The Brush of Black Wings (9 page)

They played this diabolical game for several
minutes until Martise, whose frustration began to eclipse her fear,
stopped and glared at her captor. A foul wind rose from the gods
only knew where, whipping dust into small whirlwinds that danced
across the barren landscape. Neither cold nor hot, it whipped her
loose hair across her face, obscuring her vision until she tucked
it behind her ear. She and the demon king stared at each other as
the wind keened around them.

“
You can run forever, and you will
find no end.” He still spoke in Glimming and as someone who once
tried fleeing as she did and discovered an unavoidable truth.
Martise shuddered. “Where will you go?” he asked, head cocked in
puzzlement, as if she were the most interesting thing he’d come
across in a long time.

“
Away from you,” she
snapped.

He smiled, and the hairs on her arms rose in
warning. If he were representative of his brethren, then the five
Wraith Kings were aptly named. Megiddo might be handsome were he
human. He possessed an elegant face with a high forehead and long,
patrician nose accentuated by the way he wore his hair-scraped back
at the top and sides. The slight upturn to his rigid mouth hinted
at humor, though considering the smile’s wearer, Martise wasn’t
inclined to return it. His features were younger, more refined than
Silhara’s. Not nearly so harsh and so much more dead.

Leached of color, his skin was a ghastly
marmoreal in both shade and texture. No human, no matter how fair,
sported so pallid or smooth a complexion and still breathed. Even
the lead paints the Calderes aristo women wore on high holy days or
during festivals didn’t bleach their faces like this. His strange
eyes crackled with the same lightning that washed down the sword
blade he’d carried in her dream vision. Instead of round, his
pupils were horizontal and slit-shaped like those of a goat. The
wind lifted his hair as it did hers, but the strands didn’t move as
hers did. They were like his robes, living tendrils of smoke that
seemed to move of their own free will. Tenebrous locks drifted over
his shoulders, coiled and uncoiled around his neck or melded with
the robes.

His grip on her hand had been cold as a burial
slab but solid, real. His appearance belied his touch. Spectral,
eerie and strange. Almost incorporeal. Wraith.

“
What is your name?” Even his
voice, precise in its articulation, sounded hollowed
out.

Surely he didn’t think her that stupid.
“Kashaptu.” She stumbled back with a gasp when suddenly he winked
out of sight only to appear so close in front of her that he
threatened to step on her toes.

“
Clever,” he said. His eyebrows
rode lower on his brow than Silhara’s did. One slid upward as he
scrutinized her.

She glared at him, scared and tired of his
antics. “What do you want from me?”

Megiddo shrugged and spun away. Martise swore
for a moment he walked on air instead of ground. “I should think
that’s obvious, don’t you?” He held up a finger to forestall
whatever else she might say. “First, I’d have you meet someone.
She’s been waiting for you almost as long as I have.”

He didn’t let her wonder at that enigmatic
statement, appearing next to her once more with that same unnatural
speed. His hand on her arm froze the blood in her veins. The ground
didn’t shift beneath her feet or her surroundings move, but
suddenly she stood with her captor before the door of a small
cottage set incongruously in the same bleak landscape, only now the
mountain spires rose from a different direction.

She didn’t know what was east or west, north
or south. There was no sun or moon and no stars, only a flat,
lifeless sky the same shade as the equally flat and lifeless
ground.

Martise caught a brief glimpse of the
cottage’s exterior before Megiddo opened the door and hauled her
inside. “Damkiana,” he said, and her eyes widened at the term as
well as the sudden change in his tone. So brief she might not have
caught it were she not so close to him, the softer modulation
disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared. “I’ve brought someone
for you to meet,” he said. “This is the
kashaptu
with no
name.” He kicked the door closed behind him and crossed his arms
with a pleased smile. Martise fervently prayed she’d not just been
delivered as someone’s main course for supper.

Light steps sounded from the depths of a
hallway off one side of the main room. Martise couldn’t have been
more surprised if her erstwhile master, Cumbria of Conclave, had
suddenly appeared before her.

This was no old and haughty bishop but a
woman. Young, probably close in age to Martise, and there the
similarity ended. To the person who mattered most to her, Martise
was beautiful. To others and to herself, she was plain. The woman
who watched her with the same intense scrutiny as Megiddo did was
the antithesis of plain. The antithesis of wraith for that
matter.

Long, curly hair the color of strong-brewed
tea and skin burnished brown by heritage instead of the sun, she
had a soft, round face and dark eyes framed by thick lashes.
Megiddo had addressed her as “Damkiana,” an old Makkadian word that
meant “mistress of earth and heaven.” Whether her true name or a
term of endearment, it fit.

She glanced at Megiddo, her features
expressionless, before she walked slowly around Martise and paused
behind her. “You have blood on your skirts.” She spoke in Glimming
as well, and her voice was cool, except for the thread of
disapproval Martise sensed was reserved for the Wraith
King.

“
My dog accidentally bit me.” The
reminder of her wound caused the pain to return, and Martise
shifted her weight and resisted the urge to bend down and massage
her throbbing calf.

Megiddo’s voice, tinged with that enigmatic
humor Martise had spotted in his smile was less hollow. “Not me.
Magehound. Who doesn’t attack those with magic. Will wonders never
cease?”

The woman circled to stand in front of Martise
again. “He bit her. Sounds like an attack to me.”

Martise shook her head. “He was trying to save
me.” She glanced over her shoulder to scowl at Megiddo. “I have no
magic.”

“
And that force throwing me back
through the portal was simply a strong breeze. Clever and a
liar.”

She was stopped from arguing by the sight of
Damkiana pouring water from a pitcher into a bowl. She dropped a
cloth into the water, rang out the excess and handed it to Martise.
“Here. To wash your leg. The wound won’t heal, but it won’t worsen
either. You can at least wash the blood off before it dries and
starts to itch.”

Confused by such a mundane action paired with
such a strange statement, Martise offered a startled “Thank you.”
She held the cloth but waited, determined to get an explanation for
her abduction. She turned fully to Megiddo. “Why have you taken me?
I am no witch, no mage. I have no magic.”

Every one of those statements could be defined
as either the truth or a lie, depending on who knew her and who
interpreted them. Martise had no intention of verifying her Gift
even to the most harmless human, much less a king of demons. The
fact that her Gift had chosen not to fight him off a second time
frightened her.

She still felt it inside her, a presence, a
weight, but it had retreated for some reason—burrowed itself deep,
no longer her aggressive protector.

Megiddo leaned against the door. At some
point, between their time outside and when her back was to him, his
grotesque robes had disappeared, revealing a simple tunic and
trousers in various shades of olive green and brown. He was
tall—long-limbed and broad-shouldered. Not as tall or as rangy as
Silhara, but with an otherworldly grace her husband lacked.
Probably because he wasn’t human and Silhara was.

“
Why have you taken me?” she
repeated.

“
Because when you touched the
steps of that temple, this world stopped and waited for you. I want
it to stop again, in another place, another time. Whatever you
possess inside you is powerful if it can do such a
thing.”

“
I have nothing that can help
you!” She was starting to sound like one of the colorful parrots a
Conclave primicerius once kept in his study and drove the other
primicer to distraction with their squawks and echolaic screeching,
but she’d repeat her assertion relentlessly and lie just as Megiddo
accused her of doing. Far better that than to have the demon king
rape her spirit to plunder her Gift and use it for his own
purposes.

Megiddo’s low chuckle revealed his disbelief
at her statement. “I leave you to Damkiana’s mercies for now.” With
that, he disappeared.

Martise raised a hand to the unobstructed
door. “Wait!” She lowered her arm and growled under her breath.
What she wouldn’t give for a bucket of enchanted nails at the
moment. She’d happily hammer his feet to the floor. He was as
annoying as he was frightening with all that winking in and out of
existence.

“
He’ll return. He always does.”
Damkiana motioned for Martise to use the wet cloth she held. “That
won’t do your leg much good just sitting there in your
hand.”

Martise rested her foot on the edge of one of
two benches set on either side of a small table. She hiked her
skirt to survey the damage. Four matching puncture wounds decorated
either side of her calf. They oozed dark blood that dribbled into
her stained slipper. She pulled off the shoe, damp with blood, and
set it aside. Her skirts had protected her from the worst of the
bite, but the muscle under the puncture wounds throbbed as hard as
if someone had clubbed her in the leg.

She had no doubts that Cael had tried to save
her by clamping down on her skirts in an attempt to drag her away
from the temple. He’d overreached and sank his teeth into her calf.
Martise considered herself lucky he hadn’t torn her leg off. She
washed away the blood, hissing at the sting.

The cottage was nicely appointed—a simple
abode, well-kept and furnished with those things to made a
comfortable home. “Do you have anything to make a poultice?” she
asked her companion.

Damkiana shook her head. “No, and it wouldn’t
work anyway. The pain will still trouble you, but the wound won’t
poison. In this place, nothing sickens or dies.” She uttered those
words, not with glee, but with faint despair and a resigned
expression.

Martise’s heart thumped hard against her ribs.
“Where are we?”

The other woman shrugged. “It has no name. A
world between worlds; a time between times. Nothing changes here
except the sky, and even that has gone still for now.” Her accent
thickened as she spoke, as if describing this gray prison had
swelled her tongue.

Martise changed the subject for a moment. “You
both speak Glimming.”

“
We do? I’ve always called it
Common. So does Megiddo. You speak it as well, though your accent
is different from ours.”

Martise returned the blood-stained cloth and
straightened her skirts. “My thanks for your help.” She slipped on
her shoe and sat down on the bench at Damkiana’s gesture. “Did he
capture you as well?”

Damkiana took a seat on the opposite bench.
Martise admired the way lamplight warmed her curls, highlighting
the reds and gold woven into her dark hair. “No, not purposefully.
Like your dog, he attempted one thing and did another.” A small
smile rounded her cheeks. “Knowing that didn’t ease my anger. I
think I stayed mad at him for a few centuries.”

The breath stuttered in Martise’s lungs. She
stared at the woman across from her, hoping her words were just
exaggerations to make a point. “How long have you been here?” That
hope died with the answer.

“
Who can say? Years? Centuries?
Longer? I don’t know.” Damkiana peered at Martise. “Megiddo has
been here for so long, I think he’s forgotten the life he once had.
It’s easy to do when you’re trapped in this cage.”

After reading the tomes from the lich’s
library that described the
Saruui Buidu,
Martise had a
fairly good idea how long Megiddo had lingered in this world. She
just didn’t know how or why he ended up here. The thought of being
trapped with him as Damkiana was made her throat close with terror.
“I can’t stay here,” she said, shoving down her rising panic.
Silhara,
she thought. If Cael had warned him as she hoped,
then she had a chance at escape. He’d be furious, enraged, hunting
for her. The thought lessened her terror.

“
Oh, you
can,”
Damkiana
argued. “It’s Megiddo’s hope that you won’t. Mine too if you must
know.” She held out a slender hand. “I’m Acseh.”

Martise blinked and clasped her fingers. “Not
Damkiana?”

This time Acseh grinned. “No. Megiddo gave me
that name. Even when I told him mine and corrected him a thousand
times, he still insists on calling me Damkiana. I gave up after a
while. It’s a nice enough sounding name, even if it might mean
‘idiot’ or ‘slapskull.’ I’ve asked him what it means; he just
smiles. I’m probably better off not knowing.”

Martise almost told her but changed her mind.
Whatever reasons the
saruum
had for not telling Acseh its
meaning, she didn’t want to risk angering him by revealing it. Not
a name, but a term of endearment and a telling one at
that.