The Sword of the South: Chapter Three

Last updated: Monday, June 1, 2015 21:56 EDT

Shadows by Night

The storm prowled the city like a conquering army as night guttered towards a close. The City Guard changed, new men tramping miserably to their sodden posts through sheets of windy rain while others hurried back to the welcome comfort of barracks fires and hot food. Water chuckled and laughed through downspouts, then gurgled and chattered in the deep gutters, its voice lost in the storm as it spouted and fumed headlong for the sea.

Tiny lights gleamed in a smooth crystal. Their wash illuminated the stern face of a blonde-haired woman as she peered past the lights at the water-washed Belhadan streets. Her eyes were intent, her gaze questing for signs of her servants’ progress. Long, slow minutes dragged past, and she endured them with a hard-learned patience which was foreign to her nature. Fresh lightning flared, washing the gramerhain crystal’s images with blue-white glare that flickered and crackled, and her search ended abruptly. She leaned close — so close her breath misted the stone — and a hard glitter of anticipation burnished her eyes while an unpleasant smile curled her full, red lips.

Shadows gathered in the rainswept night. They moved silently through the maze of streets and alleys, picking an unseen way towards a certain tavern. Deeper dark and blackly solid, they filtered noiselessly through the wind-slashed night while Baroness Wulfra smiled upon them.

Bahzell Bahnakson leaned back comfortably in a chair propped against the taproom wall. The tavern keeper’s apron had vanished, hanging on its peg and replaced by the chain mail hauberk, breastplate, and deep green surcoat of his order. The crossed mace and sword of Tomanak on that surcoat’s breast gleamed fitfully golden through the dimness of the turned-down lamps as the hearth fire tossed fitful spits of flame among the embers. An enormous sword leaned against the wall beside him, and his eyes were thoughtful as he gazed past the spiral of smoke rising from the bowl of his carven, silver inlaid Dwarvenhame meerschaum. That pipe was a gift from a friend long dead, and its heat-colored stone was hand-polished to a fine gloss from long years of use.

The redhaired man who’d named himself Kenhodan sat across the taproom from him, the bare blade of his new sword gleaming across his thighs. The Iron Axe was quiet despite the tumult rushing and bellowing about the heavens, and the quiet ticking of the clock above the bar was clearly audible.

Bahzell frowned mentally, although his expression never flickered, as he considered the younger man and wondered what might be passing through his mind as they sat waiting for the peril of which Wencit had warned. Bahzell had learned, over the many years of their acquaintance, that one thing Wencit of Rum seldom did was to overstate a danger or a threat. That was the reason he’d bustled the last few, diehard guests into the rainy dark and sent the staff to find lodging elsewhere. Not without protests, although the guests’ complaints had died with remarkable speed when Bahzell twitched his head sideways at Wencit and his wildfire eyes. The staff had been a bit more difficult. None of them had been willing to “desert” Bahzell and Leeana in the face of danger, and against a purely mortal threat, he would have allowed them to stay. Against this threat he’d overridden their protests with the ruthless authority of a hradani chieftain . . . and a champion of Tomanak. In fact, he rather wished he’d had the intestinal fortitude to send Leeana off to safety with Gwynna, as well.

<And what, in all the years of your marriage, suggests to you that you could send Leeana Flame Hair anywhere she chose not to go?> a deep, silent voice rumbled in the back of his brain.

<As to that,> he replied just a bit tartly, <I’m thinking I’d’ve had a better chance convincing her she ought to take Gwynna to the chapter house or the Academy if she’d not gone and climbed up on that high Sothoii horse about honor.>

<Oh , please, Bahzell! > A laugh rolled like fond thunder. < She climbed up on a high horse about honor? And what, exactly, were you saying at the moment, pray tell, my Sword? I wonder whatever happened to that pragmatic, no-time-for-nonsense hradani I ‘pestered’ into becoming one of my champions all those years ago? Rather Vaijon-ish you’ve become in your old age, isn’t it?>

Bahzell was a wise and canny tactician. That undoubtedly explained why he chose not to reply to any of those questions, and he felt someone else’s fresh amusement at his discretion.

<Well, I’m thinking that’s all well and good,> he said then, his mood considerably more sober than it had been a moment earlier. <And, truth to tell, one thing I’ve learned is if there’s one person in the entire world as can out-stubborn me, it’s Leeana, so it’s not a task I turn to any oftener than needs must. But it’s also in my mind as Wencit might just have chosen his words a mite carefully earlier tonight.>

There was silence for a moment, and when that deep, rumbling voice, its depths pregnant with a power before which most mortals would have quailed, spoke once again, its humor had faded.

<Wencit is a wizard, as I believe he’s mentioned to you a time or two before,> Tomanak Orfro, God of War and Judge of Princes, said quietly. <He always chooses his words with care. Indeed, with more care than he’s allowed even you and Leeana to realize, Bahzell. But he told you no more than the truth. You and Kenhodan have never met.>

<No, it’s not,> Tomanak acknowledged. <And I did tell you that you and he would meet again someday. I can’t tell you everything about Kenhodan — who he is, why he’s so important to Wencit — and I know you understand why I can’t. But you’re right. You have met the man he would have been in another time, another universe. And this much I will tell you, Bahzell Bahnakson: the man he is this night, the man sitting in your taproom, is just as much one of my own as Sergeant Houghton ever was, even if he doesn’t know it. He is space isn’t Sergeant Houghton, but in the sense you mean it, you’re right. You may not have met, but you do know him. Or, put another way, perhaps, you do know what lives inside him and makes him who he is.>

<Then that’s after being good enough for me,> Bahzell said simply, and felt a vast, immaterial hand rest lightly on his shoulder.

There was no flinch, no effort to temporize, in that earthquake voice. There never had been, and Bahzell had never flinched from the iron fidelity of its truth. Nor did he flinch now. He only drew on his pipe for a moment, then blew out a thin, fragrant jet of smoke.

<Then I’m thinking it’s as well as I’ve my sword handy,> he told his deity simply.

Kenhodan’s fingers caressed the wire wound hilt of the sword lying naked across his thighs and he looked across the taproom at his host.

If not for the smoke curling from Bahzell’s pipe, he would have been tempted to think the huge hradani was asleep. But thoughtful brown eyes gleamed in the light-flickers from the hearth, and Bahzell’s ears were half-cocked as if he were considering the pieces of a puzzle.

Or perhaps the piece of a puzzle.

If Kenhodan had been remotely tempted to doubt Wencit of Rum’s word about Bahzell Bahnakson’s status as a champion of Tomanak, he would have abandoned that doubt as Bahzell crisply — and ruthlessly — ordered the rest of the Iron Axe’s staff out of danger. They’d dispersed to other houses — and it said a great deal about Bahzell’s stature in Belhadan that those other houses had taken in hradani without even a murmur of protest — but Kenhodan suspected few of them would get much sleep this night. He’d needed no memory to understand the unwillingness with which they’d abandoned their chieftain and lady, and their reluctance had raised Bahzell and Leeana still higher in his esteem.

Now Kenhodan sat quietly, waiting, wondering what was about to happen. He’d had no armor to climb into as Bahzell had, and he eyed the great, two-handed sword propped beside the hradani with profound respect. Its five-foot blade and long hilt almost matched Kenhodan’s own height, and its hard edges were lovingly honed. The crossed mace and sword of the war god were etched below the quillons, and while Kenhodan would never have attempted to flourish so much steel about, Bahzell handled it like a cavalry saber.

The other defenders were spread about the building. Wencit sat alone in the kitchen, his own sword bare on the table while a tiny globe of witchfire danced slowly up and down it. The globe pulsed gently in time with his breathing, and his hooded eyes never left it.

A lamp glowed in a bedroom high under the eaves. It wasn’t Gwynna’s normal room, but it had no windows and only one door. Leeana, Kenhodan knew, sat in a chair between her daughter and the door, clad now in the traditional short, kilt-like chari and leather yathu of the war maids, and matching short swords hung at either hip while Blanchrach prowled the upper halls, long fangs gleaming in the lightning flashes the windows admitted. Gwynna was well protected, yet Kenhodan wished she’d been sent with the others. He suspected Wencit agreed with him, but there’d been little they could do. And perhaps Bahzell and Leeana were right. A child with her parents would do well to learn to share the risks and the love early.

The tavern felt like a huge beast around him, shoulders hunched in uneasy sleep while wind and rain pelted its flanks. The tranquility which always seemed to infuse a warm, snug roof while rain drummed upon it hovered in the corners, yet for all its peacefulness, Kenhodan felt the farthest thing in the world from soothed. He wondered what form the attack would take, but he never doubted it would come.

He snorted restlessly and shifted position.

In a sense, his life had begun this evening. He had no past, no knowledge of what he might have been or done or accomplished in those lost years, but now he was locked into a game whose rules were understood only by an enigmatic wizard with flaming eyes that radiated sincerity. It angered him to be so helpless, and the cold chill of ignorance simmered in his blood like sea ice.

He glanced back at Bahzell and smiled wryly. His harrowed and riven memory told him enough about the hradani tribes to know Bahzell’s position in the heart of Belhadan was virtually impossible, champion of Tomanak or not. For that matter, the notion of a hradani champion of Tomanak was even less likely than that. The hradani were masters of ambush and accomplished raiders who happened to be the Sothoii’s most bitter enemies. The hatred between them and the Sothoii —who just happened to be the Empire of the Axe’s most important allies — was cold, focused, and deeper than the sea, a thing of centuries filled with mutual slaughter. Yet Bahzell was not only a champion of Tomanak but wedded to a war maid! The gods only knew how that pairing had occurred or how the ill-matched couple had found their way to Belhadan. He gathered Wencit had played no small part in their lives, and perhaps someday he’d learn how it all had happened. He hoped so; it promised to be a rare tale.

His thoughts returned to himself and his smile vanished. Who and what was he? One thing he’d already learned was that it cut across his grain to sit and await attack, especially when it endangered those who’d gone from strangers to friends in mere hours and of their own free will in time of peril. And he’d also learned that it galled him to take orders, even when he knew he must . . . and even from someone as powerful as Wencit of Rum.

Not, he thought with another snort, that he had a choice. He was a chip in a millrace, careening into an unknown future from a forgotten past, and it was a journey he would not survive without the wizard. Much as he would have preferred to, he couldn’t doubt that truth anymore than he doubted that Wencit truly knew who he was. That truth, and Wencit’s knowledge, bound Kenhodan to him like a chain.

He straightened in the chair, pressing his spine against its back, inflating his lungs and tightening his arm muscles in a seated, joint-popping release of tension. He suppressed the need to run mental fingers over the raw wound of his forgotten past yet again and, instead, stroked the hilt of his sword and traced its razor edge. He found himself hoping the attackers would arrive soon. They’d be coming sooner or later anyway, and it might ease his frustration to cleave a few hostile skulls.

More shadows flitted through the rain, converging on a cloaked figure in the Street of Wharves. The shadows’ movements melded into a single, perfectly coordinated whole, yet no word was spoken. A bitter cold hovered about them like arctic mist, streaming through the rain with invisible menace. The dimly lit windows of a tavern were shuttered, squeezed squint-eyed and smiling into the night through the open louvers, and their reflection gleamed on the street’s streaming pavement. The shadows halted, clustered about the living human who’d summoned them, and menace flickered in the topaz raindrops as they stood just outside the spill of light in silent communion with their master.

Wencit’s eyes narrowed as his ball of witchlight blazed purple-red. He lifted his sword in a sparse, economic motion, and the blade whined softly, as though possessed of a life of its own in his sinewy hand. Blue light shimmered briefly down its edge, like a reflection of his fiery eyes, as he paused to throw a warning to the bedroom beneath the eaves before he turned to the taproom.

Leeana looked up at the touch of his magic, her green eyes calm. She stood, and his mind saw her garbed for war. Steel-fanged throwing stars glittered at her belt, and Wencit nodded approval as she loosened the restraining thongs on her sword hilts. Then he opened the taproom door.

Kenhodan rose on cat-like feet as the wizard entered. The borrowed sword balanced expertly in his hand, ready to strike, and Wencit stood motionless until the redhaired man relaxed in recognition. Then he glanced across at Bahzell.

The big hradani cocked his head, mobile ears half-flattened, and took his pipe from his mouth.

“I’m thinking you’ve the look of a man as has a mission,” he rumbled calmly.

“I always knew you were smarter than you looked,” Wencit replied with an edged smile.

“It’s here they are, then?” Bahzell laid the pipe on a table at his elbow and rose, stretching his arms in a mighty yawn while his ears shifted back and forth, alert for any sound through the pound of rain.

“Outside.” Wencit jerked his head at the windows. “Something’s out there, anyway. Part of it’s easy enough to recognize, but there’s something strange, too. Difficult to place.” He sounded almost meditative.

“What kind of attack do you expect?” Kenhodan asked tautly.

“Shadowmen, I think — and whatever else it is I sense.”

“Ahhhh!” Bahzell let out his breath in a sigh that mingled understanding with something very like anticipation. “At least your wizard friends’ve been good enough to send me something as I can get steel into.”

“So they have,” Wencit said grimly, “and one of them’s come himself — Alwith, I think. But remember: if you can get steel into them, they can do the same for you. And they’ll attack without fear, as well, so they’ve a good chance of doing it.”

“It’s been done,” Bahzell said simply, “but never twice by the same person.”

“Gods send me strength!” Wencit snapped in exasperation. “Tomanak knows you’re almost as good as you think you are, but try to remember these aren’t mortal enemies!”

“But if I can be killing them, they aren’t after being im mortal, either, are they now? And I’m thinking whatever it may be you’ve sensed out yonder in the rain, it’s not so very likely to be a demon or a devil. Not unless Wulfra’s run clean mad and decided as how she wants to see an Axeman army burning its way across Angthyr to take her head, any road.” He wiggled his ears and reached for the helmet lying on the table beside his pipe. “Taking the rough with the smooth, that’s not so very bad an outcome, Wencit!”

Wencit eyed him sourly and turned to Kenhodan.

“They’ll concentrate on you and me,” he warned.

“It’ll be a relief to have a problem I can deal with.” Kenhodan grinned, meeting Bahzell’s eyes in the dimness, and Wencit snorted.

“Solid bone between the ears, the pair of you! It’s to be hoped it at least makes your heads harder to split!” His voice was tart, but his hand squeezed Kenhodan’s forearm in approval.

“Leeana?” Bahzell had his helmet on and his enormous sword’s edges glittered in the fitful firelight. Now he moved to Kenhodan’s left, facing the windows while Wencit turned to the kitchen door and Kenhodan confronted the front door. They formed a hollow triangle of ready steel.

“She’s awake and ready,” Wencit murmured, “and Blanchrach’s in the hall. But I doubt she’ll see much of them compared to us.”

“Aye.” Bahzell shifted the great sword to his right hand and drew the hook knife with his left. “Well, as to that, they’ve business with us, tonight. And since they do, I’m thinking it’s only courteous to be giving them a belly full of commerce.” His smile was unpleasant.

“I approve,” Wencit said briefly. Kenhodan only grunted, his eyes sweeping the front of the tavern, swinging from the barred door to the corner of the windows. A flicker of light caught at the corner of his eye, and he glanced over to see red and gold runes dance quickly down Wencit’s sword, confusing the gaze that tried to follow them.

“ Ready! ” the wizard hissed.

Shadows conferred silently outside the tavern. Lightning whipped the clouds, shattering blue-white above their silent forms, and the spalling electricity etched two shapes which stood apart from the others. The human’s sodden cape lashed from his shoulders in the gusting wind, and the lightning leapt back from the ebon staff he bore. The other was a shadow, taller and somehow more solid than the others. A rod of polished steel or dull silver winked at the lightning from its left hand, its metallic glitter broken by patterns of jagged, deeply-carved runes from no alphabet ever used on Orfressa.

The human’s staff pointed at the tavern, his lips moving in unheard words, and the shadow’s black head bent. Its rod touched the staff, and a speck of eye-searing blackness leapt from the staff to the metal and vanished. Then the shadow turned and gestured to its fellows.

Lesser shadows moved to obey silent commands. Some flitted to the shutters and doors. Some lifted gently into the rainy night, borne by the wind to chimney openings and upper windows. Lightning cracked again, its jagged light vanishing into the shadow forms, and the taller shadow waited another moment, then stretched an arm to point at the tavern and its finger glowed dully.

Everything happened at once.

Kenhodan’s brain seized a brief image of the door as it flew inward in an explosion of splinters and broken bolts. An iron shard gashed his cheek, hissing past to bury its length in the wall. Windows and shutters cascaded inward in the same moment, showering the sawdust with diamond-bright glass. Broken bits of pane winked in the fire like rubies, ringing as they bounced over tabletops and benches. A shadow filled the doorway, and cold rolled from it like acid. A flash of brilliance washed his shoulder as Wencit muttered a semi-audible incantation and his blade pulsed with savage light in time with the words. The chill withdrew slightly, and Bahzell’s breath snorted, pluming like frost, as his huge sword swung up in a silvery arc, as if saluting his foes.

Then the shadows were upon them.

Despite his scars, this was in a very real sense Kenhodan’s first combat, yet there was time for him to realize that he felt no fear. Time for him to wonder what that said about the man he’d forgotten. And then a strange, consuming rage roused within him. It filled him with a fury which demanded blood, and it had an endless depth that staggered the mind. He had no idea where it had come from, and if there’d been time to think about it, its fiery strength would have terrified him. But now, at this moment, he was conscious only of his own burning hunger, and his lips drew back in a feral snarl as the shadows attacked.

“Tomanak!” Bahzell’s bull-throated bellow roared through the taproom, and a shadow loomed close, a scimitar of blackness reaching for Kenhodan like an extrusion of its own substance. Instinct prompted and reaction obeyed. His own blade darted to engage the scimitar, driving it wide, then recovered in a straight backhand that raked the shadow from crotch to throat. He felt a fleeting resistance, and the shadow fell back with a thin, ear-hurting wail. It dissolved in streamers of noisome fog before before it hit the floor.

Another eluded the sweep of Bahzell’s knife and charged Kenhodan from the left while the hradani’s sword engaged two more. Kenhodan’s blade flashed across his own vision as if he were a spectator. Black scimitar crashed on razor-blue steel. Wrist and arm throbbed, and his booted heel slammed into the shadow’s midsection as he heaved the scimitar away from his flesh. Acid cold stabbed as high as his thigh and burned in his hip with a pain that wrung an anguished gasp from him, but his sword whistled back against the shadowy neck. A half-seen head flew, and another high death wail pierced his ears.

Sorcerous they undoubtedly were, he thought grimly, but they were as killable as he was.

“Tomanak! Tomanak!”

Bahzell’s thunderous warcry rose over the clash of blades. Kenhodan leaned away from a slash and caught a glimpse of the hradani in the full, murderous action of a champion of the war god. His greatsword avalanched down in an overhand blow, propelled by the muscles of an arm as thick as Kenhodan’s thigh. It smashed clean through a scimitar to cleave a shadow in two, then whistled up in a perfect backhand, preposterously swift for a blade of its dimensions, that split another shadowy head. The hook knife darted, gutting a third while the first two fell away. Every move, every shift of weight, was perfect, like some choreographed exercise, with a deadly efficiency which had to be seen to be believed, and a bright yet half-imagined blue glitter wrapped itself around the towering hradani.

Kenhodan spared a thought for the old wizard, but the ring of blades and the odd wails of dying shadows came from his rear as well. It was reassuring evidence of Wencit’s condition, yet the moment of inattention was almost his own undoing. The brief break in the flow of his rage snapped his automatic reactions. His waking mind intruded on his trained body, and cold fire burned his shoulder, tracing a line of hot blood edged with ice. He staggered, momentarily convulsed by the awful cold pulsing through his body. But he dragged himself back on balance and his elbow smashed the attacking shadow. Another burst of cold slashed through him, but this time he was prepared. He shook it off and shattered his foe’s head, recovered, and slid two feet of steel through another’s chest. That shadow, too, fell away, winning him the tiny moment he needed to beat the last cold shudders from his muscles. A shadow sprawled to his right rear, and Wencit’s blade burned with dangerous fire, consuming his foe as it struck.

There seemed no end to that first rush. Kenhodan lost track of the number he struck down in a wild flurry of blows, counter blows, and hairbreadth escapes. Yet there was a break in the attack wave at last. He smashed the guard of the final shadow and lunged through its throat, then stood back, panting, as the remaining shadows fell away.

They stood just beyond reach, like a circle of icebergs, their silence taunting him, and that fierce rage roared up within him. It gripped like bands of hot iron, and he leapt to the attack. But Bahzell dropped his knife. His hand darted out to fasten on his shoulder like a steel vise, and Kenhodan’s eyes flared at the immense strength which stopped his lunge as if he were a child.

“No, lad!” The hradani rasped, holding him effortlessly in the defensive triangle. “This one’s Wencit’s!”

Kenhodan froze, then nodded tightly, panting for breath as a single shadow glided over the sawdust. A metal rod glimmered sullenly in one hand, and a black scimitar burned in the other. A dim flow of light from half-guessed eyes mocked the wildfire of Wencit’s gaze, and Kenhodan shuddered to see it.

The defenders pivoted slowly, Kenhodan compelled by the hradani’s grasp, until Wencit faced the new threat. Bahzell paused just long enough to recover his hook knife, then faced the shattered door, content to leave the main fight in Wencit’s hands. Kenhodan knew he should echo the hradani’s detachment, but he found his attention split between the kitchen arch and the arcane confrontation of wizard and shadow.

“You’ve been lied to,” Wencit said levelly, the words drifting in puffs of vapor in the icy chill radiating from the shadows. “Your power here is less than you think. You’re overmatched. Be gone or die!”

The shadow continued its silent advance. The metal rod traced an intricate pattern, its tip glowing like a dull ember that left a brief, sullen line of flame in its wake. Wencit’s glowing blade moaned a sub-audible shriek that grated in the bones of Kenhodan’s skull like the howl of a hunting animal, but the wizard made no move.

Ruby light spat suddenly from the tip of the rod in a quasi-solid pencil that lashed at the wizard with the speed of thought, but Wencit’s sword flashed up. It parried the light with a sweeping gesture and red sparks flew, burning through Kenhodan’s jerkin. Wencit’s blade wailed hungrily, and the wizard twisted his wrist, wrapping the light about his weapon like a cord. He jerked, and the rod snapped from the shadow’s grasp. It bounced into the sawdust with an unnatural ringing sound, as if it had struck stone.

The shadow leapt forward as its rod flew free. Its scimitar scythed at Wencit’s torso, but the wizard spun on his toes in a graceful dance that carried him out of the blade’s path and behind its wielder. The shadow lurched silently forward, committed to its attack. Its free arm flailed as if for balance, and the shadow head snapped silently towards Wencit.

The wizard continued his swirling motion. He grasped his hilt two-handed, lowering the blade to waist level, and completed his circle. Eldritch steel smashed squarely through the shadow, cleaving it into unequal halves that tumbled grotesquely to the floor. This death wail was louder and more vicious, and the bits of shadow didn’t dissipate. Instead, white fire blazed through them, tearing at their darkness, flaring bright and hot. It seemed to last for minutes, but it couldn’t have been more than a handful of seconds before those flame dwindled once more, taking the shadow’s broken pieces with them in a stink of burning sawdust and something worse.

The remaining shadows snarled as the stench of burning rose, and scimitars lifted in the firelight. Kenhodan gripped the wizard frantically, dragging him back into formation. There was something ominous in that snarl from their hitherto silent enemies, and dread burned through his rage as he fought to reposition Wencit. But the wizard was badly out of position, and he’d barely begun to move before the charge began.

Only Bahzell seemed unconcerned as the shadows gave tongue. He simply leaned sideways, peering intently into the rain beyond the shattered door. And then, as the shadows surged forward, his left hand snapped like the idle flick of a whip. The hook knife hissed from his fingers into the outer darkness, a short, bubbling scream erupted, and the shadows halted, frozen in mid stride. As Kenhodan watched in amazement, they faded slowly and the flames of their fallen chieftain sank back into smoldering sawdust.

“I’m hoping I’ve not violated etiquette,” Bahzell grumbled calmly, “but it’s in my mind yonder wizard wasn’t one as worried his head over the rules for wizards’ duels, Wencit. If he’d no wish to bother with such as that, why, I’d no reason not to be obliging him.”

Wulfra of Torfo cursed as the haze of Wencit’s masking glamour filled her crystal with a gray and silver mist her strongest spells couldn’t pierce. Alwith must be dead or dying, and with the cord of his thought went her ability to breach the wild wizard’s defenses.

She sighed and sat back in her exquisitely comfortable chair, massaging her delicate brows. The outcome was hardly surprising, much though she might have wished it otherwise. Still, Alwith had been grossly overconfident. Even a direct order might not have stayed his hand, so she’d made a virtue of his arrogance and given him the spells for which he’d asked. He’d thought Wencit was overrated, had he? That the old man was “past it” and sinking into decline? Well, he knew better now — whatever hell he was in. Yet she had to admit he’d come close . . . very close. Without the hradani and the unexpected redhaired stranger, he might have succeeded after all.

She frowned thoughtfully, then leaned over the crystal again. She retained two servants in the area, and if Harlich was weaker than Alwith, he was also more cunning. Forewarned about Wencit’s allies, he might prove more fortunate, especially since he possessed the madwind incantation.

And if he proved equally unfortunate, well, tools were made to be used, and sometimes they broke in the using.

Bahzell raked the metal rod through the sawdust with a cautious boot, studying it thoughtfully before he turned to Wencit.

“Well struck, Wencit,” he said formally.

“You weren’t so bad yourself, Mountain,” Wencit retorted with a grin. “But the shadowmage was outclassed.” He bent over the rod and lifted it cautiously. “I’ll take care of this,” he said more sharply. “See to your lady, Bahzell. Kenhodan and I can finish here.”

“Aye.”

Bahzell turned quickly to the stair, sword still in his hand, and Kenhodan watched Wencit draw the rod slowly through his fingers. The wizard’s lips moved silently, his eyes flared briefly, and then answering light burst from the rune-graven metal. As Kenhodan watched, it glowed bright and fierce, and when Wencit opened his hands the enspelled metal curled upward in a thin stream of stinking smoke and vanished.

Kenhodan raised an eyebrow, and the wizard smiled faintly and dusted his hands on his tunic. Then he turned to the door, and Kenhodan followed, standing at the wizard’s shoulder and peering out into the night. Rain blew into their faces through the shattered door and windows, but the lightning had ceased and the wind was falling away at last.

“And now there are three . . . .” Wencit murmured.

“What?” Kenhodan turned to look at him, and Wencit shrugged.

“Now there are three,” he repeated, gesturing to a sprawled body just visible in the light spilling from the open door. Bahzell’s knife stood in the dead throat, surrounded by a thinning pool of rain-diluted blood.

“That was one of Wulfra’s allies. Now there are only three: Wulfra, Thardon, and Harlich. I suppose we should consider this a good start, so early in the game, but they shouldn’t have found me so quickly.”

Wencit sheathed his weapon and straightened. The sword’s dangerous light had vanished, and Kenhodan wondered how it could look so normal one moment and burn with arcane fury in the next. There was something frightening about a weapon like that, even when it fought on his side. Then he realized his own madness had vanished just as completely, and the parallel chilled him. He was going to have to come to grips with that blind rage, and the thought of it was far more disturbing than Wencit’s blade.

He shook himself and sought a lighter note.

“It seemed less than crushing for a wizard’s attack,” he ventured.

“You think so?” Wencit turned to him, his voice thoughtful. “No attack’s crushing once you defeat it, but what about that score on your shoulder? What about the gash on your cheek? The cold that nearly crippled you?” Kenhodan blinked, startled by the wizard’s ability to catalog his hurts, but Wencit gave him no time to consider it. “A second later ducking, an inch to the side, a moment earlier with no counter spell ready — then what? And for each you or I killed, Bahzell took two. Don’t underestimate our enemies, Kenhodan. Consider what would’ve happened if they’d surprised us in the open, alone, with no warning. Not so easy to beat them off then, eh? And remember — the most deadly fighter’s still mortal, and the clumsiest foe can kill him with one lucky blow.”

“I take your point.” Kenhodan knelt to examine the sawdust where the shadow had burned. “What were they, anyway?”

“Shadows of another world. Much the same place demons and devils come from, actually, although shadowmen are far weaker than those are. That’s the reason they can flow through the cracks and escape notice so much more easily on their way through. It’s not difficult to search the worlds that might have been for the fighters you seek. Transferring them, especially in numbers great enough to make them truly dangerous to someone like a wizard lord or a champion of Tomanak, takes power and a willingness to dabble in sorcery as foul as Krahana herself, but the technique’s simple enough.”

“For some, no doubt,” Kenhodan said dryly.

“True. And even though shadows lose much of their intelligence when they’re ripped from their rightful places, they still make deadly foes. That cold is the cold of the void they cross to come here. If you’d felt it without the protection of my wards, your heart would’ve stopped instantly.” Wencit shrugged. “They have other powers, too. They aren’t truly of this world, and its presences are, to them, the shadows they are to us. But they also have limitations, because the shock of crossing the void destroys their wills and leaves them little more than extensions of their summoner. They can’t remain if his will is —” he gestured the body “— withdrawn.”

The wizard paused, scuffing a boot through the scorched sawdust, and his brows knitted thoughtfully.

“But the shadowmage bears thinking on. Shadows aren’t normally drawn from among the great and powerful of their worlds — people like that are too deeply rooted in their own time and place to readily answer the summons of anything short of a deity. Yet the shadowmage was a wild wizard in his own world. It takes a very powerful wizard to wrench someone like that across the abyss, and the guardians who prevent that sort of thing should have seen the shadowmage coming. Unlike the others, he was powerful enough to stand out clearly and be intercepted. Bringing him through at all would have been difficult enough. Bringing him through undetected and with enough power to strike with the art once he got here . . . ?”

His voice trailed off and he frowned.

“So it must’ve taken a wizard more powerful than this Wulfra? Is that what you’re saying?” Kenhodan asked slowly.

He didn’t care for the implications of that thought, and he cared still less for Wencit’s slow nod. Wind gusted through the broken door, touching them with rain and muddying the sawdust. The old wizard sighed resignedly and reached for his poncho.

“Let’s go take a look at Alwith.”

Kenhodan followed him into the dying storm. Rain soaked his hair and trickled down his face, but it lacked its earlier fury, and Wencit knelt beside the body and rolled it over. The knife hilt described an ominous arc and Alwith’s dead eyes looked glassily into Kenhodan’s.

“He looks surprised,” he observed.

“No doubt he was.” Wencit examined a charred staff that crumbled to ashes he touched it, then scraped its ruin distastefully into the bubbling gutter. “Alwith preferred to avoid physical combat. He probably forgot the lightning might pick out — give Bahzell a clear target.”

“He won’t make that mistake again.”

Kenhodan wiped rain from his face and looked back at the tavern. Perhaps Alwith might be pardoned for his misjudgment, he thought, for there were clear targets and then there were clear targets. Bahzell’s knife had traveled twenty yards through rain-filled darkness to arrive exactly on its mark . . . thrown left-handed. He raised a thoughtful eyebrow and wrenched the heavy blade from the grisly ruin of Alwith’s throat.

“No, he won’t be making any mistakes again,” Wencit agreed, sitting back on his heels in the rain, but his expression was . . . not precisely worried, but perplexed, perhaps. “There should be something more than the ash of his staff, but I don’t see what.”

“How could you expect to find it if you don’t know what it is?”

“Are you a wizard?” Wencit asked patiently, and Kenhodan shook his head in quick disavowal. “Then don’t ask me to explain the art on a moment’s notice.” He puffed his lips and Kenhodan had the definite sense that the unseen eyes behind his witchfire gaze had just rolled. “You can’t imagine how many times someone’s asked me to do that! But my point at the moment is that I just can’t believe the shadows were all Wulfra sent with him. Her henchmen could’ve managed the earlier attack alone, with her to coach them and provide the information they needed to target it. But she clearly realized it might fail, which is why Alwith was ready to follow it up, and I can’t accept that she gave him and the other two no special aid beyond the shadows! I was hoping for a clue to whatever else she might’ve given them. If I’d found it, I would’ve recognized it.”

“Suit yourself.” Kenhodan shrugged.

“It doesn’t suit me a bit. Something’s missing, and that bothers me as much as whatever’s behind her new tactics. There’s been an addition or change, and I want to know what it is and how it happened.”

“What do you mean?”

“If anyone had asked me, I would’ve said it was impossible for her to summon something like the shadowmage even with her students’ power joined with hers. On top of that, it’s not like her to give such a weapon to another. Especially not someone like Alwith, who might turn on his teacher. It worries me to find her doing unanticipated things.”

“Don’t most wizards know about these shadows? How can you be sure it’s beyond her strength?”

“The art isn’t a campfire you build higher or lower with a stick of wood!” Wencit turned suddenly snappish. “ Someone— Alwith or Wulfra or one of the others — must’ve rummaged through the shadow lines for our opponents. You never know what you’ll meet out there, and moving something like the shadowmage increases the odds of attracting some very powerful entities between the worlds. Some of them, like Tomanak, would simply obliterate someone like Wulfra with a thought. Others would take their time devouring her soul one inch at a time.” He shook his head. “Taking chances like that isn’t like the Baroness.”

“But would it be impossible for her?” Kenhodan asked.

“Whatever she may have told the world, she practices blood magic,” Wencit said grimly. “That means she could raise the power, but controlling it — that’s something else entirely. It’s her will I question. She’d have precious little margin for error, and if her will wavered even for an instant there’d be a smoking crater where her castle stands. That means it took more courage than she normally displays.” He stood and frowned. “No, that’s not really fair. She’s willing to take risks if she has to, but she’s cautious. She wouldn’t take such a chance unless she thought she absolutely had to. That’s what’s so strange about it.”

They reentered the tavern, wiping rain from their hair, and Wencit leaned over the bar for a squat bottle and two glasses. He poured pungent, cinnamon spiced Belhadan rum and handed one glass to Kenhodan, who sipped the strong spirits thoughtfully.

“So how do you explain it?” he asked finally.

“I can’t.” Wencit leaned one elbow on the bar and frowned. “At least not in a way that makes sense and doesn’t scare me.”

He sipped slowly, then shrugged.

“I see two possibilities. Either she thinks our confrontation justifies extraordinary risks — which isn’t like her, when she can’t yet know exactly what I’m up to — or else she’s found a way to augment her power. To be honest, I like that answer less than the first. Increasing her power would certainly lessen her risk, and I’m afraid I can think of at least one way she might have done it, but I hope to all the gods I’m wrong!” He frowned again. “But unless I can learn more, I can’t be sure what she’s done. Still, I’d have taken an oath that she didn’t have the nerve for that, either . . . .”

“Well, something must’ve happened,” Kenhodan said carefully as the wizard’s voice trailed away in thought.

“Obviously.” Wencit shook himself. “Well, of the two, I have to vote for the second possibility, much as I’d prefer not to. Wizards don’t change their styles easily, but they can gain power in a number of ways — not all of them pleasant.”

“Aye, I’m thinking I’ve heard that tale before.”

Bahzell’s voice startled them, and Kenhodan blushed slightly as the hradani eyed the glass in his fist with a twinkle. He and Leeana had entered the taproom silently, a nightgowned Gwynna riding sleepily on her father’s hip. The immense direcat padded in behind them and sat gracefully, then convulsed in a violent sneeze.

“You heard?” Wencit sounded unsurprised.

“Aye. It’s sharp ears hradani have — and noses, come to that.” He sniffed loudly at the rum and chuckled. “Best be pouring out two more glasses, Wencit, seeing as you’ve made so free with my stock.”

“Of course,” Wencit said courteously. He filled a fresh pair of glasses and handed them to his host and hostess.

“So your friend Wulfra’s not performing as expected?” Bahzell rumbled. “And you’re not liking the smell of things overmuch, I take it?”

“No.” Wencit shook his head, then grinned. “On the other hand, wizards seldom perform as expected. Or so I hear.”

“I’ve not known one as did, any road,” Bahzell agreed pleasantly.

“I thank you.” Wencit bowed to him, then turned to Leeana. “I see you suffered no mischief, Leeana.”

“Only three of them got as far as the bedroom, and they could only come at me one at a time,” she said simply.

“And young Gwynna?”

“Slept through the whole affair,” Bahzell chuckled.

“Did not!” the girl protested sleepily.

“Did so,” Leeana corrected, touching her nose gently.

“Well . . . maybe,” Gwynna admitted with a grin.

“As well for the shadows, I’m thinking.”

Her father smiled, easing her onto the bar, and reclaimed his knife. He wiped it before clicking it back into its sheath.

“At least wizards’re after having honest blood, though I’m thinking it’s the only honest thing as most of them do have. No need to be wiping shadow blood from a blade.”

“Yes, they were very considerate,” Kenhodan agreed guilelessly.

Bahzell eyed him suspiciously, and then chuckled and clouted his left shoulder so hard he staggered. He opened his mouth, but the direcat went into a fresh sneezing fit before he could shoot back a smart remark.

“What’s his problem?” he asked instead, nodding at the cat while his right hand checked his shoulder for broken bones.

“He says shadows taste funny,” Gwynna said sleepily. “We bit six of them, and he’s been sneezing ever since.”

Kenhodan glanced up, ready to smile, but the look on Bahzell’s face stopped him. He swallowed his humor as he realized Bahzell actually believed his daughter could talk to the cat! The hradani’s expression mingled acceptance and pride with an edge of concern, and Kenhodan reminded himself — again — that he was in no position to say what this peculiar family could do.

“Don’t worry, young Gwynna,” Wencit reassured her. “The sneezing will pass.”

“I already told him so,” Gwynna nodded. “I did when we bit them. He just says he wants it to hurry up. You know how he is Wencit.”

“Yes.”

The wizard moved to the broken windows and peered out, and Kenhodan sighed mentally and refused to ask questions. Everything else about this household was preposterous. Why shouldn’t Gwynna talk to the cat? But what about this “we bit them” business? Surely she didn’t mean —?

He put a firm lock on his curiosity and joined Wencit by the windows.

The first faint light of a blustery dawn glinted on the wizard’s silver hair. He sniffed deeply, wrinkling his nose, and nodded to himself.

“Time Kenhodan and I were gone. This may have set them back enough for us to make a clean break.”

“Aye, and you’ve come with your usual luck, Wencit,” Bahzell said. “It’s just this week Brandark raised Belhadan. We’ll be finding him at the docks, and he’ll find us a way south. I’m thinking we’ll make better time by sea than afoot, seeing as how Walsharno’s taken it into his head to be visiting the Wind Plain right this very moment. Aye, and Gayrfressa with him.”

“No!” Wencit spun to his host accusingly. “I thought I made it clear you weren’t included in this little episode!”

“And so you did, or tried to. But that was being then, and now’s after being now,” Bahzell said calmly. “You could refuse to invite me before these enemies of yours were after violating my roof and raising weapons against my guests. Now?”

His expression was as calm as his voice, but his ears were half-flattened and his brown eyes were hard. Wencit looked into that unwavering gaze for a moment, then turned to his wife.

“Leeana?” Wencit appealed to her without much hope in his voice.

“He’s right, and you know it.” Leeana reached up to rest a hand on her husband’s bulging biceps with no sign of her earlier resistance. “You know our customs. Honor demands that one or both of us accompany you against anyone who violates our roof.”

“I might point out that you invited the attack by extending your hospitality against my wishes! Honor shouldn’t demand that you risk your lives in my quarrel, and I won’t have you doing it!”

“Honor requires what we believe it requires.” Bahzell repeated Leeana’s earlier words softly. “We can’t be picking and choosing on the basis of safety, Wencit. Not with honor.”

“But it’s not your quarrel! It’s mine— mine and Kenhodan’s!”

“Wencit, if you try much harder, you’ll be making me angry,” Bahzell said. “I remember a wizard as made mine and Leeana’s quarrel his fight, once upon a time.”

“That was different! This is —”

“Oh, admit it, you old horse thief! You’re not so senile yet as to not want me along! Who else is it as might be keeping your ancient and venerable hide in one piece?”

“Kenhodan might! And I might be ancient and venerable, but I’m not exactly a dotard yet myself!”

“Aye, and Kenhodan’s one as swings a pretty blade. But if two swords are good, why three are after being better. Besides, if you’re not minded to let me come with you, I’ll have to be following on my own. And if you’re daft enough to be making me do that, how is it you expect me to talk Leeana into staying home with Gwynna? You know she’s the better tracker.”

Wencit swelled with frustration, but then Bahzell put one hand lightly on his shoulder.

“And laying all that aside,” he said softly, “I’d a talk with himself whilst waiting for your friends the shadows.”

Wencit glared at him for an instant, then exhaled sharply.

“All right. All right!” He shook his head resignedly. “Tomanak knows you’re handy with that cleaver, but don’t blame me if you wake up dead one morning!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be blaming you for that. Why, if such as that was to happen, it would mean someone’d managed to be sneaking up on me in my sleep. And if that’s after being the case —” his left hand blurred and the hook knife whined from its sheath to sink four inches deep into the far wall “— it’s only myself I’ll have to blame, isn’t it now?”

Kenhodan thought he heard Wencit mutter something about the thickness of skulls under his breath . . . but he might have been mistaken

Wulfra of Torfo flinched as the icily incisive thought speared her brain. She herself required a crystal at both ends to communicate with someone else, though she could observe others with her unaided gramerhain. The ability of that ice and iron mind to reach her anytime and under any circumstances mocked her power, and the implications of such strength made her nervous.

The shape of two eyes, slitted and yellow like a cat’s, glittered in her thoughts, and the mental voice was a chill purr of malice.

“Your minion failed.”

“He was outclassed. Just as I’d be if I faced Wencit personally. You knew that when you agreed to let Alwith attack.”

“True. But having tested the mettle of your opponents and counted their number, my dear, I suggest you deal with them from a distance.”

The biting thought’s malicious amusement angered Wulfra, but she pushed the emotion carefully aside.

“I have to know where he is for that. His glamour’s too strong for me to pierce without a link to someone inside it. You know that, too.”

“To be sure. Wasn’t it I who found him for your lightning strike? Yet even I dare not take liberties when he’s fresh,” the cold voice whispered. “If your minions bungle their attacks too often, he may begin to suspect that I’m observing him despite his glamour, and neither of us would like that, would we?” The mental purr became a chuckle. “Still, at the moment he’s too tired to detect my prying. Alwith was a fool, but he wasn’t completely wrong. Our Wencit’s less young than he was.”

“Do you have a suggestion?” Wulfra kept her mental tone respectful, but the cat-eyed wizard sensed her impatience.

“Patience, Wulfra. Patience! Revenge is best taken slowly, distilled in small sips. But, yes, I have both information and a suggestion. You might like to know that our Wencit is highly perturbed by your recent display of power. Isn’t that amusing?”

“Do you mean —?”

Wulfra’s thoughts were suddenly icy with fear. If Wencit ever guessed who she was dealing with, her fate was sealed, indeed.

“Calmly, dear Wulfra! Of course he doesn’t suspect that; how could he? But he’s anxious — very anxious. I believe he fears you’ve tapped the sword’s power, or a part of it. Of course, we know better, don’t we?”

Wulfra’s racing fear became the coal of anger the cat-eyed wizard could so easily ignite. Of course she hadn’t mastered the sword! And neither, she thought in a secret part of her brain, had her patron. If he could have done so, he would’ve had no need for her.

“But that’s neither here nor there,” the cat-eyed wizard purred, “and I do have information. Look for a ship, my Wulfra. A ship of Belhadan captained by a hradani named Brandark. There now! Even you should be able to find so singular a vessel.”

Communication ceased and the mind link snapped, leaving Wulfra to feel dismissed . . . and angry. She was no child to be so discounted! She’d won her power the hard way, through acts which would have led to instant execution had they been known at the time. And her cat-eyed patron needed her — needed her badly! How dared he treat her so?!

But deep inside, she knew how he dared. It was because for all her knowledge, she was a child beside him. Yet perhaps he’d forgotten that children grew up and some surpassed their tutors . . . .

She forced herself to undertake several minutes of carefully calm thought, banishing her rage. It was many minutes before she could unclench her fists in a semblance of normality, but then she brushed back her golden hair brusquely and moved to her crystal. Purposeful concentration carried her rapidly through the energizing incantation. Whatever the cat-eyed wizard thought of her, it was she who must bear the brunt of any failure . . . well, she and her allies.

She bent closer to the stone and formed a mental image of Harlich’s face. He should be alert for her regular contact.

He was. The face she’d pictured appeared in the stone, masklike for just a moment. Then the mask’s eyes opened. Harlich himself blinked into existence in its place, and his eyebrows rose in question. She shook her head, and he shrugged. He’d never cared much for Alwith anyway.

“There’s a ship,” Wulfra began carefully. “You have to find it. And then . . . .

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