The SteelMaster of Indwallin, Book 2 of The Gods Within (16 page)

“No,” Morgin said, and he pointed a finger at her. “It is you who are the witch, and you don’t know it, and you don’t know how to deal with it, and that’s why you’re sick.”

“I’m not sick.” She looked at the guards. “Kill him. Now.”

“If you do that,” Morgin said calmly, “then you’ll lose the one thing you want more dearly than anything else in this world.”

“I want for nothing.”

“Ah, but you do, and like your magic you don’t know what you want, nor even that you want it.”

“Well then,” she growled. “If you’re so smart, tell me what I want so dearly.”

Morgin closed his eyes, remembered when his magic had first come upon him fully, and how, untrained for it, he had been tormented for days and nights on end. There had been just one thing he had wanted, and he’d felt that if he got that one thing, then he would have the strength to handle all the rest. He spoke softly, and carefully. “You want a descent night’s sleep.”

Aiergain gasped, stepped back as if she’d been slapped.

“You want rest, release from the strain and pressure that’s forever pulling at your soul. And I can tell you how to get it.”

She looked at him angrily but said nothing, waiting for him to speak further.

“Do what I say,” he said softly. “Speak the words I want you to speak, think the thoughts I want you to think, do that for just one minute, and I’ll give you the first descent night’s sleep you’ve had in months.”

Aiergain shook for a moment, and a dark cloud of hatred passed behind her eyes, but then she calmed. “Very well. I will do what you want, for just one minute.” She extended her hand out toward him with her palm open, then slowly closed her fingers as if crushing his heart in her fist. “But if you’re lying, if you’re deceiving me, you will die the slowest and most painful death I can devise.”

Morgin had them clear the hall, though Aiergain instructed her guards to burst in the instant they heard her shout. Morgin then sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the large hall and instructed her to sit likewise opposite him. Reluctantly and distrustfully she did so.

“Now,” Morgin said. “Give me your hands.” He extended his and she unhappily took them.

“Close your eyes and try to empty your mind.” Morgin thought of AnnaRail, and how she’d done exactly the same thing with him. He tried to remember every word she’d said, every action she’d made, and he tried to imitate her. “Now repeat after me.”

He dug deep within his soul to find the word, a word completely incomprehensible to him, a word that only took on meaning when his magic came upon him, and so a word he would never again understand. He searched his memory hard, and he did find the word, and he spoke it, and then it left him as if it had never been uttered.

Aiergain repeated the word, but on her lips it rang a bell of meaning and pleasure, not merely die upon the air.

Morgin struggled to find the next word, brought it forth, spoke it, listened to Aiergain repeat it. If Aiergain responded as he had, then she’d be well into the spell before she realized what was happening to her. One by one he brought forth the words of the spell and asked Aiergain to speak them, and from a distance he saw the spell building about her. Then at the right moment he had her speak the final phrase.

She collapsed, would have fallen backward had he not been holding her hands. He lowered her gently to the floor, then stood and lifted her in his arms. He pounded on the doors of the hall with his foot. The guards opened them instantly and their eyes filled with fear.

“She’s just sleeping,” Morgin said. “Lead me to her apartments.”

Her ladies wanted Morgin to leave her so they could dress her properly for bed, but Morgin wouldn’t let them touch her. He laid her on top of the bed, still dressed in her gowns. He called for a blanket, placed it over her, tucked it tightly about her.

Her eyes opened into slits, and he saw she was still caught within the spell. “Thank you,” she said.

He smiled at her, but as he did so something within her eyes changed and he saw a darkness from deep within her soul come boiling forth. A sudden pain stabbed at his soul. He was lifted off his feet, slammed against a wall high up near the ceiling with his feet dangling well off the floor, and powerless to defend himself against her magic, he lost consciousness.

~~~

Aiergain ran in a panic stricken rush through a horrifying forest of death and decay. She heard the howl of a pack of large beasts she was certain were hunting her, and they were catching her, and soon they would devour her. Her skirts were heavy with mud, and tangled about her ankles they hindered her constantly.

She caught a glimpse of motion far to one side, retained an image of something large and hairy. She saw another, then another, and now they no longer tried to hide themselves, but rushed at her, all fangs and muscle and bone.

And then they suddenly stopped and froze in their tracks. Large, hairy, man-like beasts, they raised their muzzles in the air and sniffed, and at what they sensed one of them let out a yelp, a frightened, terrified yip. They hesitated for a moment, then barking out their fear they turned away from her and ran, leaving her behind just when she was theirs for the taking.

There was a rustle in the dank undergrowth. She looked fearfully toward it, wondering what horrible thing could have frightened away an entire pack of such monsters. But what stepped out of the brush was a small, decrepit child, dressed in torn rags, with terrible, oozing sores on its face. And it dragged an old sheathed sword behind it, a sword too big for it to lift, and almost too big for it to drag, but it managed nevertheless.

It looked at Aiergain and croaked, “Close your eyes and we’ll leave this place.”

“Where will we go?” she asked.

“A place you’ll like it much better than this. We’re going to go see Erithnae and the Unnamed King. You’ll like them. I do.”

~~~

Morddon returned to Kathbeyanne on a stretcher. He had a broken arm and several broken ribs, a serious concussion and a number of bad cuts and bruises. He was part of a train of carts and wagons carrying wounded back to the city, and they were still a few days out of Kathbeyanne when a messenger arrived with joyful news. SheelThane, the griffin queen, had escaped from captivity in the netherworld. After twelve hundred years the House of the Thane was again whole, and the entire city was rejoicing, though the man had no information on how she’d escaped, and in fact rumor had it she refused to speak of the matter entirely.

The griffin that found Morddon at the base of the cliff stayed curiously close to him. His name was TearThane, and Morddon often found him staring silently at the scar on his cheek. Then at the oddest of moments TearThane would ask, “Where did you get that scar?”

Morddon would growl, “I don’t remember. Now leave me alone.” By the time they reached Kathbeyanne it had become almost a ritual.

They put Morddon in a large, overcrowded hospital ward, though his wounds had begun to heal on the trip back to Kathbeyanne and he was anxious to return to his duties. Almost immediately Gilguard and AnneRhianne came to see him. “Is there anything we can bring you?” AnneRhianne asked.

“Yes,” Morddon snarled. “Some peace and quiet, and some privacy. Now go away.”

Gilguard flinched angrily, but AnneRhianne stayed his hand. “Don’t take offense,” she said to the warmaster. “That’s just his way. You must understand he feels guilty when he’s not out fighting the Goath, and it makes him somewhat surly.”

Morddon growled at her, “Don’t try to understand me, woman.”

She ignored him, continued speaking to Gilguard. “And he did save my life, and I saw a glimpse of his true nature then, a glimpse of the man he hides from us all.”

Gilguard nodded. “I owe you an apology,” he said to Morddon. “I’m told one of my warriors tried to kill you, thinking you had abandoned the Lady AnneRhianne. You must understand that facts can become garbled out there with all the fighting.”

Morddon opened his mouth with an unpleasant retort on his lips, but he forced his anger down. “Apology accepted.”

“There,” AnneRhianne said. “You see? He can be civil.”

“Bah!” Morddon growled.

AnneRhianne said, “And I owe you my thanks for saving my nephew’s life.”

Morddon didn’t want the attention that would come if they knew he had rescued SheelThane, and since WindHollow was intimately connected to that story, he denied it. “I didn’t save him. I never found him. I ran into those Kulls before I could track him down.”

“That’s not what he says, though he was sorely wounded and remembers little of what happened. But he does remember
the madman
. And he remembers the griffin Queen.”

“If he was wounded then he must have been delirious.”

AnneRhianne smiled. “Isn’t it odd that you were there when she and he were both rescued?”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

AnneRhianne chuckled. “Of course. Have it your way, my angry, bitter friend.”

AnneRhianne wanted to have him moved into the palace where she could care for him personally, but he would have nothing of that, and he was stubborn enough to keep her from having her way. She and Gilguard left him alone and he hoped he might now return to the anonymity of a common soldier, but through the rest of that day he was nagged by doubt, and for some reason he wanted to mend the rift of anger he’d put between himself and Gilguard, and he wanted to see AnneRhianne again.
It’s you
, he thought to Morgin, who was buried deep within his soul.
Your damn soft-hearted kindness is changing me.

The next morning Morddon dressed, retrieved his sword and left the hospital to report back to the barracks. “Are you well?” Metadan asked him.

“Well enough to fight,” Morddon snarled.

Metadan nodded. “SheelThane has been asking after you,” he said without elaborating further, then turned back to the business he’d been about when Morddon interrupted him. Metadan didn’t take offense just because a man chose to speak his mind, and Morddon liked that about him.

That afternoon he coaxed an angel into a workout. They went out onto the large parade ground in front of the barracks and Morddon discovered quickly he was still in no shape for swinging a sword. He decided to limit himself to a few exercises and some stretching, and learned even that was painful.

A messenger arrived from the palace. “Her Majesty’s compliments,” the messenger said to Morddon. “The queen of the House of the Thane requests your presence at your convenience.”

Morddon looked at the messenger, snarled, “Go away. I’m busy.”

“But Her Majesty—”

With almost inhuman speed Morddon put the tip of his sword at the man’s throat. “I said go away.”

The man bowed politely and left.

The next day Morddon was again out on the parade ground exercising and stretching, and pleased to find that the effort of the day before had done him some good. A messenger approached him with a slight smirk on his face. “His Majesty’s compliments,” the messenger snapped at Morddon. “The king of the House of the Thane commands your presence now.”

Morddon stopped exercising, looked at the man deliberately, angrily. The man’s self-satisfied smirk slowly disappeared. “I don’t want to see any of them halfbirds,” Morddon growled. “And I don’t want to see any more of you. Now go away.”

The messenger gulped fearfully, then hurried away.

Morddon went back to his exercises, thought he might even find that angel again and try a little sword practice. But while still stretching, bent deeply over and trying to work the kinks out of the backs of his legs, he caught one momentary glimpse of a shadow sweeping across the ground toward him, and with the instincts of a man who’d survived many a battle he dropped flat to the ground and just barely missed being gutted by steel tipped talons that sliced past him only a hair’s breadth above his back.

He jumped to his feet, spun about in time to see the back of a black griffin as it arced upward at the end of its dive, banked to one side and turned for another deadly pass. Morddon bent quickly and grabbed a hand full of dust from the ground. He waited, watching the griffin steady itself in its dive toward him, held his position until the last instant, then as the griffin swept past him jumped to one side and tossed the hand full of dust into its face.

Morddon hit the dirt in a roll, bounded to his feet in time to see the blinded griffin touch a wing tip to the ground. The halfbird crashed in a spectacular roll of feathers and wings and claws, and before it stopped tumbling Morddon sprinted after it, bounded onto its back just as it picked itself up, wrapped an arm around its neck and slammed the hilt of his sword into the back of its head. The griffin arched its back, flopped down onto its side and rolled over. As the weight of the halfbird pressed into his damaged ribs Morddon cried out, almost lost consciousness. Then the halfbird was on top of him, pinning his sword arm to the ground with one set of talons while lifting the other to rip his throat out. “Now you will pay for your insolence to the queen of the House of the Thane,” the griffin shouted at him, and its steel tipped talons descended toward his face.

Something within Morgin cried out to the steel to hold, and the halfbird froze, its talons only inches from Morddon’s throat. The sudden reprieve startled Morgin, and he wondered if his silent command to the steel had actually stopped the death strike of the griffin’s talons, but then both he and Morddon noticed the look in the griffin’s face, a look of incredulous surprise and disbelief. The griffin arched its neck forward until Morddon could smell the breath panting out of its beak. It hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Where did you get that mark on your face?”

Morddon heard other wings slicing through the air as a flock of griffins landed in a circle about them. “Hold!” TarnThane cried angrily at the griffin on top of Morddon. “Do not harm that man. I command you to stand aside.”

The griffin moved slowly, but it retracted its talons and stepped back. AnneRhianne and Gilguard stepped in and helped Morddon to his feet. Clutching his ribs he looked about carefully. He was ringed by a strange assemblage of beings: Metadan and Ellowyn, AnneRhianne and Gilguard and several other Benesh’ere men and women. But commanding the attention of everyone were the griffins: TarnThane, AuelThane, TearThane, but foremost among them SheelThane.