Morningstar (17 page)

“All that they have.”

“We could do that without you,” said Corlan. “Where does the Morningstar fit in this?”

“Be patient, Corlan, and listen. You will take their gold. Half you will hide; the other half will be returned to the people. You will be known as the men of the Morningstar, and you will let it be known in the settlements that you are fighting for the freedom of the land. You will be heroes. When you need food, you will pay for it. You will steal nothing from the settlements; there will be no looting or rape. You will walk the forest with heads held high, and you will bask in the acclaim of the people.”

“I still don’t understand,” snapped Corlan.

“What is there to understand?” I answered him. “You will have gold and honor. And when the time is right you will know the full plan. And you will be rich, as all of you will be rich, with more gold than a man could spend in twenty lifetimes.”

“So you say. But you have told us nothing,” put in another man.

“You know all you need to know. How can you lose? If I am wrong or my plan is flawed, you will still have the profit from your raids.”

“Why the men of the Morningstar?” asked Corlan.

“You have heard the legends growing. You know what the people think of Jarek Mace. He is seen as the banner of rebellion; he is the heart of resistance to the Angostin evil. In his name you will be welcome everywhere. They will hide you and feed you; they will die to protect you; they will beg to join you.”

“Do you trust him, Mace?” Corlan swung to stare into Mace’s eyes.

“He has been proved right so far.”

“I don’t know. You are a canny man, Mace. I don’t like you, but you fight like a demon and you’ve the mind of a wolf. You believe we’ll be rich as kings?”

“Why else would I be here?”

Corlan nodded. “I would guess that’s true. What of you, Wulf?”

The hunchback shrugged. “I follow the Morningstar,” he said with a twisted grin.

“Then we’ll do it,” said Corlan, making to rise.

“Wait,” I said softly. “First the soul oath.”

“I need no oaths,” hissed Corlan.

“But I do,” I whispered. Raising my right hand with palm upward, I stared down at the skin, holding myself still, forcing my concentration to deepen. Blue and yellow flames leapt from the palm, bright and hurtful to the eyes.

Corlan fell back, dropping his bow. “You are a sorcerer!” he shouted.

“Indeed I am,” I said, my voice deep as rolling thunder. It was a fine performance, and I risked a glance at the other men, seeing the fear in their faces. “This is the flame that cannot die. This is the light that feeds on souls. Each man will reach into this flame, taking it into himself. It will sear the flesh of oath breakers, spreading like a cancer through the body. Any man here who betrays another of the company will die horribly, his soul burning in the pit of a thousand flames. His spirit will fly screaming to the realm of the Vampyre kings. There will be no escape. Once you have touched this flame, the soul oath will have been made. There will be no turning back from it.”

“I’ll not touch it!” roared Corlan.

“Then you will not be rich,” I said, smiling.

“Have you done this, Mace?” he asked.

“Of course,” answered the warrior. “Would you like to see me do it again?”

“Yes! Yes!”

Mace leaned forward, and his eyes held mine. With my head turned away from Corlan I winked. Mace grinned and thrust his hand into the flame. A small tongue of fire leapt to his palm. It did not burn him, but then, it could not, for it was but an illusion. The flame danced upon his arm, moving to his chest and vanishing into his clothing above the heart. “I am no oath breaker,” said Mace softly.

“Nor am I!” insisted Corlan, kneeling before me and extending his hand. I could not resist adding a fraction of the warming spell to the fire, just strong enough to cause a little discomfort. Corlan tensed as the fire touched him, but he did not move as the flame glided along his arm. Silently, almost reverentially, each of the men accepted the flame until at last a young dark-haired warrior pushed out his arm. I saw that he was sweating heavily. The fire touched him, and he screamed, hurling himself back from me and slapping his hand against the grass. The fire slid over him. I increased the size of the flame and the power of the warming spell.

“Take it away!” he begged.

“Speak the truth and save yourself,” I said, though I knew not why.

“They made me do it! They have my wife!”

The flames disappeared, and the man rolled to his knees, facing Corlan. “I didn’t want to betray you, Corlan. But they told me they’d kill Norin. And it’s not you they want but the Morningstar!”

“I understand,” whispered Corlan. “I wondered why you spent so long in Ziraccu. How do you communicate with them?”

“I mark the trees. And they gave me this!” He opened his shirt, and I saw a black stone suspended from a length of twine. At the center of the stone was a small white crystal.

“The man who gave you this,” I said. “Was he tall and slender, dressed in flowing purple robes?”

“Yes, yes, that was him.”

“Give it to me!”

The man pulled it clear, tossing it across the clearing. Catching it by the string, I dashed it against a rock. The crystal shattered, the stone splitting in half.

“What was it?” asked Jarek Mace.

“A simple find stone. The sorcerer places a spell upon the crystal, and no matter where it is carried, he can always locate it.”

“I am sorry,” said the man, “but they have my …” Corlan moved behind him, and his words were cut off by a sharp knife slicing across his throat. Blood gushed from the wound, and the dying man’s eyes opened wide. Then he pitched forward to his face and lay twitching upon the grass. Corlan wiped his knife on the dead man’s tunic and rose.

“We will do as you say, sorcerer. We will close the roads. We will be the men of the Morningstar. But if you play us false, it will take more than a spell to save you.”

I ignored the threat. Fear had risen too fast in me to risk any speech.

“When do we meet, and where?” Corlan asked.

“When the time is right,” said Jarek Mace. “And we will find you.”

Corlan nodded and strode back into the forest, his men following. Wulf and Piercollo dragged the corpse back into the undergrowth and returned to the dying fire.

“That was impressive, Owen,” said Mace, squatting down beside me. I said nothing, for I could not pull my gaze from the blood upon the ground. “I don’t know how you knew he was a traitor,” he continued, patting my shoulder, “but you did well.”

I did not know what to say. Yes, I had suspected the man. Something in the eyes, perhaps, the sheen of sweat upon his brow, the trembling of his hand as he accepted the illusion of fire. But the truth was hard. His guilt had betrayed him, and the mere fact that he had felt guilt showed that he was at heart a good man. And I had seen him slain, probably dooming his family.

Did I do well?

I still recall his face and, worse, the look of relief that touched him as the knife released his soul.

For several weeks we journeyed through the high country, stopping at lonely hamlets or small villages, passing through more open areas where dry-stone walls dotted the hills like necklaces and crops grew on plowed fields.

Ilka traveled with us, though none, I think, invited her. She helped Piercollo with the cooking and stayed close to me as we walked. For a while her company disconcerted me, for whenever I looked at her, I found her eyes upon me, the gaze frank and open. But without language the meaning was lost, and I found myself hating anew the brutal men who had robbed her of both her childhood and her voice.

Sometimes in the night she would suffer tormented dreams and make sounds that were more animal than human, her mutilated tongue trying to form words. I went to her once in the
night and stroked her hair to calm her. But she awoke and waved me back, her eyes full of fear.

I think she was content in our company. Piercollo liked her, and when he sang, she would sit close to him, hugging her knees and rocking gently to the music.

Slowly we worked our way northwest. We did not have any set destination that I can recall; we merely wandered, enjoying the sunshine, moving from town to village, village to town. Occasionally I entertained villagers, offering them the Dragon’s Egg, the Tower of Rabain, and various other well-known enchant tales. Often I would ask for requests from the audience. The farther north we traveled, the more the villagers asked for tales of the Elder Days, the great wars of the Vampyre kings, the heroism of Rabain, the enchantment of Horga.

These tales were not as popular in the south, where the Angostins wished to hear of their own heroes, but the Highlanders loved them. It took me time to learn to fashion the magick images of Rabain and Horga. I practiced nightly by our camp fire, with Wulf and Mace staring intently at the ghostly forms I created.

“Take away the beard,” suggested Wulf.

“The beard’s fine,” insisted Mace, “but he is too stocky. The man was a swordsman, long in the arm, well balanced. Make him taller.”

Horga, they agreed, was spectacular. I did not tell Mace that I based her on the image Megan had showed me of herself when young, glorious of face and slender of figure.

On the first performance, in a small river town in the shadow of the Rostin Peaks, I received a fine ovation, but the audience wanted to see the great battle that had destroyed the Vampyre kings. It irked me that I could not oblige them. Rarely have I been able to sustain more than a few distinct and moving images. Instead I chose to show Rabain’s fight in the forest with the undead assassins. I stumbled upon the best technique almost by accident; I believe it is still used by magickers today.

At first I had Rabain fighting a single opponent, a vile white-faced creature with long fangs and a black cloak. Mace found the scene risible.

“He doesn’t look undead, he looks half-dead,” he said, chuckling. “And so thin. Your audience will have sympathy only for the assassin.”

I was deeply irritated by this observation. But he was quite correct.

“Have more attackers, six or seven,” he advised.

I tried—I thought unsuccessfully. But the reaction from Wulf and Mace was extraordinary. They were transfixed by the scene. What had happened was that I could not retain detail in all six assassins, and therefore they became blurred and indistinct, their cloaks swirling like black smoke, unearthly and unreal. This in turn made them demonic and terrifying.

Mace schooled me in the sword-fighting techniques my Rabain figure could use against his attackers, spinning on his heel, reversing his sword, diving and rolling to hamstring an opponent. All in all it was a fine fight scene, and I used it to conclude all my performances.

I earned more coin during our few weeks in the north than in all my time in Ziraccu. And I almost forgot Azrek and Cataplas …

But of course they had not forgotten us.

One morning, just after dawn, as we lay sleeping in our beds in a small hut on the edge of the village of Kasel, a young boy ran inside, shaking Mace by the shoulder.

“Soldiers!” he screamed. Mace rolled to his knees and fell, then staggered upright. He had downed enough ale the previous night to drown an ox. Shaking his head, he kicked out at the still-sleeping Wulf; the hunchback swore but soon roused himself. Piercollo, Ilka, and I were already awake, and we gathered our belongings and followed Mace out into the trees.

The thunder of hooves came from behind us, but we darted into the undergrowth and slid down a long bank out of sight. The twenty or so soldiers left their mounts in the village and set off after us on foot. Wulf was contemptuous of them at first, leading us deeper into the trees along rocky slopes that would leave little sign for our pursuers. But as the day wore on, they remained doggedly on our trail. We splashed along streams, climbed over boulders, zigzagged our way through dense undergrowth. But nothing could shake the soldiers.

“Are they using sorcery?” asked Wulf as dusk fell.

“I do not know,” I answered him, “but I do not think so. If there was an enchanter with them, they would have caught us by now. I think they must be accompanied by a skilled tracker.”

“He is certainly good,” grunted Wulf grudgingly. “Let’s be moving!”

On we traveled, coming at last to a steep slope curving down into a dark valley. Wulf traversed it, then made as if to lead us back the way we had come. Mace ran alongside him.

“Where are you going? That’s where they are!”

“I know that!” snapped Wulf. “I’m going back to kill their scout.”

“Let’s just get down into the valley,” said Mace. “There will be plenty of hiding places there.”

“No! I’m not running any farther.”

“What the devil’s the matter with you?” roared Mace. “We can’t take on twenty men.”

“I’m not going down there.”

“Why? It’s just a valley.”

“I’m not going there, and that’s all there is to it,” answered Wulf.

“Listen to me,” said Mace, his voice soothing. “If we stay here, we’re going to die. Now, that’s fine for an ugly little man like you who has nothing to live for. But for someone like me—tall, handsome, and charming—it’s a galling thought. Now, you wouldn’t want to be responsible for the tears of a thousand women, would you?”

Wulf’s answer was short, to the point, and utterly disgusting. But he laughed, and the tension eased.

Slowly we made our way down into the valley. It was cold, the night breeze chilling as it whispered through the trees.

“What is this place?” I asked Wulf.

“You perform it often enough, Owen,” he replied. “This is where Rabain fought the assassins. We just entered the realm of the Vampyre kings.”

The valley floor was lit by moonlight that turned the streams to ribbons of silver, the grass on the hillside to shards of shining iron. I shivered when Wulf spoke, the cold wind blowing around my back and legs. He laughed at my fear, but I could see his own in the gleam of his eyes and the wary way he glanced around at the shadowed trees.

The Vampyre kings! Dread creatures, the fabric of nightmare, but dead now for a thousand years, I told myself, seeking comfort in the thought.