The Brush of Black Wings (6 page)

She pulled her lethal skirts to the side and
crawled from under the table. He grasped her hand and helped her
stand. Seeing him before her, so strong and sure, made Martise
forget her annoyance and remember her terror. She threw herself
against him. Muscle rippled and tensed as he wrapped her in his
arms.

Life as a farmer had whittled him to sinew and
bone, and there wasn’t a patch of softness on him except for the
occasional look in his eye when she caught him watching her. The
unyielding physique didn’t lessen the comfort she took from his
embrace.

A callused hand traveled the length of her
braid before ascending to cup the back of her head. “What is it,
Martise?” he asked. “A dream? I found you asleep, the candle melted
down and a quill still in your hand.”

She shivered, recalling the grim images and
the words that inspired them. “A nightmare,” she said, hating the
tremor in her voice. “I thought you were one of them.”

“
One of whom?” He gathered her
closer, the fall of his hair brushing the side of her face. His
clothes were damp and chilly, as if he’d recently come in from the
cold without his cloak.

“
A
saruum,”
she
said.

His hoarse chuckle sounded near her ear. “I
forgive you the extreme insult of the comparison. Knowing the
quality of most kings, you’ve every right to scream at the notion
of being married to one.”

When his solid presence had calmed her even
more and blurred the clarity of her nightmare, she’d show him her
notes. Not all
saruui
or kings were equal, and those she
dreamed of were like no
saruum
ever born to command armies
or sit upon a throne.

He coaxed her down to supper, brow furrowed
when she picked at her food. Gurn’s expression mirrored Silhara’s.
He signed, offering to make her something else. Martise declined.
“You’re very kind, Gurn. The food is good; I’m just not
hungry.”

Later, in their chamber, she sat cross-legged
behind Silhara on their bed and combed out his hair. It had become
a ritual between them, adopted not long after Martise’s role in his
household changed, and the apprentice became the lover.

The stroke of the comb always soothed him, and
tonight it soothed her as well. His hair spilled down his back to
pool in her lap, long locks she twined loosely around her forearms
or spun through her fingers.

“
Do you want to see my notes now
or in the morning?” she asked, breaking the comfortable
silence.

He turned his head enough to give her a clear
view of his profile—sculpted cheekbone and prominent Kurman nose.
“Will you sleep better tonight if you show me in the
morning?”

A simple question and the greatest of
kindnesses. She dropped the comb and slid her arms around his waist
to hug him close. “Yes.”

Rough fingertips glided over her knuckles
before his palms rested atop her hands. “Then morning is soon
enough. Unless you found something that might stop me from
obliterating that temple.”

Martise squeezed, loosening her grip a little
at Silhara’s corresponding grunt. “No, nothing. Leave no stone
standing. Empty the seas of salt if you must to cover that bit of
ground.”

He unwound her arms and changed position to
face her fully. Light from the brazier deepened his skin’s swarthy
hue and rimmed the black of his eyes in a thin haze of crimson.
“It’s a demon then.”

Martise gave a humorless chuckle. “Oh yes, and
if your scrolls are correct, its anchor to this world is buried
under the temple.”

Silhara cursed. “I was afraid of that, though
it makes sense. Not so random an appearance then or your bad luck
at being in the wrong place at the wrong time. What’s the
anchor?”

“
I think it’s a sword.”

His disgusted snort made her smile. “Of course
it is. Never anything prosaic like a lamp or a butter
churn—something we could put to everyday use once I broke its
enchantment.”

She gazed at him, endlessly beguiled by his
many facets. The Master of Crows, wielder of great magic and
destroyer of gods, would have been far happier to discover a butter
churn under his heap of a temple instead of a rare, enchanted
sword.

Silhara gave her a puzzled look laced with a
touch of suspicion. “What?”

“
You,” she said softly. He
remained silent, waiting for her to finish. “I’m very glad that
executioner didn’t strangle you on the docks that day.”

Both his eyebrows shot upward. “So he wouldn’t
rob you of the chance to do it yourself?” he teased.

She yanked on a strand of his hair, making him
yelp. “Don’t think I haven’t been tempted a time or two,
sorcerer.”

Her surprised squeak mixed with laughter when
he lunged toward her and carried them back into the pile of pillows
and blankets. Her hair muffled his playful growls as he nibbled her
ear and walked the delicate line of her ribs with his fingers in a
ticklish dance.

“
Not just any old sorcerer; an
almighty god-smiter,” he said. His fingers skittered faster along
her sides, making her squirm and laugh even harder. “Say it,
Martise. Almighty god-smiter.”

“
I will not,” she said between
gasps. “And if you don’t stop, I’ll wet the bed.”

Her threat worked faster than any spell
Silhara might conjure. He froze and stared down at her smiling
face. “You wouldn’t.”

“
I wouldn’t want to.”

He blew out a defeated sigh and settled his
weight more heavily on her. His lips were soft against her as he
muttered “You thwart me too often, apprentice.”

Stretched under him, Martise wrapped her arms
around Silhara’s shoulders, tracing routes over the valleys and
peaks of hard muscle until her fingers interlocked at the back of
his neck. His eyes, usually as black and hard as obsidian were
softer now, with the sheen of a crow’s wing in sunlight. “You love
me anyway,” she teased.

“
That’s true,” he said
softly.

“
Your weakness,” she replied in
equally quiet tones.

“
No. My strength.”

They made love, this time without the power of
their combined Gifts flowing hot between them, yet Martise would
argue with anyone that its absence made no difference. There was
sorcery aplenty in loving the one you held most dear.

She didn’t know which of them fell asleep
first, but for Martise, slumber came with a price. As with the time
she dozed in the library earlier, strange dreams plagued her. This
time it was of the temple but not as she knew it. Instead of a
ruin, it stood whole and pristine amidst trees much smaller than
the ones surrounding it now. The green light she’d seen trapped
within its confines was gone, replaced by a colder moonlight that
enveloped the entire structure.

A man stood in the temple’s center, head
bowed, partially obscured by the cage of columns that held up the
roof. Martise recognized him—the entity who’d tried to drag her
across the ground and into the ruin’s interior. The miasmic cloak
of shadow with its warped faces no longer rested on his shoulders.
In its place, a gray cloak fell down his back, shielding armor
engraved in strange runes whose outlines glowed hot cobalt. He held
a sword, similar to the slender curved blades she’d seen Kurmans
wear at the hip—designed to fight from horseback with rapid draw
and slashing strokes. Unlike the temple luminescence, the light
flitting across the blade crackled and shot jagged bolts down the
temper line toward the tip.

“
Megiddo Anastas,” she said in her
dream, uttering the name she found scrawled across parchment
retrieved from a lich’s lair.

A small voice, the faintest echo of hers,
cried out in the dream. “Wake up! Wake up!”

The dream held fast, and the man she addressed
as Megiddo lifted his head and met her gaze with a haughty one of
his own. Her breathing quickened in both dread and fascination. He
was as she remember, yet different. The same princely features but
the eyes not quite so mad or inhuman and as deep a blue as the
coldest sea.

His slow smile sent that warning voice inside
her into paroxyms. “This isn’t a dream! WAKE UP!” Martise ignored
it, entranced as she had never been before by any
sorcery.

Megiddo’s smile widened, as if he heard the
same voice and noted her disregard of its desperate command. “You
know my name, kashaptu,” he said in a dialect of old Glimming.
“Come forth and know me better.” He held out a hand, beckoning
her.

She rose from the bed, silent and unresisting,
even as that inner voice screamed in her head. The floor lay icy
under her bare feet, invisible drafts swirling up her legs so that
she shivered. Her thin leine offered no protection against the
cold. Still, she obeyed the command implicit in the
sarrum’s
gesture, bound to him by the invisible shackles of dark
sorcery.

Silhara slept behind her, unnaturally still
and unaware of the bewitchment taking place in his bedchamber.
Martise tried to call to him, but the words remained locked in her
throat, silenced by the same spellwork that propelled her to dress
quietly and creep out of the room on slippered feet.

Two visions played before her eyes – Neith’s
hallways blanketed in a darkness so thick, she could scoop it with
a spoon, and the temple in the forest, unbroken and occupied by an
armored demon whose lips moved in a soundless chant and whose gaze
trapped her in unwilling obedience.

She was a puppet tugged and pulled, her
physical body subject to the player’s hand. Her spirit recoiled and
fought against the compulsion that sent her downstairs, through the
great hall and vestibule and into the loggia frosted in new fallen
snow and iced by moonlight.

A soft growl sounded nearby. Cael followed
her, staying just out of reach. His muzzle wrinkled into a snarl,
revealing teeth sharp and strong enough to shred flesh and snap
bone. His red eyes watched her, unblinking.

Stay away, Cael,
she wanted to say, but
like her attempt to call out Silhara’s name, the words stuck in her
throat. The magefinder didn’t attack her, but his fur bristled
stiff off his back and neck. He tracked her as she raced for the
wood and the irresistible command of a demon king.

Her vision of him, standing calm and watchful
within the unbroken temple wavered and finally disappeared,
replaced by the reality of broken stone and a man no longer clad in
armor but in a cloak of tortured souls. He offered a pale, graceful
hand, and even though her mind didn’t translate all his words, her
spirit clearly understood him. “Join me, witch of the wild grove.
Set me free.”

Silhara’s wards, a duller red than Cael’s
eyes, pulsed a warning. To cross their barrier was to die, and
still Martise stepped closer to the boundary. The warning voice
clanging inside her head incessantly shrieked and begged her to
stop. Her terror, the catalyst that always brought forth her Gift,
didn’t work this time, and the magic that had saved her more than
once from both death and abduction refused to manifest.

She felt its presence, a solid weight of power
that, for whatever reason, coiled in a tight knot inside her and
did nothing, even as her hand touched the mage-wards, split their
fatal threads, and grasped the demon king’s icy fingers.

A fiery pain, followed by a wrench on her
skirts broke their clasp and almost broke the geas set upon her.
Martise spun, dragging Cael’s heavy weight as he clenched her
skirts between his teeth and tugged with all his might. A hot
wetness trickled down her burning calf to pool inside her slipper.
The magefinder had bitten her in his zeal to yank her away from the
temple.

The geas’s power, greater than the dog’s
strength, pulled her back to the boundary. She had no choice but to
obey, even if it meant dragging Cael across the mage-wards with
her. Somehow the geas protected her from their deadly defenses, but
she feared such protection didn’t extend to Cael.

Cael!
His name was merely a shouted
thought, but the hound released her instantly. His crimson gaze
flickered from her to the entity and back again as if waiting for
her next order. Martise prayed the dog might somehow have heard and
understood her silent cry and listened for more.

The power of the geas wrenched on her spine,
sending a hot spear of pain down her back as if someone pressed the
length of a fireplace poker pulled straight from the coals against
her skin. She resisted the agony and bent to stare deep into Cael’s
eyes. Fearsome and intelligent, he sat on his haunches, quivering
from head to tail. Martise placed all her hopes on the slim chance
that whatever made his kind sensitive to magic also made them
sensitive to thought.
Megiddo! Run!

The dog bolted, long legs stretched as he flew
across the snow and into the wood, his bays a cacophony as he raced
for the manor.

Martise tried to flee after him, but her feet
refused to obey her will’s edict, and she turned back to the demon
king waiting silently in the temple ruin. He reached for her once
more, and the powerful wards fell away like straw in a breeze as
she clasped his hand.

“
Let me go,” she pleaded in a
mournful voice.