Dagger's Edge (Shadow series) (28 page)

“It’s wonderful,” Jael breathed. Suddenly she had to be out there, among those jewellike lights. She unwound Urien’s arms from around her and pulled him with her out of the altar area. They laughed as the lights moved slowly over their skin, marking them with diamonds of silver.

Too soon, far too soon the lights faded and died away, and Urien led her back to the inner chambers of the temple.

“When I came in to check the temple, I lit a fire,” he said. “It’s cool tonight, and I thought you might like some tea.”

“I would,” Jael agreed. “That tea that you’ve brought is addictive.”

“As I said before, I’ll have to start trading it in Allanmere,” Urien chuckled. “Or at least have some brought on a regular basis.”

He showed Jael to a small room that had been converted to a study of sorts. Scrolls littered the desk and a worktable, and numerous burnt-down candles were stuck to every clear surface. There were a few chairs, and a cot had been set up in one corner. A good fire was burning, and a kettle of water was already heating on a hook.

Urien motioned Jael to a chair, taking a block of tea from a box and shaving curls into the hot water. Jael craned her neck to see over the piles of scrolls.

“You must forgive the disorder,” Urien said, appearing at last with a cup of tea, which he handed to Jael. “It took me some time to familiarize myself with the business of this temple. Ankaras is, at least, an extremely thorough record-keeper. Drink your tea, and I’ll pour myself a cup.”

Urien had sweetened the tea with honey, and its rich, fragrant taste was just what Jael craved. The hot tea made her feel pleasantly warm and tingly inside, a sensation that quickly faded, leaving Jael thirsty for more. Urien pulled a chair up beside hers, sitting down with his own cup.

“Did you enjoy my secret window?” Urien asked her.

“It was wonderful,” Jael sighed. “I’m surprised all your priests weren’t here to see it.”

“None of them know,” Urien said, smiling. “I saved that secret to share only with you.”

Jael smiled to herself, feeling the warmth rush to her cheeks.

“I’m flattered,” she mumbled.

“I have another secret to share with you when you’re ready,” Urien said tenderly, taking her hand.

Jael hurriedly gulped down the last sip of her tea, wincing as the hot liquid burned her tongue a little.

“What is it?”

“Finished already?” Urien lifted his eyebrows. “I’ll make another cup to take with you. I’m going to take you to the cellar, and it’s chill there even when the weather is warm.” He disappeared behind the mounds of scrolls again, then reappeared with a steaming mug and lit candle. “Come along, then, and bring the cloak. As I said, it’s chill there, and damp, too.”

Jael draped the cloak around her shoulders and accepted the mug of tea, taking Urien’s arm with her free hand. She already knew the way to the cellar stairs well enough, but let him lead her. She didn’t need to feign hesitation at the top of the dark cellar stairs; a damp, dusky, unpleasant odor drifted up that Jael didn’t remember being there before. The candle seemed to make no difference in that profound blackness.

“You must excuse the smell,” Urien said apologetically. “I chose to leave some of my goods in the cellars here rather than move them to my house. One of my casks of wine developed a leak and thoroughly wetted a bundle of leathers, and I’m afraid they molded badly. If the smell bothers you too much, we won’t go down.”

“It’s all right,” Jael said hurriedly. “I’ve smelled far worse.” Indeed she had, and not long ago, either. Compared to what the castle’s cellar held, the temple’s cellar, however damp and smelly, must be a delightful place.

“Then be careful on the steps.” Urien steadied her all the way down, as if she were made of glass.

Other than the smell, little appeared to have changed about the cellar. There were more boxes, barrels, and the like— Urien’s trade goods, Jael assumed—and the thin wooden wall had been replaced with a much more solid wall, but everything else appeared the same. Jael could see, however, that the boxes had been cleared away from the area around the trapdoor set in the floor.

“What’s down here?” Jael asked dubiously. “Is it something you brought with you from Calidwyn?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Urien glanced at her puzzledly. “Jael, are you feeling well?”

“Hmmm?” Jael gulped down more tea to combat the damp chill of the cellar. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

“You seemed a little pale.” Urien frowned a little. “I thought perhaps the smell was troubling you too much.”

“No, it’s not so bad.” Jael swallowed the rest of the tea. “What did you want to show me?”

“Hmmm. Come and look.” Urien stepped to the trapdoor and pulled up on the ring, lifting the heavy square of wood easily. He gestured at the opening. “See?”

Jael cautiously bent over the opening, squinting down into the darkness. Even with her keen elven vision, she could see nothing but a steep flight of stairs leading downward, but she could hear something moving, something that seemed too large to be rats.

“I don’t see much,” Jael said. “But I hear—”

Sudden sharp pain flared at the back of her head, and then she saw nothing at all.

^VIII

Jael felt that she was floating gently, warmly, comfortably, as she sometimes floated in the bathing pool.

“Open your eyes now,” a familiar voice said. Who? Oh, Urien, of course. Jael opened her eyes. Urien was bending over her, his face drawn with worry.

“Does your head hurt much?” he asked tenderly. “I hope not. You may speak.”

“Uh—no.” Jael tried to sit up, but her body refused to obey her. There was a soft surface under her, and nothing seemed to be restraining her, but try as she might, she could not so much as twitch a finger. The warm, floating sensation continued, seeming to hold her. “I—I can’t move.”

“Yes, I know.” Urien patted her cheek gently. “I’m sorry. This would have been unnecessary if the spell I placed in your tea had worked. You’d have simply slept quietly through the whole thing. But someone must have placed some elaborate protections on you. I was forced to resort to casting a spell directly while you were unconscious.”

The unavoidable stupid questions flashed through Jael’s mind—
how, why
—but she suspected she already knew the answers. She looked around as best she could without being

able to move her head. The damp smell and cool air told her she was still in the cellar, but in a smaller room—one of the storage rooms, perhaps—and the surface she was lying on felt like a bed. That carried unpleasant suggestions.

“So what are you going to do with me?” Jael asked. “How much of me are they going to find in Rivertown?”

“Nothing.” Urien stroked her hair. “Your fate won’t be nearly so painful or messy.”

“What, the thing in your cellar doesn’t like the taste of half-breeds?” Jael asked bitterly.

“That?” Urien chuckled. “It’s only a minor demon, not at all choosy. All it needs is a good quantity of blood every few days, although it’s delighted with flesh when it can get it. Unfortunately it’s not a neat eater.”

“It’s a greedy eater, if you’ve had to feed it half a dozen elves in two weeks,” Jael told him.

Urien smiled gently.

“You’re looking for an explanation,” he said. “I don’t mind. There’s time while we finish the preparations.” He began unbuttoning Jael’s tunic. “I’m sorry, this must be embarrassing to you. Would you prefer to do it yourself?”

“Of course I’d rather be able to do it myself,” Jael said angrily. “But I can’t move.”

Urien unbuckled Jael’s belt and slid it off her, then briefly searched her. He drew her dagger and her sword, frowning over them.

“What curious things you carry,” he said. “What sort of blades are these?” He held up the dagger and the sword.

“Gifts from Aunt Shadow, just things she got from distant places,” Jael said.

“Good enough.” Urien laid them aside. “Sit up, Jael. You may move, in obedience to my directions.”

Jael found herself sitting. She shivered, secretly relieved that she was even able to shiver.

“Your bath has been prepared,” Urien said, gesturing at a large copper bathing tub steaming nearby. “Remove your clothes and bathe.”

Jael found herself obeying, flushing miserably as she dropped her clothing to the floor. She grimaced at the strange, pungent odor of the hot bathwater as she stepped into the tub.

“I hope you like this scent more than I do,” she said, picking up the sponge and the soap. “It certainly doesn’t put
me
in a romantic mood, any more than being whacked on the head and abducted.”

“Unfortunately, you’re not being prepared for me, but for my lord Eiloth,” Urien said regretfully. “But it may comfort you to know that you needn’t fear rape.”

“That’s who you’ve been trying to summon up?” Jael asked. “A demon, I suppose.”

“Not ‘a demon,’ but one of the Higher Darklings,” Urien corrected her. “And we had no need of summoning Lord Eiloth; in fact, it was he that called to us, brought us here from our hiding places, our waiting places. It was my friend Ankaras who summoned him—by accident, I believe. And he’s never known otherwise; my lord Eiloth is a great master of seemings.”

Jael scrubbed her face.

“The Lesser Summoning, I suppose.”

“So I’m told,” Urien agreed. “Of course, I was far away when it happened. Summoning a god is no light matter. A little carelessness can open the door to other summonings, other beings drawn to such potent magic.”

Carelessness. Jael winced, doubting that carelessness had had anything to do with the failure of the summoning.

“Seemings,” Jael said. “I suppose you’re not really a merchant lord, any more than you’re a priest of the Temple of Baaros.”

“Oh, but I am a merchant lord, or I was,” Urien told her. “And from Calidwyn, too, at one time. But you must have realized already that I could never have reached Allanmere from Calidwyn so quickly after the summoning, even if I walked the same slow roads over this world as other men. Lord Eiloth gave me the knowledge I would need, and brought us by another road, a quicker road, to be his eyes and his hands in this city.”

“But why?” Jael found herself standing. Urien handed her a cloth, and she dried herself as slowly as she could. “You said he was already summoned.”

“Lord Eiloth came through an imperfect door not meant for him,” Urien told her. “The full manifestation into flesh of a Higher Darkling is a slow and difficult matter. It takes days of sequential sacrifices—”

“Elves, I suppose,” Jael said, dropping the drying cloth. She blushed again, but could not raise her hands to cover herself.

Urien handed her a pot of scented oil.

“Rub this into your skin, and then I’ll perfume your hair.” He sat back down. “No, the sacrifices could have been elf or human, although it pleased Lord Eiloth that the elves have a little magic in them. He only required certain portions of their flesh, more each time, to build his strength for his passage into this world. It was convenient to choose elves because of the conflict already in the city. There were so many in the city who wished harm to elves—especially elven merchants—that blame would be hard to place on anyone, especially in a place like Rivertown where death and violence were almost commonplace.”

“But how did your people get the bodies there so quickly?” Jael asked as she smoothed the oil into her skin. The oil had a familiar pungent scent; Jael realized wryly that it smelled much like the ointment Urien had given her.

“In the same way that our little pet in the subcellar reached Rivertown, to prowl the alleys and claim our sacrifices,” Urien said. “We made a Gate, a very small and limited Gate, between this temple and the empty house you showed me near Rivertown. I bought it the very day we saw it, and we set the Gate the next night, casting the Gate from there so the magic wouldn’t be detected here. The Gate’s closed now, of course. We don’t need it anymore.”

“Not since your ‘little pet’ killed Solly, the thief who found Garric and Crow,” Jael said.

“Ah, the human found the bodies?” Urien asked, raising his eyebrows. “That I didn’t know. That explains his curiosity, and why he’d trouble to creep into an empty house where there was obviously nothing of value to steal. He even searched the cellar, an unfortunate decision for him, as we were there that night. We didn’t need another sacrifice then, so we gave him to the demon.”

Urien handed Jael a dark blue robe embroidered with glyphs in silver.

“Put this on and sit down.”

When Jael had obeyed, Urien lightly brushed a sweet-scented perfume into her hair.

“If you didn t need another sacrifice, what are you doing with me?” Jael asked, almost shaking with frustration as her body refused to move.

“I said we no longer needed the Gate,” Urien corrected her gently. “You’re the final sacrifice, the sacrifice that will give Eiloth flesh in this world. For that we needed a very special sacrifice—an uninitiated mage of noble birth and powerful family.”

“And a maiden?” Jael guessed.

Urien laughed.

“Dear Jaellyn, Eiloth has no more use for your virginity than you do,” he said kindly. “I’m sorry that you will die without ever knowing the pleasures of man and woman. I would gladly have shown them to you, but deflowered maidens often suffer from guilt or remorse afterward, often resulting in confiding in their mothers or fathers, and that might have had serious consequences for me. I was quite disappointed, I can assure you.”

“Well, why should it matter that I’m of noble birth, then?” Jael asked, wondering how much longer she could keep Urien talking. Gods, what time of night was it? Surely someone at the castle would discover that Jael was still missing. “There must be plenty of other uninitiated mages in the city, ones whose abduction wouldn’t cause such a stir in town.”

“But only one who is the Heir to the ruling family of Al-lanmere,” Urien told her. He replaced the pendant he’d given her around her neck and slipped the bracelet back over her wrist. “Hmmm. No, those earrings won’t do.” He carefully removed Solly’s gold rings, replacing them with exquisite drops that matched the pendant.

“Our ritual will be timed carefully with the Grand Summoning Ankaras will be performing,” Urien continued almost conversationally. “Sunrise isn’t the most propitious time for summoning one of the Greater Darklings, but in this case it works to our advantage. At the moment Lord Eiloth manifests, he will consume you utterly, soul and mind and body together. The magic released by your death at that moment, aided by the residual magic from the summoning above us, will bring Lord Eiloth fully into this world. As I told you, Lord Eiloth is a master of seemings. When he has consumed your memories, your knowledge, he will assume your form, just as he took the seeming of Baaros for his purposes, and Jaellyn, Allanmere’s Heir, will return home.”

“But I’m not confirmed as the Heir,” Jael argued. “In fact, it’s likely that Mother and Father will choose one of the twins instead.”

“There are many ways to be certain you’re chosen,” Urien assured her. “Those who protest the choice might die, or simply disappear. Of course, it might be simpler if the twins disappeared instead. Hopefully none of that will be necessary. I’m sure Lord Eiloth will be able to convince the High Lord and Lady that you—he—would be the best choice.”

Urien walked around Jael, eyeing her critically.

“Beautiful,” he said. He bent to brush her cheek with his lips.

“I wish it didn’t have to be you,” Urien said with a sigh. “I assure you that my feelings for you are quite genuine. But the final sacrifice must be prepared days in advance with the proper ceremonial herbs for purification, and you were the one chosen for preparation.”

Jael grimaced. Of course—the tea and the ointment. Gods, how easily he’d manipulated her! A little flattery and attention, a few gifts, some pretty words, and she’d been his. Or Eiloth’s, more accurately.

“But I can see this is disturbing you, as of course it would.” Urien sighed again. “I’m sorry. I wanted you to sleep peacefully, die unaware. I didn’t want you to suffer fear, although I’m almost certain you’ll feel no pain. If you like, I’ll try another sleeping potion.”

Jael’s mind raced. What if she asked him for some Bluebright instead? Grandma Celene had said that some potions could temporarily overcome soul-sickness, as the potion she had taken in the forest had done. If the Bluebright had made her capable of feeling desire, could it make her somehow able to change stone, as she had at the Forest Altars, or when she’d melted the mug in her room? But that had been instinctive, unconscious. She wouldn’t know what to do, how to begin.

But there was one thing she
knew
she could do.

“No,” she said. “I’m the High Lord and Lady’s daughter. I don’t want to die sleeping.”

Urien smiled.

“Bravely spoken,” he said. “As you choose, then. Come, my priests should have finished the preparations for the ceremony.” He picked up her belongings. “Lord Eiloth will need these. Follow me, and quietly.”

Jael obeyed, shivering at the cold, damp stone against her bare feet. Apparently Lord Eiloth liked his sacrifices’ bodies anointed and clean, but he wasn’t so particular about their feet.

Urien led her back out into the main storage area of the cellar. Dimly, Jael could hear voices from the top of the stairs— talking, not chanting, so the ritual had not yet started. Ankaras’s voice was plain, demanding, and Jael was certain she could hear Tanis’s softer replies. Gods, if only she could shout! She tried to concentrate on the magic muffling her voice, binding her limbs, tried to find the warm, buzzing, tickling sensation she associated with magic. Why hadn’t she talked with Nubric sooner, learned to somehow
use
this thing inside her?

The trapdoor was up, and again, Jael could hear something moving. Obedient to Urien’s commands, now she could not even shiver as she padded silently after him across the open area to the dark opening.

“Don’t be afraid,” Urien said. “What you hear is my priests preparing for the ritual. The demon is guarding the other end of the subcellar. You won’t have to see it.”

Sudden light startled Jael’s eyes as Urien uncovered a lantern resting on a case of bottles of Bluebright. He picked up the lantern and took Jael’s hand, steadying her down the steep, rather narrow stairs that curved gradually around. To Jael’s surprise, as they descended the stairs, light grew ahead of them; apparently the stairs curved enough to block the light from below.

When they reached the bottom, Jael would have stopped in surprise if she could. The subcellar was huge, much larger than the cellar above; as she thought about it, Jael realized that the subcellar must extend even beyond the area of the abandoned temple. Only a small portion was lit with torches in wall sconces and tall oil lamps on stands, but the movement of the air and the echoes of every sound told her that this area must be gigantic. Jael’s heart sank when she saw the oil lamps; she’d hoped that Urien would light his temple with light globes, as Ankaras did. An exploding light globe at the wrong moment might cause his ritual to fail.