Death of a Darklord Read online

  “The man was very blunt and matter-of-fact. He didn’t seem to be an imaginative sort. He talked of burying his own daughter, and a week later she was at his window trying to get inside.”

  “Was he sure she was truly dead?”

  “Yes, of that he was sure.”

  “How many people have died of this plague?”

  “Over half the village,” Thordin said.

  Jonathan shook his head. “Why did he not send for help before?”

  “He heard a bard singing of your defeat of the beast of Mandriel. When the bard told him you were living and not some legend, the town decided to send for you.”

  “If half of them are taken, it is a serious problem, indeed, but I have had a missive from Calum. He has given us a new assignment. I can’t put that off.”

  “I will go back to Pegin’s village,” Blaine said.

  “Alone?” Thordin asked.

  A stubborn frown made Blaine’s face seem very young, like a child told he could not do something. “He died to save his village. We can’t let him have died for nothing.”

  Jonathan sighed. There were times when duty to the brotherhood and larger goals chafed in the face of more immediate needs. This was one of them.

  “What does Calum say in the letter?”

  Jonathan handed it over.

  Blaine stared at the floor, anger beginning to show through the pain and tiredness.

  Thordin looked up, an odd expression on his blunt face.

  “What is it?” Jonathan asked.

  “Cortton is the village Pegin Tallyrand came from.”

  Blaine looked up. “You mean the brotherhood is sending us to help Pegin’s village?”

  Thordin handed the letter to him. “It would seem so.”

  “Well, now we know what is wrong in Cortton,” Jonathan said.

  “A plague of the dead,” Thordin said in his deep, ruined voice.

  “When do we leave?” Blaine asked. Eagerness showed on his face. He sat straighter in the chair; even his wounds seemed to hurt less. They were going to save Pegin’s village, repay the debt that Blaine felt, assuage his guilt at the other man’s death.

  Jonathan understood all that. He could watch most of it dance across the younger man’s face. Blaine’s face was always like a mirror. Strangely, it was Elaine who was harder to read, more private.

  “A few days to gather supplies and pack, to let you heal. To try and determine what caused the great tree to come to life. If there is some evil magic coming so close to our home, we must know of it. I don’t want to leave the others behind in danger.”

  “If we cannot determine what happened, what then?” Blaine asked.

  Jonathan had to smile at his enthusiasm. “Then we leave for Cortton in three days’ time, with or without that particular mystery solved. If we huddled at home before we had deciphered every evil that befell us, we would never leave these walls.”

  Blaine grinned. “Good.”

  Jonathan looked at the younger man’s eager face. Had he ever been that young? No, he decided, he had not. There was an answering gleam in Thordin’s eyes. Looking forward to the next battle. Perhaps Thordin had been that young; perhaps he still was.

  Jonathan stared at the two warriors. Perhaps those who lived by steel, like those who lived by magic, suffered the same delusion, that their abilities could solve every problem. Come to think of it, once upon a time, there had been a certain mage-finder that thought his abilities were proof against all evil. That had not been so long ago. Before Calum’s illness—a few months.

  He wanted to touch Thordin and Blaine, to shake them until the eager light died from their eyes. Didn’t they realize that steel was not always enough? Magic was not enough. Intelligence was not always enough. There were some horrors for which nothing was enough.

  They had fought the walking dead before and conquered. But a plague of the dead? Half a village brought to unholy life? Would they finally meet something they could not overcome? For the first time, a tiny worm of doubt began to gnaw at Jonathan Ambrose, mage-finder. Doubt … and fear.

  tHE maN’S BODY LaY ON ItS BaCK, HaNDS at ItS SIDe. He had been average: medium height, brown hair, an unremarkable face, neither handsome nor ugly. Perhaps, alive, there had been some humor that had animated that face, a divine spark that had brought beauty to ordinariness. Elaine had seen enough dead to know that was often the case. It was hard to recognize a friend, a loved one, in the face of the dead, even the newly dead.

  The shed was a mere lean-to, one wall missing, open to the winter night. Snow skittered across the body, sounding dry as sand as it gathered in the wrinkles of the dead man’s clothes. The back of the shed was filled to the ceiling with wood. The snow dusted the cut wood.

  Tereza stood over the body. The lantern at her feet cast a golden swath on the dead face. The icy wind gusted inside the lantern with a whoosh that sent flickering shadows trembling in the shed. The amber light seemed almost as uncertain as the shadows themselves, like colored darkness.

  Elaine huddled inside her hooded cloak. There had been much yelling about her braving the cold so soon after nearly dying, but in the end, they had listened to Gersalius. He said she would be fine. It was magic, and on that, like it or not, Gersalius was the expert.

  The wizard moved up beside them, kneeling by the body. His thick cloak spread like a dark pool on the hard ground. One pale hand appeared from his cloak to trace the man’s cold face. His fingers were very long and graceful: musician’s hands, poet’s hands. They traced the bones of the cheek, the chin, the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the fleshy lips. Without looking up, he said, “What do you see, Elaine?”

  “I see a dead man,” she said.

  “Look with more than your eyes.”

  Elaine shivered, drawing her cloak tighter. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He looked up. His eyes were thrown into shadow, like blind holes. His face was strange, somber, no longer friendly or even approachable. Kneeling there in the fire-kissed dark, fingers touching the corpse’s up-turned face, he was suddenly a sorcerer, with all that one word implied.

  “Come, Elaine, we have had this discussion before. You are a budding wizard, a witch, if you prefer. Tell me what you see.”

  His voice filled the shed, beating against the darkness. It was not a shout, and yet it was, as if his voice shouted on other ears besides her normal ones.

  “We haven’t got all night, wizard,” Tereza said. She stamped her feet against the cold. “Question her later, in the warmth.”

  Gersalius did not even look at her; his black-hole eyes never wavered from Elaine’s face. “She must learn.”

  “I asked if you could discover why the great tree had come to life. You asked to see the corpse. I brought you. Now you go all mysterious on me. Why is it that wizards can never do anything like normal people?”

  He turned to her at last, a slow move of his head. As his eyes moved out of shadow, they gleamed with a greenish light, the color of nothing in the shed.

  His eyes weren’t really glowing, were they? Elaine did not want to know if they were.

  “You wanted me to discover something about the spell that killed this man. I am trying to do just that,” the mage explained patiently.

  “I asked you about the spell that animated the tree. We know what killed the man,” insisted Tereza.

  “Do you? Do you really?”

  “The tree tore him in half, old man.”

  “That is how he died, yes, but not what killed him.”

  “It is too cold for riddles.”

  “And too cold for interruptions, gypsy.”

  Elaine’s eyes flicked to Tereza. No one used that tone with her, not and lived a long and happy life.

  Tereza drew a long breath that steamed in the air. Her eyes looked away from the kneeling wizard. “You are right. My apologies.”

  Elaine couldn’t have been more astonished if Tereza had sprouted a second head. The woman never apologized, not
for anything.

  “Is that a spell?” She blurted it out before she had time to think. If it were a spell, saying so was not a good idea. Or perhaps it was. Gersalius shouldn’t be bewitching them with his eyes. Surely Jonathan would disapprove of that.

  Tereza smiled. “It is not a spell. The mage is trying to teach you sorcery, and I am questioning his methods. If I were teaching you swordplay, I would not want to be second-guessed.” She made a small bowing motion with her arms. “Pray, continue, wizard. I will merely stand here freezing while you play schoolmarm.”

  “Graciousness becomes you, Mistress Ambrose.” His voice held a familiar lilt of humor. It was the voice that had been so comforting in the kitchen. Then he turned back to her, and as his eyes crossed into shadow, they gleamed. They seemed to merely reflect the glow of the lantern, but Elaine knew better. His eyes shone with sparks of blue and emerald, the color of no honest flame.

  When his eyes were safely shadowed, and that disturbing light quenched from her sight, he spoke. “Now, Elaine, tell me what you see.”

  She released a long breath that wavered and fogged near her face. It was so cold. Her body trembled in the warm shell of her cloak. Why was she suddenly so cold?

  “Elaine, your magic seeks to control you. You must control it.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “You must learn, or perish. There is no other choice.”

  “Why am I so cold?”

  “Because it’s the bloody middle of winter,” Tereza said.

  Gersalius held up a hand. “No interruptions.” Neither he nor Elaine looked to see what the woman thought of such an abrupt order.

  “Your magic takes shape from two things, outside forces, like the fire or light of your visions, and your own body. It is trying to feed on the warmth of your flesh. Don’t let it.”

  “I don’t understand.” The cold was growing worse. It was not the winter air. The cold was coming from inside her. She could feel it like an icy wind through her belly.

  “Can you find the source of the cold?”

  She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Explore it, Elaine. Tell me what it feels like.”

  She tried. She reached for the cold with something like a hand, with something that traced the cold wind back, back, deep inside her, farther and deeper than her frail body was wide. There, at what felt like the cold, dark center of her being, was something like a cave. She had no words for what it was, but she was human and needed words. So it became a cave, and with the word, the thought: It was a cave. A cavern of ice that had been built one crystalline layer atop another until it was like a great mirrored room. Each facet of ice glinted with reflected light. But there was no light. All was darkness.

  No, there was light, but it was not reflected. It was in the ice, a flickering light that ran through the crystals like a fish through swift water. She turned and, with something other than eyes, saw blue and violet, purple, the liquid pink of sunset, and somehow it was Elaine. It was her power, as much hers as her own face.

  “It is you, Elaine, your power, but you have let it run wild. It has built its own home, found its own way to freedom like water eating through the ground. It has chosen cold as its home, its brick. Heat is its mortar. There is nothing wrong with using fire, light as a catalyst for magic, but you must understand what you do, and why. You must reach for the flame to fuel your magic, not have the magic use your hand to feed it. Do you understand?”

  She could still feel her body standing in the wind-bitten cold, but it was not as immediate, as important as that darting light inside the ice.

  “Elaine, answer me.”

  There the light had stopped. She could almost reach it.

  “Elaine!” The voice cut across her mind like a whip. She jerked and staggered. She was suddenly staring at the wizard’s upturned face. The ice and flickering light inside was gone. She stood swaying in the winter night, frightened, but no longer unnaturally cold.

  “Your power has been too long left to its own devices, Elaine. It is a destructive thing now, a hungry untamed child left too long in the dark. It has made its own world. It will take a long time to reclaim it completely. But it can be done, for tonight you must feed it, consciously.”

  “How?”

  “Reach for the fire, Elaine, or reach for some reflected light. Reach for whatever would send you visions.”

  She extended a hand. The air was bitter against her bare skin.

  The lantern flickered in a sudden gust of wind. Snow swirled, sparkling like silver dust, in the light. She felt the tug of a vision, a need to hold the light. But it wasn’t just a vision; it was her magic, and it needed to be fed.

  Her hand slowly turned, palm upward. The light and shadows trembled around her like struck gold. It was as if the light drew a shaking breath and bent toward her palm. It folded downward into the skin of her hand like water going down a drain. The light leaked away into her skin. It sucked downward into that cold, iciness, and the cavern filled with life, warmth, and the ice sucked it down greedily.

  The lantern went out in a sputtering rush of sparks. They were left in darkness. The only light was the cold gleam of stars. But, strangely, that was enough. Everything seemed to flicker and glow with a faint edge of silver light.

  “Look at the body, Elaine.”

  She did.

  The man lay on the frozen ground. His face was no longer ordinary. There was some spark left, not of life, but of what he had been. He had been a man who laughed often and was often afraid. What need had driven him out in the darkest part of the year? The question gave the answer—love. He loved his remaining family, his people, his village. She saw the recent loss of his daughter like a shadow across his still face.

  How did she know all this? How could she be so certain?

  “Do not question yourself, Elaine. You will spoil it if you do.”

  She tried not to, but it was hard. Hard to stand there and stare at the flickering light that traced the corpse and gave up all the man’s secrets. She knew him in that instant as no one else had, not even his family, perhaps not even himself. She saw him stripped and pure before her, faults bare to her magic, but strengths there, too. His bravery, his kindness, his fear. Over all was fear. He had traveled far to die in such terror.

  It was not fair. Fairness is for children and fools. That soft, sure voice was in her head, Gersalius’s voice inside her head.

  The flickering light on the body was the reflected gleam of Pegin Tallyrand’s life. A good life, well loved, generous with what little he had. He would be missed by many. The light shuddered, stumbling as if it had feet to be tripped. The light circled round a small lump in the man’s cloak. It was not a pocket, but something affixed to the lining, sewn in.

  Elaine half-fell to her knees, hand reaching for that stumbling light. Her fingertips hesitated, hovering just over the cloth. There was a flash so bright it dazzled the eyes. A smell of burned cloth, and Elaine held a small piece of carved bone in her hand.

  It was the finger joint of a human hand, carved and painted with runes she did not know. The light was gone. Everything was gone. She knelt on the frozen ground with the bone on the palm of her hand. The bone gleamed like a ghost in the dark. The silver glow was gone, and the starlight too faint to see by.

  Gersalius leaned forward, peering at her hand. His eyes glowed in the dark. Tiny pinpricks of flame burned in his face, green to her violet, but it was the same kind of magic. Had her own eyes glowed just moments before? Elaine glanced up at Tereza. She stood silent and unreadable in the dark. Elaine did not ask if her eyes had glowed with violet flames; she was not ready to hear if the answer were yes.

  “Very interesting,” Gersalius said.

  “What is it?”

  “What did your magic tell you?”

  “It wasn’t part of the man. He didn’t know he carried it.”

  “Very good, what else?”

  She thought it would be hard to recall what the light had shown, now that
the light was gone, but it wasn’t. It was easy, as if each moment were carved behind her eyelids where she could never forget it.

  “It was a spell. A piece of death sewn into his cloak. It was dormant, waiting, until he touched the great tree.”

  “Why did the tree set the spell off?”

  She thought about that for a moment, rolling it round in the remembered light. “Its power was death. It had to wait for something dead to come along.”

  “And the great tree was dead, killed by lightning.”

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “Would a dead body have triggered the spell?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The spell animated the dead with a terrible purpose. What was that purpose, Elaine?”

  “It wanted Pegin dead.”

  “It?”

  “The maker of the spell wanted him dead.”

  “Why?”

  Her hand closed over the piece of bone. “The spell’s creator didn’t want Pegin to bring help. He, or she, fears Jonathan, fears the mage-finder.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The bone reeks of fear.”

  “Could that not be the fear of the hand from which the bone came?”

  Elaine nodded. “It could be that, but the maker of the spell is afraid also.”

  “Is it only the mage-finder that the spell’s caster fears?”

  “No.”

  “What else?”

  “Death, he fears death.” She squeezed the shard of bone until the edges bit into her skin. The bones in her hand trembled in sympathy with the thing she held. The pain was sharp and final, the injury so great that the body deadened the nerves. It was not her own pain she was remembering. The finger had been severed while the woman still lived. There had been many spells, many bones, much blood.

  Fingers curled around her hand. “Let go, Elaine.” Gersalius tried to open her hand. “Let go.”