The Name Of The Sword (Book 4) (2 page)

Nooooooooooo!

It wasn’t a voice, or a word, merely a thought like the whisper of a faint breeze, but he knew it to be a command from his master. In the last few moments their connection had grown stronger, and now he stopped, the point of the knife only a finger’s breadth above the child’s breast.

Nooooooooooo!

And with that second thought he understood. His master didn’t want merely the child’s life; He wanted the child alive and whole, a slave for His purposes. Giving Him the child healthy and unharmed would be a far greater sacrifice, and his reward would be to rule the entire Mortal Plane beside his master for all eternity.

Valso lowered the knife, bowed his head, and whispered, “As you wish.”

For some time he stood there, not really conscious of his mortal being, bathed in the glorious malevolence of his master. There were no windows in the small shrine, nothing that might allow the world of mundane men to intrude upon this most hallowed of rites, but when dawn came he sensed it and opened his eyes. There was no sign of the child, no blood on the altar, no blood in the runnels, nothing in the two bowls, no blood on his fingertips, or on his tongue where he had tasted it. His master had taken the child alive and whole.

Exhausted beyond belief, he opened the door to the shrine and found Salula standing there, waiting like a ghost at the threshold of its haunt. He stumbled and fell into Salula’s arms; the halfman lowered him gently to the ground and propped him up with his back against the wall of the shrine.

Salula said, “A bit of food might help you regain your strength.”

No questions from Salula, no concerns, no fears. Valso liked that about him, just cold, hard obedience.

Valso chewed on a bit of journeycake and a piece of jerky, and sucked hungrily at the water skin Salula handed him. When he could again stand—though he longed to lay down and sleep for an eternity—Salula helped him into the saddle. He let Salula take the reins of his horse and he slipped in and out of a hazy doze all the way back to Durin. Illalla met them in the stables, and as Valso dismounted, still barely able to stand, his father asked, “Is it done?”

“Aye, father, it’s done.”

“And properly?”

“Yes, properly.”

Illalla assumed he had sacrificed the child, completed the ritual as it had been written down in the ancient manuscript. But the Dark God had wanted something quite different, and Valso had given it to him. He looked upon his father, a powerful sorcerer by any other measure, but weak and insignificant compared to the power Valso now commanded. He no longer needed this man who had given him life, and there and then he decided not to enlighten Illalla concerning the change in the ritual his master had demanded. That would remain a little secret he’d keep to himself.

Now, time to clean up after the night’s events. The midwife would have to die, and the peasants, and that one handmaiden.

••••

Yes
, Valso thought, standing at the window, watching his mother tend his brother’s graves. It had been a good night’s work, all those many years ago.

2
To Find the Blade

As the only person present not of Elhiyne lineage, Cort felt badly out of place. With the exception of Marjinell and DaNoel, the entire family had gathered in Olivia’s audience chamber. With Olivia seated on a couch, Tulellcoe, Roland, AnnaRail, JohnEngine, Brandon and Jinella—Brandon’s pretty, young wife—all standing before the old woman, almost no room remained for anyone else in the small space. Cort had retreated to the back of the room to remain unnoticed, and she saw that NickoLot had done the same.

Such a strange child,
Cort thought, looking at NickoLot. In her late teens and well into womanhood, she was still tiny for her age, a stick-thin waif of a girl. Pretty, with dark hair like that of her grandmother, she had matured into quite a beauty regardless of her slight stature. But her eyes seemed haunted, as if she had experienced too many of life’s tragedies, and too few of its joys. And she hid her beauty in black, funereal dresses, with high stiff collars, long sleeves, and always a veil that half hid her face from those about her.

“He was alive,” Tulellcoe said, his sorrow a visible smear on his aura. “Alive, and we all believed him dead. And then he truly did die.”

Morgin’s death, only that morning, had thrown the entire family into chaos. Several of them had felt him depart the Mortal Plane, and they were all still reeling from his passing.

Olivia appeared rather bored with the whole subject. “Of course he was alive. You were a fool to think otherwise.”

“You knew he was alive?” Tulellcoe demanded, anger coloring his aura more than the sorrow. “And you didn’t tell us?”

“You wouldn’t have believed me if I had. And in any case it was just a suspicion. I had no proof.”

JohnEngine said, “But if you’d told us we might have been able to help him.”

Olivia shook her head sadly. “And how would you have helped him, when not one of us had the slightest inkling of his whereabouts?”

JohnEngine opened his mouth to argue, but Olivia cut him off with a slash of her hand, saying to Tulellcoe, “And what makes you think he is now truly dead?”

Tulellcoe’s anger visibly turned to cold rage. “I felt his soul depart the Mortal Plane.”

AnnaRail, her eyes puffy from crying, said, “As did I.”

Olivia’s brows furrowed in thought. She ignored AnnaRail and said to Tulellcoe, “Interesting! I understand his mother sensing his demise, even though there was no blood connection between them. The mother-child relationship can bridge that gap. But you, nephew, what connection is there between you and Morgin that you too would sense his passing?”

Cort revised her interpretation of the look on Olivia’s face. It was not careful thought, but rather conspiratorial conniving.

Her words did give Tulellcoe pause, and his thoughts seemed to be elsewhere for a moment. Then he said, “He did once confess to me that when he killed the Tulalane in the sanctum, the power in the sanctum came to him readily, came to him in a way that told me he must have some Elhiyne blood in him.”

Tulellcoe’s words stunned everyone in the room but Olivia. She merely smiled. Tulellcoe had once described that smile to Cort, and she saw it now for the first time, an avaricious grin of greedy delight.

The old woman frowned in thought and said, “That could explain it; you both share Elhiyne blood, even if his was bestowed upon him by some clansman’s whoring.”

AnnaRail said, “And you believe he is still alive?”

Olivia shook her head. “I did not say that,”

AnnaRail made no effort to hide her anger as she spoke. “Then what did you mean?”

“I mean only that I have not seen his body with my own eyes, and he has such a penchant for returning from death. So I do not know for a certainty that he is dead. Just as I do not know that Rhianne is dead.”

NickoLot flinched. It had been only an instantaneous loss of composure, but Cort happened to be looking her way and saw it clearly. And since she and NickoLot were standing behind the rest of them, it was unlikely anyone else had seen it. If there was any question in Cort’s mind about what she’d seen, NickoLot confirmed it by quickly glancing about the room like a thief fearing discovery. Cort looked away from NickoLot before the girl glanced her way, and she pondered what she had just seen. That girl knew something the rest of them didn’t, something about Rhianne.

“Do you know something about Rhianne?” AnnaRail demanded of Olivia. Cort had heard she was one of the few who would stand up to the old woman.

The avaricious grin returned to Olivia’s face. “I do not believe the girl is dead, though I have no proof of that either.”

AnnaRail stepped forward and leaned over the old woman. “Then where is she?”

Olivia sighed, making it clear to all of them that this conversation wearied her. “I do not know. But perhaps, with time, we can find her.”

The old woman glanced about the room as if gauging the reaction from each of them, but as her eyes swept past NickoLot, Cort thought she saw them harden for just the tiniest instant, a surreptitious look that no one else saw. Cort realized she wasn’t the only one who had seen the young girl flinch.

AnnaRail and Olivia argued quite heatedly, though the stubborn old woman refused to budge. As AnnaRail’s anger began to border on something more deadly, Roland intervened and broke up the meeting.

Marjinell’s absence didn’t bother Cort in the least. After the death of her husband and oldest son, she had turned into quite the recluse. But she did wonder about DaNoel’s absence.

••••

NickoLot paused at the door to the suite of rooms Morgin had occupied before being driven from the castle. The first time they had thought him dead, AnnaRail had not felt his soul depart the Mortal Plane, so she had locked the suite and refused to allow anyone to change anything, insisting he would return. But this time Nicki and her mother had both felt him pass. She was glad to find the room still locked, a mundane, mechanical contraption she had no difficulty circumventing. She had already searched the small, single room he had slept in before moving to this suite as warmaster, but it had long ago been cleaned and was now occupied by another. Nicki wanted to search these rooms before someone else did, and before the servants stripped and cleaned them in preparation for a new resident.

She started with the outer sitting room first, searching every bit of furniture, every nook and cranny. She didn’t know what she was looking for, was doing this purely on instinct, but when she found a small, copper coin beneath the cushions of a chair, she hoped it had been his, and a plan began to form in her thoughts.

She next searched the small study. Morgin had spent very little time there, but when he had been the hero of Csairne Glen and Warmaster of Elhiyne, Olivia had insisted his suite be appropriate to his station. Nicki found nothing more in the study so she moved on to the bedroom.

She checked beneath the cushions of a chair, pulled the sheets and covers off the bed and shook them out. She ran her hands beneath the mattress, and in the process acquired only a nasty splinter in her thumb. Last of all she stood over a small, wooden chest at the base of his bed. If it yielded naught, she’d have nothing to show for her efforts but the splinter and the single coin.

When she opened the lid she realized she’d uncovered a treasure trove. She found a comb with a few missing teeth, but with several hairs still attached to it. It was an old thing, probably one of the few possessions he’d had as a small child living in the young boy’s barracks. She also found a cheap knife, the broken shard of a mirror, a small bronze pendant, four shiny stones polished by the weather, two dove feathers, and an old pair of cheap boots much too small to have fit Morgin for several years now. All these items appeared to be little treasures from his past, and that made them especially valuable for her purposes.

She returned to her own single room, laid the items out on a writing table and looked them over carefully. She must eliminate any that weren’t truly his, for they would contaminate the spell she intended to craft.

She started with the copper coin, picked it up and held it to her breast. She summoned power, fed some of it into the coin and thought of Morgin, tried to recall every memory she had of him . . . and nothing happened.

She tried to put her disappointment aside as she next picked up the comb and removed one of the hairs. Again, she held the object to her breast, fed it power and thought of a time when Morgin had picked her up as a small child. She had always enjoyed his antics, making faces at her to get a laugh or a shriek. As with all memories from her earliest years it came to her in hazy and indistinct images, and it was difficult to truly recall his face in detail. But the image cleared, and she saw him as if he stood before her this moment, the young face of a boy at about the age of 12. The screwed up grimace and crossed eyes he made for her evoked a laugh even now.

She quickly determined that most of the items she’d taken from the trunk were his, though his connection to some of them was rather weak. Strongest were the four stones and the strands of hair. He had probably acquired the stones only a short time after first coming to Elhiyne. She decided to work with just the hairs and the stones.

She used two strands of hair to bind the stones into a ring, four stones, each with a delicate knot tied about it. She then pulled one of her own hairs and added it to Morgin’s to reinforce the knots. She pulled more power, fed it into the charm she had created, then cleared her thoughts. For this spell to work, she must not contaminate the invocation with her own biases.

She sat for what seemed quite a long time, and slowly a sense of purpose emerged from the charm. She had a brief glimpse of Morgin riding in the Munjarro next to a young Benesh’ere warrior, the two of them crossing the sands together. A moment later they were joined by an older Benesh’ere warrior, then after that a young girl, though she seemed every bit as warlike as the men. Together, the four of them headed toward the glistening, glass-like spires of a city in the far distance. She saw Morgin kissing a beautiful girl that looked much like Rhianne, and yet not. She saw him standing between two armies facing one another across a battlefield; one bore the banners of Elhiyne, and the other that of Penda. She saw him leading strange beasts to war against dogs who stood on their hind legs and walked like men. She saw many images of him, and from them all she sensed
purpose
, not something that belonged in the past, but rather in the future.

Exhausted, she extinguished the spell and lay down to rest.

••••

Spinning . . . spinning . . . spinning

As Rhianne spun, completely helpless under the control of Valso’s spell, she had no sense of the sword. Before, even without the enchantment, the blade had stood out like a beacon in a starless night, and Valso’s spell had enhanced her awareness of it even further. But now . . . nothing . . . not the faintest glimmer. Slowly she spun down just as a toy top spins down, and finally collapsed in a heap in the mud, exhausted.

She’d watched Salula kill Morgin just moments ago. He was truly dead, and of that, she was now certain. She’d been mistaken about the skree killing him, but this time she’d felt him die, had sensed his soul depart the Mortal Plane. Laying in the mud with the halfman standing over her, she could not hold back the sobs that racked her body.

“Blast you, woman!”

Salula’s rough hands gripped the front of her dress and lifted her to her feet, held her there dangling with her toes barely touching the ground. She opened her eyes and looked into his face, looked into the kind and friendly face of the swordsman France, noticed a runnel of blood trickling down his cheek. But she made the mistake of looking into those inhuman eyes; she saw Salula and had to look away. Wearily, she said, “I tell you he’s dead. You killed him, and I felt him die.”

He tossed her to the ground and she landed painfully on her shoulder. She had already learned that if she tried to just lay there he’d kick her until she stood, so she struggled to her feet, though the weight of the mud caking her simple, homespun dress made it even more difficult to stand.

“Then where was the body?” he demanded. “And where is that damn sword?”

She shook her head wearily, dislodging several clots of mud clumped in her hair. “I don’t know. But that cave was heavily enchanted. In any case, I can no longer sense the blade so it too must have left the Mortal Plane, though that blade is not going to simply die.”

He reached out and gripped her arm, turned and shoved her toward the horses. She barely managed to keep her feet as she slammed into the side of one of the animals. Salula gripped her by the waist, lifted her as if she weighed nothing and plopped her into the saddle. He tied her hands to the saddle horn as he grumbled, “Then it’s back to Durin for us.”

He tied the reins of her horse to his own saddle horn, then mounted up and led her away. The trail down the side of Attunhigh was steep and dangerous, so they moved slowly and it took almost an entire day to get back down to the foothills. As night settled upon them he stopped and dismounted. Still sitting in the saddle, Rhianne considered putting her heels to her horse’s flanks and trying to run. But Salula must have guessed her thoughts. Holding the reins of her horse he wagged them at her and smiled. “It won’t work, girl. Not while I hold these. And that’ll only earn you another beating.”

They unrolled sleeping blankets. He lit no fire, clearly afraid of the attention it might draw. Dinner consisted of jerky, journeycake and water. Autumn was not far off, and Rhianne spent the night shivering with only a single blanket to warm her.

In the morning they headed north up the east side of the Lake of Sorrows. Clearly, Salula wanted to stay far away from the Benesh’ere camp on the west shore. They also avoided Norlakton to the north, traveling on game trails through the forest until they reached Gilguard’s Ford.

Before crossing the ford Salula turned to her and said, “The God’s Road will be heavily traveled. But if you think to call out and get help from some traveler, you’ll only get them killed, and gain yourself a beating instead of an evening meal.”