The Nothing Man paced back and forth before the ordinary hearth, not looking at Kel as he gnawed a thumbnail. “Stenmun, tell me how you let them get in,” he whined in Scanran.
“I’m not Stenmun,” Kel replied steadily in Common.
The mage turned to stare at her, his brown eyes wide in shock. The hand he’d gnawed on went to his chest. He held the other up to her, palm-out, as she advanced on him. He was as pasty-skinned as she had dreamed, small and unhealthy-looking, with nails bitten down to the quick of his fingers and strips of angry red flesh around them where he’d picked away bits of skin. His robes were ratty and stained, his brown hair short and uncombed. “I don’t know who you are, or what you are doing here, but King Maggur will be most displeased when he finds you’ve interrupted me at my work. It’s vital to the war. You’ve broken my concentration. You’ll pay, my overeager friend. If you want to keep even a shred of life, you’ll get out and fetch Stenmun to me.”
“I don’t answer to Maggur, Stenmun, or you,” Kel retorted. “I just came to see what a monster looks like.”
Blayce opened his mouth, then closed it. He peered at her for a moment, obviously confused. At last he said, “You’re not Scanran.”
“They said you were clever,” Kel told him bitterly. He was the worst let-down of her life. She had expected someone with Numair’s or Daine’s air of hidden power, or Baird’s suggestion of iron strength, not this rat-like creature. He truly was a Nothing Man. How could the gods have let such a creature wreak so much havoc?
“You’re Tortallan,” Blayce said, now speaking in Common. “You - you’ve…” His eyes darted around the room, as if he were looking for an escape hatch. “Gods be praised, you’ve saved me!”
He lurched towards Kel with open arms. She brought up her glaive, the point aimed at his throat. “Not another step,” she warned.
“I don’t know what your masters told you, but it was lies. Stenmun forced me to do it, for King Maggur. I had no choice. They said they’d kill me. You’ve saved my life.” He fiddled nervously with a jewelled pendant around his neck. “Gods, I thought I’d never be free.”
“Liar,” Kel told him softly. “The lives I’m saving are those of the children you had fetched to you. I thought Stormwings were monsters, but they aren’t. They’re what they were made to be. You chose your path.” She made her voice hard, but her soul was in an uproar. How could she do this? Was she going to cut him down in cold blood? He was no more able to physically defend himself than Meech. “You’re the monster, Blayce the Gallan.”
“Chose?” he whined. “I didn’t choose where my greatness lay. Don’t you think I’d rather make a place in the world by healing, or bringing rain to places stricken by drought? Necromancy is where my talents are. I must work with what I have.”
“Liar,” retorted Kel. “You like what you do.”
He drew himself up. “I’m a great mage, whoever you are, and you’ll treat me with respect.” He attempted to sound haughty but only sounded anxious as he fiddled with his pendant. “Don’t think yourself fit to judge magics you can’t comprehend, or great mages. A sword-thug like you couldn’t hope to understand the subtleties of my mind.”
“You torture and murder children, then enslave their spirits for conquest and murder,” Kel told him, leaning on her glaive for support. It was hard to remember if she had ever been so tired. “That’s all I need to understand.” She wished he would leave the pendant alone. The light that glanced from it felt like needles in her eyes.
“You don’t want to be rash,” Blayce said. The pendant he fiddled with so nervously held a jewel of some kind. “Think. Your king could win this war if I helped him. Not only do I have the secrets of these devices, but I know King Maggur. I know his plans. That could be worth a great deal to you. Honour from the Crown, perhaps more land, more gold, more respect at court.”
Kel swayed, and dimly realized what he was doing. He was using the pendant to try to catch her mind, just as Numair had warned some mages could do back when he’d visited Haven.
With a growled curse she swung the glaive at Blayce as she might swing a club, with no thought but to break his hold on her. He was an illusion: the glaive passed through him. Kel turned round searching for the real Blayce, sweeping her glaive in front of her, hoping to strike him if somehow he’d made himself invisible.
“You really ought to listen to me, Sir Knight.” His whine came from every direction. Kel advanced, swinging her glaive left and right. “Trust me when I tell you I know kings. They use every tool they can find. Your monarchs will welcome any chance to defeat King Maggur and save themselves a long war. My devices will give them that power. You don’t want to throw away the most powerful weapon that your king can put his hand on.”
“He would never take help from the likes of you,” Kel said, trying to pinpoint the location of his voice. “Never.” She advanced, thrusting her glaive into the room’s nooks and crannies.
“For all you know, I’m not even in this room,” Blayce taunted.
Kel halted. This was foolishness. If she weren’t dizzy from blood loss, she would have known better than to hunt a mage unaided. She groped in her belt for the pieces of the griffin-feather band, then held them over her eyes.
“What are those?” Blayce demanded sharply. “There is power in them, but not the Gift. What hedgewitch made that?”
Kel turned. His voice still came from all around. But now she saw him, standing on top of his worktable.
She thrust the pieces of the band into her breastplate.
She knew she had to kill him quickly, before he caught her in the mind-gripping spell of his pendant, or with any other magic.
She brought up her glaive in a controlled slash, one-handed, part of the staff lined up against her arm to steady it. She caught Blayce at the knees, cutting the muscles behind them. He dropped, turning visible to her unaided eyes, his control over his invisibility spell gone. Kel seized her glaive two-handed and yanked the blade towards her, neatly beheading the Gallan.
She swayed. That was it. The man who had haunted her for nearly six long months was dead at last.
“You’re wrong about my king, I think,” she told the body. “But better that he not have the chance to be tempted by the likes of you. And frankly? What you just got was far more merciful than you deserved.”
She stopped, thinking about what she’d just said, and smiled briefly. He had deserved worse, yet she had not given it to him. That was something to be proud of, and it made up for her carelessness in almost getting trapped by the pendant spell. With a sigh of relief, she leaned on her glaive, trembling with exhaustion. What next?
Jump pawed her leg and whined. When Kel looked at him, he took a dog’s pointing stance, his twice-broken tail quivering as he stared at the door.
Using the glaive as a crutch, Kel turned. What she saw was not the door she had come through, but another, familiar entryway, lined in bright blue light. She now looked at the door to the Chamber of the Ordeal from the inside. The face sculpted in its keystone looked at her. Its eyes shone yellow, as they had during Kel’s previous experiences with the thing.
Very tidy, its voice announced in her mind. I said you would do it, and you have.
Kel gripped her glaive until her fingers creaked inside her gloves. “Yes, it’s done,” she replied. “I ‘fixed’ it. I killed a swordless man and saw a lot of good people murdered. Now you have your balance, I have the little ones, and you and I are quits, understand? Find someone else to do what you can’t.”
Yes, we are finished. Do you think this makes you free of your fate? asked the Chamber. You are the Protector of the Small. You see real people in the humans and animals overlooked by your peers. There will always be work for you.
Kel scowled. “I don’t mind that,” she retorted. “It’s what I mean to do, though I’d never call it by as silly a name as ‘Protector of the Small’. At least now I know where I’m going and what I’m doing, which I never did with you. I can find my own road from here.” She strode towards the door, praying it would open in Scanra. Jump and the dogs followed her.
As she put her hand on the latch, she heard the voice say, Gods all bless, Keladry of Mindelan. She stepped outside. She was still in Blayce’s keep. Before she could shut the door the Chamber added, with something that sounded like wicked humour, Protector of the Small.
Grumbling about Chambers that thought too highly of themselves, Kel stumbled down the hall. She blinked at Stenmun’s corpse: her fight with him felt like something that had taken place years before. Looking past him, she saw the grey-and-orange cat against the wall.
It was a foolish thing to do. She knew that as she did it. Somehow she got down to one knee, hanging on to the glaive as if her life depended on it. Carefully, she leaned it against the wall until she could gather up the cat’s body and drape it over her good shoulder. She didn’t want to leave so brave a fighter in the same building as Stenmun and Blayce.
Dizziness flooded her as she fought her way to her feet. The floor seemed to roll and lurch. Wetness on her left side told her she had bled through the makeshift bandage on her shoulder. She had forgotten all about her wound during her fight with Blayce.
“Sometimes battle fever is a good thing,” she mumbled to the anxious dogs. For a moment she rested against the wall. Then, with a grunt of effort she took up her glaive and hobbled slowly across the yawing floor, bound for the staircase. Her head swam as she essayed first one step, than another. The stair rail she clung to began to sway along with her body.
Once she reached the ground floor, she stopped. Just for a moment or two, she told herself. Somehow she propped herself against the wall. Gently she placed the cat’s body on the floor beside her. Then Kel closed her eyes.
When she woke, it was past sunrise. She lay on a pallet in the courtyard of the castle. Her first sight was of Stormwings, lined up on the outer wall, watching greedily as the Tortallans built a funeral pyre for their dead. The Scanran dead had been left where they fell, except for two. Stenmun and Blayce - his head and his body - lay in an open part of the courtyard, their faces bluish white.
Kel struggled to sit up. Her blankets felt like sheets of lead. Dogs who sat in a ring around her moved up and dragged the covers away. Putting a hand down, Kel found a small, warm body at her side. She looked down into the emerald eyes of the grey-and-orange cat. The cat blinked, and began to purr.
“She was only stunned.” Tobe knelt beside her. He sported a set of bandages. “Bad stunned, but Zerhalm has the Gift with healing animals. She’s near as good as new.”
“That’s good indeed, then. Saefas?” asked Kel.
Tobe pointed. Dom was helping the trapper to mount a horse. Kel was glad to see that there were plenty of castle horses in addition to their own. Escape from Scanra would be much easier if everyone, adult and child, was mounted.
Hands - Fanche’s and Gydo’s - helped Kel sit up. Woman and girl both looked the worse for wear, but Kel saw a new, fierce gleam in their eyes. “They call what happened to you seeing the kraken,” she told them, her voice a croak. “It means you’ve survived the ordeal of war.”
“An honour I’d as soon have done without,” retorted Fanche. “You look like the kraken found you too tough to chew and spat you out.”
Kel looked at her left shoulder. The bandage was fairly clean and unstained by blood. She felt pounding there that would probably get worse, but at least she was no longer bleeding.
Kel looked for Neal. Dom’s remaining corporal, Wolset, was helping him lurch over to Kel. Like most of Kel’s people, Wolset carried bandages, his on his arm. The bandages meant that while Neal had done his best, he had been forced to spread his Gift thin to keep as many people alive as he could. Only the gravest wounds had been tended. The rest would have to wait.
She inspected Neal as Wolset brought him over. Her friend had seen better days. His skin was pale and sweaty, his eyes feverish. When he saw her, Neal glared. “You call that mess you had on a bandage?” he demanded sharply. “I was picking threads out of your wound. I stopped the bleeding, at least, and cleaned it. What business did you have getting wounded in the first place?”
“You, you should -” croaked Kel. Her parched throat refused to emit another sound.
“She’s bone dry,” snapped Neal. “Any of you battle baits have a water flask?”
Someone offered her a full waterskin. Kel drank, and drank, and drank. When she felt halfway human again she told Neal, “You should see the other fellow.” She looked over at the bodies of the mage and his protector. “What are Blayce and Stenmun doing out here?”
“The local folk wouldn’t believe they were dead till they saw the bodies,” Fanche explained. “Can’t exactly blame them for that.”
“No, I suppose not,” Kel whispered. She drank some more water, then struggled to her feet. “Let me think a moment.”
Someone put her glaive into her right hand. Kel used it like a staff as she looked around the courtyard, trying to decide what to do next. The Tortallan pyre was nearly ready, which was good. She hobbled over to measure their losses. They were harsh. Gil lay there. Neal hadn’t been able to save the former hill bandit. So too did Sergeant Connac, Morun the lockpick, Lofren and Corporal Fulcher of Dom’s squad, and three of Connac’s men. The pyre also included animals: Owen’s Happy, the dog Shepherd, the hound that Owen had wanted to take back to Wyldon, and two more dogs. Kel would cry for them later, in private. She had other problems now.
In a corner by the gate Kel saw Tobe’s friend Loesia, hidden in the shadows. She walked over, her legs stiff, to find the girl kneeling beside one of the Scanran dead, her face in her hands. A spear was buried in the man’s body.
“Loey, what’s the matter?” she asked, using Tobe’s nickname for her.
“Him,” said the girl, showing Kel a tearstained face. “He was - he was good to me. He took care of me all the way here, he was nice, and I killed him.”
Kel shook her head. “He couldn’t have been that nice,” she reminded the girl. “He was bringing you here to die.”
Loey wiped her eyes, leaving streaks of dirt on her face. “I know I ought to think of that, Lady Kel,” she whispered. “But he was nice when I was scared. How can I feel good about killing him?”