The slave never glanced his way. But from deep within his hood, as he held his breath, Innowen studied this servant. The old man's face was a mask of fear, and those gnarly hands trembled as they wrung around each other.
Innowen waited until the old man passed into the hallway. Alone once more, he rose and melted into the thickest shadow the room offered, where he slowly let out his breath.
He could feel her now. He knew she was close.
He ducked into the next room. Two lamps burned on delicate tables at opposite sides of yet another doorway. Quickly, he looked around for some place of concealment, but the only darkness lay beyond the balcony. This room opened to the outside.
The slave with the strange-smelling basket had not gone outside, though, Innowen was sure. With broad strides, he swept toward the doorway, paused beside one of the tables, then crossed to the other, risking a look into the next room as he did so.
"Set it down here, by the bed, and leave me."
Innowen nearly froze in midstep as he heard her voice. He made it to the other side of the second table with its lamp and, heedless of its amber glow, pressed himself against the wall.
Now, he could feel her heartbeat in the stones, her breathing in his ears. He sank down into a ball on the far side of that table and hid himself under the folds of his cloak, trembling, barely aware when the slave passed by without seeing him.
With one quivering hand, he slid the hood back from his head and listened. Strange stirrings came suddenly from the room beyond. His heart lurched, but he feared to move. She might emerge to take a breath of the night air and discover him beneath the table. Some other slave might appear to answer her call, or to bring her something she had ordered, and give warning.
With an effort, he mastered his fear and forced it away.
Abruptly, the stirrings ceased. The room grew silent. After a while, Innowen crawled from under the table and rose.
He thought of the balcony. There was a good chance it passed outside her room. From there, the darkness of the night might shelter him while he dared to peek inside. To see her, that was what he had come for.
That, and more.
Yet a dreadful cowardice filled him again. In his mind, he saw the shadows of the Sea Father and the Sky Father spilling across his path in the megaron, their arms extended as if to warn him away. He squeezed his eyes shut, and in the darkness behind his lids, he imagined he saw another god, a black idol squatting in the mud, laughing at him, laughing, laughing....
Innowen clenched his fists until the knuckles threatened to crack.
Whoever you are,
he swore silently,
whatever hell you reign in, I will not be laughed at.
He slipped back into the previous room and out into the warm embrace of darkness. The wind kissed his face and throat and slithered down inside his cloak before he drew it close again. He wiped at a free trickle of sweat as it rolled down his left temple to his cheek.
It was hot. Gods, it was so hot. Even at night, the unending drought tortured his poor country. He stared at all the darkened windows of the palace and wondered how anyone could sleep in such heat.
Again, the sound of footsteps drew his attention. These were not the footfalls of a slave, though. These rang with authority on the marble tiles of the room within.
Innowen moved swiftly now, without thinking, following the balcony as it bent suddenly around a corner. Light spilled through an open doorway from the room just ahead. He took a moment while darkness still surrounded him to peer over the balcony's edge into the courtyard below. Then, gathering his courage, he stole up to the doorway.
At first, he thought he'd found the wrong room. It was brightly lit with many candles and lamps, and richly furnished. The largest bed he had ever seen in any of his travels dominated the chamber. It was canopied and draped with expensive sheer fabrics that stirred ever so delicately in the slight draft and shimmered in the firelight.
But there was no sign of the Witch.
He leaned cautiously inside. Seeing no one, he stepped with sudden boldness into the shadow of a huge wardrobe. From there, he had full view of what had once been the King's bedroom.
Still he saw no one. To whom had those footsteps belonged? Just as he decided to move onto the balcony again, a sound warned him back into his shadow. He pressed against the wardrobe and the wall. An instant later, Vashni strode into the room.
The huge warrior looked around in puzzlement. Even so late at night, he still wore his armor. The glow of the candles and lamps danced on the exaggerated musculature of his black lacquered breastplate and on the gold inlaid patterns that decorated his greaves. On the great bulges of his bare arms and along his strong jawline, there was a fine sheen of summer sweat.
After a moment, a frown creased Vashni's lips. He stared toward the bed, then toward the balcony, and began to walk in that direction.
Innowen bit his lip and gripped the hilt of his sword. Vashni might miss him as he went out to the balcony. But if he turned to reenter...
Then, before Vashni moved two steps, her voice sounded from a darkened antechamber beyond the bed. At first, Innowen thought it was a high, sweet song, but it ended too quickly. Not a song at all. Only two strange foreign words spoken with a musical quality.
The Witch of Shanalane emerged out of the darkness of that room.
A powerful trembling seized Innowen. With a sudden horrible insight, he realized that what he once had thought was love for this woman had somehow, at some time, turned into a powerful, overwhelming fear. For five years he had pursued her. Now, she was but the width of a room away, and he could not—dared not—make a move.
Her hair, which in the darkness and lightning of a storm had once looked blond to him, was, in fact, black as the night, black as any shadow. It swept around her face and over her shoulders in a crazy tangle that he still found oddly beautiful. Her lips were just as he remembered, red as roses. And her eyes...! His first impression was that they glittered like stars. Now, he saw them filled with a peculiar glaze.
In her hand was the reason. She carried the reed basket he had seen earlier in the possession of a slave. From it, she lifted white flower petals and stuffed them into her mouth.
Innowen remembered the sweet odor he had experienced when the slave had passed him. He had not recalled it immediately, but he knew it now by its smell and by its effect.
The flower was called
snowfever.
Some claimed it was medicine, and some claimed it was magic. Some claimed it was a gift from the gods, and some a pretty trap set by Bastit, the Lord of Chaos, to snare the unwary. Whatever it was, those who chewed its leaves or ate its petals dreamed such dreams that some chose never to wake again.
Fever dreams,
the users called them, dreams of flight, or of colors with taste, potent visions of the past or the future, of heaven or hell.
Innowen watched as she lifted another handful. A few petals slipped between her fingers and wafted back into the basket. Like a child with candy, she ate them.
Vashni went toward her. "Mother..."
In his amazement, Innowen's trembling ceased. He had never guessed their relationship. Suddenly, he saw it written on their faces.
The Witch glared. "I've told you not to call me that!" She moved past Vashni and set the basket on a table. When she turned toward him again, she held out a single petal and pressed it to his lips. "Eat," she commanded.
Vashni towered over his mother, yet he obeyed meekly, nibbling the petal from her fingers as a horse eating sugar from its master's hand. As he fed, her other hand touched his thigh and worked its way up under his brief kilt. He closed his eyes and moaned as he swallowed the last of the petal.
"You know what I want," she told him. She pulled his face down to hers and kissed him deeply, almost cruelly, while her other hand continued to explore under his kilt. Vashni moaned again and gathered her in his arms. He lifted her from the floor as if she weighed nothing.
The Witch's legs wrapped around her son. Their kiss seemed to last forever as she worked at the straps of his armor. Finally, he put her down and finished disrobing himself while his mother watched impatiently. He reached out then, and with a wrench, ripped away her thin garment.
The firelight gleamed on both of them as they moved together again. Vashni lifted her once more, and again she wrapped her legs about his massive body. This time, a sharp cry issued from her throat, and she flung back her head.
The nails of Innowen's right hand shattered as he dug them into the stone wall at his back. He knew he should run while they were too occupied to see him. Yet he stayed and watched, fascinated, terrified, like a mouse watching the mating of cobras.
"The bed!" the Witch ordered. Her hands gripped Vashni's hair as if it were a stallion's mane, and she jerked his head around to steer him where she wanted him to go. They didn't separate, nor cease their eager movements, but fell upon the sheets in a blind ardor.
Up where the pillows should have been, the covering slipped back a little. From his hiding place, Innowen saw a pair of hands bound together with a rope that stretched to the edge of the mattress and under the bed.
The Witch screamed commands and orders at her son and lover as they worked furiously together.
Vashni's pantings and thrustings grew embarrassingly loud. Innowen felt a rush of shame as he realized how rapid and harsh his own breathing had become. He watched the Witch, though, and Vashni's gleaming, sweating body, and he watched that unmoving pair of hands above them.
Then the Witch had a dagger in her hand. Innowen didn't see where she'd gotten it. Hidden among the bedclothes possibly. She simply had it. Through the haze of his passion, Vashni saw it, too.
"No!" he muttered, thick-voiced. His thrustings ceased.
The Witch dug the nails of her free hand into his bare backside. "Keep working!" she screamed. Using the same hand in which she held the dagger, she whisked away the covering at the top of the bed.
A man lay there, bound hand and foot. His naked, hirsute form stirred not a whit, though, for all the violence and turmoil taking place on the bed. Scattered around him were a few of the white
snowfever
petals.
Innowen didn't know the bearded face. But he knew the man dreamed a dream from which he would never awaken.
"Not another soldier!" Vashni cried with angry desperation. "My men have served you well!"
"He serves me better now!" the Witch answered savagely.
Vashni ground his body down on his mother, as if he could punish her with his motions. "He doesn't deserve this!"
The Witch didn't answer. Instead, she arched her back and twisted so that she could see the sleeping soldier and continue her rutting at the same time. Her legs locked around Vashni's hips, driving him deeper, preventing him from escaping her embrace.
The dagger made a silver flash above the soldier's throat. A spray of blood fountained upward and splashed in Vashni's hair and on his back. More blood pumped outward. It ran down Vashni's neck, over his shoulders, into the Witch's face and over her breasts. Her body arched in ecstasy, her hands spasmed open, and the blade clattered to the floor beside the bed.
"Minowee!" Vashni screamed, but whether in terror or in lust, Innowen couldn't tell. "Mother!"
The Witch smeared blood with her hands wherever she could touch her son. His back shone black with it, and his buttocks, his sides. His hair dripped. It all ran down onto the Witch.
"I need a man's blood, Vashni!" she cried suddenly. "A man's blood and fluid gives me strength, fills me with a man's courage and power!"
They bucked wildly together while the sheets turned scarlet beneath them. "You already have Ispor!" Vashni grunted.
"Akkadi!" she managed between ragged breaths. "It's not enough to have it. I must rule! I need a man's strength—a man's power—for that. A great Akkadian empire will be ours, Vashni, because I take what I need."
Vashni's back arched, and his head rolled toward his straining shoulders. "When will it end?" he shouted through clenched teeth. "When will it end?"
The Witch thrashed under him. "Now, let it end now!" She raked her nails down his spine. "Come to me, my favorite son. Come, and give me just a little of your strength, too!"
Chapter 17
Innowen cowered in the wardrobe's shadow. He shivered, afraid to move, though his legs ached painfully.
Some time ago, Vashni had risen from the bed and recovered his things. Innowen had imagined he could hear the dried blood crack on the huge man's skin as Vashni had bent and lifted the dead soldier's body and slung it over one shoulder. Vashni had paused, looked at his sleeping mother with an expression of strange hurt, then taken another pale petal of
snowfever
from the basket and eaten it.
The Witch of Shanalane slept. The sheets under her spent body gleamed moistly with red blood that sometimes, according to the whims of the flickering lamplight, seemed utterly black. So much blood! Innowen was sure if he could creep to the edge and press his smallest finger to the mattress, a crimson pool would seep up and form around the tip. Her body lay streaked with the stuff, her hair matted with it.