The Dark Remains (16 page)

“No, it is not Tome,” Falken said. “It is a god of Tarras she weeps for.”

Aryn fought for understanding. “But Mandu is the Everdying. Will he not simply rise again?”

“It’s not Mandu either,” Lirith said in a clipped voice.

Aryn looked to the witch, then to Falken. At last the bard spoke in a grim voice.

“A god is dead.”

Aryn listened in growing shock as Falken told her what he had already explained to Lirith and Durge. That morning, just before dawn, Melia had awakened with a scream, and Falken had rushed to her side.
He is gone!
she had cried.
I can feel it—like a wound filled with nothing!
Before she was consumed by her grief, Falken had managed to get a few words from her. The god’s name was Ondo, and he was a minor deity of Tarras—not one of the Seven who were worshiped in the Dominions. Ondo had been revered primarily by the Tarrasian guild of goldsmiths.

“I still don’t understand,” Durge said, stroking his mustaches repeatedly. “To be sure, I know scant of the ways of gods, and what I do know holds little logic. Yet I
have heard the gods are immortal. So how then can a god die?”

Falken opened his mouth, but it was another who answered.

“Because he was murdered.”

As one, they turned and stared. Melia stretched her legs downward, until her small, bare feet touched the carpet. Her coppery cheeks were still stained by tears, and her hair was wild with snarls, but her eyes shone with a fierce light.

“I have spoken with my brothers and sisters in the south,” she said. “And they tell me that Ondo was murdered. More than murdered. There is no trace left of him. He has been utterly destroyed.” Now sorrow returned to her visage, mingled with fury. “Poor Ondo. He was far from perfection, but he harmed no one. He wished only to play with his gold.”

Aryn still struggled to comprehend. “But who would have the power to murder a god?”

Melia clenched a hand. “That is what I intend to find out. Ever has there been competition and plotting among the gods of Tarras. Some gain in position, others lose—that has always been the way. But never, in all the eons since the founding of Tarras, has one god directly harmed another. And it is not just the gods. Worshipers have been murdered as well, and not only those of Ondo. Blood flows in the temples of Tarras.” Melia hugged her fist to her chest, her eyes growing distant with thought. “Yet if there is a pattern to it all, none of us can see it. All my brothers and sisters are afraid.”

Aryn had never imagined that a god could be afraid. But then, she had never imagined that a god could be killed, either.

Lirith tightened her arms over the bodice of her gown. “None of this makes sense. How can everything just unravel like this?”

Aryn glanced at her. There seemed more to the witch’s words than just a comment on Melia’s news. Was there something else Lirith knew?

Melia smoothed her hair back over her shoulders. “One thing is certain—something has changed in Tarras. And I intend to find out what it is.”

“What do you mean?” Falken said, raising an eyebrow.

Melia regarded the bard, her expression resolute. “I leave for Tarras at once. If you would come with me, Falken, I should be glad.”

The bard opened his mouth to answer, but at that moment a shrill scream sounded—muffled but distinct—through the chamber’s door.

The five exchanged startled glances, then they were moving. Durge led the way, flinging open the door and charging down the corridor even as a second scream rang out. The others ran after, hard pressed to keep up with the Embarran’s sturdy legs. The corridor widened into a larger space—the castle’s lesser hall, where some of the smaller feasts and revels were held.

The source of the screams was plain to see. Elthre the serving maid crouched in the center of the hall, hands to her cheeks, a tray of smashed crockery on the floor. She gazed up, her eyes circles of horror. A gasp escaped Lirith, and Falken let out a low oath.

A gangly form clad in green dangled from one of the hall’s high galleries, bells jangling dissonantly as he swung back and forth.

Lirith moved to the serving maid to comfort her. Aryn clamped a hand to her mouth, lest she scream like Elthre had. A length of cloth had been wrapped around Master Tharkis’s neck—one of the dozen green-and-yellow banners of Toloria that hung from the hall’s galleries—and it was by this he had been hanged. His bony limbs jutted at odd angles, and his teeth were bared in what seemed a mad grin, as if he had been frozen in the act of one last jest. However, the illusion was dispelled by the crimson
streams that still seeped from the two empty pits where his crossed eyes had been.

A sigh escaped Melia. “Poor Tharkis. This was not the end he deserved. But how can this be?”

“It is clear enough from the evidence,” Durge rumbled. “The fool could stand his madness no longer. He gouged out his own eyes and hanged himself from the gallery.”

Aryn shuddered. She remembered what Tharkis had said to her only minutes ago, about the eyes who saw everything.

I have seen things as well …

Tharkis had seemed so terrified. At the time she hadn’t understood. Maybe now it made sense. She started to speak, knowing she had to tell the others of her encounter, but Falken spoke first.

“Are you so certain of your judgment, Durge?”

The knight scowled. “What do you mean?”

Falken pointed upward with his black-gloved hand. “If Tharkis plucked out his own eyes, why is there no blood on his hands?”

The moon sailed through a sea of silver clouds. Below, deep green shadows filled the garden, and a cool wind slipped among the branches, like a voice whispering forgotten secrets. Midnight had come and gone.

The wind faded, and for a time the garden was still. Then the shadows parted, and a figure stepped through. Pale moonlight washed her red-gold hair to steel as she turned her head from side to side, searching. She hugged her heavy cape around her. While the days were warm still, the nights were already growing chilly. But then, she
knew it was not only the night that made her shiver, but also the one she sought.

“Show yourself, blast you,” she muttered. “Must you play these games, even now?”

A patch of darkness separated itself from a tree and drifted forward. The woman clutched a hand to her breast, a gasp frozen in her lungs.

“What is the matter, sister?” a shimmering voice said. “Did I startle you?”

Anger replaced fear as the woman regained her breath. “Of course you startled me, Shemal, as was surely your intent.”

The shadow drifted closer, resolving itself into a slender, feminine figure. Here and there a shard of ice-white skin glinted in the moonlight, but for the most part the night cloaked her. A fragment of a mouth turned upward in a smile.

“Why be so cross with me, dearest? Did not all go exactly as I said it would?”

The woman tightened her fingers on her cape. “I still do not see why she should remain Matron.”

“Tut, tut,” the other clucked. “Do not be too greedy too quickly, sister. A greater change takes greater time. Now what of the others—that shambling corpse of a bard and the amber-eyed bitch from the south?”

The woman smiled despite her anger. “They are leaving Ar-tolor. I understand she has received ill news from Tarras. She leaves on the morrow, and he will go with her.”

“Excellent,” the shadow said. “I do loathe it when she is near, for I must take care she does not sense my presence. Limited as she is, she has abilities that must not be underestimated. It is well they are leaving. Yet they must be watched.”

“How?”

“Are not two of your sisters their companions?”

The golden-haired woman curled her lip. “Yes, but
they can hardly be trusted. They were among those who came last to the Pattern.”

“And yet come to it they did,” the other snapped, “and they are bound to the Pattern even as you are. It is they who must go, for they are close to Melindora Nightsilver and Falken Blackhand. And to
him
as well.”

She breathed the word without thinking. “Runebreaker.”

The other was staring at her from the darkness; she caught a glint of a hard, colorless eye. She shivered again. How she hated this damp air.

“I do not understand,” the woman said. “If they are close to him, will not they betray us for him in the end?”

Cruel laughter drifted on the air. “It seems you have much yet to learn, sister. One cannot betray those whom one despises. One can only betray those whom one loves.”

The woman nodded, although she was less than convinced. All the same, she could see no other way. “And how am I to assure they accompany Nightsilver and Blackhand?”

“Bid your dear Matron send them. She cannot refuse your advice—not now.”

The woman smiled. It was true. Ivalaine would have to listen to her; the Pattern required it. There was only one last, small matter. “What of the boy?” she said.

She could not see, but somehow she sensed a smile within the shadows. “Concern yourself not with the boy. I will watch over him myself. And when the time is right, I shall make myself known to him.”

“And then what?”

“And then he will lead us in our battle against the Warriors of Vathris, and with him before us we will crush them all.” A slender hand clenched into a fist. “So is his destiny—a male witch, first in a century, full-blooded in his power as any of your sisters. More so, in fact, save one. And I do not mean you, sister.”

The woman winced, then let the slight pass. It was not
from her ability with the Touch that her power and position came, she knew that well enough and had accepted it. Warmth replaced the coldness in her. It was happening then. After so many years of whispers and promises, of waiting on the edges while others stood in the center, it was truly happening.

“I will leave you then,” the woman said, only too happy to be done with this conversation. She knew she needed Shemal, but she did not like her. From the first, she had always come in shadows.

“Wait,” the other said. “There is something else. I have felt something … strange of late. A weakness in the fabric that binds all things together. Have you sensed it?”

The woman frowned, shaking her head.

“But I am foolish to have asked you,” the other said. “Of course, your power is far too weak. Yet if you learn anything, you will tell me.”

“Of course,” she said, but once again annoyance rose in her. Why must Shemal always mock her ability with the Touch? That one-armed runt was said to be the strongest of them all, and what good did it do her, the pathetic little thing? There were other, better sorts of power.

The air was paling to silver. The darkness receded; it was nearly dawn.

“I must go now,” the one cloaked in shadows said.

“When will we speak again?”

“Soon.”

There was a faint rustling, then the woman knew she was alone. She turned and walked from the garden. By the time she reached the entrance of the main keep, the sun was just cresting the horizon. A guardsman nodded to her as she approached the doors.

“Good morning, my lady,” he said. “Were you out for an early stroll? It’s a beautiful morning—full of promise.”

A smile touched her lips. “Yes,” Liendra said as she stepped through the castle doors. “It is.”

Dr. Grace Beckett drifted like a ghost through the antiseptic corridors of Denver Memorial Hospital and prayed to the gods of another world that no one would recognize her. If anyone saw her—anyone who remembered her face, or the events of last October—then this would be over in an instant.

She tugged at the too-short white coat she had pilfered from the Emergency Department locker room, hoping it covered her shabby jeans and thrift-store sweater. Maybe tall and bony worked for supermodels and actresses, but right now Grace wanted to do anything but stand out. She had found a broken stethoscope tossed on a shelf and looped it over her neck. It would do as long as no one asked her for a consult on a rattling lung.

She punched a red button and slipped through a pair of stainless-steel doors as they
whooshed
open, into a pastel peach hallway. The sound of respirators whirred on the air like the wingbeats of vultures.
Hold on, Beltan. I’m coming
. But the words were pointless. Even if she could have sent them along the spindly, sooty tatters of the Weirding that existed in this city, he couldn’t possibly have heard them.

A pair of smooth-faced young men in khakis and short white coats appeared from around a corner. Grace stiffened, then relaxed. First-year interns—their too-tight neckties were dead giveaways. No doubt both of them were fresh out of medical school that spring. Which meant
they were new enough not to know all the residents at the hospital yet.

They fumbled their hellos. Grace gave them a clipped nod in return—no intern would believe a friendly smile from a resident they didn’t know—then pushed on past. Only as she turned a corner did she let herself breathe again.

This is idiotic, Doctor. You know there’s been no change in his condition—Travis was here just this morning. Beltan is still in a coma, and all you’re going to accomplish with this stunt is to get yourself caught. What are you going to tell Travis when you have to use your one phone call at the Denver police station to talk to him?