Stalking Darkness n-2 Read online

  Alec got up to go without a word. But he paused in the doorway, looking back at Seregil still sitting by the fire.

  "What does tali mean? Is it Aurenfaie?"

  "Tali?"

  A ghost of the old grin tugged at one corner of Seregil's mouth. "Yes, it's an Aurenfaie term of endearment, rather old-fashioned, like beloved. Where'd you pick that up?"

  "I thought—"

  Alec regarded him quizzically, then shook his head. "I don't know, at one of the salons, probably. Sleep well, Seregil."

  "You, too."

  When Alec was gone, Seregil walked to the window and rested his forehead against one cold pane, staring out over the dark garden.

  Stone within ice. Secrets within secrets.

  Silences inside of greater silences.

  In all the time he'd known Nysander, he had never felt such distance between them. Or so alone.

  Several days passed before Alec realized that they were not going to talk of the matter again. Despite his oath, it troubled him greatly. This silence toward the wizard seemed to create a small cold gap in a relationship that had been so seamlessly warm and safe.

  For the first time in months he found himself wondering about Seregil's loyalties.

  Try as he might to banish such thoughts, they nagged at him until at last he came out with it as they were out walking in the Noble Quarter one evening.

  He'd feared that Seregil would evade the question or be annoyed. Instead, he looked as if he'd been expecting this discussion.

  "Loyalty, eh? That's a large question for a thinking person. If you're asking if I'm still loyal to Nysander, then the answer is yes, for as long as I have faith in his honor. The same goes for any of my friends."

  "But do you still have faith in him?" Alec pressed.

  "I do, though he hasn't made it easy lately. You're too smart not to have noticed that there are unspoken things between him and me. I'm trying hard to be patient about all that, and so must you.

  "But maybe that's not the real issue here. Are you losing faith in me?"

  "No!" Alec exclaimed hastily, knowing the words were true as he spoke them. "I'm just trying to understand."

  "Well, like I said, loyalty is no simple thing. For instance, would you say that you, Nysander, and I are loyal to Queen Idrilain and want to act in the best interests of Skala?"

  "I've always thought so."

  "But what if the Queen ordered us, for the good of Skala, to do harm to Micum? Should I keep faith with her or with him?"

  "With Micum," Alec replied without hesitation.

  "But what if Micum, without our knowledge, had committed treason against Skala? What then?"

  "That's ridiculous!" Alec snorted. "He'd never do anything like that."

  "People can surprise you, Alec. And perhaps he did it out of loyalty to something else, say his family. He's kept faith with his family but broken faith with the Queen. Which outweighs the other?"

  "His family," Alec maintained, although he was beginning to feel a bit confused.

  "Certainly. Any man ought to hold his family above all else. But what if his justified act of treason cost hundreds of other families their lives? And what if some of those killed were also friends of ours—Myrhini, Cilia, There. Well, maybe not Thero—"

  "I don't know!" Alec shrugged uncomfortably.

  "I can't say one way or the other without knowing the details. I guess I'd just have to have faith in him until I knew more. Maybe he didn't have any choice."

  Seregil leveled a stern finger at him. "You always have a choice. Don't ever imagine you don't. Whatever you do, it's a decision and you have to accept responsibility for it. That's when honor becomes more than empty words."

  "Well, I still say I'd have to know why he did it," Alec retorted stubbornly.

  "That's good. But suppose, despite all his kindness to you, you discovered he really had betrayed your trust. Would you hunt him down and kill him as the law required?"

  "How could I?"

  "It would be difficult. Past kindness counts for something. But say you knew for certain that someone else would catch him—the Queen's officers, for instance—and that they'd kill him slowly and horribly. Then wouldn't it be your duty, as a friend and a man of honor, to see to it that he was granted a quick, merciful death? Looked at from that angle, I suppose killing Micum Cavish might be the greatest expression of friendship."

  Alec stared at Seregil, mouth slightly ajar. "How the hell did we come to me killing Micum?"

  Seregil shrugged. "You asked about loyalty. I told you it wasn't easy."

  11

  The hands moved more often now. As Nysander gazed down at them through the thick sheet of crystal that covered the case, a trick of the light superimposed his reflection over the splayed hands below, creating the illusion that his head lay within the case, gripped in the withered talons of the dead necromancer. The face he saw there was a very old one, etched with weariness.

  While he watched, the hands slowly curled into fists, clenching so tightly that the skin over one knuckle split, showing brown bone beneath.

  Continuing grimly on through the deserted museum, Nysander half expected to hear the Voice from his nightmares, roaring its taunting challenge up through the floor from the depths below. Those dreams came more often now, since Seregil's return from the Asheks.

  Summoning an orb of light, Nysander opened the door at the back of the museum chamber and began the long descent through the vaults.

  He'd wooed Magyana here in the days of their youth.

  When she'd remained obdurate in her celibacy, they had continued to share long discussions as they wandered along these narrow stone corridors. Seregil had often come with them during his ill-starred apprenticeship, asking a thousand questions and poking into everything.

  Thero came with him occasionally, though less often than he once had. Did Ylinestra bring him down here to make love, Nysander wondered, as she had him?

  By the Four, she'd warmed the very stones with her relentless passion!

  He shook his head in bemusement as he imagined her with Thero; a sunbird embracing a crow.

  He'd never completely trusted the sorceress.

  Talented as Ylinestra was at both magic and love, greed lurked just behind her smile. In that way she was not unlike Thero, but Thero was bound by Oreska law; she was not.

  The fact that she had gone from his bed to Thero's troubled Nysander in a way that had nothing to do with former passions, though he had been unable to convince Thero of that. After two tense, unpleasant attempts, Nysander had dropped the subject.

  Other wizards might have dismissed an assistant over such a matter, he knew, yet in spite of their growing differences, Nysander still felt a strong regard for Thero and refused to give up on him.

  And mixed with that regard, he admitted once again in the silence of the vaults, was the fear that many of his fellows in the Oreska would be glad to take on Thero if he let him go. Many were critical of Nysander's handling of the talented young wizard, and thought Thero was wasted on the eccentric old man in the east tower. After all, he'd ruined one apprentice already, hadn't he? Small wonder Thero seemed discontent.

  But Nysander knew the boy better than any of them and believed with every fiber of his being that given his head at this stage of training, the young wizard would ultimately ruin himself. Oh, he would earn his robes, of course, probably in half the time it would take most. That was part of the problem. Thero was so apt a pupil that most masters would joyously fill his head with all they knew, guiding him quickly through the levels to true power.

  But more than a keen mind and flawless ability were needed to make so powerful a wizard as Thero would undoubtedly become. Ungoverned by wisdom, patience, and a compassionate heart, that same keen mind would be capable of unspeakable havoc.

  So he kept Thero with him, hopeful to change him, fearful to let him go.

  There were moments, such as the night he found him tending to Seregil's injuries after the
misadventure in the sewers, when Nysander caught a gleam of hope—signs that Thero might be coming to understand what it was that Nysander was asking of him beyond the mere learning of magic.

  Reaching the door to the lowest vault, he shook off his reverie and hastened on.

  Few had reason to go to this lowest vault, which for time out of mind had been the Oreska's repository for the forgotten, the useless, and the dangerous. Many of the storerooms were empty now, or cluttered with mouldering crates. Other doors had been walled up, their frames outlined with runic spells and warnings. But as he walked along, the sound of his footsteps muffled on the dank brick underfoot, he could hear the bowl and its high, faint resonance, audible only to those trained to listen for it. The sound was much stronger than it once had been.

  The wooden disk had had little effect on it; its power was incomplete separated from the seven others Nysander knew existed somewhere in the world. The crystal crown was a different matter. As soon as he'd placed it here, the resonance of the bowl had grown increasingly stronger, and with it his nightmares.

  And the movements of the necromancer's hands in the museum.

  How Seregil had survived his exposure to the disk unprotected by anything but his own magical block was still a mystery. Equally mystifying was how little protection all Nysander's carefully prepared spells and charms had been for Seregil from the effects of the crown. In the first case he should have died, in the second he should have had absolute protection, yet in both cases he had sustained wounds but survived.

  All this, taken together with the words the Oracle of Illior had spoken to Seregil, left Nysander with the uneasy conviction that much more than mere coincidence was at work.

  Stopping, he faced the familiar stretch of wall yet again. With a final check to be certain no eyes, natural or otherwise, were upon him, he spoke a powerful key spell and cast a sighting through stone and magic to the small hidden room beyond.

  Immured in the darkness of centuries, the bowl sat on the tiny chamber's single shelf. To the uninitiated, it was nothing more than a crude vessel of burnt clay, unremarkable in any way. Yet this homely object had dominated his entire adult life, and the lives of three wizards before him.

  The Guardians.

  To one side of the bowl lay the crystal box containing the disk; on the other, still smeared with the ash of Dravnian cook fires, was the flat wooden case holding the crown.

  For no better reason than curiosity, he spoke the Spell of Passage and entered the chamber.

  Magic crackled ominously around him in spite of the wards and containment spells. Taking a lightstone from his pocket, he held it up and regarded the bowl solemnly for a moment, thinking again of his predecessors. None of them, not even Arkoniel, had anticipated ever adding to the contents of this hidden and most guarded chamber. Now he had, not once but twice, and their combined song was a pulse of living energy.

  His hands stole to the containers on either side of the bowl.

  What would that song be if I opened these, brought even these three fragments together without the rest? What could be learned from such an experiment?

  His right thumb found the catch on the wooden box, rubbed tentatively at it.

  Nysander jerked back, made a warding sign, and retreated the way he'd come. Alone in the corridor, he broke the Spell of Passage and slumped against the opposite wall, his heart pounding ominously in his chest.

  If just three fragments of the whole could force such thoughts into his mind, then he must be all the more vigilant.

  Forced those thoughts into your mind, old man, a niggling inner voice chided, or revealed them there? How many times did Arkoniel warn you that temptation is nothing more than the dark mirror of the soul?

  Inevitably, regret followed hard on the heels of memory. Arkoniel had taught him well and early the responsibility of the Guardians, allowing him to share the weight of the secret they preserved.

  Whom did he share it with?

  No one.

  Seregil could have been trusted, but the magic had failed him. Thero had the magic, but lacked—what?

  Humility, Nysander decided sadly. The humility to properly fear the power contained in this tiny, silver-lined chamber. The more apparent Thero's abilities became over the years of his apprenticeship, the more certain Nysander was that temptation would be his undoing. Temptation and pride.

  Feeling suddenly far older than his two hundred and ninety— eight years, Nysander pressed a hand to the wall, bolstering the warding spells, changing and strengthening them to conceal what must remain concealed. It was a task he'd once thought he would pass along as his master had passed it to him. Now he felt no such certainty.

  12

  Seregil and Alec were lingering over a late lunch one bright afternoon toward the middle of Dostin, when

  Runcer entered the room with a ragged young girl in tow.

  Seregil looked up expectantly, recognizing her as the sort who made her living as a message carrier.

  "Beka Cavish sends word that the Queen's Horse is riding out at dawn tomorrow," the girl recited stiffly.

  "Thanks." Seregil handed her a sester and pushed a plate of sweets her way. Grinning, the child snatched a handful and hid them away in the folds of her ragged skirt.

  "Take this message to Captain Myrhini, of the Queen's Horse," he told her. "As Beka Cavish's patron, I'm honor-bound to give her and her turma a proper send-off. The captain is asked to attend and keep order. She may bring anyone else she likes, so long as she gives Beka and her riders a night out. Got that?"

  She proudly repeated it back word for word.

  "Good girl. Off you go." Turning back to Alec, Seregil found his young friend frowning worriedly.

  "I thought you said nothing would happen before spring?" Alec asked.

  "The war? It won't," Seregil replied, somewhat surprised by the news himself. "The Queen must have some reason to think the Plenimarans mean to move in early spring, though, and wants troops near the border in case of trouble."

  "This doesn't give us time enough to send for Micum and Kari."

  "Damn! I didn't even think of that." Seregil drummed his fingers on the polished tabletop a moment.

  "Oh, well. We'll ride out tomorrow with the details. In the meantime, we've got a party to prepare for."

  Word soon came back by the same messenger that Captain Myrhini would release Lieutenant Cavish and her riders for the evening, with the expectation that sufficient food and drink were included in the offer.

  Seregil had already turned his attention to the preparations with an efficiency that astonished Alec.

  Within a few hours, extra servants had been engaged, a raucous group of musicians was installed in the gallery with their fiddles, pipes, and drums, and a steady stream of deliveries from the market had been whipped into a proper feast by the cook and her crew.

  In the meantime, the salon was cleared of all breakables and three long trestle tables set up, together with hogsheads of ale and wine set on pitched braces at the head of the room.

  Beka and her turma rode into Wheel Street at sunset. They were an impressive sight in their spotless white breeches and green tabards sewn with the regimental crest.

  A little daunting even, thought Alec, standing next to Seregil at the front door to welcome them.

  He'd always envied Beka just a little, being part of such an elite group. The idea of riding into a pitched battle surrounded by comrades had a certain romantic appeal.

  "Welcome!" Seregil called.

  Beka dismounted and strode up the front steps, her eyes shining almost as brightly as the burnished lieutenant's gorget hanging at her throat.

  "You do us a great honor, my lords," she said loudly, giving them a wink.

  Seregil bowed slightly, then looked over the crowd of riders milling behind her. "That's a rough-looking bunch you brought. Think they can behave themselves?"

  "Not a chance, my lord," Beka replied smartly.

  Seregil grinned. "Well then
, come on in, all of you!"

  Alec's awe diminished somewhat as the men and women of Beka's command filed past into the painted salon.

  He'd only seen them at a distance on the practice field before-dashing figures clashing in mock battle. Now he saw that most of them were scarcely older than he. Some had the bearing of landless second sons and daughters or merchant's scions; others—those who stood gaping at the opulent room—came from humbler backgrounds and had earned their place by sheer prowess and the price of a horse and arms.

  "I'd like to introduce my sergeants," Beka said.

  "Mercalle, Braknil, and Portus."

  Shaking hands with the trio, Alec guessed that most of them had come up through the ranks. Sergeant Mercalle was tall and dark-complected. She was also missing the last two fingers of her right hand, a common wound among warriors. Next to her stood Braknil, a big, solemn-looking man with a bushy blond beard and weather-roughened skin. The third, Portus, was younger than his companions and carried himself like a noble.

  Alec wondered what his story was; according to Beka, it seemed unlikely that he would not be an officer of some rank.

  Seregil shook hands with them. "I won't embarrass your lieutenant by telling you how long I've known her, but I will say that she's been trained by some of the best swordsmen I know."

  "I can believe that, your lordship," Braknil replied. "That's why I asked to serve with her."

  Beka grinned. "Sergeant Braknil's too tactful to say so, but he was one of the sergeants assigned to train the new commissions when I came in. I started out taking orders from him."

  "A title may guarantee an officer's commission, but it doesn't guarantee the officer's quality," Mercalle put in rather sourly.

  "Especially if there hasn't been a real war to winnow out the chaff in a while. I've seen a good many sporting the steel gorget who won't see high summer."

  "Mercalle's our optimist," Portus chuckled, and Alec heard the remnants of a lower city accent behind the man's smooth words.