Sing a Graveyard Song, page 34
part #3 of Enclave Book Series
“Done.” She straightened and stretched her back. She reached to rub her muscles then remembered her bloody hands and held them out, stained fingertips up. “Go downstairs and get two pitchers of cold water.”
“You’ll have to watch the door.”
She looked too wrung out to understand, but she nodded.
He went fast. It was Thereiss in the kitchen, bustling about to fix food, and a neighbor woman was there, helping her. When he got the pitchers, she wanted to know why. “Jaeger’s wanting to wash.” Which was the wrong thing to say, for her face lit up. He managed to brush her off, adding that Jaeger wanted privacy for it and he’d give him whatever help was needed.
Magretha stood in the doorway to her room as he reached the first landing. Her eyes looked heavy with sleep. He grinned, hoping that would be enough to help him pass, then she said, “Alstera’s working magic. I can feel it, heavy in the house, thick as smoke.”
He glanced down the steps. Thereiss and the woman were talking. They hadn’t heard. “She said your da was sinking. Harroth was taking his strength, like he did Verel’s. She told us that this morning.” She nodded, but she didn’t move. She looked hurt. He wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know what to say, not about magic. He stumbled with it. “She used—it was—she told you she’d use blood-magic. You—she said you didn’t need to learn it.”
Magretha looked at the closed door at the top of the stairs. “Are you finished?”
“Got to clean him up.”
“Has he waked?”
“Not when I left. Look, sweetings—.”
“No. Go on. I’ll come up soon, if I may. Go help him and her.”
“She didn’t give me much choice.”
Her eyes lightened then, and somehow he’d managed to say the right thing. “No, I expect she did not. I am learning our wizard does not often give choices in matters of power.”
Alstera let him in. Jaeger was sitting on the edge of the bed. The bloody signs she’d painted had smeared beyond figuring out what they were. Raul shoved the pitchers onto the chest of drawers. “You’re awake.”
The headman looked up then around. His face was washed clean. He inhaled deeply then said, “With some thanks to you, I understand.”
“In the next few minutes, you will owe Raul even more. I will leave you to it. Jaeger, you will be groggy a while yet. Do not push too much too soon. You are still linked with Harroth. I have warded you so he cannot use your life-force, but save your strength for tonight.”
“Alstera—,” Jaeger started, but she’d slipped out the door.
Raul re-shot the hasp then carried the first pitcher to the bed. “Get to it, old man.”
The smith gave a ghost of a laugh then pressed his hand to his side. “Gods, I feel like I’ve been sucked down a long, dark cave. Just how much did you help?”
“I kept watch on the door. What do you remember? Anything?”
The headman shook his head. He squeezed out the rag he’d dipped into the pitcher then swiped it down his chest. “My mind’s dark on that. Alstera said she did to me what she did to Verel. Much good it’ll do either of us if we can’t destroy Harroth.”
“She also said, `cause you’re linked, you could lead us to Harroth’s lair.”
Jaeger froze with his hand in the pitcher. He looked as startled as the wizard had when Raul had connected her blood-magic to Harroth. Then his gaze focused inward. His nostrils flared. “Aye, I.feel the pull. I can lead you to him.”
“Then we can kill him while he sleeps. I knew that wizard-brain of hers would come up with a plan.”
. ~ . ~ . ~ .
The sunlight blinded Alstera when she left the chapel. A playing child’s happy song drifted on the air, mingling with a bird singing on the roof-ridge. She stood in the sunlight, soaking up its warmth. Then a wind swept down from the mountain trail, its chill reminding that winter still smothered the heights, reminding her of this morning’s dream, reminding her that the Enclave pursuers were as close as breath. And she was trapped. She could not abandon Alpage. She could not escape her pursuers. She regretted nothing she’d done to help Magretha and Jaeger and little Verel, but the linking and the blood spells would condemn her.
She wished for her cloak to hide in, but it lay burned to ash in Feldie’s fireplace. She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin. The chalice, in the deep pocket of her skirt, banged against her leg. Golden and holy, wealthy in this material realm and the one beyond, she prayed it gave an answer to destroying a creature of both realms. Another omen washed over her. Her pursuers were so close. Pursuers who were her blood-kin.
She’d not walked the road out of the village since her arrival. She climbed the first rise and looked back. Alpage didn’t look like a village awash in blood. She shivered then followed the trail. The valley narrowed into the mountain gap. When the shoulder of Crouching Bear hid the chimney smoke, Alstera picked a boulder in the sun and waited.
The swollen brook covered her pursuers’ approach. They appeared around Crouching Bear’s lower haunch, two riders coming at a steady pace. The way they sat in the saddles looked very familiar. Their horses splashed through streaming snowmelt and started up Bear’s haunch. And they spotted her. They stopped, the sun in their faces, and she identified them.
Her cousins Ferrant and Allard, twins and beloved sons of Raigeis, magister to her grandmother the ArchClans Letheina. Raigeis had died last summer, killed by a sorcerer. Ferrant was a strong wizard, not Alstera’s equal in power (before her family shackled it) but definitely her equal in spells. Alstera, Ferrant and Allard shared the family’s crystal clear eyes and dark hair, the long straight nose and decided chin. But their blood connection and resemblance hadn’t deepened their liking for each other.
She and Ferrant had competed to be the best young wizard in the Letheina clan. They had clashed over everything. They vied for their tutors’ attention and sparred for first-right to a new spell. She’d won wizard-status before him; he’d won the right to defend Mont Nouris with the army stationed at the border. He would be eager to count the ways she’d broken the tenets.
As for his twin Allard, he had no magical spark. A powerless Naught, he had enlisted in the military and supported his twin with keen steel. She’d not often seen him since Uncle Raigeis had bought his commission. Grandmère could order a wizard where she chose, but it took the king’s approval to release the soldier twin from his posting.
Alstera slid off the boulder to confront them. For half a year she’d run on loose reins. Now, with the twins’ arrival, her throat constricted with all she wanted to say and dared not. All her reasons and justifications meant nothing if Ferrant chose to ignore them.
They conferred then rode upslope. Both dismounted, and Ferrant tossed his reins to his twin. “You do not seem surprised to see us, fair cousin.”
She refused to admit to any surprise. Of rank in Enclave and army, they were valued fighters in Mont Nouris’ defense against the sorcerers and wyre of Frost Clime. She’d thought that was the essential reason for the severity of the judgment against her, a wizard prowling into dark spells. She wouldn’t give her cousins the satisfaction of her confusion or her desire to hear of home.
Alstera folded her arms, burying her fingers in the thick quilting of her doublet. “From the first I sensed trackers hounding me. Since I freed myself of the first binding, I have even more strongly sensed you.”
Taking the lead, Ferrant answered her. “Ah, yes, the first binding. I have questions about that.”
Allard left the horses ground-tied and came even with his brother, although he ranged several steps over. Soldier that he was, he routinely kept sword-room to his right. “You are not even surprised to see us, Ferrant and me.”
Trust Allard, a man of action and not the mind, to point out the second layer attached to Ferrant’s first comment. His twin had known it unnecessary. “I knew someone would track behind me. Who better than my cousins who hate me?”
“Who better than blood-kin?” Ferrant spat. “You dishonored our family. Who better than us, to reckon your taint? To mark how far you have ventured into the shadow ways?”
“I expected the Rochein clan. Did they not petition Grandmère to be my executioners? Do they not hate me for killing Gage?”
“Oh, he’s not de—.”
Ferrant’s glare and quick cutting motion stopped his twin too late. Alstera leapt on it. “Not what? Gage is not what? Not dead?” Allard lacked a wizard’s deviosity. Never more than now was she so grateful for that sword-straight mind of his. She hadn’t killed her lover; that had saved her from having all her powers stripped away. But the shock weakened her knees and slowed her brain. “Gage is not dead. I see now.”
“See what?” Ferrant clipped.
She waved the question aside. “How much has he recovered?”
The twins exchanged a glance. Ferrant sneered, “You let it slip, brother. You tell her.”
“He never died. It took him a while to recover, as if from a serious battle wound. Tante Camisse had hopes of his full recovery before we left.”
She shook, although she could not yet identify the emotion that wracked her. “And all this time, all through my months of exile and my inability to use my own powers, and my dearly beloved family let me believe I had murdered him? Why, Ferrant?”
His eyes, as wizard-clear as hers, flashed. “You broke all five of the wizard tenets. You deserved no mercy. Now it sounds as if you still feel no remorse?”
“No remorse? Do you not mean that I feel no guilt? The whole Enclave thinks me a murderer tainted with dark spells. The greatest charge against me should have been lifted.”
“Everyone knew the truth, especially after your exile began.”
“Everyone except me. Oh, I thank you for that. So when great-uncle and my brother visited me in gaol, they lied to me?” She choked on the betrayal. She wanted to weep, to rage, and had to fight to maintain the semblance of balance. She loved and revered her great-uncle. She loved her brother, but her great-uncle Rombrey had tutored her, giving her daily counsel and direction. His betrayal tarnished Alstera’s adoration of him. And her brother, her closest kin since their parents’ death, he had also lied. Or had he? She remembered Rombrey preventing Romert from telling her something. Locked in her cell, she had been too focused on her miserable condition to pay attention to their interaction. “Was Gran—were the family that eager to be shut of me? You bind my power then banish me from my home. You thrust me defenseless into a world of strangers.”
“So you would learn. Is that not right?” Allard trotted out the answer so quickly she knew the family had bandied the words about in his hearing. “And you have, have you not? Already you’ve freed yourself of one binding. A half year since your trial. I can tell you no one expected that quickness.”
“Although you accomplished it by devious means.” Ferrant’s rigid adherence to wizard rules mirrored his late father’s. “You’ve left a trail of blood-magic from Vaermonde south.”
“Will you haul me back because I do not meet your expectations? The Enclave set neither calendar nor the means by which I fulfilled my penances. The bindings are my restrictions. The blood-magic helps me bypass them; it does not free me from them.”
“It is not wizardry. It is banned.”
“Wizardry is denied me. Is all magic denied me? Was I given the choice: sorcery or no power at all? I was not, Ferrant. Keep that in mind when you match what I have done to the wizard’s tenets. Keep in mind that the tenets themselves accepted the blood-magic, or I would not be free of a binding.”
“So you say.”
He sounded so like Uncle Raigeis, so like Grandmère Letheina, that a smoky veil ripped from her eyes. Unclouded by emotions, unclouded by her shame at how she’d dishonored her family, she saw her exile through their eyes. Her exile did not punish her for harming Gage. Her exile protected the clan’s status in the Enclave and at court. And the king’s banishment? She carried a writ of banishment with the king’s seal—until she burned it to start a fire. How had they managed that writ of banishment if she hadn’t committed murder?
Or had they lied about that as well? She’d not lain prostrate before the king when he pronounced charge and judgment. The writ of exile that had been thrust into her sweaty hands by her beloved great-uncle. Another lie. Not as great as the lie that Gage was dead.
But two lies made her look for more.
Alstera did not expect truth from Ferrant, although she might startle it out of Allard’s less subtle mind. Yet would the soldier twin know the truth, or only what the family had told him?
She’d always trusted her blood-clan. Now she felt faith in them slipping away, like the melting snow. Mont Nouris no longer looked like home, only a reason, a destination to show she’d satisfied their judgment. Home would have to be where she made it. She must seek ways to fulfill her bindings but not to return home, not to win back her rank in the Letheina clan, and not to regain Grandmère’s love and pride. She would do it only to return her powers to the free-flowing energy before they’d bound her.
As their betrayal and its implications flooded her, she felt bereft. All the months on the road she’d been essentially alone, even with Raul for companionship, but never had she felt as alone as now, when she realized her clan had arrayed against her to protect themselves. She had never anticipated her family would abandon her. Even as she had screamed and raged while they tattooed the bindings, she’d thought Grandmère ordered it to save her from having her powers stripped completely away.
What else was a lie?
“Alstera, you are not listening to me.”
She lifted her head. She saw Ferrant with new eyes, competing not against her to excel but to win rank and influence, to support his father’s machinations to position Raigeis to become clan leader when Letheina died. His death had foiled those plans. Who had become magister after him? Her aunt Camisse?
She fought to keep the sneer from lifting her lip. “I am listening. Forgive me if I do not react to every word.”
“You should react. I charge you with four crimes.”
He’d evoked power, making the charges in the formal manner. Tucking her hand into her deep skirt pocket, she touched the chalice, shaped it with her fingers through the weathered velvet of her skirts. And she prayed to the great god for courage, to find the right words to answer him, to protect her power, and to guide her through the task she had yet to do.
“I charge you with blood-magic, a banned use of power since the inception of the Enclave. Blood-magic in Vaermonde, in Le Dictame of the Bois Argent, and in this valley, day after day after day.”
“I accept the charge.” She bowed formally. She could not evoke power through the bindings without blood, and she would not do that before them. “In Vaermonde, I saved Cherai d’Aure Lourrante, the countess Muirée, from a sleep-snare that would have killed her. In Le Dictame I healed a boy’s broken leg. And here I used blood-magic to fight the Death Walking who kills the people of this village, kills to drink their blood and sustain himself with their life-force. Judge me for those evils, Ferrant.” She bowed again.
“Death Walking? Are you sure?”
“I have seen it, Allard. I have fought it twice without success. I will fight it again. If you stay, perhaps you will help me this very night.” Both twins looked skeptical that a legend could come to life. “Ferrant, you searched my track with power. You must have sensed the sorcery lading this valley. You must know an evil wreaks its terrors here.”
He shook off whatever speculations her words had evoked. “We must follow the forms.”
“Was that our grandmother’s edict or my great-uncle’s?”
From Allard’s start, she guessed the latter. Ferrant ignored the snide question. “I charge you with necromancy.”
“I accept the charge. I did indeed evoke and speak with the dead. Twice I did it, to learn anything I could. I will do anything to defeat this death-walker.”
“I charge you with blood-rites, yesterday and this very morning.”
She thought of Jaeger and Verel. This time she did not fight to hide the smirk that twisted her smile. “I accept the charge. I will not let someone die when I know a way to save them. Or do you not remember that lesson from our great-uncle Rombrey? Examine the baby that wasted twenty days and longer. Examine Jaeger, the headman of this village. Search around their wards. I defy you to tell me I had another choice. Even your freed power could not have warded them and bound the link to the death-walker without blood.”
“I charge you with invading the mind of a priest, the very crime that nearly killed Gage. You broke his mind.”
“To save the countess Muirée. He had invaded her mind. He had snared her in a death-dream. Should I have flung up my hands and done nothing?”
“Do you accept the charge?” Alstera bit her lips. Had he heard nothing she said? But, ah, she forgot; this was Raigeis’ son. He followed the forms. She bowed. As she straightened, Ferrant chided her. “You cannot continue to commit such crimes without taint to your power.”
“I sense no taint. Do you? Forgive me, cousin, but I do not think you can. Or will.”
“That is the risk, is it not? You did not sense the taint before. Why else would they have purged you? You cannot dabble in shadow ways, and blood-magic is a path to the shadows.”
“This I know. I know blood-magic is not the best way to access my power, only the easiest way.” Her attempt to defend herself reasonably suddenly collapsed. She was shaking again and still couldn’t define the emotion that permeated every fibre of her being. “Do you know what a binding is like? Do you understand what I’m left with? You, of all my cousins, Ferrant, you might understand. We were well matched in puissance and talent. Do you know how much power I have without blood? I can do simple magicks, like any child. To work the deeper spells I must meditate hour upon hour to hoard enough power. Days and days it would take to approximate what I once called with the lift of my hand!”
