Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (63 page)

The woman uttered neither an oath nor a gasp. Instead, she simply sat on the other side of the screen and continued to breathe in a loud and annoyingly nasal manner.

Severa wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting, perhaps a scream of dismay or a thumping sound as the woman fainted to the floor, but this contemplative silence was anticlimactic.

“What is the black swan?” she finally asked.

“Something you are never likely to see or hear about,” the woman answered. “And it is better that way. You do not sound like a Salventian.”

“I am not.”

“Then how do you come to be delivering a message from the sister?”

“My father has an estate there. We arrived back to Amorr yesterday. I came as soon as I could.”

“Ah, I see. And your father is?”

Severa felt strangely reluctant to answer, but she felt it would be unwise to avoid the woman’s question.

“Severus Patronus.”

Another silence, then a chuckle. “So the patrician’s daughter comes bearing the peasant woman’s message. I sense the hand of the Maiden in this. The Mother has no humor, and the Crone’s is dry and cruel. How are you called, and how many earrings do you wear, little sister?”

“They call me Severa. I wear only the one.”

“Only one? Then you know nothing. And there may not be time for you to learn anything. Are you willing to serve, daughter of House Severus?”

“If that is what I must do to attain wisdom, I am willing, Sister.”

“A proud answer,” she heard the woman say, as if musing to herself. “A poor one too. And yet, the message was delivered…. Very well, daughter of House Severus, as you obeyed the Salventian woman, obey me now. You will not come here again until permission is granted you. Within three days, a woman will present herself to you. You will accept her into your service, but you shall obey her as your teacher.”

“But Sister, I cannot! My father, or rather, his majordomus, makes all such decisions!”

“Trust in the Goddess. You and your mother will be needing dresses for the upcoming festival, will you not? The Sister who will instruct you in the wisdom is a superlative seamstress, and you need not fear your father’s majordomus will not take her on. She speaks with the voice of the Mother. Obey her in all things, and say nothing to anyone.”

“Yes, Sister.”

“Go now, and may the Maiden enlighten you, the Mother nourish you, and the Crone guard you. You have done well in coming here, Severa. The Goddess’s blessing be upon you.”

Severa heard a rustling as the unseen Sister left her side of the confessional. She did the same, unsettled and a little frightened. What had she done? What was the black swan? The wisdom was real, that much she knew, but it had never occurred to her that there might be a darker side to the Goddess and her worship. She had a sneaking suspicion that her father might be even less happy with her involvement with the secretive old women than he had been about her aborted affair with a gladiator. And yet, how could the old witch woman have known about Clusius if there wasn’t a real power there, and the sort of power that even an influential man like her father could never hope to understand, much less access?

As a Moon-blooded woman, she owed a duty to the Goddess. That much was certain. But even a female member of House Severus owed her duty to the House. Perhaps she could serve both allegiances this way—not only serving the Goddess, but in doing so, giving House Severus the same sort of access into the women’s temple it had into the Church and the Alabaster Palace. The Sister had said she’d done well, and she had blessed her, after all. Her conscience clear, or at least sufficiently confused, she went to meet Falconatera.

Her friend was waiting for her near the vestibule.

“You must have a lot to confess,” Tera said with an inquisitive look.

“They say sin abounds in us all, my dear. Even in the boring countryside.” She slipped her arm into Tera’s and walked with her from the darkness of the secret temple into the bright light of the brisk autumn day.

The rioters had passed, leaving a visible trail of destruction that had somehow left the church, even the statue outside, entirely unharmed. The Goddess, it seemed, could protect herself.

Tera looked around in dismay at the wreckage strewn about the street. Doors were kicked in, shutters were hanging by their hinges, and the body of a woman not very much older than them lay face down in a pool of blood. Her dress was hiked up well past her waist. They could still hear shouts, but they were off in the distance now and growing gradually more faint.

“What do we do now?” she asked Severa. “Do you even know where we are?”

Severa smiled, pointing to two men who were limping down the street toward them, one with an arm around the shoulders of the other. It was her father’s men, battered, bleeding, and much the worse for wear. But she was delighted to see they were still alive, even if she didn’t know their names.

“No, but I imagine they do.” She waved to them.

After a moment’s hesitation, one of the young men waved back.

“My lady, thank God you’re alive!” the shorter man said when they finally reached her. It looked as if his ankle might be broken, but he still had his sword. “Your father would have flayed us and rolled us in salt if we’d returned without you!”

Severa was touched by his heartfelt relief. But don’t thank God, she thought, even as she offered him and his companion her prettiest thanks. He didn’t save us. Thank the Goddess.

FJOTRA

An impromptu council gathered in the main hall amidst the remains of the earlier feast that was still being cleared away by the kitchen thralls. But there was nothing festive about the haunted eyes and stricken expressions that could be seen in all of the Savoner faces, and more than a few of the Dalarn ones as well.

The Skullbreaker’s wounds were clean and bandaged, and, much to his disgust, he had been carefully carried down the stairs by two of his strongest warriors. He now presided over the makeshift gathering with his feet propped up on one of the table benches and goosedown-stuffed pillows supporting him on either side. Fjotra sat between the two sides, as she had to supply the translations required for them to talk to each other, which slowed the conversation considerably.

“How did this happen?” her father demanded of no one in particular.

“I went down and looked at the cells in which the two captive ulfin were placed,” Patrice said. He had taken the news of the prince’s death very hard and his uncharacteristically low voice made it hard for Fjotra to understand him. “There were two gaolers. Both were dead. I don’t know how the creatures managed to get out, but both gates were unlocked, and I didn’t find any keys on either body.”

“They’ve got a demon’s strength, and they have long arms too,” Steinthor Strongbow commented. “If one of the guards got too close to the cell, they could have reached through the bars to catch him, kill him, and take the key from his body.”

“That seems plausible,” the battlemage allowed. “And one of them did have wounds to his arm that could have been caused by their claws. But what’s harder to understand is how they knew to attack both you, my lord Skullbreaker, as well as the prince. The guards’ bodies were cool, but not rigid, so the beasts didn’t escape long before the feast. That would have given them enough time to explore the keep, and of course, if they slipped into the hall, they would have seen both the prince and my lord at the high table.”

“It doesn’t matter how the prince was killed!” Gerard de Coucy, the Comte de Montbrelloz and the prince’s captain of cavalry, exploded. “This is the Red Prince of whom we speak, the heir to the realm! Why are we wasting words on how the cursed demonspawn murdered him? Our liege lord now lies dead, and instead of avenging ourselves upon his killers, we sit and babble about how they managed the trick! When a knight falls on the field, do we stop fighting, sit on our arses, and parley about whether it was the sword through the gut or the axe through the helm that slew him? Or do we drive the cursed enemy from the field?”

Before Fjotra could even begin translating the comte’s words, Blais de Foix was shaking his head. He had been silent until now, but his eyes were dry, and he was visibly less perturbed than his younger companion.

“His killers are dead, my lord captain. The prince has already been avenged.”

“To kill the dog that slew him is no avenging. Such infamy demands a reckoning of the sort these islands have never seen! To return to Savonne without ten thousand skulls to place upon his grave would be an insult to his memory!”

Her father and the other Dalarn looked at her as the Savonners argued, but she only shook her head and let them vent their rage and frustration for a few moments without attempting to translate their actual words, only half of which she could understand anyhow as they shouted over each other. She did her best to summarize the situation for them.

“The horse warrior wants to take the field and collect aalvarg skulls to take back to the king, and the witch men tell him he’s mad.”

Her father waved his hand, unconcerned. “They’re angry, that is all. No one will take the field, not unless they don’t wish to re-enter my gates. You’re sure the one you saw looked like a proper man, both of you?”

Fjotra and the Strongbow both nodded. There was no doubt about it. Even in death, the aalvarg that the Strongbow had slain remained half-changed between its man shape and its bestial form.

“So we know they can change their shapes to look like men as well as beasts,” her father said. “Or at least some of them can. That might explain how they were able to take Trandhus and Aarborg so easily in the summer. Ambush a villager when he’s out, return wearing his face, and then open the gates to the others at night. I found it hard to imagine how two cunning old warriors like Olaf the Fat and Randver Longreaver could be wiped out to a man before even managing to get a messenger out. But if they were attacked at night in their beds by sigskifting that were able to get past their walls, that makes a little more sense.”

“We know one thing more,” added the Strongbow.

“We do?”

“They’re stupid.”

“Why do you say so?”

“If you infiltrated a fortress like this, Skuli, would letting the enemy know you’re inside be the first thing you’d do? Sure, they killed the prince, and they damn near killed you, but if they’d only bided their time and begun with the guards at the gate, they could have taken the place and both of you before anyone realized anything was wrong.”

It was a sobering thought. As the two veteran warriors stared at each other, realizing what a close escape it had been, Fjotra noticed that the argument between the Savonners had cooled somewhat.

However, the Comte de Montbrelloz hadn’t given up on his desire to take the battle to the enemy. He was gesticulating energetically as he attempted to convince the two mages of their need to take the offensive.

“Even if we don’t send out an army, we can enlarge the size of our mounted patrols and hit their smaller groups. You saw how easily we rode them down! I propose that each morning we send out two patrols, each containing four squadrons. Eighty knights should permit each patrol to easily defeat all but the primary ulfin forces. And we have the speed to disengage at will in order to avoid those. I will lead one, and the Baron d’Angennes the other. And, of course, we’ll each take one of you with us in case we run into any more of the sorcerous beasts.”

“I’m not going on any patrols. And if the lord captain is wise, neither will he,” Blais firmly rejected Montbrelloz’s idea. “We were already in a difficult position before the prince’s death. Taking the risk of losing nearly two hundred of our men and betraying the secret of our magecraft just to let you whet your appetite for vengeance would be insane.”

While the comte spluttered in impotent anger at the mage’s calm refusal to participate in his mad scheme, Fjotra quickly explained his intentions to the Dalarn.

Her father laughed contemptuously. “Tell that southerner the aalvarg aren’t like his turtle-shelled knights. They won’t line up out in the open and stand there waiting to be killed. They will stalk you like prey, look for the chance to ambush you wherever they can, and use darkness as their armor. If he rides out in the daylight, he’ll find nothing until the day he rides out and turns around to find himself cut off from our gates by a thousand wolves.”

“So you haven’t even sworn an oath to the king and already you would betray him?” the comte demanded once the Skullbreaker’s opinion of his plans had been conveyed to him.

“No, it would be a betrayal to cut the throats of eight squadrons of his liegemen, include the lord captain’s, while they slept under my care. And that wouldn’t be much more fatal than were I to permit the lord captain to ride out from the safety of my walls. Maybe he won’t be caught out the first day, maybe not the second or third day either. But sooner or later, they’ll catch him out, cut him off, and his patrols will be wiped out to a man.

“Look at their numbers. We’ve counted more than five thousand already. Given how they skulk about, you can be sure there are at least twice that many. Tell the comte that if he has the sense the All-Father gave a fish, he’ll heed my words. And if he doesn’t, he’ll damn well heed them anyway, because I am not opening Raknarborg’s gates for him or anyone else!”