The Brush of Black Wings (4 page)

Her time would be much better spent in Neith’s
library, hunting for a book or scroll that might shed light on the
mysterious words the demon had uttered before it tried to drag her
into the temple’s confines.

“
Kashaptu, mi peti
babka.”

A greeting of some kind, spoken in a language
she didn’t recognize. It sounded...old. Arcane and
forgotten.

“
Martise.” Silhara nudged her
attention back to him.

“
As you wish,” she said and
stepped out of his embrace. The spell she attempted offered little
challenge, even for a first-year Conclave novitiate—lighting the
wick of a nearby candle. To no one’s surprise, the candle remained
unlit. She tried several more incantations, some difficult, others
as easy as the first. She was no more successful now than she was
when Silhara first had her try years ago.

“
Maybe I took too much of your
power,” he said.

Martise’s shoulders sagged. “No. I’m not
completely drained. I still feel it inside me.” She gave him a
humorless smile. “I will live out my days wondering which is
worse—not having it at all or not being able to use it
myself.”

A flash of sympathy passed through Silhara’s
gaze. She was obviously more tired than she thought if she imagined
such a thing in his eyes.

“
It isn’t yours to command for
invocation,” he said. “But you put it to use when you fended off
whatever appeared in the ruin this morning.” He crossed his arms
and tapped his chin with one ink-stained finger. “What made your
Gift appear after four years—”

“
Nine months, thirteen days, six
hours,” she completed for him.

Silhara tensed, and his face took on a drawn
look. “You regretted its loss more than you led me to
believe.”

Martise chewed her lip, wishing she wasn’t so
tired and her tongue so loose with her words. Guilt lay behind his
cool expression. Misplaced guilt, but guilt nonetheless. They’d
both come away from the battle with Corruption certain Silhara had
leached her dry of her Gift in his bid to destroy the god. They
were wrong.

She reached for his hand to lace her fingers
with his. “I didn’t lose it. I gave it up. Willingly. I’d do it
again if you asked. But I did mourn its absence, useless as it is
to me.”

He tugged her back into his hold. “Not
useless. Dangerous. You know my thoughts about your Gift, Martise.
Left solely to me, I’d bleed it out of you a second time and make
sure I took all of it. Its power is coveted. You’ve known slavery;
you’ve never known the kind of slavery such a Gift would
induce.”

She laid her head on his chest. His heart beat
a comforting rhythm in her ear. “I know, I know. The reasonable
part of me agrees with everything you said. I don’t want to lure
demons or be used by power-crazed mages like poor Zafira was, but
I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t reluctant to destroy my
Gift.”

He tipped her chin up so she’d meet his gaze.
“Then you and I shall bargain. You keep your Gift until you say
otherwise. But we take up where we left off those years ago. I’ll
teach you to bury it—as deep as it lay buried after Corruption’s
defeat. If Cael can’t sense it, neither will any mage or cursed
Conclave priest. You’ll stay away from any of the temple ruins in
the wood, and you’re never to seer-bond with anyone but me.
Agreed?”

Martise rubbed her chin against his finger.
“Agreed.” A very reasonable bargain, and she had no intention of
going anywhere near one of the woodland temples ever again—not even
for Gurn’s mushrooms.

They spent the next several moments exchanging
slow, languid kisses until Martise put some much needed distance
between herself and Silhara. The chamber was as frigid as when she
left the bed’s warmth, but she fanned herself with her hand to cool
off. Silhara’s knowing smirk earned him a roll of her
eyes.

She left him to retrieve a shawl from the
chest at the end of their bed and wrapped it around her shoulders.
“Don’t you want to try out a spell yourself? Break a window? Open
the shutters from across the room?”

He snorted. “No. Your power runs through me
like hot Dragon Piss. If I try to open a shutter, I’ll likely blow
out the wall. I’ll never hear the end of it from Gurn.”

Martise groaned. “Gurn. He won’t forgive us.
Breakfast is long cold by now.”

Silhara smothered the coals in the brazier.
“Considering breakfast almost got you abducted and likely worse, he
can damn well take the trouble to reheat the plates.”

“
You know what he’ll say,” she
said as he ushered her toward the door.

He shrugged and followed her into the black
hallway. “For a man with no tongue, he talks far too much for my
liking.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Gurn surprised them both by not only having
the food reheated when they returned to the kitchen but a new pot
of tea readied to replace the one that had turned cold and bitter.
He did gesture to Martise behind Silhara’s back, a sign she easily
translated to the usual “horse’s ass.”

“
I saw that,” Silhara said and
frowned at the extra orange left beside his plate and cup—Gurn’s
small revenge for having his first efforts ruined by Silhara’s
prolonged stay in his bedchamber with Martise. It didn’t help that
they were oranges bought from another grower.

In a petty act of revenge for Silhara’s
resistance, the god Corruption had destroyed the orange grove that
was once not only Neith’s source of income but also Silhara’s love,
second only to Martise. She hadn’t always understood his attachment
to the grove until he’d revealed his history and what it
represented—proof of his ability not only to overcome a childhood
of deprivation and violence but to remain independent of the
loathed priesthood who’d first sought to control him and then kill
him.

Young orange trees grew where the burnt
remains of the first trees fertilized the soil, their slender
branches as yet unable to offer sanctuary to the crows that called
Neith home. Conclave, which once considered the Master of Crows an
unpredictable adversary at best and a heretical threat at worst,
had shown its gratitude for his role in destroying Corruption by
offering saplings and labor to plant them in the ruins of the first
grove. The irony wasn’t lost on Martise.

Silhara sat down next to her, his upper lip
curled into a sneer as he contemplated one of the oranges by his
plate. “These aren’t even half as sweet as the ones I grew, and the
flesh is dry. Eridici Halt is skiving me into penury with these
things. I can’t wait until we see the first fruit from Neith’s
trees.”

Martise poured tea into his cup. “You’ll still
hate them, sweet or not.” An orange grower he was, but Silhara
loathed their taste. He ate them anyway in an act of defiance
against an inner demon that refused to fade from memory.

“
Aye, I will, but at least they’ll
be mine to hate, and I won’t be paying good coin for inferior
produce.” He tossed one of the oranges back to Gurn and set to
peeling the one he kept. “One of these days I’m going to kill you,”
he told the giant in mild tones.

Gurn sipped his tea and gave a scornful chuff.
Martise grinned. During the many years Gurn had served Silhara,
he’d likely heard that threat more times than he could count and
considered it with all the seriousness it deserved.

The servant did question them about their grim
arrival, and his countenance grew darker as Martise recounted the
events in the wood. He signed to Silhara who shrugged in
reply.

“
It’s just a ruin choked with ivy.
I’ve no idea what drew the entity.” He forked one of the cooked
mushrooms Martise had gathered into his mouth and chewed before
continuing. “I’ve searched every temple and rubble heap in that
forest. Not even a hint of magic until now.”

Martise avoided looking at him for fear of
Gurn seeing the silent message passed between them—that her Gift,
reawakened, had somehow drawn the intruder. Silhara had been
insistent for his own safety and hers, that Gurn remain ignorant of
her particular Gift even when they thought it obliterated in
Corruption’s defeat. He’d only witnessed the aftermath of the
battle and never saw Martise’s role in helping Silhara destroy the
god.

The mute servant was perceptive. He likely
guessed long ago that Martise’s Gift had somehow manifested, but if
neither she nor Silhara spoke of it, no forced seer bonding by
Conclave could make Gurn reveal that which he didn’t know. She
didn’t want to tempt him into asking the wrong questions because of
glances she exchanged with Silhara. While the mage might lie as
easily as he breathed, she’d find it difficult, especially to
someone she considered a valued friend.

Gurn turned his gaze to Cael who stretched out
by the door that opened to the bailey. The dog rested his head on
his paws, a faint reddish glow still lingering in his eyes. The
servant signed even faster, shoulders hunched and features pinched
into worried folds and lines.

Martise held up her hands. “Oh trust me. I
have no intention of going anywhere near that place. One scare per
morning is more than enough excitement for me.” She pushed her
portion of the parasol mushrooms around her plate. She liked the
delicacy well enough, but after her earlier struggle with the
temple’s visitor, she’d lost her taste for them and slid the plate
to Silhara to finish.

His free hand trailed the length of her back
in a comforting touch. “As soon as I’m done here, I’ll return to
the temple.”

“
But you already put up
wards.”

“
I just want to take a second
look. See if there’s something I missed. If not in the temple
itself, then around it. I’ll take Cael with me.” He downed his tea
and made to rise.

Martise caught his hand to stop him. “Please
be careful.” Silhara’s seer bonding and the merging of his Gift
with hers had cleansed her of most of the entity’s taint, but a
little still lingered in her nostrils—dark sorcery and
madness.

His lips were soft on hers before he
straightened and left the table. His faint smile belied the cold
gleam in his eyes. “I’ll be the most dangerous thing in the wood.
Whatever might linger there will regret trying with me what it
tried with you.”

He left for the temple with Cael in tow while
Martise helped Gurn scrub pots and dishes and carry firewood into
the kitchen. She didn’t argue when he shooed her off afterwards,
eager to ransack Neith’s extensive library for any information that
might give a clue about her would-be abductor.

Without the heat of a hearth to warm it, the
library was colder than a tomb. Martise had wrapped in her cloak
and slipped on gloves before leaving the kitchen, but she still
shivered in the room’s vast space. Her breath fogged in front of
her, and a thin layer of ice painted the windows, obscuring the
landscape.

She had lived at Neith first as both
apprentice and spy and then wife to the man she’d come to betray.
In that time, she’d only explored a fraction of the books and
scrolls stored in the library. Conclave’s own library was
considered a wonder of the known world, and as a novitiate, Martise
had spent many hours researching, learning and receiving lessons
from the priests. They were the stolen moments she held dear of her
time with the priesthood, but nothing compared to her joy in
digging freely through this treasure trove of knowledge. Somewhere
in here lay clues to the entity who had tried first by coaxing, and
then by force, to bring her into the temple with him.

Dust billowed in clouds around her as she
removed a selection of tomes and scrolls from the various shelves
and took up her favorite spot to study the words written by scribes
and mages long passed.

The tallow candle she lit swirled tendrils of
pungent black smoke in the air but did an adequate job of
illuminating the faded script on yellowed parchment. Martise
scratched out notes with her quill on her own stack of parchment.
Words spoken in eerie intonations seemed less obscure once she
wrote them down.

Kashaptu, mi peti
babka.

Only one of the words seemed vaguely familiar,
and then just a portion of it. Martise returned to the shelves,
pulling out books until she found two she wanted. All words had
roots, foundations upon which languages were built and transformed.
The scribes of Conclave always taught that first to the novitiates,
a way to grasp all languages and spells, even if it wasn’t the
student’s mother tongue. Martise put that training to
use.

The Makkadians were not known for great magic,
but they were famous as beast masters. Raptors, bears, big
cats—trained and put to use in matters of war and pageantry for any
kingdom willing to pay the price for their expertise in
beast-charming. The Makkadians were especially famous for breeding
and training magefinders and called them
kashkuli
—witch
hunters.

Martise prayed the path she followed in this
research was the right one. If not, then she was about to waste
hours of time trying to decipher the strange words whose echo still
sent chills down her spine.

The ringing of the kitchen bell signaled lunch
a few hours later, and she left the library, frozen to the bone,
fingers stiff from the cold and copious amounts of note-taking.
Silhara and Cael strode through the bailey door just as Gurn set a
much welcomed bowl of hot stew in front of her.