Brotherhood of the Wolf Part 50

"Wait!" Iome warned.

She stared up at the a.s.sa.s.sin. He looked down at her, gibbering in laughter.

She felt the Power that moved him. She'd never met a wizard of the Air.

She felt confusion around him, indecision, a great buffeting wall. The man had no mind of his own, no will of his own. He moved as the wind moved him. He gave himself to it. even further now, hoping that it would preserve him.

She felt his instability. The Air was taking him.

He was no longer human in this state, could hardly think sequentially. He was a gibbering lunatic blown by the wind. A wretched creature bereft of will. The horror of it settled into her as she realized that he wanted her to join him, to become like him.

Her dream of turning to thistledown. She remembered now that she'd dreamt it during a storm, with the wind blowing all around.

No, the wizard didn't want her to become like him. The wind did. The Powers of the Air.

Throw yourself into the sky. Let me take you away.

"So, good fellow," Iome asked in an effort to divert his attention, "do you think you can teach me to fly?"

"Fly? Sky fly? Fly. Walk like a fly? Talk like a fly. Talk to the sky? Why? Why? Does she ask why?" the a.s.sa.s.sin began to gibber. He raked his good hand nervously over the bark of the oak, and Iome was amazed at his strength, for he absentmindedly began to rip huge shreds of bark away.

Iome calmly walked her mount over to Sir Hoswell. He'd nocked another arrow but was unsure whether to shoot. His last shaft had come within an inch of skewering the Queen.

Iome licked her lips and kissed the arrow's point, shaft, and fletching, wetting it in the same way that Myrrima's arrow had been wetted when she slew the Darkling Glory.

"Shoot him now," Iome whispered.

The a.s.sa.s.sin shrieked, searched about for some means of escape. His sudden terror let her know that she had guessed right. Hoswell brought up his steel bow.

The fellow leapt into the air, and the wind shrieked around him, howling as if the wind itself were in fear. It beat his robes, so that they flapped around him like wings.

Hoswell loosed the shaft. The arrow became a dark blur and caught the a.s.sa.s.sin in the shoulder.

The a.s.sa.s.sin spun half a dozen times in the air.

Then the strange winds that held him suddenly dissipated, and his body hurtled downward as if he'd fallen from a limb. He landed with a dull thud.

But a groaning sound escaped his throat and moved off through the sky, whirling overhead, circling the great oak.

In horror Iome gazed upward.

The wizard's body might be lying at their feet, but something of him was left still: a swirling expanse of air that circled overhead and moaned of its own accord.

Hoswell dropped from his mount and rolled the corpse over. Hardly any blood flowed from the fellow. The arrow in his shoulder provided a minor flesh wound that should not have killed him.

Yet the Inkarran lay unmoving, unbreathing, his eyes staring fixedly.

We did not kill him, Iome realized Not the way that Myrrima slew the Darkling Glory. This wizard had chosen to leave his body.

Hoswell wrapped one hand around the throat of the corpse and squeezed then grabbed a handful of dirt, gouged it from the soil, and began shoving it in the dead man's mouth and nose. He glanced about fearfully as he worked.

"I've heard it said that if you disembody a Sky Lord, you should put him in the ground quickly," Hoswell said to Myrrima and Iome. "That way he can't take his body back. It's best to sew his mouth and nostrils closed, too, but a little dirt shoved up there should hold it for a while."

Iome knew little of such things. She was not a soldier of the line, had never imagined that she'd find herself battling magical creatures. Yet she had to wonder. She'd not done these things to the corpse of the Darkling Glory. Could it come back?

A strong gust of wind roared from the sky with a sound like a cry, slammed into Hoswell's back and drove him to the ground. The wizard's body suddenly bucked and heaved about as if in its death throes.

Hoswell threw a handful of soil in the air, and the magical wind whirled away in retreat. As if in frustration, it roared up into the heights of the tree and shot through the desiccated leaves, sending them raining down all around.

"Wait!" Iome said, horrified at the gruesome pains that Hoswell was going through to kill the man.

Hoswell looked up at her curiously.

"I want to know what he's after. Why did he attack us?"

"You'll not get any sane answers by questioning one of the wind-driven," Hoswell said.

"Search the body," Iome ordered.

Hoswell went through the fellow's purse, but found nothing.

Hoswell pulled off the man's right boot. His foot and calf were covered in blue tattoos, in the style of the Inkarrans, but the image there was not of the world tree, as was common, but instead bore the symbol of the winds among his family names. Iome knew a little of Inkarran glyphs, could barely read what was written there.

Hoswell scratched his jaw, studying the fellow's tattoos. "He's an Inkarran, all right. His name is Pilwyn. Zandaros is his patriarchal line, but the b.i.t.c.h who sired him is named Ya.s.saravine," Hoswell said meaningfully. He looked up into Iome's eyes.

"Ya.s.saravine coly Zandaros?" Iome asked. "The Storm King's sister?" The Storm King was perhaps the most powerful lord in all of Inkarra. Legend said that his line descended from the Sky Lords, but that his forefather had fallen from their grace.

Hoswell was telling her that this wind wizard she had at her mercy was a powerful lord in his own right.

The Inkarrans did not fight wars. Their leaders settled disputes by battling among themselves. But Inkarran methods of battle were often subtle and perverse. Seldom did two lords actually bear weapons against one another. More often, a victim might be poisoned or humiliated, or driven to madness or suicide.

As Iome considered this man's actions, she gaped in wonder.

He'd probably taken great delight in dressing as a messenger of Mystarria. He'd have enjoyed the irony of riding as a courier of the land he sought to destroy.

Iome understood that creeping sensation she'd felt when she'd touched the message case. Magical runes were written on it, written with wind. Iome had no doubt that if Gaborn had touched that message case, the "message" written there would have destroyed him.

More than that, this fellow had either sent Iome dreams to trouble her mind, or he'd peered into her dreams.

"Is this what I think it is?" she asked Hoswell "Aye, I fear so," Hoswell said. "For the first time in history, the Inkarrans have come to war against Rofehavan, milady, and they're going to teach us a whole new way to do battle."

In frustration, Iome clenched her fists and gazed up into the sky. She didn't want to kill another lord, especially not a foreign lord with family members who would seek retaliation. Why would the Inkarrans want war? She wondered if she could reason with him.

The wind was moaning around the upper branches of the tree. She called to it now. "Pilwyn coly Zandaros, speak to me."

The ma.s.s of whirling air quit thrashing through the branches, stood quivering above the tree, as if listening to her.

We have not attacked your people," Iome shouted. "Nor do we seek battle with Inkarra. We hope to be allied with you in the dark times to come."

The wind did not answer. She did not know if the Inkarran lord could speak to her in his present form. Perhaps it was too complex a task, Iome reasoned.

"Sir Hoswell, take the dirt from his mouth and nose."

"Milady?" Hoswell asked.

"Do it," she said.

Hoswell did as she commanded, but the corpse did not move. It merely lay smiling mysteriously up into the tree. Iome noted that its eyes had not glazed.

Iome rode her horse back up the road a couple of hundred yards, until she reached the leather scroll case. She dared not touch it. Instead she threw dust on it by the handfuls. For a moment two runes written there in wind whirled about, then at last dissipated, drowned in dust.

Only when they were gone did Iome open the case and read the message that fell out, scripted on yellow parchment.

Ah, to taste the lively air-- no more!

The scroll had carried a curse, then. One that would have strangled her husband, had he dared to touch the scroll case.

She ripped the paper in half and trampled the message case, then rode back to the tree. "We'll take his horse as a palfrey," she told the others. "I don't want him following us. But leave him with money and food, so that he can make his way home as best he can."

"You'll leave him alive?" Hoswell asked. He did not hide the incredulity in his voice. She was taking a dangerous risk.

"The Storm King may want to wage war against us, but we desire peace," Iome said. "Let Pilwyn coly Zandaros bear that message back to his uncle."

With that, they gathered the Inkarran's horse and left his body beneath the tree. The fellow still had not moved, had not drawn a breath. Hoswell left the arrow in his shoulder.

The three of them had not ridden more than two hundred. yards when an arrow whizzed past Iome's head.

Iome looked back. The Inkarran stood with his white hair blowing in the wind. He'd pulled the arrow from his shoulder, sent it over her head.

"Honor dictates that I repay your kindness, Your Highness," he shouted at her. "I give you your life, for mine."

Iome nodded curtly, as ladies of the court were taught to do, and said, "Let there be peace between us."

But the Inkarran shook his head. "Though the Earth King may shake his fists and cry out against it, the wind blows him war.

"There is no hope for him, or for the vast hordes of mankind. The earth powers weaken. But my offer to you stands, milady. The Storm King will offer you a haven--"

He pointed off to a distant cloud, a great c.u.mulonimbus on the horizon.

Iome turned and rode south.

CHAPTER 42.

A LORD OF THE UNDERWORLD.

The walls around Carris shuddered as the reaver horde raced from the mists.

Out in the fields before the city gates, the common troops of Indhopal ran for their lives, even as the castle guards began to crank up the drawbridge. Many of those troops sprinted up the causeway to where the drawbridge had stood open, then threw themselves into the water and swam for safety, relying upon those at the barbicans to pull them from the lake. The water became thick with splashing sounds, pleas for help, and the cries of the drowning.

Others were too slow to escape, and reavers herded them or hunted them mercilessly. To Roland's amazement, many of the men, when confronted by a reaver that blocked their way, merely fled in terror back out onto the plains, into greater danger, or lay down and huddled, afraid to even move. Thousands of men were thus stranded, cut off from Carris.

Roland clung to the castle wall. The crows and gulls all began to wing away from their roosts in the city, so that only gree filled the air, writhing like tormented things.

Nine reaver mages raced toward the castle, heads held high, staves thrust forward, as if drawn by the scent of its men. Soldiers on the walls shouted in terror.

Raj Ahten's flameweavers ran to the wall-walk above the city gates. Soldiers backed away from the flameweavers, who burst into flame and were clothed only in living fire. One flameweaver raised a hand, drew light from the sky so that for a moment he stood in gloom as sunlight whirled and funneled down into his palm.

He traced a shape in the air: A fiery rune took form before him, a magnificent green shield of living fire that glowed like the sun. The flameweaver shoved it forward. The rune floated down to the end of the causeway and hung in the air two hundred yards from the castle gates. In rapid succession, two more flameweavers did the same, and then the first flameweaver created a fourth rune.

The temperature around Carris plummeted by ten degrees as flameweavers drew heat from the sky. The cold drizzle that had been falling turned to sleet.

But within thirty seconds a wall of four fiery shields blockaded the causeway, cutting off the retreat of men, or the reavers hopes for attack.

All the while, behind the mages, the main army of reavers marched northward, as if they cared for Carris not at all.

A wild hope began to rise in Roland's chest.

We are nothing to them, he realized. Whatever the reavers intend, Carris is nothing to them.

But out on the plain, the reaver mages formed ranks, a group of nine, so that they charged over the battlefield like geese in formation, with the largest mage at their head.

No, Roland suddenly understood. We are not nothing to them. They merely think so little of us, that they only feel the need to dispatch these nine.

The leader of the nine was a huge thing, over twenty feet tall at the shoulder, with fiery runes tattooed across its entire face and along its forearms. It held its head up fearlessly and approached the causeway, its staff high. As it charged, the dull azure glow within its staff began to blush to crimson, and the rod itself began to trail black smoke.

The artillerymen cut loose with a volley of ballista bolts, the whonk, whonk, whonk sounds punctuated with shouts of "Reload!" and the cranking of gears.

At such close range, one of the artillerymen should have pierced a reaver. But mysteriously, every bolt seemed to veer wide of its mark.

Magic! Roland realized. We can't shoot them. There's no stopping them.

The great reaver mage reached the end of the causeway and halted momentarily before the green shields of flame. It moved its head this way and that, as if studying them. Then it reached out experimentally with its staff and touched the whirling green wheel of living fire.

It will dispel them, Roland imagined. The shields will collapse harmlessly.

The shields exploded with the sound of an avalanche, tearing at the castle's foundations. Roland fell backward on his b.u.t.t. Bolts of green flame slashed skyward. Hot air surged over Roland in a violent concussion, and he felt as if he were leaning over a blacksmith's forge, even though the flames were over two hundred yards off. Men nearer the inferno cried out in pain and dropped for cover.

Flames blasted Carris. The heat was so intense that the water wards oft the castle wall took effect.

A steam cloud geysered upward, surging into the air, forming a vast curtain that obscured Roland's view. Water condensed on his brow, filled his eyes, and he wiped it away with his sleeve.

Roland looked up for one heart-stopping moment and saw the most beautiful rainbow above him.