Part 16 (2/2)

And somewhere in the Yellow City, someone-a child?-was being forced to use her magic for the petty machinations of gangsters and water bosses, when the realm and its king stood balanced on the brink of death.

Without touching the walls here-without opening her mind to whatever residue of spells had struck down Summerchild as she opened hers, without fingering the broken gla.s.s that glittered, she now saw, everywhere among the bean fields and pumpkin vines around the dead town-she could learn no more. ”We'd better go back,” she said.

As they mounted fresh horses by the little watch camp, Shaldis turned to Corporal Riis.

”I know it isn't much,” she said, ”but I promise you, I'll look at your camp-or get one of the other Raven sisters to look at it-through a mirror or a scrying crystal at sunrise, noon, and sunset. If something happens out here, something you can't cope with, tie one of your red sun veils onto a stick in the middle of the camp. I swear we'll get someone out here as swiftly as we can.”

Riis inclined his head. ”Thank you, lady.”

As Shaldis and her bodyguard trotted away from the camp in a huge cloud of amber dust, Jethan remarked quietly, ”You know that's not going to do them any good. By the look of the corpses, death took every one of those people at roughly the same time. It's a day's ride from the city. Even if you saw whatever it was, swooping down on the camp-”

”The village was taken asleep and unprepared.” She glanced sidelong at the guard. Only his eyes were visible above his veils, and there was a trace in them that could have been anger or could have been only concern. ”Riis and his men are watching for trouble.”

”Do you think that will save them?”

Shaldis was quiet for a few minutes. Then she said, ”No. But it might. I have no idea what it is that will come out of the desert, if anything. And if it truly makes no difference one way or the other, there's no harm in letting them know they're not simply being abandoned without a thought.”

”And does it help to know you're being abandoned with a thought? I'm sorry,” he added almost at once. ”You're right, of course; it is best to know that someone at least hasn't forgotten you, even if there's nothing they can do to help. Anything that even sounds like a promise raises the hair on my nape. I shouldn't have spoken.”

”You sound like you had a father like mine,” said Shaldis softly, remembering all those a.s.surances of treats, of books, of a tutor who'd teach her. And hard on the heels of memory, the thought, It wasn't his fault he never came through with them.

Jethan drew rein a little, his gaze moving unceasingly over the pale wastes of the rangeland, dyed now with the molten colors of the sky. A moment later Shaldis saw a small pack of coyote trotting toward Three Wells.

”As a child I spent a lot of time with animals,” he said, as he rode on. ”Hunting wild goats or looking after my uncle's sheep. I remember realizing very young that animals don't understand what you say, only what you do to them. And by the same token, they never tell you one thing and then do something else. If your dog loves you he lets you know it, without worrying about what you're going to do with that information later. I love that about them.”

And who told you they loved you, wondered Shaldis, and then turned around and acted only for themselves?

She didn't know how to ask. Instead she said, ”Maybe I shouldn't have spoken. Because you're right, and Riis has to have known there's nothing anyone can do. But there's something out here, something deadly.”

She turned in her saddle. The burned walls and circling vultures were no more than a dark spot in the distance, alone in the empty land.

”No argument there.” Jethan's voice was dry. ”And if someone has found a way to control the teyn, to make them attack and maneuver as an army, it's going to be more than deadly. Every village has its compound of workers, every house in the city, practically, its sweepers and water drawers. If someone can command them to kill, it will be disastrous.”

He was right, of course, thought Shaldis, reining her horse after his down the arroyo, westward toward the Lake of the Sun.

But that wasn't what she'd meant.

She didn't know what she'd meant. Again and again she paused, turning to look back at the circling vultures that marked the dead village, until even that column was lost in the vast s.p.a.ces of the oncoming desert night.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

Don't be a ninny, girl.” Red Silk's hand closed around Foxfire's arm as the girl tried to turn away-she had a grip like an eagle's claw. Chained to the post in the midst of what had been a small temple at the back of the Valley of the Hawk compound, the half-grown teyn doubled over and began to spasm in the horribly familiar convulsions of wild arum root poisoning. It was the seventh that had died that day. Like the others, even in its agony it didn't make a sound.

”If this was my father's household, we'd be using men and not teyn. I'm not sure that we shouldn't be using them as it is.” And Red Silk glanced across at Soral Brul.

”As I've said, my lady,” replied the young former Sun Mage, ”a spell that protects a teyn will usually protect a man.”

”Sun Mage spells.” She waved a dismissive hand and turned back to watch the teyn as it sank to its knees, vomiting and clawing at its belly and mouth.

Foxfire closed her eyes. I will not faint.

”According to everything in the Citadel's library, that held true for all systems of magic. Blood Mages, Earth Wizards, Pyromancers . . .”

It's only a teyn. How would I like it if it were Father? It will be if we don't find a spell that will protect against all poisons. I WILL NOT FAINT.

How can they talk so calmly while something, anything, is dying in front of them in that kind of pain?

The jangle of the chains, the sound of retches and gasps, filled Foxfire's mind and drowned her grandmother's discussion of male and female magic. The fight not to cry made her almost ill.

Seven. None of the spells Soral Brul had guided the two women through since dawn had had the slightest effect. Nor had the earth-wizard magics taught by Urnate Urla, though the bitter little man was seldom sober. Some enchantments would protect against a single poison, but it was guessed-no one knew for certain-that the Servant of Time mixed two and three poisons together in the cups that the kings found within the maze there, and there was never any telling which cup the king might drink from. The Sun Mages had always used a spell of general protection.

A spell that could not now be made to work by either a woman or a man.

Foxfire wished with everything that was in her that she knew a spell that would kill at a distance. That would end those desperate, awful noises.

Not that her grandmother would let her use one.

And since Red Silk had forced her to bind herself with her into a Sigil of Sisterhood, there was probably no way to do it secretly.

I WILL NOT FAINT.

Silence. Her grandmother said, ”Grzh,” a foul curse indeed in the language of the deep-desert nomads. Foxfire felt tears track down her face.

”Well, bring in another one.” Red Silk's voice slurred. She'd taken tiga root in brandy to work the spells on the previous two teyn, in larger and larger doses. On this last one she'd had Foxfire drink it, too. ”To open her mind,” she'd said.

Foxfire heard Soral Brul go to the door, call for Garmoth, the captain of the guards. ”Grandmother,” said Foxfire carefully, ”could we wait and start again tomorrow? I don't think I have your head for brandy. I think maybe the last one . . . didn't work”-It died! I put everything of me into protecting it and it died, it died in agony-”because I might have been dizzy from the brandy and couldn't concentrate.” Not to mention being half-crazy with tiga.

”Nonsense.” The old woman was already stirring the silver pitcher that contained the decoction of madness. ”Don't get squeamish on me, girl. I expected better of you.”

”Grandmother, please.”

Red Silk grabbed her arm again, shook her hard. Soral Brul caught Foxfire as she staggered.

”Perhaps she's right, lady,” he said in his most unctuous voice. ”She looks very pale.”

”Garmoth!” yelled Red Silk as the guardsman came in with two others, leading the old jenny teyn the keepers called Eleven Gra.s.shoppers. ”Fetch coffee for my granddaughter and be quick about it.” The hard turquoise eyes were dilated so that only the thinnest rim of green showed about the swollen pupils. ”You'll be more pale watching your father die of what's in that cup, girl. Or do you want him to die? Is that it?”

Foxfire whispered, ”No.” Wanting to die herself.

Soral Brul stepped back, clearly not about to cross Red Silk's will. As he did so he gave Foxfire a wide-eyed gaze with eyebrows tweaked in what he obviously meant to be sympathy: You have all my support.

As long as it doesn't mean going against your grandmother.

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