Chapter Five

5.

Lorel strode across the plaza with his chin held high, preening as though the squads of Altarians lined up to to his left and right were court attendants watching him ascend to his Lord’s Chair.  It mattered little to him that the soldiers paid him no mind, they were nothing but Altarian dogs, slaves to the Dreanalai witch.  They would help her snatch a few Triton children and then slink back across The Rift to go on with their miserable foreign lives.  He on the other hand, was a High Seat now, one of only fourteen in the land, and would remain behind as one of the most powerful men in all of Triton.  The Dreanalai had done him a tremendous favor.  Letting her take Shan from him was an insult, but a little brother was a tiny price to pay for all that he had gained.  I am the Lord of Hollow Hill! he told himself, still finding it difficult to believe how swiftly the winds of his fate had switched directions.  In that incredible moment when he’d seen his father first draw his sword on the Dreanalai, he’d known right away that the man’s time had come to an end.  The joy that revelation had brought him was the sweetest feeling he’d ever tasted, and if he had any regrets about watching Lord Jandegar die, it was only that he hadn’t killed the bastard himself years ago.  It had been so. . .easy. . .such a simple thing to lean into the handle of the dagger and watch his father’s eyes go dark.  Why hadn’t he done it sooner?  Why had he been so afraid of the man?  All those times he’d thought about dropping a little castor seed into his father’s wine. . .or that day on the Goatsbridge when all he’d had to do was give Lord Jandegar’s backside a little shove and he’d have plummeted to the rocks and fouled water of Tanner’s Gulch in all his armor. . .  

Looking back through the eyes of his newfound power Lorel already didn’t recognize the pathetic fool that he had been, hanging his head like a whipped mongrel whenever Lord Jandegar had barked at him. . .letting the man’s every glance of disapproval gnaw at his insides.  Lord Jandegar had been nothing, a bag of bones and shit like everyone else.  No lighting bolts tore from the sky to protest his death, the ground had not split open. . .after a few days or weeks no one would really even mourn his passing, not even his right hand, Sigmond of Woburn.  Sigmond had respected Lord Jandegar but never liked him, Lorel was fairly certain about that.  The man was nothing!  Meat and piss! A fucking joke!  

He searched himself but could find no trace of guilt or remorse.  That surprised him a little.  He’d always assumed it was at least partly decency that had stayed his hand, but now he could admit to himself it had only been fear.  Fear that made him cower and scrape and say “Yes, Lord Jandegar,” when what he ought to have said was “Go bugger yourself with a sword.”  Fear that had made him suffer for years, powerless when all the while he could have changed everything in an instant just by cutting the man’s throat and taking from him all that he had.  Such a shame that he’d wasted so much time!   Never again.  The wretch that he had been had just died with his father.  From now on Lord Lorel Breylock of Hollow Hill would never suffer, and all those to cross him would feel his vengeance immediately; he’d give them either pain or death depending only on which better suited his mood. . .

Lorel peered back over his shoulder, spotting the swine’s arse of a cobbler and his hairy, brutish friend hobbling along behind him.  Tonight, he told himself, I am in the mood for both.  

“Hurry,” he sneered at them.  “I have much else to attend to.”

The cobbler and the brute traded wary glances.

“If you’re thinking to bury a knife in my neck tonight like you did to your father,” said the cobbler, “I warn you it will not end well for you.”

“Aye,” said the fat man.  “Try it and I’ll remove your balls like coins from a purse.” 

Rage erupted inside Lorel, rolling around within him like thunder trapped in a cook pot. 

“Do you take me for an idiot?” he said acidly.  “I’ve just become the Lord of Hollow Hill and inherited hundreds of horses, do you think I’d risk all that and my uncle’s wrath over a two-nit palfrey?  You mean nothing to me, either of you, nor does your horse.”

The cobbler nodded, uneasily.

“Then you’re not quite as stupid as I’d have made out.”

Lorel attempted a cavalier laugh.  The sound came out high-pitched and awkward though, enraging him even further. 

“Enjoy your jests, cobbler. . .” he grimaced back at them, menacingly.  “But know that two or three moons from now, when Lord Jondel has long forgotten your names, I will send a few of my men along in the night to snuff out your lives as thoughtlessly as I would a pair of privy candles.”

“My cabin sits at the base of the Thimblemont,” the cobbler quickly replied.  “The trail is marked by a copper boot.  Tell your men, I’ll await them eagerly.” Lorel sighed.

“As you wish.  You know, I was going to spare your son.  Now I’m thinking I’ll have your boy killed first and let you bury him before I send a man for your head.” 

Without waiting to see the cobbler’s reaction, Lorel turned his back on them and strode into the Tollhouse tunnel. 

The shadows inside the long stable had deepened, threatening to overwhelm the lanterns hanging from the rafters as they guttered on the last of their oil.  The boy who tended them was gone, having no doubt fled upstairs to the tavern or into the woods at the first cry of ‘Altarians!’.  Fortunately the whelp had left his keys dangling from the lock of the stall where his mare and the palfrey were stabled.  

Lorel turned the key and jerked the stall door open.  Standing to one side, he gestured for Cob to enter with mocking graciousness.

“Take the bloody horse and get out of my sight,” he said.  The cobbler looked to his friend, his weathered mouth twitching towards a smirk.

“Go and get your cart,” he told him, “I’ll meet you in the plaza.”  The brute hesitated.  

“Cobbler--”  The man’s eyes were pained by anxiety. 

“It’s all right, the fool won’t defy Lord Jondel, he’s too cowardly for all that.”  The cobbler stared hard into Lorel’s eyes, his own coiled with subtle fury.  “In his breast there is naught but a nest of worms and he lacks the spine to challenge all but those who can’t defend themselves for fear of going to the gallows.  Yet I’m no common boy like my son, and he knows it.  I am old soldier who has lived his life and has no fear of prison or the gallows.  If he moves against me this night I will paint these stables red with his blood all the way to the rafters.  You know all that, don’t you, Lord Lorel?”  Lorel made no reply, internally stunned and elated by the unending shower of luck the stars were pouring down on him.  This man was daft as a post, practically offering up his own head on a plate by sending his friend away.  “Go on, Gabe,” said the cobbler.  The brute nodded reluctantly and left them, continuing down the stable tunnel and out into the night. 

“Well then,” said the cobbler, once the man was gone.  “I have no sword and it’s just the two of us.  You can tell your uncle I attacked you and there will be no witnesses to say otherwise.  It’s the best opportunity you’re likely to get, Lorel, do you have the mettle to take it?”  The man waited for an answer, and when Lorel again gave him none, smiled.  “I thought not.”    

Turning his back arrogantly, the cobbler stepped into the stall.  Lorel felt his pulse quicken and his breath shallow.  It was going to be a thrill to watch this fool pay for his many errors in judgment.  I am the Lord of Hollow Hill, you simpleton! He raged in his thoughts.  I have a whole army at my back now and my uncle is too soft to risk an open war over a a bloody cobbler!  You are a dead man, friend, let me show you. . .  The moment was upon him.  While the cobbler fumbled in the shadows searching for the palfrey’s lead, Lorel yanked his sword from its scabbard and lunged forward, intending to drive the point into the man’s back.

“Bugger my uncle!” he shouted.  “And bugger you!” 

He thrust his sword into the shadows with vicious force, but it struck nothing, parting the air with a hiss.  The cobbler had been ready and waiting for the attack.  Lorel realized that an instant too late, just as his eyes caught the gleam of a blade that was not his own.  His confusion paralyzed him and he watched frozen as something flashed through the shadows and disappeared.  Next he knew an arm was slipping around his neck.  Like quicksilver the Cobbler had oozed around behind him.           

“You should not have threatened my boy or the baker,” a voice spoke quietly into Lorel’s ear, his beard tickling the flesh.  It’s tone was so mocking and deadly Lorel almost didn’t recognize it as the Cobbler’s.  “I am indebted to the fellow and will not have him live out the rest of his days fearing an assassin’s blade.  You leave me no choice, Lorel Breylock.”  

The arm flexed tight, cutting off his wind altogether, and the gleam of the blade that he had glimpsed descended toward his chest.  It was double-edged and sawtoothed, an ugly thing meant for naught but killing.  Lorel’s gaze fixated on the jagged steel.  All at once the meaning of the cobbler’s words and the import of what was happening infiltrated the fog that had enveloped his thoughts; he was going to die, he suddenly understood.  He screamed, or tried to, but no sound came forth, and his wild kicks only served to alarm the cobbler’s palfrey, who bellowed and tossed in the gloom in front of him.  Lorel cursed the animal and its owner to the blackest corner of Necartha, but that did nothing to stave off the cold bite of the dagger, which struck in a tender spot between his first two ribs. As the blade pierced his flesh, the weight of fear crushed his thoughts like a stone dropped on an egg.  He was lost.  His eyes rolled up into his head.  

The cobbler grunted.  Inexplicably the cold of the blade retreated and the pressure on his throat released.  He gulped for air.  Regaining control of himself he glanced down to see the cobbler’s limp hand fall away.  The dagger it held dropped into the straw between his boots, only the very tip stained with his blood.  Shouting relief he bolted free of the cobbler’s embrace and whirled to see what had become of the man.

The bastard had dropped to his knees in the doorway of the stall, a sword driven clean through his middle from behind.  The point jutted from his belly and he was staring at the steel in wide-eyed disbelief.  As his fingers reached for the blade his mouth gaped open.

“Wilhem,” he croaked. 

Sigmond of Woburn stood behind the poor fool, his brow creased and his cat-like eyes seeming almost saddened.  

“Forgive me,” he said, jerking his blade free.  The cobbler pitched forward and fell face down into the straw covering the floor.  

Lorel laughed, a wicked cackle of surprise and elation.

“You chose wisely, Sigmond.  I will see you well rewarded for this.”  The swordsman shook his head, his handsome mouth taut with displeasure.  

“The only reward I seek is discharge from my oath to Hollow Hill.  I have given you your life, I’d ask for mine in return.”  Lorel sneered.

“You did your duty here, nothing more, but I am not without gratitude.  You may have your choice of my serving women tonight.  Your life however, still belongs to me.  Return to Hollow Hill and see that my father’s body is prepared and the keep readied to greet its new lord.  I will arrive no later than with the dawn.”

Sigmond stared at him, those strange eyes of his turning hard and unreadable.  

“Very well.”  Before sheathing his blade he drew the flat of both sides very calmly across the grieve on his left arm, cleaning off the blood.  Then he nodded at Lorel and stalked off in his customary feline silence.     

Lorel collected his sword and the cobbler’s dagger from the straw and pulled himself up on to the back of his mare, who was pawing the floorboards behind the palfrey, restless.  “Ssshh, Cora,” Lorel patted her neck.  “We’re leaving the stink of this place behind us now.”    

He knew exactly where they were going next, feeling the rightness of it in his bones.  Nothing could stop him tonight, not even the Dreanalai’s ridiculous gods.  For whatever reason the stars themselves were with him, conspiring to pave the path of his vengeance, with blood to wet the mortar.  This night he was going to clear the slate of those that had wronged or offended him, and in the morning, when he returned to Hollow Hill to assume his chair, there would be no lingering clouds in his mind to detract from the radiance of his ascendency.

“Ho!” he shouted, spurring the mare with a firm kick.  She bolted over the cobbler’s body and thundered down the tunnel, dragging the cobbler’s palfrey along with them by a short lead.   

Chapter Six

6.

Wilhem awoke in the dark, disoriented and afraid.  Night had crept into the cabin, pouring in through the little windows to flood the room like cold black water.  At some point while he slept he had pulled Cob’s thick sheep’s wool blanket over himself, yet the chill was still sharp and had turned the sheen of sleep sweat that moistened his back near to ice.  

“Cob?” he spoke, tentatively.  The blackness yielded no answer.  He sat up and blinked, but did not speak his father’s name a second time.  It seemed unwise somehow to disturb the silence further, lest he attract the attention of. . .   Of what?  The Dreanalai witch?  He was being childish, he told himself.  Matha was not lurking in the cabin’s shadows, nor were any wraiths or wolverns or blood demons.  The fear was just burden of his dreams still weighing on his mind, tugging at his thoughts like ghostly fingers.  He could not recall exactly what beasts he’d dreamt of, but whatever they were, they had not been pleasant.

Gradually his eyes began to pick out different shapes hulking in the blackness. The table and chairs next to his bed formed a single large blob and the fire bowl next to them another, smaller one.  Beyond those and across a stretch of oozing dark the windows shone with a faint patina of silver moonlight.  He waited a little longer and saw more. . .the rope netting stretching over his head and Cob’s double-handed saw leaning against the wall like a sullen stranger.  Shade by shade the room came dimly into focus, and along with it his memories of the day also returned to him.  Cob and Gabe had gone to Whitestone to warn Jondel Breylock of the Altarians and retrieve Skreeander.  Skreeander, he whispered.  The name carried him back through the day until he saw the face of Lorel Breylock floating over him, kicking him ferociously.  He cringed, reaching for his chest.  His fingers traced the stitches Cob had knit into his flesh and felt clumps of dried blood flaking away at his touch.  The aches that had been nagging at him swelled, breaking through the lingering fog of sleep.  His head hurt fiercely.  He also had to make water so badly it felt like his loins were about to burst.                   

Throwing off Cob’s blanket he tried to stand.  His legs were weak, made dumb by the Vella’s tar.  They would not hold his weight so he sank back to the bed and wriggled his toes until the tingling in them subsided.  The effects of the drug had not worn off completely, otherwise he supposed the pain would have been even more intense.  He could feel the sting of his wounds but the pressure in his abdomen was more urgent.  It was lucky he hadn’t soiled himself during his sleep, he thought, shuffling unsteadily to a bucket in the corner.  Leaning against the damp logs of the wall and undid his breeches, sighing at the relief of it.  

Once his bladder was drained he groped blindly through the dark to the shelf where Gabe had set his satchel down, intending to retrieve his huntsman’s lamp and get a fire lit.  He passed in front of the window on his way and paused when a distant flickering caught his eye.  Off in the woods a yellow bauble of firelight was shuttering in and out of view.  Someone was making their way down The Boot Trail, on horseback by the look of it.  

Cob, Wilhem hoped.  Pressing his forehead to the cool glass he watched the light grow brighter, drawing closer.  It was moving quickly.  Too quickly.  Plenty of men could ride that swiftly through the woods but not Cob; with his bad knee he could not bend his leg and that made it difficult for him to keep his balance at anything more than a walk.  Also Cob and Skreeander would have no need for a lantern since the horse could navigate every twist and turn of the Boot Trail in the darkest night by memory and smell alone.  

The skin on the back of Wilhem’s neck prickled.  The rider was not his father, and something was wrong.  He could not say how he knew it, he just had that telltale feeling, a queasy sensation in his stomach that was growing stronger by the second.  Was it the witch or her Captain, Syros, come to take their retribution for his lie about the cage lift?  If it was the witch he knew he stood little chance of defending himself from her sorcery, but if it was the Captain. . .he would not make the mistake of being captured by the man twice in one cycle of the sun and moon.  He reached for his satchel, looking for his crossbow.  As his hand found the leather he remembered that the bow was gone, taken by Matha.  “Grieves,” he swore, seeing the witch’s penetrating blue stare in his mind’s eye.  He needed to find another weapon, and there was very little time.  The rider would be upon the cabin in another handful of heartbeats.   

Blindly he searched the shelf, knocking over drinking tankards, plates and bowls.  At the end he found what he thought was a dagger amongst a heap of spoons, but when he ran his thumb along the edge the blade was dull.  A bread knife.  He tossed it down in disgust and blundered back to the table.  Frantic now he grabbed at the objects left out upon its surface, finding and rejecting a few of Cob’s tools. . .a hammer. . .a marking wheel. . .a pair of pincers.  At last he picked up an awl, the shaft as long as a finger with a point at least sharp enough to bury in a man’s neck.  It would have to do.  He gripped the wooden handle firmly in his fist, bracing himself to face the rider.  He was stepping to the door when he heard a voice.  What in hell are you doing? You need a sword, not a bloody boot needle.  He squeezed the awl’s handle harder.  Well this is all I’ve got.  He answered back, angrily.  I don’t own a bloody sword.

Oh, but you do, said the voice.  You have a sword finer than any other you’ve ever set eyes on right here in this room.  Stop being a fool and take it!

Wilhem’s heart sank.  He’d been trying not to admit to himself that he’d remembered the the doeskin bundle his father had left for him.  Reluctantly he put down the awl and reached for it.  He found it right where Cob had placed it, on the far end of the table closest to his bed.  The cloth was supple and soft, the object within rigid and unquestionably a sword.  Unraveling the straps that held the bundle tight, he rolled it out flat until he saw a glint of steel.  Though he could not make out much more than that he knew the Phaeon blade was lying there, stubbornly real despite his desire for it not to exist.  He was loathe to touch the thing, as though doing so would somehow set in stone the significance of the story Cob had told him that evening, branding him forevermore an Altarian.  An enemy of his own father and the only land he’d ever known. . .  Who you were born to makes no difference Wilhem, you are what you choose to be.  Take it, now.  Stop wasting time!

Wilhem reached for the sword.  By chance his hand landed on the pommel.  From there he moved it upward, tracing his way to the hilt.  When he felt leather wrapping beneath the pads of his fingers he curled them around the grip.  The instant his nails touched the meat of his palm, completing their circle around the hilt, his breath flew from his lungs in a burst of shock. 

The sword was. . .alive.  With a bard’s tongue he would not have been able to explain what that meant, but the sword lived, that was the only word for it.  The sensation was incredibly strange and yet somehow as familiar as the smell of Skreeander’s sweat or the songs his mother sung to him when he was a child.  Without knowing how he suddenly remembered things he had forgotten.  He knew that the sword would only speak to one of his kind, and that the power that lived in it was a blessing from Lanadara.  The Masterful One.  And he knew that this--the feel of the blade’s handle in his grip--was something he had once taken for granted, something he had been yearning for without realizing it for a very long time.  And his other hand still yearned, for it too had once carried such a blade.  

All of these thoughts came to him at once, passing through his mind in an instant that upended everything he’d ever known.  It was like what he’d always thought was “Wilhem” was just one small part of him, like he’d been living in one room of a fortress without realizing there were hundreds more down the hall. . .and yet for now at least, it changed nothing.  The rider had arrived.  

Wilhem heard the clamor of hooves and then a horse nickering just outside the cabin.  He lifted the blade from the table.  It was very light and exquisitely balanced, as long as his arm by the feel of it.  He held it out, the tip pointing almost straight up.  The blade resisted, the connection between it and his thoughts becoming strained.  A feeling of awkwardness emanated from the hilt, akin to brushing a horse’s coat the wrong way.  The sword did not like being held in that position.  

Sensing what the blade wanted, Wilhem lowered his arm and relaxed his wrist, letting the point drop until it rested halfway between vertical and horizontal.  The sensation of awkwardness ebbed, giving way to calm and. . .  readiness.  That was what it felt like to him--this was where the sword belonged when it was at rest.  Damen, he thought.  The word came unbidden, materializing out of nothing and dragging up more things he had not known he’d forgotten.  Damen. The wary wolf.  That was the name of the position.  He’d stood just like this and mouthed the word, thousands of times before.  Damen.  Kotan.  Ashanka.  Rayen. . .  The names came to him.  When he tried to recall the other poses that accompanied them though they remained frustratingly out of reach.  His mouth went dry.  It frightened him that he could not remember.  There are eleven positions in the Child’s Ring.  One for each of the creatures that roam in Lanadara’s garden.  The words of the lessons were there but their meaning eluded him.  His fear multiplied.  Rothan will punish me for forgetting.  He saw the face of an old man, gaunt and stern with stark white hair and dark, joyless eyes. . . 

“Boy!” came a shout.  Wilhem’s attention jumped back to the cabin.  He knew that queer voice, high-pitched and lilting with an acid edge.  Lorel.  “Come out of there, I’ll have words with you!”  

Fury boiled within Wilhem.  It took over his thoughts, weakening his connection to the Phaeon blade so swiftly and thoroughly that he could not fail to notice it.  He felt smaller, a simple cobbler’s son again.  The sword that kills is calm.  He went to the window, trying to get his emotions under control and the sense of power back, but it was no use.  You are rusted.  Your mind is weak.  You are failing your Phaelynx. The thoughts were his but at the same time did not belong to him.  He could not be what they wanted him to be so he shoved them back down from where they had come and peered out into the night.  The moon had emerged from behind a nest of clouds, its pale radiance intensifying enough to drive back some of the night’s shadows and light the clearing.  

Lorel had emerged from the woods not far from Skreeander’s paddock, a black shape on horseback casting a foreboding reflection in the still black water of the drinking pool.  The blaze of the lantern he held aloft hid his face, but Wilhem recognized the blue of his coat and the slick reddish sheen of his mare.  Another horse trailed behind the chestnut, saddled but riderless.  As the moonlight caught its silver coat Wilhem let out a yelp of surprise.   

“Skreeander!”

Forgetting himself, he rushed to the door, threw it open and ran down the porch steps.  His excitement carried him half the distance to Lorel before caution at last returned slowed his legs.  The lordling had swung from his saddle and stood waiting for him.  He laughed coldly, nodding at Wilhem’s left hand.  

“What in hell is that supposed to be?”  Wilhem followed his gaze and saw the Phaeon blade for the first time by the light of the moon.  It was a strange thing, the steel gleaming in a shade of grey like frozen smoke, the blade very narrow and tapering towards the point in a slight upward curve.  There was almost no guard to speak of, only a small and simple circlet of steel, and a faint pattern was etched down the length that looked like filigree.  He had never seen anything like it, and yet. . .I have, haven’t I?    

He raised his eyes to meet Lorel’s black gaze.  Behind the lordling Skreeander pawed the ground, his eyes rolling skittishly as he struggled against the lead binding him to Lorel’s mare.  

“Answer me, peasant,” Lorel hissed.  “What do you think you are going to do with that blade?”  Wilhem swallowed.

“Nothing, mi’lord.  Now that I know it’s you, I mean.”  He feigned deference. “I didn’t recognize your voice and thought you might be a thief until I saw Skreeander.”  Wilhem made a show of lowering the sword, putting the tip to ground.  The blade protested in his thoughts, the sense of wrongness potent enough to curdle his stomach and set his teeth on edge.  “What brings you here?”  Lorel shrugged.

“What else?”  A slow, sinister smile spread across his over-red mouth.  “I’ve come to right a wrong.  My uncle Jondel wills me return your bloody horse to you.  Here--” he beckoned.  “Take the beast so I can be rid of this stinking swine pit.”  Lorel untied the tether that held Skreeander from his mare’s saddle and held it out to Wilhem.

Wilhem could not believe what he was hearing.  If Lord Jondel had ordered Lorel to return the horse that meant that Cob had succeeded in his petition.  But then why hadn’t he returned with the horse himself?  

“Take it,” said Lorel, waving the rope.  “You’ve won this joust, piss for brains.  I don’t know how but somehow your goat-buggering cobbler of a father managed to convince my uncle to humiliate me on his behalf.”  Could it be?  Wilhem dared to hope, but was not convinced.  “Take your damn horse for now and I’ll return for my vengeance in a year or two when my uncle has forgotten you exist.”  Wilhem ignored the threat.

“Where is my father?” he asked.  Lorel sneered.

“What do I look like, your father’s bloody wet nurse?  Last I saw him he was gloating over a tankard of ale with that fat filthy friend of his.”  Gabe.

“Where?”

“The Tollhouse of course, you dolt.  Ask me another question and you won’t like the answer much, I swear it.”

Wilhem took a step towards the lordling.  It wasn’t impossible to believe.  Cob very well might have lingered to buy a round or two for Gabe as a reward for his help.  And once he’d gotten an ale or two in his belly he could have gotten carried away.  Cob wasn’t a big drinker so when he did indulge he tended to get lost in the cup rather quickly.  

“Ganther’s cock,” Lorel complained.  “Move your arse before I change my mind.”  He jerked his fist, threatening to take back Skreeander’s rein.

“No!” Wilhem protested.  He decided to take his chances.  “Give it here, I’ll take him.”  Closing the distance to the lordling he reached out for the rope.  Lorel let him take hold of it.  Wilhem started to draw the palfrey away to the paddock, and then Lorel’s composure broke, his face writhing into the macabre grimace of fury that was seared into Wilhem’s memory.  

“Like hell you will!” he shouted, smashing his fist into Wilhem’s temple.  “Vellas will lay with pigs in their temples before I ever let you take that fucking horse back!”  The force of the blow upset Wilhem’s footing, but he had not been caught completely unawares this time as he had that afternoon.  He’d dodged as the blow was landing, escaping the worst if it and remaining on his feet.  While he fought for his balance Lorel drew his sword.  Wilhem staggered and held his palm out, warding him off.

“Don’t,” he warned, sounding calmer than he was feeling.  “Lord Jondel will--”    

“Lord Jondel will have my head for this?”  Lorel rolled his eyes.  “Yes, yes, I’ve heard.  Your father said the same thing right before my man Sigmond drove a sword through him.”  He donned a bored frown, waiting for his meaning to take.  The words hit Wilhem far harder than the lordling’s fist had.

“You lie,” he said weakly.  

“Do you know what I told him, peasant boy?  I told him fuck my uncle Jondel!  Fuck him, the coward.  I am the High Seat of Hollow Hill now and all those who disrespect me, noble or common, will pay the price for their insolence!  A lord cannot afford to be soft if he expects to keep order, a rule that my overfed uncle has forgotten while sucking at Selthena’s tet. . .”  Lorel bared his teeth, rat-like.  “I will not be soft.  I will not abide insolence of any kind, especially not from lowborn scum like you and your father who refuse to mind their place.  If my uncle doesn’t like it he can tell it to my bloody army!  You think I’d let a little shit like you get away with defying me?  You think I’d let your crippled old beggar father humiliate me in front of half the province and do nothing about it?  I’d rather turn the rivers from here to Hollow Hill red with the blood of babes than let an insult like that go unanswered.”  He wiped spittle from his lips with the back of his hand, his eyes locked on Wilhem’s.  A trace of humor touched the corners of his mouth.  “I wish you could have seen it, the way I left him, face down in a heap of dung and straw, trampled by your own horse’s hooves. . .”  He cackled.  “It was marvelous.  So very satisfying.”  He raised his sword, lazily.  “And now, to put the apple in the hog’s mouth. . .”  

Wilhem screamed, a wordless, strangled cry.  Acting on nothing but instinct he met the lordling’s blade with his own, swinging it up with both hands.  The two swords crashed together inelegantly, struggling as horn-locked rams.  Through the fever of his rage Wilhem was vaguely conscious of the sickening feeling of the Phaeon blade’s displeasure.  He was forcing it to move  against its will.   He didn’t care.  The sword’s resistance only made him angrier.  Lorel had murdered Cob.  He knew it by the feeling that had been in his heart since he’d awoken in the cabin and by the look on Lorel’s face when he’d told of it.  The deed was in his eyes, their blackness filled with mad exuberance and haunted shadows.        

“I’ll kill you!” Wilhem roared.  “I’ll kill you myself for this, I swear it!’”  He wrested the Phaeon blade free and swung it at Lorel’s head, coming at him wildly and with all his strength.  The fury of his attack brought a glimmer of doubt to the lordling’s eyes; he fell back a pace, struggling to parry Wilhem’s primal, untrained hacking.  Though he was older and had some training his frail build was actually even-matched by Wilhem’s stouter one.  Sensing the lordling’s fear fanned Wilhem’s rage and he struck again and again, each impact more violent than the one that preceded it.  Finally Lorel stumbled, his heel catching a stone as he backpedaled.  One of his knees gave and he sank into a crouch.  

No! A voice warned.  Don’t!  But Wilhem was deaf to it.  The thought of Cob lying dead and trampled at Lorel’s doing had carried him too far beyond reason to go back.  “Die!”  He shrieked, raising his sword overhead like an ax.  “Die!”  The blade fought him fiercely, the sensation of resistance escalating from nausea to outright pain, a feeling like blisters erupting all over his body.  I am dishonoring myself!  This is shameful!  Never meet toad with scorpion, NEVER!  Wilhem howled.  He did not care about the pain or the multitude of voices in his head.  And the sword be damned, he didn’t care about that either.  He wanted to kill Lorel Breylock.  But when it came down to it something in him hesitated, unwilling for just fraction of an instant to deliver the fatal blow.  

Seeing the opportunity, Lorel launched himself into a roll.  Wilhem reacted, swinging the sword down with the force to kill but it was too late, the blade cut through the air striking nothing but dirt and a bit of the stone.  The power of the impact sent up a spray of sparks and ripped the blade from Wilhem’s grip.  Spinning end over end it fell to the ground at Skreeander’s feet, more than five paces away.  Wilhem gazed after it in shock, standing defenseless. 

Lorel did not hesitate.  As Wilhem lunged to retrieve the weapon he leapt to his feet his feet and stuck him, driving the point of his sword firmly into Wilhem’s stomach.  It happened so fast that Wilhem hardly felt the blade.  He glanced down disbelieving and then the pain hit, a pain so deep and wrong that it robbed the fight from him instantly.  There was no protesting it, no chance of beating it back and fighting on.  Lorel’s sword had gone right through him.  He whimpered and his legs buckled, dropping him to his knees.  

Lorel laughed his insane laugh, withdrawing the sword with sadistic deliberateness.  Wilhem clutched at it vainly, beseeching with his eyes for the lordling to stop the agony.  Lorel showed him no mercy.  Once the sword was free he held it over Wilhem’s head and let it shower him in his own blood, dripping from the reddened blade against the backdrop of a bone-white moon.   Wilhem tasted metal on his lips and coughed, his hands dropping to the hole in his belly.  He covered the hole with his palms as best he could, but that did nothing to slow the growth of the stain spreading through his shirt.  

“Don’t die just yet,” Lorel chided, sweeping his lank black hair back off his forehead.  “There’s something I want you to see first.”

He sheathed his sword and walked over to where the Phaeon blade lay in the dirt, between Skreeander and the mare.  Both horses were restless, tossing their heads at the tang of blood in the air.  Skreeander showed his teeth and shied as Lorel approached but the lordling caught the palfrey’s tether and stopped him from bolting.  

“No,” Wilhem moaned, watching Lorel bend to pick up his sword.  “Please, no. . .”  Lorel   grinned wickedly, turning the hilt in his hands and examining the craftsmanship.         

“What an oddity,” he said, peering at the blade.  “These symbols, what are they, Irathi?”  Wilhem had no answer to give him, even had he been willing.  Lorel sighed.  “Must be.  Only an Irathi would go through the trouble of forging good steel and then bend it into such an absurd shape.  I wonder though, do you think it can actually make a decent cut?”  He twirled the sword in his hand, leaning close to Skreeander.  The horse’s eye wobbled anxiously as Lorel patted his neck.   

Wilhem reached out with a trembling, blood covered hand.

“Please,” he begged, “no--”  

Gripping Skreeander’s bridal tight in one hand, Lorel dragged the Phaeon blade across the palfrey’s throat like a bow being drawn over a fiddle.  The horse screamed a horrifying unnatural squeal and a black curtain of blood poured from its neck, as wine dumped from a bucket.  So much fell at once that Wilhem caught the smell of it, potent and sour, before Lorel had even withdrawn the sword.

“Impressive,” said Lorel, eyeing the drenched blade appreciatively, “for Irathi junk anyhow.”  

Wilhem went mute, his mind so overwhelmed that all emotions ceased.  The horse collapsed onto its side, convulsing.  Not a horse, he reminded himself.  Skreeander.  Skreeander who had been with him every day of his life for as far back as he could remember.  Lorel’s chestnut pranced to avoid the palfrey’s spastic thrashing.  The lordling himself held still, watching death take the animal with the kind of rapturous, hungry look on his face that most men reserved for the Tollhouse girls.  He is poison.  You should not have let him live.  He will be a stain on the world.  Wilhem dismissed the voice, uninterested.  It no longer mattered.  Cob. Skreeander.  His mother, whom he barely remembered.  All that he’d ever had in this life he’d lost.  What difference did it make if Lorel turned the whole of Triton into his own personal dungeon?  To hell with this.  To hell with all of this.  

Skreeander’s quivering slowed.  In its final paroxysms the horse’s eye met Wilhem’s and stayed with him until the last of the fight within it faded.  It’s all right, he thought.  It’s all right.  I’ll see you soon.    

He was thirsty, incredibly thirsty.  Clutching his belly he staggered to his feet.  His own life was nearly spent as well, he knew that.  Very soon he would lose consciousness.  It is all right, he told himself, truly.  Unless the monks were all liars he and Skreeander would soon awake in Necartha.  The realm of the dead was said to be dreary and barren, a pale reflection of the world where food had no taste, but at least the two of them would be reunited there, and together they could search for Cob.  And how much more barren could Necartha be, given how little the this world held for him now?  He was no longer terribly afraid.  I am going to have a drink.  He took several steps toward the little pool.  Each one was a horror.  One of his legs was completely numb so he dragged it along, hopping forward with the other.  His blood rained from his mouth as he went, jarred up his throat by the heaving of his ribs.   

Lorel watched his progress without interfering, his mouth set in a sardonic smile.  He let Wilhem make it all the way to the banks of the pool where he dropped to his hands and knees.  Leaning out over the polished black surface of the water he encountered his reflection.  His boy’s face was ghastly pale and his eyes were so glazed and black of pupil that he looked like he’d gone as daft as the Big Idiot.  He cupped his hand and was lowering it when Lorel’s face swam up next to his own.  Wilhem grunted.  I’ve been through this once already today, he thought cynically, almost amused by the dark circles his fate was making. With that girlish face of his Lorel even looked a little like Matha.  Was there meaning in it?  Had the witch’s gods ordained that one way or another he would die this day, no matter what road he traveled?  Or was it all just happenstance, a random jest that had naught to do with anything?  

He watched Lorel raise the Phaeon blade.  The knowledge of what was to come next was more dismaying to him than terrifying.  He was not going to have his drink after all.    

“Forgive me,” Lorel said chidingly.  “But I grow bored of this.”  

He swung his arm and the sword took Wilhem through the back, the point erupting from his chest next to his heart.  His reflection reacted as though it belonged to someone else, the  bloodied mouth falling open in a scream that did not make it past his lips, gurgling awkwardly in his throat.  Lorel gave the sword a twist and let go of the hilt, leaving Wilhem skewered.  Then he dealt a kick to his midsection, toppling him into the pool. 

Wilhem felt no cold.  The water was silent, calm.  The last of his breath left him in a cloud of bubbles and he sank, coming to rest a few feet beneath the surface.  Soft mud cradled him as though he was abed and smooth stones beneath his cheek served as a pillow.  Out of the corner of one eye he gazed up at Lorel’s blurred silhouette and the moon behind.  Both seemed impossibly far away, too far now to be of any significance.  You are weak.  You are bringing shame down upon your Phaelynx. Get up, fight!  Wilhem paid no mind to the voice, unmoved.  Instead he thought about the girl in the cage and the kiss she’d given him.  He’d have liked to have experienced that again, the forceful pressure of her lips and the thrill it had opened up in his gut, vast as the bowl of the night sky.  He still couldn’t believe she’d done that.  The whole day had been like that though, come to think of it.  A tide of changes so peculiar and relentless that he’d been hopelessly unprepared for them, struggling nonstop from the minute he’d seen the girl until this very moment just to keep up.  To hell with it.  There was nothing else he could have done, he decided, nothing more to do.  The stars had taken him down as he’d taken down the doe, ending him while he was stumbling and still trying to figure out what was happening.  To hell with it.  I am nothing next to them.  I could not have won.  He opened his mouth, wide as it would stretch, and drank.                        

                                  

      

           

Chapter Seven

7.

    “The linens all are from the Ippen monastery at Aurochs Rock,” Thambol Collins boasted, sweeping his hairy fingers across the bedding.  “Ten thousand stitches per quartermark, all hand-sewn by the acolytes.  If you have need you’ll find more candles in the wardrobe as well as ink and parchment--”

“Enough,” said Matha, irritated by the fat little man’s prattle.  “Leave us and fetch water.   Wine as well, if you have anything that won’t turn my stomach.”

“I have just the thing,” he bowed obsequiously.  “A robust summer red from the Vellan Delta, it’s exquisite I assure you.  I’ll have a flagon sent up immediately.  And would you care for anything to eat?”

“No,” said Matha.  “The wine will do.  Go.”  The mayor’s dismay was obvious by the way he tugged on his revolting grey beard.  

“Very well,” he bowed again.  “Should you have need of anything else there is a bell pull in the hall.  The cook does make a succulent dish of rabbit--”

“Out!” 

“Of course, of course.”  The man hastened from the room pulling a heavy door shut behind him.  Matha collapsed into an overly ornamental wooden chair with a bright red cushion.  By Altarian standards the fabric was offensively gaudy, as was the rest of the suite, which took up the entire top floor of the inn.  Though the mayor had informed her repeatedly that it was The Grand Cortigan’s finest, the Dreanalai saw nothing about the accommodation that pleased her eye.  A mottled blue and gold fabric patterned with valecats covered the walls, drooping in spots where the rank damp that clung to the air had gotten behind it, and the scarred planks of the floor looked like they hadn’t suffered a cleaning in a dozen moons.  The bed was a travesty, its headboard cracked down the middle and repaired with bands of iron, the linens that the mayor had been so proud of yellowed and stinking of mold.  

“This place has the look of a Carthan brothel,” Syros muttered.  He stood by one of six tall windows that lined the back wall, idly fingering a tassel that trailed from a shabby wool curtain.  By the moonlight he looked almost handsome, a pillar of bronze muscle with a smooth, well-shaped skull.  The shadows softened the harshness of his brow and hid the teardrop scars on his cheek.  “And it smells like a soldier ditch.”  

He was right about the stink.  Matha had complained of the heat  when they’d first entered the room since the fire had been banked too high, so the mayor had opened the doors to the balcony, admitting the babble of the river as well its reek of refuse and a fishy stink wafting up from the inn’s kitchen.        

“I’m glad of it,” she lied.  “It means Selthena’s tax is accomplishing its purpose.  Bleed the wealth from a country and you break the spine of its ability to make war.”

“Still,” Syros said, “it fills my throat with bile.”  The Dreanalai frowned.  She knew her Altarman well, perhaps better than any other that had served her at this point.  There had been another in her past that had been with her longer, but he had been duller and more difficult to read.  Or perhaps she had simply been less interested in reading him.  Either way it was not the stink of fish that was bothering the High Captain.  

“It was not your fault, Syros,” she said.  “I took a risk with mostly pride for purpose and the result was what it should have been.  I was rash.  You did not fail me.”  Syros shrugged, shifting his gaze to the moon which hovered low outside the glass.

“It is my vow to see that my death takes the place of your own, Dreanalai.  If the blade had found your heart you might not have survived it.  I did fail.  Whether you were foolish or not makes no difference.  When we return to Altaria I will report to the Crescent.”   Matha closed her eyes a moment, fighting a wave of exhaustion.  With the dreana all but gone from her blood she could feel her true body underneath its effects, the dryness of her ancient bones and the weariness of too many decades with little sleep.    

“Do what you must,” she said, “that is your decision.  But for now you are still the head of my legion and I need you to clear your head of such distractions.  What word have you had from your lieutenants?”  Syros turned to face her, one hand resting on the pommel of his broadsword, the other reaching into a pouch on his belt for a wad of blackleaf.

“All is well.”  He stuffed the blackleaf into his cheek and chewed.  “Sulla and the others have settled outside the cave mouth awaiting orders.  Orelion holds the northern perimeter of the town without incident.  Bruntus holds the southern perimeter and reports that a father with an infant girl attempted to slip past one of his roadblocks and escape through the woods. The man was killed and the babe sent to Sulla to with the other two we took from the Triton lord.”

“Good,” Matha approved.  “Have the body of the father staked in the plaza for all to see.”

“It is being done as we speak, Dreanalai.”  She nodded.  The exhaustion was growing so heavy now that she’d sat down she was dizzy with it, her vision speckling on the edges.  She could wait no longer.     

“Syros,” she waved for him to come over.  “My wasps, please.”

The captain did as she commanded, producing the Dreanalai’s treasured ebony box from a pouch tucked in his cloak.  Matha took it from him and opened it on the bed.  With her dagger she slit her thumb, in the same spot that had been rent and healed more times than she could number.

“Such a waste,” she said, withdrawing one of the wasps from within its bed of black silk and eyeing the blue liquid swirling inside the glass.  “Truly Syros.  I cannot recall doing anything so impetuous since the day I took my cloak.  It must be true that in old age we become children once more.”  Syros grunted.

“My last Dreanalai died at twice your age, Matha.”  She laughed.

“She must have been a mewling babe by then.”  Syros tilted his head and a dimple appeared on one side of his mouth.  Matha knew that was as close as he would come to laughter while he was still punishing himself for allowing her to be wounded.  

“She did have a habit of soiling her small clothes,” he said.  

“Gods.”  Matha lowered the stinger of the wasp to her bleeding thumb.  “I find the desire to still the aging in me grown twice as fierce.”  She pressed on the device and forced three drops of dreana into the cut.  As the substance began to take effect, crawling under her skin and a compelling a ragged moan from her throat, there was a knock at the door.  Syros went to answer and returned with a tray of water and wine.  Matha coughed and straightened her posture.  

“That looks wretched,” she told him.  For the second time that day she had transformed back into a younger woman’s body.  The color had returned to her hair, her voice was stronger and her eyes were reinvigorated.  Syros held the flagon of wine up in the lamplight.  Its color was more pink than red.   

“Cut to death with water.  Shall I pour it anyhow?” The captain asked.

“Yes,” said Matha.  “The taste will be no joy I’m sure but it will help me take to the Spirit.  I’ll drink it on the balcony.”

She stood and let herself out through the double doors with grace returned to her step.  

Absent the sun’s warmth for many hours now the night had turned bitter.  The dreana coursing Matha’s blood however made it seem luxuriously cool to her.  She walked to the balusters and laid her hands down on the iron rail, her senses so keen that she could discern each individual bubble of rust beneath her palms and separate all the smells that made up the stink of the river.  Rancid meat and rotting lettuce, rendered fat, and of course, privy waste.  Her vision had sharpened as well, making the night vista laid out before her almost rapturously vivid.  Out on the horizon the bald mountain Suratha had shown her before she’d ever heard its name stood forlorn beneath a field of stars like shards of glass, its crown wreathed in moonstruck clouds.  Thimblemont, the Triton simplefolk called it.  A silly name, but apt.  The thing was indeed shaped something like an upturned thimble.  At its base lay a dark cloak of forest that rolled all the way back to the edge of the town, her view of it broken only by the soaring towers of the stone bridge a little ways to the South.  At one point halfway between the mountain and the river the trees gave way to a rolling swath of pastureland.  The Downs part of Thimbledowns, she surmised.  A few tiny pinpoints of light dotted those bare hills, most likely hearth fires warming the windows of simple cottages.  

There were undoubtedly children sleeping in many of those cottages, children that on the morrow would stand before her to be tested.  Would any more of them bear signs in the blood?  The odds were slim.  Returning to Altaria with even the one marked boy she’d found that day, Wyeth Trawn, would be a victory but she doubted it would restore her to the Avetar’s good graces.  To accomplish that she’d need to find others, five or ten even, enough to earn her praise and stature sufficient to live out the remainder of her days in the comforts of the Altars, without fear ever finding another black envelope on her chair.  She was weary of dust and tents and foreign backwaters, endlessly ranging the continent with a legion of soldiers at her back.  Warmaking and Seeking were tasks for younger Dreanalai, those that had not yet made their contributions to the empire.  After all that she had done for Selthena and her father before her Matha should have been entitled to a cozy chamber with a stout fire, a place to hatch plans and issue orders rather than carry them out.  Alas, that was not her fate just yet. . .     

Suratha will guide me, she consoled herself.  The goddess had not led her astray so far, urging her to this place with visions of the Thimblemont and gifting her with the handsome blond child marked by Diedra.  And what of the other boy?  Wilhem.  She felt the goddess churning within her when she pictured his grey-eyed young face, an array of chaotic feelings that was as difficult to sort out as the fragments of a dream, but was strong nonetheless and getting stronger.  Though he was not touched by any of the gods the boy was unique in some way that eluded her.  Suratha had never before recalled her attention to someone so forcibly.  It had been many years since she’d felt the presence of the goddess intruding so regularly into her mind.  Perhaps Suratha had decided it was finally time to reward her for her devotion, perhaps there really were more gifts waiting for her here, be it the boy or another tied to him that would bring her great glory when she at last returned home to Altaria. . .

The Dreanalai stopped herself.  It was dangerous to let her expectations soar so high, a conceit she thought she’d outgrown.  Something was indeed shifting in her, causing her to revisit all the madness and desires of her youth.  It was the mood of the goddess, she supposed, rekindling old ambitions.  Also, she realized, it was at least partly the surge of the dreana, which was always strongest as it first took to the blood, setting the mind afire with a thousand thoughts and an unquenchable thirst.  The Dreanalai’s Thirst it was called, as it was similar for all Dreanalai regardless of which god they served, making them want to drink in the whole world and to taste fruit from every tree, to see what lay behind every door, to disrobe every man or woman and either couple with them or consume them.  Above all though there was always the excruciating urge to stab their wasps deep into their veins and let the dreana run freely until the flood of it tore them from their bodies and carried them completely into the spirit world. . .a temptation that had sent many marked children to the catacombs beneath the Altars long before their time.  When they first came to the Altars to be awakened the marked ones spent the entire first year just learning how to resist the thirst.  Many did not survive it, and still more lost hold of the discipline years or even decades later, indulging themselves in the dreana to the point of madness and death.  Matha herself had come very close once, only finding her salvation in a visit from Suratha.  The goddess had not been pleased with her then, nor had the Avetar or the Queen.  It was all so long ago now. . .would they never let it be forgotten?

“Dreanalai,” Syros spoke behind her.  She glanced over her shoulder and saw him standing in the doorway with the tray of wine and a lit candle.    

“Leave them on the table,” she said.  He set the tray down and began to withdraw.  “Syros, wait--” she stopped him.  “This may take some time.  I do not know if Suratha will speak with me tonight but I think she will at least show me something about the boy.  I intend to wait a while if she does not come straight away.  An hour, even.  Be sure that I have quiet.”  Syros nodded.

“On my blood you will not be disturbed Matha, by myself or any other.”  He left her then, pulling shut the balcony doors as he went.

Matha poured herself a glass of the weakened wine and drank it down in one tilt.  Then she poured again and knelt directly on the hard wooden planks of the balcony.  She consumed the second glass slowly, waiting for the effect of the first to soothe her nerves and mute the roar of the dreana.  By the time she had drained the goblet she felt something, not much but it was enough.  Truthfully she did not need the wine at all to take to the Spirit but the ritual was helpful, sipping at the goblet in the moonlight with the steady hiss of the river lulled her into the focus that was required.  When she felt she was ready she rested her palms on her thighs and closed her eyes, plunging herself into darkness.  She took a breath.

The darkness pulsed, alive with her heartbeat and the energy of the dreana.  Memories came, flashes of the day that beckoned for her to chase them off into oblivion.  She resisted, willing the darkness to become empty and still.  It took concentration to drive the images away, the face of Lord Jandegar and the Blood Thief in the cage, Lyna, nagged at her like gnats until they were certain she was not going to give in.  When they relented and the Spirit realm had opened to her she sought the door to her Spirit Chamber, starting with a simple slab of dark Kingswood set in a wall of blank stone.  Next she added the swirling grain of the wood and three heavy black hinges, from each protruding a triangle of iron banding, affixed horizontally to the door with diamond rivets.  Lastly she envisioned the handle, a slender hoop dangling from the mouth of a snarling mongoose, also wrought in iron.  

With the door set firmly in her mind, she imagined her own hand, reaching out to take hold of the handle.  Matha Dal’sara Nador, she spoke, in voice that none but her and Suratha would ever hear, with her finger stroking the snout of the mongoose.  The animal’s face came alive, its eyes opening.  When it saw Matha its snarl relaxed, permitting her to pull the iron hoop free of its mouth and turn it sideways.  The latch released with a soft creak.  Matha set the hoop back in the grip of the mongoose’s teeth and pushed the door open.

When she stepped across the threshold, all awareness of her body on the balcony of The Grand Cortigan faded away.  The stink of the river and the croaking of frogs disappeared, as did the pressure on her knees and the chill of the air.  In their place she smelled rose hips and felt her body in Sucartha become as tangible as the one she had left behind, her skin prickling as it awoke.  She wore nothing now but a plain violet robe that was open down the front, exposing her navel and a sliver of flesh between her breasts.  The air was so warm it would soon raise droplets of sweat there.  Her feet were bare, resting on hot, damp stone.  Around her the chamber was dark.  Delin, she spoke, an ancient word for light.

A dozen orange flames burst into existence, licking up from sconces mounted on the walls around her.  Each pair framed another door, making six in total. The chamber was a perfect circle with a domed roof, built of fist-sized cobbles.   At the center of the floor a black pool of water had been cut into rock, forming another circle around a looming statue carved in polished white hearthstone.  Steam rose from the pool, rising to the ceiling where it made the cobbles weep.  

Matha approached the pool.  The statue rising from it was of a young woman, very petite yet enviably shaped, dressed as Matha herself was in a simple robe that opened down the middle.  With one hand she held the halves of the garment shut, covering her breasts demurely as though she was unaware that the pose bared one of her thighs nearly to her sex.  Her eyes were cast down modestly and mostly closed, yet on her sly lips she wore a sultry smile.  A pair of mongooses played at her feet, lazily intertwined with one another and her ankles. 

It was an irresistible statue, its perfection evoking awe and lust in all who gazed upon it, man or woman alike.  The persona of the goddess was embodied perfectly in the girl’s expression and its contradictions.  Suratha was guile touched by innocence, or she was innocence touched by guile.  It was impossible to know which.  Like the vapors rising from the surface of the pool to hide her, the goddess was something that could never be fixed in the mind, her true nature a mystery even to herself.  

When she’d first learned she’d been marked many decades before, Matha had not understood why Suratha had selected her.  She had never been beautiful enough to be a seductress, or at least, she was not beautiful enough in that way, and even as a child she had always been direct rather than coy, her ambitions and desires displayed nakedly in the brashness of her actions.  At the Altars the Dreanalai that had trained her had explained that the gods did not always choose those that reflected their own personas, on rare occasion they marked an opposite to walk for them in the world, usually out of some dire necessity to counter their own shortcomings.  When the goddess Bertra for example, who was the Mother, the embodiment of love and loyalty, hospitality and kindness, saw that the Tritons were going to be wiped out, she had chosen Ganther to bear her mark and stand for her, though he was from the womb a man built for war.  It had not been easy for Bertra to maintain such a pairing however; when a god chose a man or woman who was not of a similar disposition the bond was unnatural and strained, requiring a great deal more of the god’s energy.  To hold Ganther to her and give him his power Bertra had eventually been forced to abandon all her other marked ones and fixate on him alone.  Still, it could be done.  That was the lesson Matha had taken from the tale.  

For much of her life therefore, she had believed she was like Bertra’s Ganther, chosen by Suratha to be blunt and singleminded for her wherever the goddess had need of such a personality.  Not until she had been given Syros as her Altarman had she begun to understand that she had been mistaken.  She and Suratha had always been very much alike.  It was Syros that had finally shown her the truth of it, or at least her unexpected feelings for the Altarman had, since they’d forced her to at last confront the contradiction of who she really was.  On the one hand she was Matha Dal’sara Nador, hard, calculating, and bold, a Dreanalai to be feared who had never shied from bloodshed, but on the other she had always been another woman as well, a hidden, nameless woman who felt intense loneliness and overwhelming horror at the things she had done to rise through the Altars, a woman who knew that her boldness and ruthlessness had always been a deception, a mask to hide her fear and her childhood longing to be sheltered in the arms of a father and mother she had never known.  That woman still lived within her breast, fighting every moment to guide her hand, though Matha would never allow her to show through her choices.  Though the Dreanalai lacked some of Suratha’s sensuality, the paradox within her mirrored the goddess’s closely.

“Goddess,” she said, “I must speak with you.” 

She set one foot in the steaming waters of the pool and let the robe slip from her shoulders.  It puddled on the stone behind her.  There were four steps cut into the rock.  She took them one at a time, giving herself a few moments on each to adjust.  The water was painfully hot.  By the time she reached the last step she was submerged to her naval with sweat streaming down her spine and between her breasts, waves of her hair clinging to her to her shoulders and the nape of her neck.  She laid her palms down on the surface of the pool and gazed up at the statue, waiting to sense that Suratha’s presence had graced the stone.

The goddess did not come.  Matha stood patiently, opening her thoughts and reaching out with them, calling out to her, pleading with her to make herself known.  She could feel the goddess but only very faintly, as though across a great distance.  Still she waited, staying motionless and silent until she was no longer aware of the heat, until the skin of her fingers had shriveled like grapes left in the sun.  The dome over her head wept ceaselessly, raining down drops that were shockingly cold, and the sconces around her burned steadily, their glow never fading since the tallow that fed them could never be exhausted here.  An hour passed before she began to doubt.  Suratha rarely ever came when she was bid, few gods did, but this was important.  The goddess herself had impressed the significance of the boy Wilhem upon her, and though Matha had told the child there was nowhere in the world for him to hide from her, that had been an exaggeration of her talents.  She could not find him without Suratha’s aid.  Even if she stumbled upon him by chance, she’d have no idea what his purpose was or what to do with him if the goddess would give her no indication of his worth.  Frustration crept into her calm, and after another hour, anger.                                                        

“Goddess,” she broke the silence, testily.  “I can wait no longer this night.  If you would have me seek out the boy, Wilhem of Ashfall, I must know where to find him.  If you will not come now I shall return to Encartha to attend my orders from the Queen.”  She gave Suratha a moment longer, but felt no stirring of her senses.  “As you will, then,” she said hotly, turning her back on the statue and rising up the steps from the pool.  She donned her robe and was wringing the moisture from her hair when the torches suddenly flickered, nearly guttering out.

“It is too late,” said a voice, all around her.  It’s tone was soft and rich and feminine, suited to throaty laughter and the bedroom.  But tonight it was also laced with venom, a serpentine threat Matha had heard in it only once before, many years ago.  “Too late because you did not listen.  Turn and face me Matha Dal’sara.”

Matha felt the presence of the goddess swell into the room, its usual carnal magnetism black with a crackling, barely-constrained violence.  Suratha was furious.  Matha’s anger cooled like reddened steel plunged into a water bucket.  She turned around.

The eyes of the statue had opened, radiating a blue glow into the mists rising up before them.  Like Matha’s gaze the statue’s was the same shade as the dreana that gave her power, but unlike Matha’s the goddess’s eyes were completely consumed by the glow, leaving no irises.

“Suratha--,” Matha began, her voice faltering.  “I--”

“Be silent.  Listen now.  Listen as you have never listened in all the years that I have tried to show you the river stones to set your feet upon.  You serve me, not I you.  When and where I choose to speak with you is for me to decide.  If you think that I have need to converse with you, you will wait patiently and if I do not come you will be grateful merely to have stood before this statue a while looking upon my image.  What do you imagine I am doing while you are here barking for my attention?  Am I lounging in a Cauldron Bath, feasting on berries and summerwine?  Am I watching the games in the Queen’s parapet whilst her Speechless Ones weave flowers into my hair?  You are not my only face in the world, Matha Dal’sara Nador,  and there are never less than a dozen places I am called to at once.”  

Matha bowed her head, staring humbly at the mongooses at the statue’s feet.

“Yes, Goddess.  I understand.  But please, hear me, I forgot myself only because I could sense that the boy Wilhem is important.   I am eager to find him for you.”

“You are eager only to correct the mistake of letting the boy slip from your grasp!” Suratha snapped.  “A Phaeon child from Ashfall. . .do you expect me to believe you are truly so daft as to think I’d have steered the boy into your hands just to help you find your way to a blessed Forger’s cave?  Have I nothing more to urgent to do?  The boy is the son of Arexes, Matha!  Your infatuation with that captain of yours is making you blind and soft!”

Matha gasped, stunned twice over.  Suratha had never spoken to her so fiercely and she’d never imagined the goddess could see so deeply into the corners of her heart.  Was it true?  Had she known all along that Wilhem was more than a simple boy and hid the knowledge from herself to spare his life?  She’d had no trouble plunging a dagger into the Triton lord, Jandegar, or half a hundred others before him, why would she have balked at killing the child?  Because he risked himself to free the Blood Thief, Lyna.  Because he’d been so fierce and unafraid for a boy his age.  Because his courage and obstinacy had reminded her no small way of. . .Syros.  Her throat tightened with shame.  Suratha was right, she was losing herself to her weakness for the man.  

“We are not built to be fisher wives, you and I!” the goddess reprimanded.  “You will never know a mother’s joys or fears or mend his shoes and stand behind him as he rushes off to fight battles for you.  I will not allow it, Matha Dal’sara!  You will rely on your own wits and my gifts and be beholden to no one, that is our way.  If I must take the Altarman from you to keep you on the path, so be it!”  Matha lifted her face to confront the living statue.  A tear spilled down her cheek, sprung from the well of her embarrassment.

“There is no need, Goddess,” she said.  “I will rip his heart from his chest myself before I fail you again, I swear it.”

“Oh?” Suratha retorted, cynically.  “So you say.”  But Matha sensed a slight lessening in the goddess’s fury.  “You cannot begin to know what your weakness has cost us already.  Look.”

The statue’s eyes dropped to the pool.  Matha followed her gaze.  The surface of the water darkened until it was truly black, and then shimmering specks of light emerged and brightened, like a swarm of firebugs.  Their glow revealed a silhouette beneath them, as though they were hovering over the bald head of an old man.  Stars, Matha realized, above the Thimblemont.  The moon appeared next, and in its light the landscape became as clear as if she had returned to her body on the balcony of The Grand Cortigan.

As soon as she had recognized what Suratha was showing her, the Thimblemont began to streak toward her like she’d caught the tail of a raven.  The forest rushed past beneath her in a blur, impossibly fast.  In a breath she reached the base of the mountain where the rock first broke above the woods.  There the unseen raven dove, carrying her down through the treetops into a clearing.  

She saw a crude cottage, its roof so overgrown with moss it seemed at first to be just a mound in the forest floor, leaning against the mountain.  In front of it the clearing ground was broken and churned and a horse lay unmoving, its throat torn open with the gash still steaming.  A few paces from the dead horse there was a pool of standing water, not unlike the one she was staring into, fed by a trickle leaking from the craggy stone of the Thimblemont.  The pool came toward her until it seemed she was standing on its bank.  She peered into it and made a surprised sound, startled to see the boy Wilhem curled up on his side beneath the surface with a Phaeon sword run through him.  A black cloud leaked from the wound, slowly expanding around his starkly pale face.  The boy’s mouth was wide open, as though he was shouting or trying to swallow                    

“As we speak the last of his life pours from his veins, spilled by the same fool who had his father murdered.”  

Matha swallowed, dismissing an impulse to mask her confusion.  There was no use trying to hide anything from Suratha now, the goddess must have always been able to see everything her mind concealed, even the things she kept so deeply buried that she herself hardly knew they were there. 

“I don’t understand, Goddess,” she admitted.  “Is it not fortunate that the boy’s life is at an end?  Isn’t that the fate you’d hoped I would hasten him toward?”

“By your hand!” Suratha replied.  “The boy was to die by your hand.  If you had ended his life before this other murdered his father the scales would not be so imbalanced and he would not be. . .”  She trailed off, leaving the sentence unfinished, as though the rest of it was too unpleasant for even a goddess to speak aloud.  A chilling intuition blossomed in Matha.  The boy is the son of Arexes. . .  The irony of it would be elegant, having a dark but almost beautiful symmetry. . .

“He would not be chosen to become. . .” she echoed Suratha, “Auren Damet Avetar?”

The brightness of the statue’s gaze wavered and Suratha’s weight in the chamber slackened, seeming almost to slink back into the void beyond the walls.  Fear? The Dreanalai wondered; was Suratha was showing fear?  The premonition was unsettling.

“Goddess, it cannot be,” she said.  “Are you certain?”  

“I have glimpsed only stones,” the goddess replied, hotly, but the anger in her voice seemed an afterthought, muted by her distraction.  “Still you must go to him, immediately.  You must be there if he returns to Encartha.” 

“I will seek him out the moment I leave here,” Matha assured her.  “But what would you have me do with him if he does return?  Shall I send him right back to the Spirit Realm?”

“No!” Matha felt another spike of fear in the goddess.  “You mustn’t!  If he has become Auren Damet Avetar now we must not so much as bloody his lip or pluck a lash from his eye.  If he wakes take him into your custody and bring him to the Altars, do you understand?”

“Yes, Goddess,”  Matha met the statue’s eyes with her own, intending to show Suratha that she had truly heard her and was submitting to her will.  The statue’s eyes darkened back to stone.  Matha felt the goddess’s presence slipping from the chamber. 

“I must go,” said Suratha, her voice disembodied and waning.  “Once you have the boy in hand return to me here, as soon as you are able. . .do not fail me in this Matha Dal’sara.”

“I won’t, Goddess,” Matha promised.  Suratha was already gone.