The Robin and the Kestrel (34 page)

The more he thought about that—well, the more likely it seemed. Robin could well have been angry enough at him to punish him by not sending any word. Or she could have found herself in a position where she was unable to get away. Surely, surely, if she'd been caught, she'd have been paraded like any other common criminal!

But he could not convince himself of that, and he certainly could not convince his gut.

Out of habit, and for lack of anything constructive to do, he closed up the wagon and trailed off with the rest to the Healing Service, hoping that Robin would come to their usual place under the statue of Saint Hypatia. But Hypatia's pedestal was empty, and as the usual show played out in its usual mockery, he was tempted to leave—

Then came a cry that rang over the murmur of the crowd and brought the healing service to a complete halt.

"Demon!"

His head, and everyone else's, snapped around at the cry from the back of the Cathedral. No matter how often Padrik staged these "demonic possessions," they always gave him a shock. Four Cathedral Guards struggled forward with Robere Patsono—who this morning sported clothing that made him look several pounds heavier than he truly was, and a false moustache.

Kestrel sighed with frustration. The way the tension had been building, he had thought for certain Padrik was going to come up with some new revelation before the Healing Service was over. But just as they reached the altar, the expected scenario took an abrupt turn into something completely
unexpected.

Robere suddenly gave a great cry, convulsed, and went limp in the arms of the Guards. His head sagged, chin against his chest, eyes closed, mouth hung slackly open.

And a thin stream of blue-gray smoke issued from his open mouth.

But it didn't act the way smoke was supposed to. Instead of rising, it snaked down his chest, eeled towards the space between him and Padrik, and pooled there.

He stared, along with every other person in the Cathedral.
If only Robin were here, she could tell me how they're doing this—
It looked real,
very
real. So real that the hair on the back of his neck crawled, and gooseflesh rose on his arms. The Cathedral was so silent that he wondered if anyone was even breathing. The Guards holding the man were white-faced and trembling;
they
certainly hadn't expected this to happen. Only Padrik was unmoved; he watched, face stern, one hand raised in a warding gesture, the other grasping his staff of office.

Then as more and more of the smoke gathered, a vague shape rose up out of the pool of mist—

And Kestrel heard a faint, discordant music. But not with his ears.

Music like, but unlike, the music he always heard when Rune or Talaysen worked real Bardic magic; the music he followed on the rare occasions that he had done the same. Someone was working magic,
real
magic, in the Cathedral!

And if it's not to produce this demon, I'll eat every God-Star I've made!

The shape shivered, thickened, grew opaque—and took on a clear, defined form. Then more than a form.

It became a demon; a real, three-dimensional being, that looked exactly as the demons portrayed in so many Church paintings and carvings. Pale gray, the color of stone. Manlike, but clearly not a man. Naked, except for a loincloth, clawed feet and hands, huge bat-wings, horns, a raptor's beak where a mouth should be—

—strangely similar to T'fyrr—

People nearest the demon screamed as it snarled at them, then turned its attention towards the altar, and hissed. But before Kestrel had any chance to wonder about that resemblance to T'fyrr, Padrik spread both his arms wide and over his head, his staff of office held between them. A white-gold glow surrounded the staff and the hands that held it.

"Begone, foul fiend!" he thundered, his voice filling the Cathedral and drowning the cries of panic from the crowd. "Begone, be banished, and trouble us no more!"

The fiend laughed, and Kestrel felt his knees turning to water with fear. He couldn't have moved; like everyone else in the building he was paralyzed with fright. He shivered with cold, drenched in an icy sweat; he shook as if he was trembling with fever, and started to sink to the floor in abject terror—

When he suddenly felt the internal music intensify, and a new melody join it, and realized that the fear he felt was not coining from within him, but from the music!

Once he knew that, he was able to shunt the music away, and fear vanished, exactly like a soap bubble popping. With it went the paralysis that had held him helpless.

He remained on his knees, however; if he had stood, he would have been terribly conspicuous amid all the rest of the grovelers. Padrik was the only man standing now, for even the Guards had dropped to their knees, leaving their "prisoner" to lie on the floor like a dead thing. The High Bishop glowed with hazy, golden light—light that was no more divine than the demon, Kestrel suspected.

"In the name of God and His Angels, begone!" Padrik cried again, his voice rising over the demonic laughter. "Begone, lest the wrath of God be unleashed upon you!"

The demon's only answer was to leap upon the High Bishop, claw-hands reaching for his throat.

Padrik brought down his staff just in time; the demon's hands closed upon it rather than flesh. The moment that it touched the wooden staff, however, the real show began.

The two combatants lurched in a bizarre circle-dance, linked by the High Bishop's staff, never once leaving the clear space before the altar. Coruscating lightnings of eye-searing yellow and blood-red lanced from the demon, grounding everywhere except on Padrik, whose golden glow had hardened to a visible shield about him. The demon's shrieks of rage echoed through the Cathedral, further terrifying the congregation. Now that Kestrel was no longer in the thrall of the artificially induced terror, he was able to admire the artistry, and wonder who among the Priests or the Gypsies was responsible. As a show, it was the best he'd ever seen; a truly professional illusion on the mage's part, and a truly fine acting performance on Padrik's. It really
looked
as if he was fighting something!

At first, the struggle appeared to be completely even, but gradually the tide turned in Padrik's favor. The High Bishop was back in his former position, where he'd started when the fight began. His back was to the altar, with his face to the congregation, and the demon's back to them. There he stopped and held his ground.

The demon cried out, and for the first time there was something like
c
tear in its voice.

His face shining with well-simulated righteous wrath, Padrik forced the demon to its knees, and with a tremendous shout, wrestled the staff out of its hands and struck it across the head! A soundless explosion of light covered the lack of any sound of impact. It collapsed at his feet, and he planted the tip of his staff firmly in the middle of its back.

It groveled on the marble before him, whimpering.

A collective sigh passed through the crowd at the successful conclusion to the "struggle." Kestrel was impressed, Robin's disappearance momentarily forgotten; this was going to enhance Padrik's reputation no end! It was one thing to "banish" a "demon" no one could see—it was quite another to actually defeat such a creature in a battle anyone could see with his own eyes!

Even if it is as phony as glass diamonds.

But surely now the show was over. He expected the High Bishop to "banish" the creature as he always had before, though probably in a much more spectacular manner.

But once again the little play took an entirely different turn.

"Who sent you?" Padrik demanded, his voice booming and echoing in the silent Cathedral. "Who sent you to possess this man, and to attack me? What vile magician is it that you serve, creature of darkness? Answer! Or you will feel the might of the weapon of God once again!"

He raised his staff in threat, and the demon groveled and wept and whimpered so convincingly that Kestrel almost felt sorry for it.

"Lady Orlina Woolwright,"
the demon hissed, its voice harsh and hoarse.
"That isss my missstresss, the lady I sssserve—"

Kestrel started with surprise, and he was not the only one to do so.
Orlina Woolwright?
He knew that name—and so did every native of Gradford, and every merchant who had been here more than a day or two.

She was one of the Mayor's Councilors, appointed by her Guild, for the Mayor surely would never have appointed anyone as outspoken as she was on his own. A few days ago, she had made a public speech or two of her own in the Cathedral square from the vantage of her own balcony, concerning the rights of tradesmen, with carefully veiled references to all the restrictions that Padrik had been attempting to have signed into law. She was beautiful, wealthy, a Master in the Weaver's Guild in her own right, and perhaps not so coincidentally, the only person on the Mayor's Council with a sense of humor. She'd certainly been able to make a mockery of some of Padrik's more outrageous statements in those speeches of hers. She had—unwisely now, it seemed—been flaunting the new wave of piety, by dressing as a woman of refinement and fashion, rather than a woman of the "new" Gradford.

She had been too prominent a target for Padrik to attack in the Council or in any other conventional, secular venue. That was what the other merchants had said, anyway. She held too many debts, knew too many secrets.

So
has he chosen this way to bring her down?

"Orlina Woolwright? So be it!" Padrik raised his staff above his head, and gazed out over the heads of the crowd. "You have all heard it! You have heard the testament of the witch's own creature, sent to slay me! I now denounce Orlina Woolwright as a sorcerer, mage, and witch of the blackest and darkest! I declare her Anathema in the sight of all good Churchmen! Let no man aid her, let no man succor her, for the wrath of God is now against her!"

A bolt of lightning lanced down out of the ceiling of the Cathedral, and struck Padrik's staff with a
crack.
He pointed the staff down at the demon, and another bolt crackled down to strike it—

This one was so bright it brought tears to Kestrel's eyes, and when he blinked them clear again, gasping, all sign of the demon was gone. Padrik stood triumphantly before the altar, alone.

Was he the only one to notice that there was no sign
literally
of the demon—not even a blackened spot where the "bolt of lightning" just hit?

Silence for a moment, then a single voice rang out over the crowd, as a single, discordant chord of jarring music rang through his head.

"Get the witch!"

Before Kestrel could blink, the crowd had turned to a mob, a raging, maddened mob. He tried to stay where he was, tried to cling to the statue, but the press of people surging towards the exit was too great, and his grip was torn loose as the mob carried him away. It was all he could do to stay on his feet and not be trampled!

Now
he was afraid, really afraid; frightened that he would stumble and fall, frightened that the mob's anger
might
turn against him for no reason at all. The brief glances he took at the faces of those around him only frightened him more. There was no sense in those dilated eyes, no sanity in the twisted mouths that spouted shouts of hatred.

He could only hold to one thought.
If I try to leave now, they'll turn on me and tear me to shreds along with whatever they do to Orlina Woolwright.

Orlina Woolwright's home was one of the many fine houses on the square facing the Cathedral; the mob did not have far to go for their victim.

Two burly men at the front of the crowd sprinted ahead and broke in the door just as the main body of people got there. The house could never hold them all; and only part of the mob surged inside; the rest waited, shouting, for the first group to find their prey. Jonny could only watch helplessly as one poor servant who tried to stop them was beaten half to death and left beside the splintered remains of the door. Other servants ran for their lives; some crawled away with the marks of more blows upon their faces and bodies.

Within moments, glass shattered as something was thrown out of a window—a beautiful silver candelabra. A woman snatched it out of the air, and screamed,
"Take the witch's wealth! Strip her as naked as she was born!"

That was the signal for all-out looting. Windows shattered as goods came tumbling out of them. The mob surged forward and people snatched at anything that the righteous looters inside pitched out a window—lengths of fabric, paintings, furniture, clothing and jewelry—a fork, a glass paperweight, an ornamental letter-opener—

People snatched their prizes and ran, and no one did anything to stop them. The City Guard had vanished; there wasn't even a Cathedral Guard to be seen. Jonny was quite certain that there was nothing left but the bare walls by the time Orlina appeared, herself bundled up like so much loot, bound and gagged and carried in the ungentle hands of the two men who had first broken down her door. And now the mob parted to let them through, then surged along behind them as they carried her off to Padrik. Strangely, they had not stripped her literally; that seemed odd in the light of their lack of restraint so far—she remained clothed in her fine gown of mulberry-colored wool; not even the badge of Master on its chain around her neck had been taken from her.

Once again, the mob surged forward; somehow, this time, Jonny managed to get to the edge near the front. If he got a chance to bolt for the wagon, he was going to take it!

The High Bishop met them at the foot of the staircase in front of the Cathedral doors, his face the very essence of a grieving saint. The two men tumbled the woman at his feet and forced her to kneel before him. Jonny could not see her face, but her back told him that if she had one hand free and so much as a letter-opener in it, Padrik would have been eviscerated before anyone could blink.

"You are a witch, Orlina Woolwright," Padrik thundered, as the mob quieted. "You are a dark mage, and a foul demon-lover. Your own acts condemn you, as should I. And yet"—his face softened, and his tone took on new sweetness—"and yet I cannot do other than forgive you."