The Name Of The Sword (Book 4) (9 page)

“Wah . . . wah . . . what’s going on? What’s wrong?”

“We’re going to see the Benesh’ere.”

••••

JohnEngine stubbornly refused to take Nicki to the Benesh’ere camp. But then she told him about the dream, about Rat, and about how she’d gone to sleep clutching his knife to her breast—and awakened without it. JohnEngine insisted on searching her room, and after finding no knife he demanded, “Are you sure you brought it?”

“Of course, I’m sure,” she said. “I’m not delusional.”

He gave her a look that said he wasn’t so sure about that, but he relented.

While JohnEngine returned to his room to dress she threw on the riding clothes she’d worn the day before. She retrieved a few charms she had prepared in advance, most importantly the truth charm. It wouldn’t work well on a clansman with any reasonable skill at the arcane arts, but the Benesh’ere had no such defenses. She met John in the hall and they headed for the stables.

He and Nicki and their escort of armsmen rode out to the Benesh’ere encampment. The whitefaces were all about, in the town, between the town and their camp, in the forests around Norlakton. And they had posted no sentries, at least none that were apparent to her. But there came a moment when they crossed some invisible line, and they both felt a level of tension in the air that had not been there an instant before.

A tall whiteface carrying an unstrung bow stepped in front of their horses and said, “Good day, plainfaces. What brings you to our camp?”

Nicki thought she recognized the man, as if they’d met before. But that couldn’t be, for this was the first Benesh’ere she’d ever faced. She reached into a pocket and triggered the truth charm.

JohnEngine said, “I am JohnEngine et Elhiyne, son of Roland and AnnaRail, grandson of Olivia, and this is my sister NickoLot. We are seeking news of our dead brother, who was named AethonLaw et Elhiyne. But you might have known him as Morgin.”

“Dead, huh?” the fellow asked.

Nicki said, “Yes. I felt him die, but he wasn’t among us when it happened so we don’t know what befell him.”

The Benesh’ere shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

The truth charm tingled in the recesses of Nicki’s soul. She leaned toward JohnEngine, leaned close enough to almost touch her lips to his ear, and whispered, “He’s lying.”

JohnEngine asked, “And may I have your name?”

The man smiled in a rather friendly way. “I’m Jack the Only.”

“Well, Jack the Only,” JohnEngine said. “Why do you lie to us?”

The man looked back and forth between John and Nicki. “Why do you assume I’m lying?”

“I don’t assume. I know, because my sister here is a powerful witch, and she knows when a man lies.”

The whiteface’s eyes narrowed as he looked at NickoLot. “Are you practicing magic?”

Her patience had evaporated. “Of course I’m practicing magic. I practice magic as naturally as you breathe.”

“I’ve met a lot of men that stopped breathing, even helped a few get there.”

“And I’ve helped a few get there with my magic.”

The whiteface threw back his head and roared with laughter.

Nicki added, “We’re here because we loved our brother and we want to know what happened to him. Please help us.”

The whiteface’s laughter died. “And you have a temper just like your brother. Come, follow me.” He nodded toward their escort. “But leave them behind.”

The tall whiteface spun on his heel and marched toward the center of the camp. JohnEngine hurriedly ordered their escort to dismount and remain at the edge of the camp, then he and Nicki spurred their horses into a walk and followed.

Jack the Only led them to a large pavilion, stopped outside it and called, “Harriok. Branaugh. It’s Jack. I have two plainface guests. May I enter?”

They waited in silence for several heartbeats, then the tent flap was thrown aside and a young woman stepped out. She wore an ankle length, hooded robe, not the sand colored breeches and knee-high boots most common among the whitefaces. She was pretty in a plain and simple way, but she carried herself with an air of rank and authority that would have stood out even on the plainest of women.

“Who are they?” she asked.

Jack glanced over his shoulder at them as he said, “They claim to be the brother and sister of some plainface named Morgin. They say their names are JohnEngine and NickoLot. They
say
all that, but who knows.”

The woman nodded and looked at them as if trying to determine the truth of their claim. “Do they now?”

“And they say he’s dead.”

She paused for a moment, still staring at them, then said. “Get the others.”

Jack turned and walked away.

The woman said, “I am Branaugh. Please join me in my home.”

She called a young girl named Yim to see to their horses, and they entered the dark interior of the tent. She had them sit on cushions and served them tea, and NickoLot was about to broach the subject of Morgin and Rhianne when the tent flap was again thrown aside. A young man stepped in and introduced himself as Harriok. Like Jack, there was something strangely familiar about him.

Before Harriok could sit down a crippled old man with snow-white hair entered the tent. He supported himself on one side with a crutch, and on the other by leaning on a middle-aged woman. Olivia had described Angerah to her many times, so NickoLot didn’t need to be told that the leader of the Black Tribe had joined them.

Angerah sat down on a cushion and said, “How do we know you are truly who you claim? Tell us of this supposed brother of yours.”

JohnEngine gave a physical description of Morgin while a steady stream of whitefaces entered the tent, each interrupting him briefly while introductions were made.

Their warmaster Jerst said, “Yes, yes, yes. Anyone can tell us what he looked like. Prove to us you were his kin.”

Nicki said, “He killed a lot of men and Kulls in the last few years, but he didn’t like killing, hated it, in fact.” She told them of the battle in the sanctum when the two of them had fought the Tulalane, and Morgin had killed the twoname. While she spoke more whitefaces arrived and it grew rather crowded.

Jack said, “I believe them.”

Jerst’s daughter Blesset said, “I don’t. Anyone smart and clever could have learned these things about him.”

Nicki hadn’t paid much attention to the girl when she’d arrived, just one among many in the shadowy interior of the tent. But as the whitefaces argued about whether they could believe the claims of the two plainfaces, she looked at the girl more closely. Like Jack and Harriok she felt she should recognize the young woman. And then it hit her like a clap of thunder: Blesset was the whiteface girl who had accompanied Morgin out on the sands in Nicki’s prescient vision. And with that, she realized Jack and Harriok were the other two.

In the midst of the heated argument, JohnEngine and NickoLot were, for all intents and purposes, ignored by their hosts. As Nicki tried desperately to understand her vision, someone from outside threw the tent flap aside, though when no one entered and it settled back into place, she assumed it had been just a gust of wind. But JohnEngine looked up and frowned, though there was nothing there to look at, or to cause one to frown. Then he stood, and still looking at nothing he said, “Old sir, please take my seat.”

A strange disembodied voice cackled and laughed. “Why thank you, young man.”

The room went completely silent. Someone said, “Toke, is that you?”

“Aye,” the disembodied voice said. “And this young fellow is kind enough to offer his seat to an old man.”

NickoLot watched JohnEngine’s cushion compress as something she could not see sat down where only the moment before he had been seated. Then the strange disembodied voice said, “Well, I guess we have our answer. It appears he can see as well as his brother. And like his brother, he sees all, and yet sees nothing.”

9
Unwelcome Visitor

“Stop, dammit,” Morgin shouted at Mortiss.

This time she complied. She simply came to a stop in the middle of the forest and stood there without moving, almost throwing him from the saddle. She didn’t even snort some nasty remark.

With his hands tied behind his back it was awkward getting out of the saddle. He had to throw his right leg over the saddle horn, pull his left foot out of the stirrup and slide off. He landed off balance, and fell to his face in the dirt and leaves of the forest floor. He lay there for a moment panting.

Dusk was quickly turning into night, and Morgin wanted to have his hands free by nightfall. But how?

He rolled onto his side, got one knee beneath him, and grunting and swearing he made it to his knees. More grunting and swearing got him to his feet.

He had a knife stowed in one of Mortiss’ saddlebags. Using his teeth, he managed to untie the laces on the saddlebag, but couldn’t get to the knife. He tried everything, even tried using his teeth to pull the saddlebags off Mortiss’ back, but they were too tightly secured.

He gave up on that and stepped back from the horse. An idea occurred to him. “Do you think you could chew through the ropes with your teeth?”

She neighed,
Don’t be ridiculous.

With darkness fully upon him he curled up on the ground and closed his eyes. Sleep eluded him for a time, but then exhaustion pushed him over the edge and he slid into a restless slumber.

••••

Morgin dreamt of Rat. Somehow the filthy child had found his sheathed sword and dragged it behind him on a barren plane of emptiness and misery. Morgin ran after him trying to catch up, but running was awkward with his hands bound behind him.

He stopped and shouted, “Rat, wait.”

The creature stopped, turned about and looked Morgin over carefully from a safe distance.

“It’s me,” Morgin said, and he tried to say his name but he couldn’t speak it.

Rat circled him like an animal trying to determine if it faced a large predator. Then he slowly approached Morgin, stopped two paces away, and reached into the filthy rags he wore. When his hand emerged it held a wicked little knife, and Morgin stepped back a pace.

Rat stepped forward, and Morgin hesitated. He recognized that knife, remembered trying to cut a purse with it so long ago.

“Turn around,” Rat said in a barely understandable grunt.

Morgin didn’t want to turn his back on this thing from his past, not while it held such a weapon. But then he realized he really had no choice in the matter, so he turned about and waited for whatever would happen.

••••

JohnEngine cringed as every whiteface in the tent shouted at once. For some reason the old man’s cryptic statement about
seeing all and yet seeing nothing
drew a strong reaction from everyone. Even NickoLot appeared stunned, gaping at him with her eyes wide and mouth open.

Standing in the midst of a lot of shouting Benesh’ere, JohnEngine felt rather exposed. He didn’t understand why they had turned so angry, knew that if their anger drove them to violence, he and Nicki stood no chance. He looked again at the old man seated on the cushion he’d occupied only a moment before.

Like most Benesh’ere men and women, this fellow they called Toke wore loose-fitting, sand-colored breeches made of a coarse cloth and tucked into knee-high boots. He also wore a knee-length robe made of the same material, gathered at the waist with a belt of intricately woven cord and strips of leather. His hair had long since turned a white to match that of his skin, and while the top of his head was bald and shiny, a thick mane of it still grew out of the sides and back of his skull to cascade down over his shoulders. He looked up at JohnEngine and smiled, though like one of Olivia’s fearsome grins it didn’t bring him any comfort.

Angerah bellowed, “Will everyone please shut up?” The many arguments in the tent died slowly, and when silence ensued Angerah asked, “You see Toke?”

JohnEngine looked down at the old man and asked, “I assume your name is Toke?”

“Aye,” the old man said.

“What am I missing here?” he asked the fellow.

“John,” NickoLot said. “I see no one sitting before you, merely an empty space where you were sitting, though I do see a depression in the cushion as if someone is sitting there.”

Toke said, “Your brother told us we could trust you two, and a few others. But we had to be certain you were who you claimed to be. Wouldn’t want to give some Decouix agent any real information.”

JohnEngine didn’t try to hide his confusion. These whitefaces were a crazy lot. “My brother was here?”

Harriok spoke up. “Yes. I saved his life and he saved mine in return.”

Jack added, “And he killed a lot of Kulls.”

“Aye,” Jerst said. “He was good at that. He came among us, taught us a bit about steel, then left. Shame he had to die.”

The Benesh’ere turned out to be a terse lot, not very good storytellers. They told him and Nicki seemingly unrelated bits and pieces, and JohnEngine reconstructed the tale of Morgin’s time among them from that. But clearly he didn’t understand the half of it. The whitefaces didn’t know how Morgin had died. He’d left them and not returned. And they knew nothing of Rhianne.

He and Nicki shared a meal with their hosts, then Branaugh sent Yim to retrieve their horses.

JohnEngine climbed into the saddle, but while he waited for Nicki to mount, the strangest thing happened. Harriok approached him and said, “When next you see your brother, tell him we’re still waiting for him to right the seventh wrong.”

“Wait,” JohnEngine said. “You mean he’s alive.”

“No,” Harriok said, giving JohnEngine an odd look. “Of course not.”

“Then how am I going to see him again?”

Harriok didn’t answer, just shook his head, turned and walked away.

Crazy Whitefaces!
JohnEngine thought.

When next you see your brother . . .
That statement haunted him.

••••

Chrisainne lay in bed and breathed a sigh of relief as Valso withdrew from her mind. The first time he’d penetrated her thoughts that way she hadn’t known the limits of his reach. Could he actually read her mind? Could he rummage through all her memories, know her most private thoughts and desires? Since that first time she’d carefully experimented, allowed specific pieces of important information to surface in her thoughts, bits that would certainly elicit a reaction from him. Then she had held back mentioning them for a brief time, and he had not reacted. Later, when she did tell him, she got the expected response. She had concluded that for him to receive anything, she had to think words as if speaking them.

Still, it never hurt to be cautious, so when in contact with him she was careful to be certain she never allowed dangerous or incriminating thoughts to cross her mind. He was not aware of the stable boy and stable master, nor that Theandrin had somehow learned of her affair with BlakeDown, or that Theandrin was blackmailing her.

She pulled the covers up tightly around her neck and closed her eyes, confident she could control the situation.

••••

Something pulled Theandrin out of a restful sleep. Her bladder wasn’t demanding that she make a trip to the privy, and no dream or nightmare had disturbed her enough to wake her, so what had done so? The fact that she asked that question meant she hadn’t just awakened of her own accord. Something must have triggered one of her perimeter wards.

She threw back the covers, stood and pulled on a pair of slippers, then walked to the window. She unlatched and pulled back the shutters, and by the position of the moon she guessed it to be late evening, well before midnight. The night was warm and dry and quiet, and the castle about her silent. She neither saw nor heard any evidence of a disturbance that might have awakened her, and that aroused her curiosity even more.

She turned away from the window, lit a candle near her bed and pulled on a robe, then opened the door to her rooms and stepped out into the hall. Walking down the steps to the ground floor she found nothing out of the ordinary. She took a small lantern from the kitchen and used the candle to light it, then walked out into the castle yard.

A guard on the parapets saw her and called out, “Your Ladyship, is there something you need?”

“Not at the moment,” she said. “But if I do, I’ll let you know.”

She crossed the yard to the wall that surrounded the inner bailey. She’d made these rounds hundreds of times in the 30 years she’d lived in Penda, and almost didn’t need the light of the lantern to guide her, though without it she might stumble over something unseen in the dark.

She stopped at the first monitoring ward, meant to trigger and alert her should anything attempt to breach the castle walls. It had no physical manifestation in this world, and she’d designed it to be invisible to any eye but her own. Perhaps someone who rivaled her in power might detect it, but she’d been reinforcing this ward and others like it for decades, so they’d have to surpass her by a considerable amount to thwart it. And even then, she’d probably have some sense that it had been altered, no matter how slight. But to tamper with it, one would have to do so from within the castle walls, for any attempt to do so from without would trigger it immediately.

After careful examination she determined that no one had
tampered
with the ward; of that she was certain. And yet, something about it was off, like the sound of a bell with a small crack in it. She reinforced it, reset it, then moved on to the next. Through the years she had placed a total of 13 such wards so that, when triggered, she’d also know the location of the breach, and she found every one of them slightly off in that same way.

They hadn’t been triggered, and yet they would respond that way only to some penetration of the castle. But any physical breach would have triggered only those wards nearby. What would disrupt all 13 of them? And not trigger them fully?

After repairing the last of the 13, she stood staring at it and pondering that question. She concluded that the breach must not have been physical. No thief or invading army had climbed the walls to plunder her home. So what non-physical entity had done so?

She returned to her bed and lay awake into the wee hours of the morning considering that. If she modified the wards so they triggered on just
any
non-physical intrusion, they’d alert her every time someone cast a simple spell. She’d definitely modify them, but she had to be specific, and to do that she’d have to experiment; perhaps have them trigger on a non-physical intrusion by anyone not of Penda Clan. Catching this thief would take some time.

••••

Rhianne stood at the window in her parlor and pondered again the events in her dreams, which had grown less dreamlike each time she returned there, and now had the look and feel of their own separate reality. She could picture Rafaellen and Kenna easily, and even recall distinguishing features among the jackal warriors. And Morgin had felt disturbingly real in her arms.

To return to the Kingdom of Dreams as frequently as possible she now took several brief naps throughout the day, along with the longer sleep at night. At first she had simply wanted to escape her own reality, to return to her dreams where she might find herself in Morgin’s arms. What difference did it make? Morgin was dead, and being Valso’s prisoner didn’t bode well for her own longevity. So what did it matter if she enjoyed a few moments of pleasure before Valso took her life as well. But somewhere, in the middle of one of those dreams, it had all become too real. She couldn’t recall the specific moment, but at some point she had come to believe in her heart that Morgin lived, that he had somehow departed the Mortal Plane without dying, and made his way to the Kingdom of Dreams. Funny, how her heart had come to realize the truth while her mind still consciously denied it. And now that she knew for a certainty that Morgin lived, she had to think of some way to help him. She had a unique ability to slip back and forth between this world and that of the Kingdom of Dreams, and she must now think of some way to use that to his advantage.

She recalled that moment when she’d first seen him on that shelf of rock in the side of Attunhigh, shortly before Salula killed him. He’d been struggling to lift a heavy stone, with his sword leaning against a boulder far to one side. She’d been following the nether scent of that cursed blade and its power, and that sense pointed not at the steel sword lying to one side, but at the man grunting with effort to lift the stone. The blade had been benign, lifeless, powerless, while the malevolent power she sensed had drawn her to the man. Had she been following the man and not the blade?

It struck her what a danger she posed for Morgin. Only she knew he still lived; even Valso believed him dead. So she must guard her tongue in the most diligent fashion, for if she slipped up, and gave Valso even a hint that Morgin had survived Salula’s attack, it would be as if her own hand wielded the knife that struck him down.

“Milady?”

Rhianne turned to find Geanna standing just within the threshold of the room. “Yes?”

“There is a young woman who wishes to speak with you, a Vodah girl named Xenya. Shall I show her in?”

The nobility of the Greater Clans had been conspicuously absent during her captivity in Durin. She had spied them occasionally from a distance, but they had avoided her so far. She couldn’t blame them; she had no illusions as to what her ultimate fate would be in Valso’s hands. And if
she
had been a noblewoman from any of the Greater Clans, she too would fear the dangers of associating with one of Valso’s enemies. So Rhianne thought it odd that one now wished to see her. “Yes, let’s find out what she wants.”

Geanna’s eyes narrowed with disapproval. For some reason she thought Rhianne should refuse to see the young woman, but a mere handmaiden dare not argue the point.

When Xenya et Vodah entered the room she stopped a few paces short of Rhianne, curtsied deeply and bowed her head. “Your Ladyship,” she said. “Thank you for seeing me.”