Into the Labyrinth (9 page)

Over and over he repeated the process, inserting the bodkin into Marit’s smooth skin more than a hundred times until the complicated pattern was completely drawn. He shared her ecstasy, which was of the mind rather than the body. After the ecstasy of rune-joining, sexual coupling is generally a letdown.

When he had finished his work and set down the blood-and ink-stained bodkin, he knelt before her and took her in his arms. The two pressed their foreheads together,
sigil touching sigil, the circles of their beings closing in one. Marit cried out in gasping pleasure and went limp and trembling in his grasp.

He was pleased with her and held her in his arms until she grew calm again. Then he put his hand on her chin and looked into her eyes.

“We are one. No matter that we are apart, our thoughts will fly each to the other as we desire.”

He held her with his eyes, his hands. She was transfixed, adoring. Her flesh was soft and pliable beneath his fingers.

It seemed to her as if all her bones had dissolved at his touch, his look.

“You did once love Haplo.” He spoke gently.

Marit hesitated, then lowered her head in shameful, silent acquiescence.

“So did I, Daughter,” Xar said softly. “So did I. That will be a bond between us. And if I deem that Haplo must die, you will be the one to slay him.”

Marit lifted her head. “Yes, Lord.”

Xar regarded her doubtfully. “You speak quickly, Marit. I must know for certain. You lay with him. Yet you will kill him?”

“I lay with him. I bore his child. But if my lord commands, I will kill him.”

Marit’s voice was calm and even. He would sense no hesitation, feel no tension in her body. But then a thought came to her. Perhaps this was some sort of test …

“Lord,” she said, clasping her hands over his, “I have not incurred your displeasure. You do not doubt
my
loyalty—”

“No, Daughter—or, I should say, Wife.” He smiled at her.

She kissed the hands she held in hers.

“No, Wife. You are the logical choice. I have seen inside Haplo’s heart. He loves you. You and you alone, among our people, can penetrate the circle of his being. He would trust you where he would trust no one else. And he will be loath to harm you—the mother of his child.”

“Does he know about the child?” Marit asked, astonished.

“He knows,” said Xar.

“How could he? I left him without telling him. I never told anyone.”

“Someone found out.” Xar asked the next question, frowning. “Where is the child, by the way?”

Again Marit had the sense that she was being tested. But she could make only one answer, and that was the truth. She shrugged. “I have no idea. I gave the baby to a tribe of Squatters.”
²

Xar’s frown eased. “Most wise, Wife.” He disengaged himself from her grasp, rose to his feet. “It is time for you to depart for Arianus. We will communicate through the rune-joining. You will report to me what you find. Most particularly, you will keep your arrival on Arianus secret. You will not let Haplo know he is under observation. If I deem he must die, you must take him by surprise.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“ ‘Husband,’ Marit,” he said, chiding her gently. “You must call me ‘Husband.’ ”

“That is far too great an honor for me, Lor—Hus—Husband,” she stammered, alarmed that the word should come to her lips with such difficulty.

He brushed his hand across her forehead.

“Cover the sigil of rune-joining. If he saw it, he would recognize my mark and know at once that you and I have become one. He would suspect you.”

“Yes, Lor—Husband.”

“Farewell, then, Wife. Report to me from Arianus at your earliest opportunity.”

Xar turned from her, went to his desk. Sitting down without another look, he began to flip through the pages of a book, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Marit was not surprised at this cold and abrupt dismissal by her new husband. She was shrewd enough to know that the rune-joining had been one of convenience, made in order to facilitate her reporting to him from a far distant world. Still, she was pleased. It was a mark of his faith in her. They were bound for life and, through the
exchange of magic, could now communicate with each other through the combined circle of their beings. Such closeness had its advantages, but its disadvantages as well—particularly to the Patryns, who tended to be loners, keep to themselves, refuse to permit even those closest to them to intrude on their inner thoughts and feelings.

Few Patryns ever formally rune-joined. Most settled for simply joining the circle of their beings.
³
Xar had conferred on Marit a great honor. He had set his mark
⁴
on her, and anyone who saw it would know they had joined. His taking her to wife would increase her standing among the Patryns. On his death, she might well assume leadership of her people.

To Marit’s credit, she was not thinking of that. She was touched, honored, dazzled, and overwhelmed, unable to feel anything but her boundless love for her lord. She wished that he would live forever so that she could serve him forever. Her one thought was to please him.

The skin on her forehead burned and stung. She could feel the touch of his hand on her naked breast. The memory of that blessed pain and the memory of his touch would remain with her forever.

She left Abarrach, sailing her ship into Death’s Gate. It never occurred to her to report to Xar the conversation she’d overheard between the two lazar. She had, in her excitement, forgotten all about it.

Back in Necropolis, in his study, Xar settled down at his desk, took up again one of the Sartan texts on necromancy. He was in a good humor. It is a pleasant thing to be worshipped, adored, and he’d seen worship and adoration in Marit’s eyes.

She had been his to command before, but she was doubly his now, bound to him body and mind. She would open herself to him completely, as had so many others before her. Unwritten law prohibits a Patryn from joining with more than one person, so long as the rune-mate is still alive. But Xar
was
the law, as far as he was concerned. He had discovered that rune-joining opened up many hearts’ secrets to him. As for revealing his secrets to others, Xar was far too disciplined mentally to permit such a thing to happen. He revealed as much of himself as he deemed it useful to reveal, no more.

He was pleased with Marit, as he would have been pleased with any new weapon that came into his hand. She would do readily whatever needed to be done—even if it meant slaying the man she had once loved.

And Haplo would die knowing he’d been betrayed.

“Thus,” said Xar, “I will be avenged.”

THE FORTRESS
OF THE BROTHERHOOD
SKURVASH, ARIANUS

“H
E’S ARRIVED,” CAME THE REPORT, “STANDING OUT FRONT.
”

The Ancient looked at Ciang, pleading in his eyes. The formidable elf woman had only to say … No, she had merely to nod … and Hugh the Hand would be dead. An archer sat in a window above the entrance. If the elf woman, sitting stiff and upright in her chair, barely inclined her smooth, skull-like head, the Ancient would leave her presence and carry a wooden knife, with Hugh’s name carved in it, to the archer. The archer would without hesitation send a shaft into Hugh’s breast.

Hugh knew this. He was taking an enormous risk, returning to the Brotherhood. The knife had not been sent around on him
¹
(if it had been, he would not have been alive at the moment), but the word had been whispered among the membership that Ciang was displeased with Hugh the Hand, and he had been shunned. No one would kill him, but no one would help him either. A shunning was one step away from the wooden knife. A member finding
himself shunned had better get to the Brotherhood and argue his case fast. Thus no one was surprised at Hugh’s arrival at the fortress, though a few were disappointed.

To have been able to claim that you killed Hugh the Hand, one of the greatest assassins the Guild had fostered—such a boast would have been worth a fortune.

No one dared do it without sanction, however. Hugh was—or had been—one of Ciang’s favorites. And though her protective arm was gnarled and wrinkled and spotted with age, it was spotted with blood as well. No one would touch Hugh unless Ciang commanded it.

Ciang’s small, yellow teeth sank into her lower lip. Seeing this gesture and knowing it for indecision, the Ancient’s hopes rose. Perhaps one emotion could still touch the woman’s insensate heart. Not love. Curiosity. Ciang was wondering why Hugh had come back, when he knew his life was nothing but a word on her lips. And she couldn’t very well find out from his corpse.

The yellow teeth gnawed flesh. “Let him come in to me.”

Ciang spoke the words grudgingly and with a scowl, but she’d said them and that was all the Ancient needed to hear. Fearful she might change her mind, he hastened out of the room, his crooked old legs moving with more speed than they’d used in the past twenty years.

Grabbing hold of the huge iron ring attached to the door, the Ancient himself swung it open.

“Come in, Hugh, come in,” the Ancient said. “She has agreed to see you.”

The assassin stepped inside, stood unmoving in the dim entryway until his eyes adjusted to the light. The Ancient eyed Hugh quizzically. Other people the Ancient had seen in this position had been limp with relief—some so limp he’d been forced to carry them in. Every member of the Brotherhood knew about the archer. Hugh knew that he’d been a curt nod away from certain death. Still, there was no sign of it on his face, which was harder than the fortress’s granite walls.

Yet perhaps the penetrating eyes of the Ancient did catch a flicker of feeling, though not what the Ancient had expected. When the door offering life instead of death had
opened to Hugh the Hand, he had appeared, for an instant, disappointed.

“Will Ciang see me this moment?” Hugh asked, voice gruff and low. He raised his hand, palm outward, to show the scars that crossed it. Part of the ritual.

The Ancient peered at the scars intently, though he had known this man for more years than the elder could recall. This, too, was part of the ritual.

“She will, sir. Please go on up. May I say, sir,” the Ancient added, his voice trembling, “that I am truly glad to see you well.”

Hugh’s grim and dark expression relaxed. He laid his scarred hand on the old man’s bird-bone-fragile arm in acknowledgment. Then, setting his jaw, the Hand left the old man, began the long climb up the innumerable stairs to Ciang’s private quarters.

The Ancient peered after him. The Hand had always been a strange one. And perhaps the rumors about him were true. That would explain a lot. Shaking his head, knowing that he would likely never find out, the Ancient resumed his post at the door.

Hugh walked slowly up the stairs, looking neither to the left nor to the right. He wouldn’t see anyone anyway, and no one would see him—one of the rules of the fortress. Now that he was here, he was in no hurry. So certain had he been of his death at the hands of the archer that he hadn’t given much thought to what he would do if he didn’t die. As he walked, tugging nervously on one of the braided strands of the beard which straggled from his jutting chin, he pondered what he would say. He rehearsed several variations. At length he gave up.