The Gambler's Fortune (Einarinn 3) (47 page)

Eresken let go his grip on Teiriol and the younger man collapsed. Eresken walked rapidly down the length of road, checking every body, even those unrecognizable lumps of charred flesh. Some lingered, clinging desperately to life despite their injuries. Eresken ruthlessly snuffed any vital spark he found; there were wounds enough to explain the deaths. No one would suspect his hand in so thorough a slaughter and most would have died anyway, without rapid aid at least.

But he still needed Teiriol, for the present. Eresken walked back to the weeping man hunched over his agony. “I must summon help,” he said breathlessly. “I must call Aritane, to bring Sheltya to save those not yet dead.”

“Not yet—” Teiriol lifted his face, incredulous hope shining through the muck and blood. Eresken seized the boy’s surge of longing, seeing Aritane pictured within his mind. He wove that pitiable yearning for home and healing into his own tight-focused appeal, masking his intent with Teiriol’s piercing need.

“You must come, my love. Come to me. We have been betrayed, murdered, slaughtered. You must come.”

Eresken tore himself away from Aritane’s frantic appeals for explanation and direction. Her talents were notable for her race, he thought, but no match for any of his clan. Still, he didn’t have much time. “What is that?” Eresken looked down the road, mouth open.

Teiriol turned his head and Eresken plunged the bitch assassin’s dagger into the base of his skull, twisting the blade to leave the young man twitching helplessly, blindly for an instant of horror before death.

Pursing his lips for a moment, Eresken released the hilt of the dagger. It could stay in the wound for someone else to remark on, another pennyweight in the scales demanding vengeance. He scrambled rapidly up the hillside to the dell where he had been attacked. That whore would pay with her own blood for the shedding of his, he promised grimly. Eresken rummaged among the crisp leaves, peering at the dart he retrieved. There was still a faint smear glistening on it, rainbow mockery as he tilted it to the sunlight. Good enough.

Eresken drove the point into the back of his hand and let himself fall gracelessly to the ground. He seized the dizziness of the drug and nurtured it, forbidding the instinct to drive it from his blood. He heard movement on the road beneath but forced himself to stay motionless. If it were passers-by, no matter. They could hardly remove the bodies before Aritane arrived and no one was going to know any truth beyond what he chose to tell them.

He relaxed into the insidious charm of the poison, mind drifting idly around a hidden tether of inmost consciousness. Aritane’s desperate thoughts brushed past, nearly missing him before horrified realization struck her. Eresken opened the surface of his thoughts to her, seemingly half insensible, coloring the sight of the corpses in his mind’s eye with Teiriol’s shame and anguish. “Beloved…” He infused that one despairing word with all the frustrated passion he sensed in Aritane, with the memory of their discreet kisses, her nervous delight at his exploration of her body, never yet satisfying her cravings, calculated to leave her always longing for more.

Now her hands were beneath his head, cradling him to the soft swell of her bosom, the galloping beat of her blood drumming in his ear, her breath rapid and ragged, hysteria threatening. Eresken warded himself discreetly from that mental turmoil but did nothing to soothe it. Opening his eyes, he let them roll upward before fixing with visible effort on her face.

“What happened?” Aritane was pale as milk, a vein throbbing at her temple.

“We came to parley, as we discussed—” Eresken coughed and tried to rise but collapsed as if the effort were beyond him. “The wizards, all we wanted was their undertaking to leave us to settle our disputes—”

“They attacked you? Under parley?” Aritane was trembling now, fury and shock rippling through her arms as she held Eresken close to her heart.

“We did not expect it.” He allowed himself to feel bemused. “Even if they did not agree, we did not expect to be assaulted.”

“What happened—”

He felt the first confusion clearing from her mind. She was wondering how he was spared when the rest were so bloodily slaughtered. Eresken thrust the image of the redheaded whore at her, no need to dissimulate as he struck her with his disbelief and outrage and the memory of poisoned darts.

“Then she was truly a spy?” cried Aritane in horror.

“Worse, she knew me.” Eresken let Aritane feel the echo of the slut’s hatred. “She was one of those who came to rob my father’s house, at the bidding of the Archmage. They kidnapped me—I feared for my life…” He let her see the little boat driven through the ocean on the glow of false magic, he let her hear the cruel jests about eating him if his captors should go hungry on the voyage. “They came for me again!” Eresken flooded Aritane’s mind with dread of retribution, hiding the fact that it was his father’s wrath he feared. The terror was real enough to make shedding a few stifled tears easy. “I could not help them, I could hear them being killed, but I could not help them.” He thrust image after image of the dying and the dead at Aritane, tainted with the dizzying seduction of the drug. She gasped and clutched him ever tighter.

Eresken could hear other voices down on the road. “Is that Bryn?”

“And Ceris,” Aritane replied. “Rest easy, my love.”

“No,” Eresken forced himself up out of her embrace. “I must help, I must see what has happened.” He got to his feet, careful to lean heavily on Aritane. This series of shocks left her ready to accept any offer of leadership, Eresken realized. Good. Now he must ensure that the rest of these half-trained hopefuls saw events as he wished. With Aritane struggling to support him, Eresken saw Bryn and Ceris walking slowly from corpse to corpse. Farther down the road were a couple more of the gray-clad fools whose names he had not bothered with.

Ceris stopped for a moment beside Teiriol’s corpse, hands going to her face as she saw the dagger in the back of his head. “Treachery! Murder! Stabbed as he tried to flee or sue for mercy!” Her thoughts may as well have been shouted aloud, weak-chinned face bloodless beneath her head of golden curls.

“We met the wizards to ask for a parley,” Eresken told them, barring his mind to their questing thoughts with a pretense of grief and pain. “We appealed to them to allow the Men of the Mountains to redress their grievances against the lowlanders in fair combat. They seemed to be listening courteously enough, so we relaxed our guard. We didn’t wish to insult them with any suggestion of mistrust. Then they attacked us; the mages turned nature itself to wreak evil upon us.” He ripped a few holes in his façade, giving them glimpses of apparent memories within.

“Tell us everything, from the beginning.” Bryn strode toward them, intent darkening his eyes.

Eresken felt the force of the man’s determination to wrest the truth from him and allowed his knees to buckle. Letting his arm slide from Aritane’s shoulder, he slumped to the ground, the woman unable to support the burden of his dead weight. “Let him be,” she snapped. “Can’t you tell? They poisoned him!”

As she pillowed his head on a bundle of her cloak and straightened his limbs with gentle hands, Eresken wrapped himself in a cocoon of deception and lurked within, listening intently. Aritane’s voice was as hard as diamond, he noted with satisfaction. The vulnerability he was exploiting remained unseen by anyone else, schooled as she was in the unflinching mask of the Sheltya.

“Look carefully, mark every death and the manner of it,” she commanded coldly. “We will let every soke know how their sons spent their lives.”

“To kill from afar and with such violence…” words failed one of the younger Sheltya, Remet. Eresken picked his name out of Aritane’s mind unnoticed, matching the voice to a face still waiting for the strength of manhood, full of youthful appeal but without substance to either wit or convictions.

“That’s what these mages do,” spat Bryn. “Why do you suppose the lowlanders drove them into the sea so many generations ago?”

“What of Jeirran and his men?” the other woman gasped. Krelia, that was her name. Eresken recalled a nervous face and hands with nails chewed to their quick, a mind worn thin by endless demands, never taking time for herself.

“Who will tell Jeirran that his sister’s brother was so foully slain?” asked Ceris of no one in particular, a sob in her voice.

“We must keep the Suratimm out of the battle,” said Bryn with grim determination. “If they are truly working with the mages of Hadrumal.”

“Of course they are! One of their spies struck down Eresken!” Aritane slapped all four with a sudden vision of the redhaired slut. “She was up in the Hachalfess trying to cozen Cullam, along with that wizard. How much more evidence do you need?”

Well-concealed satisfaction warmed Eresken. Aritane would do his work for him without need for further prompting.

“Then it is war?” Realization strengthened Remet’s voice.

“We didn’t want it and we didn’t start it but we cannot let an outrage like this go unchallenged,” Bryn answered him dubiously. “If we do, this slaughter could be visited on innocents in every soke, if lowlanders seize land with false magic at their back.”

“We should fight,” declared Aritane. “This is not just a struggle for the men of the sokes, not just a fight of swords and axes. We must support them against the false magic with every power at our command.”

So the seeds he had planted and nurtured were finally coming into bloom, Eresken thought with relief.

“Sheltya are sworn to be impartial,” Krelia whispered.

“In conflict between soke and soke, between fess and fess,” agreed Aritane. “Where is the oath binding our hands when our people are to be driven naked into the snow?”

“The Elders—” Remet choked on a strangled objection.

“I will answer to the Elders,” said Aritane defiantly. “As Sheltya loyal to no single bloodline, I must be sworn to the service of all or to none. I will either die in defense of my people, of all my people, or I will stand proud at my brother’s shoulder when he has led us to victory and I will claim him once more as kin. Let the Elders judge me then. If they condemn me, then I will go north into the ice as the Alyatimm once did and face Misaen’s judgment.”

Inarticulate protest from Bryn escaped Eresken.

“You think they did justly?” Aritane was scathing. “To exile those who would use true magic in defense of their rights? What price Misaen’s judgment now? The Alyatimm did not freeze and die, I can tell you that now. Eresken is of their blood, of their lineage. He brings word from far islands where his people live free and unchallenged. They are not afraid to use the true magic they have kept pure and strong. Even as we speak, they are defying the wizards and the Tormalins who stretch their greedy hands out over the ocean to seize yet more land.”

Curse the woman, why couldn’t she keep her foolish mouth shut? Eresken waved a feeble hand, instantly diverting Aritane.

She knelt beside him. “Are you with us?”

“Some water?” he asked breathlessly.

Bryn held a bottle to Eresken’s lips as Aritane raised his head. “So you are of Alyatimm blood?” Mistrust hovered around the edges of his mind.

Eresken gazed deep into the man’s eyes. “My forefathers’ forefathers followed the men who called themselves such and went into the ice to face the judgment of Misaen. We call ourselves Elietimm and use the powers of true magic to survive in the cold islands of the northern ocean. We are assailed by Tormalin greed backed with the false magic of Hadrumal. I came looking for allies to help save my people and I found brothers in blood whose plight echoed our own.”

Bryn nodded slowly and Eresken let fresh blood flow from his wounds to stain Aritane’s dress and hands. “We have to get him back,” she insisted.

Eresken relaxed in her embrace as the five wove power of mind over matter to carry them back to safety. Once this story was told and retold, reinforced with appropriate nudges from him, these pitiful Anyatimm would howl down from their mountains as if their forefathers had never been the cowards of legend. War in the Forest would spill out to crush the farmers of the lowlands after a few judicious incidents managed by himself. With all Tormalin eyes and arms drawn westward before the summer was out, his father could choose his moment to strike. Eresken relished reward and adulation to come, to be savored just as intensely as wrath and punishment were dreaded.

The Great West Road,

2nd of Alt-Summer

“Slow down!” I was so out of breath my desperate appeal was barely a hoarse gasp. Stopping dead, I bent to ease the catch in my side, drawing warm, sweet air deep into my lungs. Blood pounded in my head. Sorgrad realized I was no longer at his shoulder inside a few paces and halted, ’Gren doing the same. Darni slowed, red-faced and sweating like a pig. He let Usara slide from his shoulder, the wizard leaning heavily on his arm. “Saedrin’s stones but you’re heavier than you look, ’Sar!”

Usara looked pale and queasy and my stomach was still revolting from being moved about like a bird on a Raven board by Gilmarten’s magic. Never mind, we could empty our guts when we had leisure to spare. Were we pursued?

Sorgrad must have heard my thoughts; he peered back down the road. “No sign. I think we can take it a little slower.”

“Bless you,” Gilmarten struggled, chest heaving, “for that.”

I wasn’t so sure. “What about their enchanter? He could be here inside a heartbeat—they come out of the shadows like Eldritch-men!”

“He can do that wherever we are,” pointed out Sorgrad with irritating logic. “Let’s clean our blades and get our breath before the next bout.” As he spoke, he led us to a hollow where we could see the road before being seen ourselves. Sorgrad stationed himself at the edge and indicated a faint trail heading into the deeper woods. “We run that way if need be and then swing back to the road.” He began wiping the streaks of blood from his blade, emerald flies soon gathering around the enticing scent.

“I only run away from men with swords who are bigger and nastier than me,” grunted ’Gren, looking at his gory gloves with distaste.