Michael A. Stackpole (10 page)

I must have looked stricken. “Another hour?”

He threw me a wink. “Likely not that long.” He let his voice get a bit louder and added, “Of course, were I standing next to Marija, I would find the time would pass much, much too swiftly.”

Marija gave him a smile in return that was all cat to his being a mouse. “Swiftly for you perhaps, Master Christoforos.”

Kit clutched a hand to his chest. “You wound me.”

“You will recover, 1 think, my lord.” Marija smiled at me, and added, “He has all the other times.”

The resumption of guest flow put an end to their banter. One old soldier tapped Kit’s company badge and noted that he, too, had belonged to the Emperor’s Horse Guards. “I had heard they were up on the Menal/Chaos border for their winter tour.”

“We still are, but the capital still wants reports coming in and has orders coming out, so I am here in service to the Emperor.” Kit gave the man a salute and thanked him for attending the party. “I will be certain to tell Colonel Grimands I met you.”

So sharply removed from his easy exchange with Marija was his reaction to the soldier that I knew instantly Kit had lied to the man. I waited for the soldier to become absorbed in his conversation with the Warlord, then, with a smile plastered on my face, 1 whispered, “You were not sent back to the capital as a messenger, were you?”

Kit’s smile eroded at the corners for a heartbeat, then he glanced down at me. “Military secrets are not the stuff of idle party chatter, Locke.” He glanced around the room, then back at me again. “Would it be paranoia or just common sense to imagine at least one person here knows someone who might be a member of the Black Church?”

1 shrugged. “For all I know, everyone here might be…” As he slowly started to nod, 1 let my voice trail off. “Blooded on first thrust.”

Kit laughed aloud. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard that little saying. I saw your lips moving, but I heard Audin’s voice. How … amusing.”

The tone I heard in Kit’s voice concerning Audin irritated me, but no verbal riposte came to me, so I remained silent. 1 went back to introducing myself to countless people whom I promptly forgot. Finally, as the last couple moved through the line, I stamped some feeling back into my feet and turned to speak to Kit, but he’d vanished. I looked back to talk with Marija, but she had gone to get the wheeled wicker chair Grandmother used to get around, and Grandmother was engaged in conversation with two of her dowager friends.

I felt abandoned for a moment, then my stomach rumbled. As a host of the party it struck me I should certainly see that the food was fit for consumption, so I headed for the nearest table. Unfortunately for me, sitting in a half-opened shell of some sort, on a bed of ice, I saw reddish white things that looked like the tail end of some very fleshy insects. People seemed to be enjoying them with great relish, but 1 was new to seafood, and it looked as if one had to be at least an Apprentice in some culinary discipline to be able to even get at the meat.

“Eating a
tsoerit
is worth the effort.”

1 turned and found Xoayya stand beside me. “I’ve never seen one before. I wouldn’t know how to start— and I’m not certain it would appeal to me.”

“It should, really.
Tsoerits
are remarkable creatures. They never stop growing. When their carapace becomes too confining, they slip from it and grow another. In one life they endure multiple rebirths.” She smiled and focused distantly. “Perhaps an allegory for our lives.”

1 shook my head. “I don’t think I understand your point.”

“No?” She pointed to where my family’s rank banners were displayed in the foyer. “Those banners define us, and even confine us, much as the
tsoerit’s
shell defines and confines him. That says what you are, and if your ranks and disciplines are not correct or high enough, you are barred from some things. As we change, as we learn more and become better at what we do, we shed those old ranks and banners and become defined by new symbols.”

“That life moves in stages is obvious, Mistress. People move through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and then old age.”

“Don’t forget death.”

“I don’t think of death as a life stage. It ends life altogether.”

“But that ending becomes a new beginning as our souls are clothed with new flesh, and we are sent back to live again.”

I nodded. “Of course, and in that way, I guess, death is a stage of iife. What I’m saying is that your observation is obvious.”

That brought a smile to her face. “Is it? For moving through all these stages of life, what is the
tsoerit’s
purpose?”

“Purpose?” I shook my head. “I don’t know? To propagate?”

“For some, perhaps.” She pointed a delicate finger at the chilling
tsoerit
carcasses. “For these their purpose was to be eaten. From the moment they were born, they were destined to be here, now, sating hunger.”

“But perhaps that’s not true.”

“But they are here, aren’t they?”

I recognized the fact that we were arguing free will and fate. While 1 didn’t think a
tsoerit
had enough brainpower to really have free will, I couldn’t imagine the sole purpose for these creatures being to fill up a hole in some mage’s future vision of this party. “You’re using a circular argument here. You’re saying that because they
are
here, they were destined to be here.”

“And you don’t believe that?”

“No.”

“Then why are
you
here?” She opened her arms. “Aren’t you here because you are destined to be here?”

I shook my head. “1 don’t think so. I’m here because I beat my brothers out for the honor of being here.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “1 know of no other reason for my being here.”

“You will find one.” Again she spoke with an iron certainty in her voice that I found rather spooky. The fact that she was looking right through me at the time didn’t help matters much either.

“And what would that reason be?”

Xoayya laughed lightly. “I don’t know, I just know there is one. The problem of being cursed with second sight is that I do not see everything or even
most
things. I get glimpses.”

“Such as?”

“Such as my grandmother needing me.” Xoayya laid a hand lightly on my shoulder. “There is much for you to learn, Locke, and learn you shall. Then we will dance.” She laughed lightly, then vanished into the crowd.

Now feeling confused as well as abandoned, I reminded myself that I had a duty as the host of the party. In keeping with it, I began to look around for our guest of honor, the Imperial Warlord. Even with him being as tall as he was, I had no luck in spotting his head above those of the crowd. I started making my way through the press of people to find another vantage point from which to look for him, but when I did so, I still could not find him. I did, however, see Kit wandering out of the ballroom and deeper into the house.

Probably
off
to find some more suitable clothing.
Utterly at a loss, 1 decided to look for James, to have him tell me what to do. 1 made it as far as the hallway outside the ballroom, but 1 couldn’t even see one of Nob’s grandsons, much less lames. 1 stopped for a moment and scratched my head, then I heard the sound of footsteps from the floor above. The noise ceased, and I frowned.

Whoever or whatever was upstairs, it had just entered my suite.

I ran to the nearest set of stairs and sprinted up them two at a time. Something clicked inside my head, and I started to think in the tactical patterns my grandfather had beaten into me with repeated lessons. One step into the room and 1 could easily free one of the swords from the rack just inside the door. I smiled because as soon as that bit of strategy occurred to me, 1 knew Cardew had placed the weapons on the right side of the doorway with a mind to their utility as well as display.

Whoever was in my room had lit the lamp on the table across from the door and had left the door ajar. I pushed it open with my left hand and, with my right hand, twisted a rapier free of the rack. “I don’t know who you are, but it is a poor thing to rob your hostess at a Bear’s Eve celebration.” Shutting the door behind me to prevent their escape, I leveled the blade at the two men looking at the spiral of daggers on the left hand wall.

Whatever else 1 had planned to say evaporated from my mind. Their faces half-hidden in shadows cast by the lamp, Kit and Gam Drustorn regarded me with a look that dismissed my threat. In his hands Kit held a dagger that even I could tell, in the weak lamplight, had not been made in the Empire.

“It might be rude, as we’ve just met, but I will kill you, cousin, in a heartbeat, unless you can satisfy my curiosity.” 1 centered the rapier’s point on his chest. “You’ve not just ridden in from Chaos, so what is a
Bfiarasftadi
dagger doing in the possession of one of the Emperor’s scouts and where, on this side of the Ward Walls, did you find it?”

7

How and where 1 got it is information I I undoubtedly worth killing for.” Kit shifted his shoulders rather uneasily. “Despite your threat, the answers to those questions are not the sort of thing to be discussed with someone in the capital for nothing more than the Bear’s Eve Ball.” He looked to the Warlord for confirmation of his assessment.

Drustorn stood taller even than Kit, and, while they probably weighed the same, I had the feeling that the wiry man would beat Kit easily in any sort of fight they could have.
Chaosfire
filled his eyes fuller than it had Eirene’s, but I saw no other indication of the changes commonly wrought on a man by Chaos. Of course I knew the stories about Gam Drustorn and his famed Chaos Raiders, but my experience with the things said about my father had been enough to make me wary of believing everything I had heard.

“It is my feeling, in this case, no harm will come if Locke is allowed to hear what you have to tell me.” While older than Kit by nearly a dozen years, but not even twice my age, Drustorn’s voice had a calm strength that made me feel good and, apparently, vanquished Kit’s reluctance to talk. “Locke, please put the sword up. After you tell me what you know, Lieutenant Christoforos, I will want to hear how Locke knew that dagger was manufactured by the B
harashadi.”

Kit sat down in one of the chairs, and Drustorn waved me to the other one after I locked the door. He remained standing and folded his arms across his chest. “Lieutenant?”

“Approximately three weeks ago I was leading a small patrol in Menal to check on some ruins that had once been in Chaos, but have been part of the Empire since the province was liberated. There had been reports of some Church of Chaos Encroaching activity in the area. We all knew that those reports were false, since the Black Church tends to be active near the borders, not in the middle of farmland.”

The Warlord nodded. “Superstitions die very hard, I know. So you rode out to check and had a magicker with you.”

“An Aelven woman of Warder rank, yes sir. We found the ruin and checked it thoroughly but found nothing. Taci, the Warder, used a spell that she described as being akin to a sieve. Because Chaos magick has a certain taint to it, she said its residual effects could be detected by her spell. She even put enough energy into the spell to let me see it as a cerulean ball that flattened out into a glowing cobweb. It grew and spread out with its anchor at the ruin, then faded.

“She reported she had found nothing, so we made camp that night at the ruin. It was already snowing in the plains, and wolf packs were coming down from the mountains to hunt. We decided braving whatever ghosts the locals had seen was preferable to freezing to death or being overrun by wolves. The ruins provided enough shelter for ourselves and our mounts, and the well meant we had fresh water.”

“I know I would have chosen to stay there, too,” I commented. In Kit’s description I could hear the whistling of the wind and the howls of wolves coming across a snowy plain under the bone white light of a full Lovers’ Moon. I smiled as I imagined being alone on those plains with only Cruach as a companion, and I knew instinctively it would be the wolves that would be fearing us and not the other way around.

“Shows you’re not entirely without sense, Locke.” Kit turned the dagger over in his hands and concentrated on it. “That night Taci awoke with a start and cried out. Even by the time I got to her she had not fully become aware of where she was. My lord, it was as if she were in shock, or so I thought. 1 had my people bank up the fire, and we made her some
vusopeh
tea. We had to force her to drink it, but once she got some into her, it started to bring her around.

“Once 1 made sure she had not been hurt somehow, I asked her what happened. She was not certain. She said her hands were numb, much the way they feel after you accidentally hit something very solid with a sword. Obviously she’d not done that while sleeping, so we assumed the cause of her shock might be magickal.”

The Warlord nodded. “A rather logical conclusion.”

“Yes, sir. Taci considered whether or not she’d been attacked by an enemy, but rejected that idea since she’d suffered no real harm. In thinking about everything she decided her shock had something to do with the spell she had woven earlier in the evening. Because she had put the extra strength into it to enable me to see it take effect, the spell had remained active over a much greater range. Just how far, she said, she could not be certain. What had shocked her, however, was the sheer virulence and power of the Chaos magick spell she had detected. Unprepared for it, it had addled her.”

I narrowed my eyes. “So there were Chaos Encroachers in the area.”

“That’s what I thought at first, Locke, but Taci said what she had felt was nothing like their magick. She pointed her hand out in the direction in which the Chaos magick had been sensed, and 1 had several of my patrol make an arrow out of building stones pointing straight out in that direction. Then Taci and I rode about a third of a league to the west and she cast another of her detection spells. This time she refined it so it would only search in a ninety-degree arc. It went out invisibly this time, and within a minute she had a new direction for the magick.

“I marked everything down on my chart of the area and was able to determine that whatever she had felt looked to be four leagues off to the south, just entering the forests. As that area of Menal is not heavily populated, I was very reluctant to tangle with anything that powerful in the middle of the night because we were only a scouting patrol with a single magicker. I forced everyone to get some sleep so we could be alert the next day, when we did go after it. In light of what we found, I don’t know if this was the correct tactic to choose.”

Gam Drustorn shook his head. “You’re here now, reporting this information. That’s far more valuable than our learning about the problem you encountered after you’d gone missing for a week and another patrol found your corpses.”

“That was my feeling, too, sir, but the risk might have been worth it.” Kit sighed heavily. “Taci knew from her spell that we’d located the nexus point of the casting, and I knew it from what I saw. The snow, which was running about knee-deep thereabouts, had been melted down to the ground in a triangular pattern about ten feet on a side. All around there, throughout this small clearing in the forest, lay dead wolves. Some of them had been flash-burned with all their fur singed off, while others looked as if they had been roasted for hours on a spit.”

The Warlord frowned. “With no cooking pit in sight.”

“No, sir.” Kit’s face hardened as he continued his story. “Being out there in Menal, I have no love for wolves, but this pack died hard, very hard. We couldn’t tell if they got a piece of what they attacked, but they’d been dogging its steps for the better part of a day. They surprised their prey because that spot wasn’t particularly defensible—though with magick it turned out fine.

“From there we started tracking the thing, and I think 1 saw it once. It surprised us by trying to cut back on its own trail. It came in toward our camp from downwind one evening, and the horses let us know they were upset. We chased out after it, and I think I got an arrow into it—left shoulder. I can’t be certain—it was running, at night, and fair distant. I saw a blood track, though.”

My jaw dropped. “You hit it at night at something beyond point-blank range? How big was it?”

“Man-sized, more or less.” Kit glanced sidelong at the Warlord, then nodded. “The thing looked pretty much like the picture-book illustrations of a lion, from the time before Chaos came. It had a mane and a long tail with a bushy brush of hair at the end. The mane seemed to trace down the spine, but it was difficult to tell because the whole thing was black, excepting, perhaps, its eyes. I saw glints of gold in its eyes, but that could be as much my imagination or reflections of firelight as it is fact.”

“I think you saw gold eyes all right. You realize, Lieutenant, your description is consistent with that of a B
harashadi
Chademon.” Drustorn held his right hand out, and Kit gave him the slender, barbed blade. “You said you saw blood.”

“Yes, sir. On more than one occasion. Where 1 got my arrow into it 1 saw blood in the snow, and it looked dark purple. Hansen, one of my people, said he’d seen blood that color from a Chapanther that had been killed over in Tarris. Later we saw some more from where a bear had fought with the creature. The bear had been killed, and its hide had been stripped off. Apparently the creature had appropriated the bear’s lair for shelter.”

“It killed a bear?” I shook my head. “Did it use magick?”

“No. Taci sensed no residual magickal power, and the marks on the bear’s carcass indicated it had been killed by dagger and claw.”

I blinked. “If it was the size of a man and did that, it must be very strong.”

Drustorn nodded. “Chaos demons are often quite powerful.”

Kit winced. “True, but could this have been a Chaos demon?”

Kit’s question focused me on the problem with which he and the Warlord wrestled. Everyone knew that creatures born in Chaos could not penetrate the Ward Walls and live. It just could not be done without resulting in their death. We all knew it. We had been given that as the one fundamental tenet of our lives in the Empire. It was a fact that no one disputed.

Another fact not in dispute was that an incredible number of Chaotic creatures had been released into the Empire when the provinces of Menal and Tarris were incorporated into it. The activation of the Ward Stations that created those new provinces pushed the Ward Walls out instantly, trapping an incredible number of creatures nurtured by Chaos within the new province. While many creatures had been slain in the century since Tarris’s birth, some of the Chaos beasts had established a stable population and were breeding true even in my father’s time, or so his books reported.

None of those creatures, at least as nearly as I knew, were capable of using magick. Clearly the thing Kit had chased was a magick user, but it was also possible that any magick it used was an inherent power, not a spell. While a spell might mimic a dragon’s ability to breathe fire, a dragon’s breath is not a spell, for example. Even as I offered that idea as a possible explanation, I knew it did not truly cover the facts available.

“Where did you find the dagger?” I asked. “You said a dagger was used on the bear’s corpse, but do you know if it was this one? Could someone else have inflicted those wounds with a knife afterward?”

“In other words, how do I know the creature carried this dagger?”

“Right.”

“Good question.” Kit gave me an appreciative nod. “We didn’t see tracks from anyone else around the bear’s body, so I assume the wounds were inflicted by the creature. The kill was fresh, but I didn’t have the dagger to match against the wounds, so I don’t know if this was the one used on the bear.”

The Warlord nodded. “Not an easy thing to determine at the best of times.”

“No, sir, though Taci said some magickers could have used a spell to do the job. As for the dagger itself, well, who was carrying it is still something of a mystery. We tracked the creature further south and two days later, at a cabin in the forest, found more evidence of its passage.

“It had snowed during the early morning just lightly enough to dust the whole area. We found a dead man lying facedown beneath this thin blanket of snow, so we assume he died in the night. When I rolled him over I found the knife stuck in his chest. There were plenty of signs of a struggle in the area, but no more purple blood. I cannot tell if he was stabbed, or just knocked down to where he fell on the knife himself.”

“And the man had a history of being a Chaos Rider, correct, Lieutenant? That way you could not be certain if the dagger was something he had brought back from Chaos himself, or something the creature left behind.”

“That is the mystery, Warlord.” Kit sighed heavily. “The creature ran upright, and it ran on all fours. It did some very intelligent things to elude us, and it did some very stupid things to put us back on the track. Aside from changes made to put us on a false trail or to make travel easier, it always angled south.” Kit plucked at his service tunic. “We tracked it to within a league of the capital here before we lost it.”

The implications of what Kit had related made me swallow hard as 1 considered them. 1 saw three possible solutions to his problem. The first was that some sort of strange Chaos creature—one that had not been seen in Tarris or Menal before—had wandered from its normal range and found itself being hounded south. The second, which was really a variation of the first, was that a small band of Chademons had managed to anticipate the annexation of Tarris and had hidden themselves in the province when it was reclaimed. They stayed quiet and only now decided to make trouble. It was even possible that Chademons born within the Ward Walls would be able to pass freely through them as anything else born on this side could do.

While that second conclusion was quite nasty in and of itself, it paled by comparison to the third. That one, quite simply, was impossible by everything 1 knew of the Ward Walls, but I realized that was painfully little. Simply stated, a Chaos demon, apparently of the Black Shadows tribe, had managed to pass through the Ward Walls. Of course, the most terrifying thing about that was that if one could do it, others could as well. This was, then, the worst-case scenario, and I thought it would be foolish not to give it some weight, no matter that 1 knew that it was impossible.

1 shivered. “Could a Chaos demon have made it through the Ward Walls?”