Dark Magic (20 page)

“That you are a creation of foulest necromancy,” he answered. “A revenant! And that I shall not permit you to return to your maker.”

Cennaire tensed. Menelian laughed, a single, humorless bark of sound. “Did you think to deceive me? I am a mage, revenant.”

His loathing hung musky on the air, and with it confidence. He murmured, the words too low to catch, and again the almond scent came pungent to her nostrils. She experienced a momentary doubt: this man had known that he could best her and destroy her. “Yet still you welcomed me to your home,” she said, her voice harsh now.

Menelian’s lips curved in a thin line. “I’d a wish to learn how much you knew,” he said. “And I do not believe you can best me.”

“Mayhap not,” she allowed, unsure what gramaryes he might employ to protect himself; certain that she must, at very least, endeavor to slay him now. “How know you my master’s name?”

“Not all in Nhur-jabal favor his insane purpose,” came the answer: that admission open proof of the
wizard’s confidence. “And some there are who would see it halted.”

“For a stripling out of Lysse and a freesword Kern? Or is it for the woman’s sake?” Now she laughed as his face registered shock. “Oh, Menelian, sorcerer you may be, but still a man. Your lust for her oozes from you at mention of her name. So, know this—that when I find them I shall slay her, too.”

“You shall not!” he cried, and Cennaire had the satisfaction of scenting his sudden alarm.

Her smile was mocking as she said, “I shall. You cannot destroy me, but I shall take this woman you’d protect and tear out her heart. Think on that as you die, sorcerer!”

She sprang forward as she spoke, swift as a stooping falcon, hands raised and hooked like a harpy’s talons, her face no longer lovely but transformed, like a window to her soul, into a mask of bestial fury. Menelian shouted a single word and the air was abruptly thick with the perfume of almonds. Cennaire felt the force of his spell wash over her, and knew that any living creature must surely be consumed by that occult power. Had she been a living creature, she would have died on the instant, but she was not: she was undead. Anomius had explained this to her—that the greater part of the glamours wrought by sorcerers were designed to work against the living, for it was usually against the living that they were needed. Undead, she was unaffected by such spells. She snarled laughter as she fell upon Menelian and saw the realization in his eyes.

Even then he was not entirely defenseless; the spells that invested her with the semblance of life were not entirely unaffected. Her furious attack was slowed and though she caught his shoulders in her hands, those mechanisms possessed of a strength that could crush flesh and snap bone, he fought against her, resisting her terrible fury. He raised his own hands, seizing her wrists as she sought to clutch his throat, and spat arcane syllables into her face.

She recognized that his sorcery depended, to at least some extent, on vocalization: she halted the forming spell by the simple expedient of driving a knee upward into his groin. From time to time she had employed the same action against some overly enthusiastic client and it worked as well against a sorcerer as any normal man. Menelian’s words became a shriek of pain. His hold on her wrists loosened and she snatched her arms away as, helplessly, he was bent by the agony flaring in his belly. Cennaire chuckled—it sounded like a snarl of triumph—and locked a hand about his windpipe. Her fingers gouged deep, closing his throat, as with her other hand she slashed red lines across his face.

The violet eyes bulged, his skin suffused with crimson as blood vessels burst, that coloration rapidly lost beneath the welling that came from the cuts. Less powerfully now he battered at her arms and face and she held him off, not sure what damage he might inflict, but her vanity prompting her to avoid the risk of unsightly bruising.

“You were too confident,” she rasped, and laughed once. “Men are always too confident.”

She tightened her hold and his fists ceased their pounding. She clutched a wrist for fear he might yet employ a gramarye that needed no words, exulting in her strength as she forced him to his knees. He bowed before her, his eyes staring wide and horrified at her naked form, empty of any lust, but filled instead with fear. She savored the odor, aware that their struggle had disturbed lanterns, burning oil taking hold on the chamber, layering the room with smoke. She felt the magically induced strength begin to go out of him as his body strained to inhale the air denied by her grip and with an almost casual motion broke the wrist she held. He seemed not to notice the pain; nor when she took the other and snapped that, leaving both his hands limp and useless.

“What price your magicks now, sorcerer?” she demanded.

And with a single tightening of her fingers tore out his throat.

Menelian loosed an awful sigh through the ragged opening of his windpipe and fell forward against her knees. She stepped away from the corpse, breathing fast and deep, not from her exertions, for she felt no toll from those, but from the sheer excitement of what she had done. She had bested a mage! Bested one of the Tyrant’s sorcerers! What might she not achieve?

She started as fists pounded wood, reminding her that smoke must now trickle beneath the door, Menelian’s servants come to investigate. In confirmation she heard a nervous shout—“Master? Is all well, master?”—and looked about. The chamber was dense with smoke now and flame blazed all around her. She stood in the midst of the conflagration, not feeling the heat, but neither sure whether, or not, the flames could harm her. And threatened with exposure, without convenient excuse for the body at her feet. It would be easy to open the door and force a way through the servants—none there could halt her!—but that would beg questions, the answers perhaps leading back to Nhur-jabal and Anomius. Her creator had allowed her free rein, even warning her that she might find it necessary to slay Menelian, but he had also suggested that tact was preferable. And the dead man had spoken of sorcerers plotting against her master; men who might, did they learn what she had done, unite to destroy her. Singly, she believed she could defeat them, but not together. Should sufficient move en masse against her, then likely she would perish. Best then that she flee, leaving a mystery behind her that with any luck would not reach Nhur-jabal before she quit the city again in pursuit of her prey.

She favored the wizard’s corpse with a last, scornful glance and promised, “All of them, fool. The men and the woman, too,” then flung open a window and sprang through to the ground beyond.

Flames lit the night as she ran across a garden,
scaled the farther wall, and lost herself in the streets, the shouting of Menelian’s servants fading behind her. With luck, she thought, it would be assumed her body was consumed in the conflagration. Without, well, she would be gone from Vishat’yi before any could come seeking her, thanks to her master.

She halted in a dark and silent square, composing herself as she concentrated on the spell Anomius had taught her. She visualized his chamber in Nhur-jabal, mouthing the arcane syllables he had impressed upon her, and smelled the scent of almonds thick on the cool, moist night air.

A
NOMIUS
lounged upon a couch, propped against the silken cushions at his back, a disgusting epicure, seeming out of place in the luxurious surroundings of his chambers in the citadel, like a maggot in the clean, crisp flesh of a new-plucked apple. A decanter of crystal and silver stood beside a filled goblet on a low table of artfully worked copper at his elbow, his mottled hand delving in a bowl of sticky sweetmeats, their remnants already greasy on his jaw and clothing. Candlelight played on spilled sugar and the pale ivory of his hairless pate. He gulped down a tidbit as Cennaire materialized, his watery blue eyes registering no surprise, though his brows rose slightly, framing a question.

“It went well enough,” she said, shaking out her own thick hair, and smoothing her tunic. “Though they were gone.”

The wizard’s eyes narrowed at this and he wiped a hand across his mouth, spilling crumbs of pastry and grains of sugar over the symbols embroidered on his robe. Irritably, he cleaned his hand on the hem, motioning with the other that she should explain.

She took a seat and succinctly advised him of all she had learned and done. When she was finished he nodded thoughtfully.

“So, I have enemies here.” He plucked at the redveined
bulb of his nose. “That my prowess gives rise to envy is hardly surprising. They’ve laid glamours, did you know?”

Cennaire shook her head.

“Oh, yes. These quarters”—his hands scattered more crumbs as he gestured at the room—“these were all set with gramaryes. Spells of observance, spells of listening. They even tried to use a quyvhal to spy on me. On me!”

He laughed, the sound an avian tittering that flecked the detritus coating his robe with spittle. Cennaire waited, studying his ugly face, wondering, not for the first time since he had slain and resurrected her, if he was mad. It was of little moment: he enjoyed a prominence in Nhur-jabal and a measure of that status spilled over to her profit. She enjoyed that; more, she enjoyed the power he had given her. And he held her heart—held, therefore, the key to her existence.

“Fools,” he muttered when his laughter ceased. “Did they not think I’d know? And protect myself? Their glamours are as naught compared with mine and so, my lovely huntress, I am neither surprised nor unduly alarmed that they plot against me—in time I shall take my revenge. Meanwhile, when word comes from Vishat’yi that Menelian is dead they’ll have some inkling of what they face.”

Cennaire frowned at this, folding hands still stained with the mage’s blood on her thighs. “Might they not then move against me?” she asked. “I was able to defeat Menelian easily enough, but several, acting in concert . . .”

“You shall be gone to Lysse.” Anomius waved a casual hand, exposing discolored teeth in a smile she supposed was intended to reassure. “Safe from their magicks. Our quarry departed for Aldarin, you say? And on a warboat out of Vanu?”

Cennaire nodded. “So Menelian claimed.”

Sallow lips pursed thoughtfully as a grubby finger dug at a nostril. “The man they seek is Varent den
Tarl,” he said at last, flicking his finger. “The one who first employed them to find the grimoire. That much I knew, but this matter of the Vanu folk is interesting.”

“Menelian said only that they sailed together,” Cennaire offered, adding, “he lusted after the woman.”

The wizard’s watery blue gaze moved over her face and form appraisingly, the smile that accompanied his examination almost mocking. “But not after you,” he whispered, “which, I sense, annoyed you.”

Cennaire met his eyes unflinching. His smile grew broader, then faded. “No matter—do with her what you will. Only find Calandryll den Karynth and the Kern freesword.”

“I shall,” she promised.

“Aye,” he murmured, less to her than himself, “though they travel to the edges of the world and beyond, I’ve no doubt you’ll hunt them down. But even so . . .”

“What?” she asked, sensing for the first time an element of doubt behind his confidence.

“The Vanu folk,” he replied, shrugging. “What part do they play? Those folk seldom venture farther south than Forshold, and that but rarely. From what you’ve learned it would seem this Katya—and Tekkan, was it?—have joined the game. If Calandryll and Bracht came to Vishat’yi on the Vanu boat with dragon hides to sell, then likely it was that craft brought them to Gessyth. Nothing was said of what they found there?”

“Nothing,” Cennaire confirmed. “Menelian said only that they were friends to Kandahar.”

Anomius grunted, digging again at a nostril. Cennaire, ladylike for all her past, looked away. Sorcerer though he was, and her maker, Anomius was a revolting man.

“Why should Vanu aid them?” he wondered, the question rhetorical. “To suppose their meeting depended only on chance is to accept too much. I know
little enough of that land, but I’ve heard talk of shamans there with great powers—might they have arranged this joining of forces? And if they did, then why?”

“Mayhap they, too, seek the grimoire,” Cennaire suggested.

“Mayhap.” Anomius frowned, brow creasing in a myriad of lines as he pondered. “And if they do, it must truly be a tome of immense value. Perhaps even more than Calandryll believed, or”—his expression became menacing with anger—“more than he revealed.”

“Could he have hidden that knowledge from you?”

Cennaire regretted the question as she saw his eyes grow cold with rage at the implied insult. This man had given her the life she now knew, and he could take it from her. Perhaps was the only man who surely could. Behind the fear his stare induced she felt a new thought take shape: perhaps someday she must destroy him to protect herself. But not yet; not until she had explored the limits of her newfound powers, not before she was confident of the victory. She smiled nervously, lowering her head in apology to watch him through the heavy curtain of her lashes, employing all the artistry of her old trade.

Anomius sniffed noisily, not deigning to answer the question. Instead, he said: “Do not slay them before you have the book. Do you understand? Until you have the grimoire safe, you shall not destroy them.”

His voice was fierce and, dutifully, Cennaire nodded. In a subdued voice she asked, “And if they do not have it?”

He studied her a moment, his eyes speculative, and she feared she had gone too far. Then he smiled again, his expression unctuous as he said, “You think ahead, my pretty—aye, it may be they’ve delivered it to their employer and it rests now in the hands of Varent den Tarl. Be that so, you shall slay them—but only if you are certain beyond doubt of the grimoire’s location.
Those two are subtle, their stratagems cunning, so be wary! If Varent den Tarl holds the book, then be sure you find him before you take my revenge. Above all I must have the book! Find that before you deal with them; after . . .”

His eyes roved her body, not with such lust as she was accustomed to seeing in men’s eyes, but in contemplation of what she could, in her undead form, achieve, his tittering laughter finishing the sentence clearer than words might.