Sing a Graveyard Song, page 11
part #3 of Enclave Book Series
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
Gorged with blood, Harroth felt potent, throbbing with power and life. Now that his need was sated, his wit came back, and wariness came with it.
He crouched beside the body and listened for men. In that straining to hear, to anticipate danger, he sensed something else, some power tanging the night. He couldn’t unravel its strands. It was like yet not like the first woman, the one who had awakened him. He could smell her, not far, not near, housed in the village. Even without seeking, he recognized her acrid hate. The third power that he sensed, awake and puny, he rejected. And somnolent powers, unaware and drifting, those he ignored. This power was far more intriguing. This power rippled like the thousand waves on a lake. Its track emanated strength. Its energy poured over him like a river, a flood that called to his blood. He wanted it to pulse through him, wanted its puissance, wanted its source.
He considered seeking it, considered battering through a wall to get it. With the blood renewing his vigor, he could do it. He remembered that first gush of the old woman’s blood, before she turned it into poison. The power in that blood had flooded through him, changing every sinew and nerve it touched. This power—what strength this power would give him! He would be strong, strong enough to break the shackles that bound him to the cave, strong enough to break the binding spells that forced him to feed in an unnatural pattern. He could hunt every night then. He would not have to wait for a second night then a third; he could feed when he wanted. He could take any prey. Nothing could stop him. Anticipation licked over him, and he bared his teeth in a wolfish grin.
He rose in a fluid surge to seek the power. A dog barked. And Harroth remembered caution. He turned his head, looking for the animal, listening for man. Then he stepped out of the moonlight. He would wait. He would take that flooding life-force another night. Until then he would tantalize himself with that promise. It would make the long wait in the cave bearable.
. ~ . ~ . ~
Alstera felt the predator’s focus on her slacken. She lifted her head and listened over her heartbeat. Nothing. No one. She reached out with simple power and sensed him fading away, going beyond the bounds of the village, racing beyond her range. She uncurled and stumbled off the bench. After a struggle with her boots, she straightened and reached out again. He was gone, beyond her ken. She leaned shuddering against the table, glad she didn’t have to meet that creature tonight.
“What are you about?”
She started at Raul’s question. Caught in the creature’s backwash of energy, she hadn’t sensed or seen his waking. He sat on his pallet, watching her with wary eyes.
“Alstera? Why are you up? What were you doing at the door?”
“I sensed—.” She stopped, for he wouldn’t understand the creature’s streaming power. Not for anything would she expose her fear that it had sensed and hunted her. Abruptly she realized blood-magic had intensified its power. Already it had taken prey.
“Alstera, answer me.” He clambered up and reached her in two strides. He grabbed her arm hard, but her remnant shivers diluted his anger. “Ye gods, woman, you’re shaking like a leaf. What’s wrong? Here, sit.” He propelled her onto the bench then began fumbling with the lamp. In the time it took him to light it, she managed to shake out the fear. “Now, tell me.”
“Someone has been killed.”
“The catamount?”
“Or whatever it is, yes, it’s killed again. In the village. Not long ago.”
“Were you going out after it?”
She glanced at the barred door and didn’t answer.
“That ain’t wise. If you think another villager’s dead, you’d best tell Jaeger. You don’t want him to think you had a hand in the killing, do you?”
“No. But Jaeger doesn’t know I’m a wizard. How can I tell him I know someone’s dead when I didn’t witness it?”
“If he asks, tell him. My guess, coming straight out of sleep, he won’t tie off that loose string. Get Magretha to wake him. Look, that’s sense, ain’t it?” He yanked his breeches to his waist and jerked the laces. “Go on up. I’m right behind you.”
With her brain working, she knew Raul was right, but the dammed fear made her stiff and cold as she headed up the stairs. At the landing was a door for the loft-room over the cellar. Alstera knocked and knocked again until she heard movement. Magretha appeared, a wool shawl snatched over her nightrobe. She yawned. “What is it?”
“Would you wake Jaeger for me?”
She came more awake. Her gaze shifted to the jittery candle flame. “What’s wrong? Has someone come to the house? I didn’t hear a knock.”
Alstera shook her head. “No one, but—.” She bit her lip with a hesitation that was foreign to her nature. Wavering between rashness and the creature’s blood-born puissance, she was becoming a weak, puling fool. That was not her. Deliberately, she straightened her spine and squared her shoulders. She tossed back her head. “There’s been another killing.” At the bald words, the young woman winced. “Jaeger should know before anyone destroys the evidence. Would you wake him?”
Wrapping her shawl tighter, she led Alstera up the second flight of stairs. She knocked then opened the door without waiting for a response. “Papa? Wake up.”
The wizard heard a murmur then rustling. She lifted the candle to shine its light into the room. Jaeger levered up onto one arm. When he saw her behind his daughter, he pushed the covers back and climbed out, reaching for his breeches. “What’s happened?”
“We think there’s been another killing.”
Candle-glow glittered in his eyes. “You heard something?”
Alstera shook her head. “No.” He stopped buttoning his breeches, so she added, “I sensed something.”
He didn’t question it. His gaze shifted to Magretha. “How about you?”
“Nothing. I was asleep. I’ll go downstairs,” she said and retreated.
Jaeger grabbed his boots. Shoving his foot into one, he snapped, “You been out?”
“I am not that much of a fool.” She just nearly was.
He grunted and hauled on the other boot.
“Jaeger?” Thereiss reached a hand across the bed to her husband. “What is it?”
“Go to sleep, wife.”
“Is it another attack?”
He stood and stamped his feet. “I don’t know. Stay in bed, get some sleep. No sense you and the babe getting rousted out for nothing.”
“Leave the candle,” she asked. Alstera placed it on a small chest by the door then left.
Raul had stirred up the fire. He sat on the bench, Magretha snuggled beside him.
Jaeger clattered down on her heels. “So, tell me again.”
Alstera looked down at her hands, wondering how much to reveal. Their previous troubles, when she had recklessly used power, nagged continual caution. She decided that the fewer details the better. “Something was outside.”
“Hear anything?” She nodded rather than recount a lengthy explanation. Jaeger swore and unhooked his coat. “I better look around.”
Magretha straightened away from Raul. Worry furrowed her young face. “Wouldn’t it be better to wait till dawn, Papa? If the—the catamount has killed someone, we can’t help him now. It might attack you.”
“You can forget your lie about the catamount,” Alstera interjected. “No great cat has been attacking your village.”
“What do you know of it, outlander? Unless you’ve had a hand in it.”
“Père Hals showed me Odbear’s wounds. He was cut with a knife, not claws, not fangs. He was murdered.”
The headman surveyed her, and she met his scowling gaze with her chin up and her eyes unblinking. Finally he nodded. “If Père Hals told you that, I got no cause to lie now. It’s murder. And if you think someone’s dead, I got a duty to find out.”
“Papa, he could be out there, waiting.”
“That ain’t the pattern, Magretha. He strikes only once. If he’s killed tonight—.”
“You don’t know that,” she retorted. “On other nights, a whole group of you has searched the village, enough people to scare him off.”
Raul stood up. “I’ll go with you.”
He eyed Raul with the same skepticism he’d examined Alstera. Then he gave a short nod. “Fair enough. We’ll get torches from the forge.” He opened the door. “Bolt this door. Don’t open it for anyone but us.”
Raul followed him out. Alstera watched the night swallow them. Had the creature, once-man that it was, fled? He had gone beyond her power’s range. How far was that? With power bound, she could no longer know. Her hoarded power had long since dissipated. She sensed him gone, sated and gone, to strike another night when the blood-magic’s compulsion stampeded his will. “Magretha, get the door.” Before the young woman could protest, she seized her cloak and plunged outside.
The wet ground was soft beneath her boots. The cold air lacked an icy bite. Snowmelt trickled from the eaves. Yellow light flared near the street. She followed it to the men. Jaeger was explaining a search pattern as she reached them. He saw her and stopped talking. Raul gave her one look but didn’t comment and continued twisting a soaked rag around his stick.
The headman glared, and Alstera realized he could see better in the dark than Raul could, more evidence of his latent power. “Fool thing to do, leaving the house. Or did you come to help your partner murder me?”
“If you are going to slander me, I will search by myself.”
“I can’t watch your back and mine.”
“I did not ask you to. I do not need your protection.”
“How do you plan to help? We ain’t going to do nothing but look around.”
“I dreamed the killing, Jaeger. The murderer may be gone, but I might be able to sense the victim.”
He lifted the torch to study her, and again she knew the smith measured her with some internal caliper.
“Best let her come along,” Raul said as he lit his torch from Jaeger’s. “She’s bull-headed. That’s why she leads and I follow. It’s easier.”
The smith’s mouth twisted. The chancy torchlight stained his face to orange flesh and black shadows, his eyes glittering flame-yellow. He turned away with a curse and tossed an order over his shoulder. “Stick close, then. I ain’t looking for you if you get lost.”
Alstera didn’t make the retort she wanted. She ducked her chin into the shelter of her cloak and mutely followed the men as they began their search.
Stars twinkled in the black sky, and a warming south wind blew steadily on their faces as they worked down one side of the street, circling each house and outbuilding. Where the torch-glow didn’t cast its wild flickering shadows, the world to Alstera’s wizard-gifted eyes was the flat gray of buildings, the white of the reflective snow, and the quicksilver of life. Jaeger burned a shade brighter than Raul, revealing his power, however latent.
The village yielded empty streets, empty yards between houses and barns, empty gardens. Shutters and doors were tightly bolted for the night. Animals snoozed within the safety of the barns. Water dripped, plopping on the slushy snow. The torches guttered when the water dribbled off the eaves onto the flames. They shivered and saw nothing and kept looking.
Even with the combined torchlight and the added silvery sight that wizardry imparted, the night was cold and empty. An owl hooted from its perch in the green forest. The breeze died, and the village’s quiet seemed eerie. Alstera yearned to kindle a sphere. Its light would illuminate far better than the guttering torches. Yet her lack of caution in Le Dictame had burned its lesson as deeply as the tattoos had.
Who would have thought a healing would cause any havoc? She hadn’t, not when she’d carried the screaming child to his home, not when she’d vowed to heal him even as his father protested, not when she’d cut her arm to evoke the blood-magic that helped her bypass the bindings. Nor had Raul. He’d kept the priest out of the room while she cut her arm and worked the first spells. He’d confiscated the holy water she needed to make a dilution with her blood to bathe the bones jutting from the boy’s leg. And he’d hustled the protesting mother out of the room while Alstera knitted the bones together with crackling power.
She’d expected gratitude. As soon as Raul let the others into the room, the mother had crouched over her boy, shielding him from Alstera. The priest had circled her with warding signs, as if she were insane or possessed. “We’re in for it now,” Raul had said. Ignoring his worry, she had bound her arm, gathered her belongings, and left.
With the sun down, they’d crossed the well-square to the inn where they still had to earn their supper. Between Raul’s juggling and her legerdemain, they’d won a capful of coins. Then thundering hooves and shouts had emptied the taproom of their audience. Curious, they’d followed. A horse-squad had lined up on one side of the well-square. While their captain dismounted. the buff-coated soldiers sat straight, looking neither left nor right. Two other men, neither in uniform, climbed down from their horses. One wore a gold-braided cloak. She caught flashes of embroidery on the black cloth, but she couldn’t distinguish the design. The men walked across the square, and the priest eagerly greeted them.
While the four men talked, she prodded the crafter beside her. “Who is that?” she asked. “The man in the cloak.”
He answered without glancing her way. “Physick Arran. He’s a great healer, with brews for aught that ails ye.”
The men looked toward the inn, and she recognized the other man. The boy’s father. He had disappeared while she worked the healing. Now she knew where he’d gone.
Alstera faded back inside. Father and priest, physick and soldier made an unlucky throw of the bones. She looked desperately for Raul but didn’t see him, so she headed up the stairs. And met him coming down with their gear. “We going?” he asked. Without comment, she’d taken her pack and led the way out the back door.
As they rode a barge out of Le Dictame, they learned that the physick Arran was uncle to the local baron, and his healings made a tidy sum for himself and Sir Edgissan. The fetid brews and smoking stones and colored powders of his healing sounded like alchemist’s quackery.
Alstera didn’t see how her healing could have harmed the boy as the priest had claimed. They were out of Seilandrac and the Cordes d’Or, where wizards were outlaws, and south of the Cordes Verte, where wizards freely lived and worked. Nor did she know why the child’s parents had called in the soldiers. Raul guessed that the local baron kept a finger in any pie likely to make money. Horning in on the physick’s business threatened that particularly juicy pie. He made her vow to ask before she worked her next magic. No longer could she brazenly display the power she’d always accepted the gods’ gift. She’d learned her lesson. She kept it hidden throughout the Bois Argent to here, to Alpage, where she needed her power’s rushing flood to fight this night killer.
As Raul rounded a shed, a dog erupted with a roar, springing to the length of its chain. He dropped his torch and jumped back. It sputtered on the snow as they retreated.
“Jors’ dog,” the headman identified it when they’d circled out of the animal’s sight. “It’s not usually so vicious.”
“It is afraid,” Alstera offered. “It smells blood.”
“So am I afraid, but I don’t go biting the good guys,” Raul retorted. “Probably woke the whole village. Damn, it’s got my torch, Jaeger.”
The smith handed his over. “This isn’t working,” he said. “We got no tracks. No busted windows. Nothing. Again.”
Alstera lifted her head, sniffing the air, sensing loosed energy. She felt a void, a deadness nearby. Like a hollowed shell with the nutmeat picked out, the hard husk discarded. More than ever before, she felt the weight of her shackles, her protections as fettered as her magic.
Shivering with cold and fear, she stepped around the corner. A small creature rushed out from the eave. Wings beat against her head. She gasped and staggered backwards, crying out as the darting body tangled in her hair.
Chapter 10 ~ Eighteenth Night / Seventeenth Night / Winter’s End
Jaeger caught Alstera, clapped a hand over her mouth and hauled her tight against him. She shuddered and strained in his hold. “Easy,” he whispered. “Easy. It’s only a bat. Easy.” She clung and trembled, as the brush of wings and tiny claws that had snatched her hair echoed through her. “It’s gone,” he said when she shuddered again. “It’s gone, see?”
Raul had brought the torch and raised its light to fall on her. “You all right, Alstera? Did that bat scare you?”
His question mocked her fright. She bit her lip and pulled away. Jaeger immediately released her. She wrapped her arms around herself but couldn’t rein back another shudder. “The loosed energy is stronger here,” she whispered. “We are close. He is here.”
“The killer?”
“The man he killed.”
“Where?” A long-barreled pistol appeared in Jaeger’s hand.
She led them around the house and stopped when they’d gained a new yard. “Here. Someone died here.”
“Gods, this is Baudoin’s place.”
Raul lifted his torch to cast its light far into the yard. A dark shape had slumped at the barn door. The smith swore and strode across the slushy yard, trailed by the other two.
When Jaeger reached the body, he stood looking down, his useless pistol lowered. “It’s him. It’s Baudoin.”
Alstera knelt, her skirts puddling in the melted snow. Yellow torch-light flickered eerily over the man’s stilled features and in his eyes. “His throat is cut. And he has been gutted.” She plucked at his clothing to reveal the wounds. “Like the trader we found. Only a little blood, just a few stains. He should have bled more.” She shuddered.
Jaeger shoved the pistol beneath his coat then went down on a knee. With a shaking hand he closed Baudoin’s eyes. He left his hand covering the man’s face. Headman he might be, but he was failing in his duty. Baudoin, Odbear, Feldie, Ruod, all dead. Archaim and Karel missing. And he couldn’t even track this murdering beast.
