the middle of the night to find a straw effigy dressed in crimson swinging from a tree near her tent, a noose tight about its neck.
“It’s not even as if I’m a Black Robe,” she protested to Vincil the next night, staring at his image in a jade- framed mirror within the shelter of her tent.
The silvered glass shimmered, sparks dancing across its surface, just as his scrying bowl would be doing, back in his study at Wayreth. She reported to the Highmage every evening, focusing on the mirror until his image appeared. It was easy magic she knew well.
If the pious Istarans saw her doing it, though, she figured the next thing hanging from a noose would be her.
“They’ve truly come to despise everything that isn’t righteous,” she went on. “Just the other day, we passed the ruins of an old chapel. I asked what god it was to, and Sir Cathan said Zivilyn. Zivilyn, the Tree of Life! But they burned down his church because he isn’t their idea of goodness.”
Vincil’s mouth pinched at the corners. “Marwort never said anything to me about this.”
“Marwort never left the Lordcity,” she replied. “Even if he had, I don’t think he’d have mentioned it. He was too much the Kingpriest’s dog.”
“True,” the Highmage admitted. “At least they haven’t done you any harm yet.”
“Yet.”
He closed his eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way, Leciane. All I’m saying is watch yourself. Things are obviously worse than I thought.” He paused, running a hand over his scalp. “If you believe you have no real allies among these people, Leciane … perhaps you should find one. That knight they have nursemaiding you, perhaps.”
Leciane glanced toward the flap of her tent. Sir Cathan would be standing right outside it now, watching for trouble. Later on, when night came, his bedroll would lie in the same place.
“He’s not a friend, Vincil,” she said. “He’s the Twice-Born, the Lightbringer’s man. If the Kingpriest says to put his sword in me, he’ll do it.”
“Then you should make him your friend.”
Leciane scowled, a cold feeling running over her. Cathan spoke to her, yes, but he was still aloof, diffident. There were ways, though. “All right. I’ll consider it,” she said, and sighed. “What about the danger you spoke about? Have you learned any more?”
He shook his head. “Half the Conclave is reading omens, but we’ve found nothing. All we get is the same feeling-something awful is going to happen. Whoever’s behind it, they know how to hide themselves.”
Soon he bade her good night, and the mirror flashed bright as the spell of contact broke.
When the light died again, Leciane stared back at herself from the glass’s depths.
She turned away, her mind whirling. Whatever was going to happen, whatever Vincil’s fears were about, it was going to happen soon. She didn’t need magic to know that. She could feel it in her bones. Most likely, it was waiting for them at the end of their journey in Lattakay. All the more reason to heed Vincil’s words. If she was going to be of any help, she had to have someone she could trust. Surely, there was no harm in that?
She got up from where she’d been kneeling and went to the flap of her tent. She pushed it aside a little, just wide enough to look through. Sure enough, there he was, facing away from her, the hammer burning on his back. She let the flap fall back into place.
