“No friend mine,” Lan said bitterly. “She is one of Claybore’s personal staff, a commander high in his esteem.” The words choked him now; he felt the full force of the geas strangling him. “I… I love her,” he grated out between clenched lips.
“So?” Brinke moved around the table and sat in her chair.
She tented slender, gold-ringed fingers and peered at him over the top. Lan flinched under the intensity of the grey eyes, yet no spell was uttered. What magics Brinke used were only natural ones.
“I can’t help myself,” Lan said, fighting to keep control. “Claybore placed me under a geas. I… I can’t counter it. She is a dagger against my throat. Claybore cares nothing for her except as an instrument of my destruction.”
“She has tried to kill you several times.” Brinke’s words came as a simple statement, not a question. Lan nodded. “He saves her for the ultimate confrontation, then. If he succeeds in killing you without using her, however he intends to do that, fine. Otherwise, he always has a spy and ally in your camp.” Brinke shook her head, white-blonde hair fluttering up in disarray.
Lan glanced over to the mountain of dead carcass and asked, “Is there some way of removing that? I have no wish to keep it as a trophy.”
“Ugly, isn’t it? I’ve never seen its like around here.”
“There’s no way to find out what world it came from. The space between worlds contains beings from all, I think.”
Brinke made a small gesture. From a tiny closet set off to one side of the room came small demon-powered cylinders, rolling on rubber wheels. They hissed and complained but taloned arms came forth and grabbed at the carcass. The fronts of the cylinders opened and the demons began sucking in noisily until the beast vanished. Only then did the cleaners belch, whirl about, and return to their stations in the closet.
“You must tell me more of this,” Brinke said, pointing at Kiska. “Would you like me to kill her for you?”
Lan’s reaction came instinctively. Brinke slammed back in her chair as the spell sought to crush the life from her body. Only through extreme exertion did Lan lighten the spell he cast and then destroy it totally.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
“This geas is more than I had thought,” the woman said softly. “But it could not be a common spell or a mage of your ability would have lifted it himself.” Brinke rose and said, “We’ll see that she’s put to bed. While your healing spells seemed adequate, let’s have the chirurgeon examine her.”
Lan picked Kiska up in his arms and followed Brinke through a maze of corridors. Glimpses out narrow windows showed the full bloom of summer on the land; he had returned to the world where the Pillar of Night beckoned so seductively to him.
“Claybore is not likely to know of your rescue,” Brinke said as she ushered Lan into a sleeping chamber. She indicated he ought to put Kiska on the bed. He lowered her gently, even as he wanted to throw her from the high window. “This castle is shielded against his intrusions.”
“You bear some burden put upon you by Claybore. What is it?”
She swallowed, then pulled herself up stiff-necked, eyes staring at a blank wall.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I know he has placed a geas on me, also, but its nature is hidden from me. I fear it.” She turned and gripped Lan’s brawny forearm. “Oh, how I fear not knowing what he might make me do. The uncertainty is worse than any deed he might make me perform.”
Lan snorted at that. “Claybore’s imagination is vivid. You might be better off not knowing.” But he understood the woman’s concern. Only because he had advanced to a stage almost matching Claybore’s had he been able to detect the geas forcing him to protect Kiska. Lan needed to surpass Claybore in ability to be able to counter the spell. He wondered if the answer lay locked within the beguiling Pillar of Night.
“Lan?” called out Kiska. “What happened?”
“Rest,” he said. “I’ll be here. There’s someone coming to examine you, to make sure your injuries aren’t worse than I thought.”
Brown eyes moved past Lan to fix on Brinke. Lan saw the calculation working in Kiska’s expression. He made no move to introduce the two.
“She is very lovely,” said Kiska.
“I will fetch the chirurgeon,” said Brinke, moving from the room with a liquid grace that reminded Lan of Inyx stalking game.
“She likes you. I can tell,” said Kiska.
“I used a small healing spell on your leg wound. All that saved you was the odd flow of time between worlds. An artery had been severed by the beast’s fanging. Only when we emerged back onto this world did the wound begin to bleed.”
“The Pillar of Night is near?” Kiska asked. “Never mind. It must be. I recognize this world. It was here that Claybore and I-” Kiska abruptly cut off her words and smiled wickedly. “That is no concern of yours, dear, loving Lan.” The words burned as if they had been dipped in acid.
Brinke returned with the chirurgeon, who performed a thorough and nonmagical examination. All the while Lan and Brinke stood to one side, quietly talking.
When the chirurgeon left, Lan said, “I should stay with her.”
“No, darling Lan,” spoke up Kiska. “I would rest. He gave me a sleeping potion. I… grow drowsy. Go and swap spells with her.” A tiny smile curled the corners of Kiska’s mouth. Lan couldn’t help but compare the difference between the two women. On Brinke a smile brought sunshine; on Kiska it chilled to the bone. “Go and leave me alone. I would sleep now.” Kiska pulled a blanket over her shoulder and turned her head away.
Lan and Brinke silently left the room and made their way back to Brinke’s study. Another of the magically powered cleaning devices scuttled about to clean the beast’s blood from the flagstone floor. Lan went and stood in front of the archway.
“It doesn’t appear to lead anywhere now,” he said. “What spells do you use to activate it?”
“My magics are not so predictable,” Brinke said. “I know few spells. I sit and sometimes everything seems right. Then I perform what strike me as miracles; but, on a consistent basis, I have no control.”
“You plucked me from the nothingness,” said Lan.
“I sat here reading and a mood came over me. I felt… apprehensive. I spoke, you answered. If I used some spell or another, I know nothing of it.”
“Purely instinctual,” Lan mused.
“I have made no real effort to learn formally.”
Lan’s heart accelerated as he looked at Brinke. Her beauty was unmatched on any of the worlds he had walked. He told her so.
“What will Claybore’s militant pawn think of such flowery words?” Brinke asked.
“I don’t know.”
A sinking feeling gripped Lan Martak. Kiska had almost chased him away, knowing full well what it would lead to. Why? What part did this have in Claybore’s plot? Any?
His and Brinke’s eyes locked. He moved closer to her.
“I should thank you for all you’ve done.”
“No thanks is necessary,” Brinke said. Her tongue slipped the merest fraction from her mouth, wetting her lips. Lan kissed her.
The kiss became more, much more. Through the long, passionate night, Lan never once thought of Kiska.
But he did think of lost Inyx.
CHAPTER SIX
“Tell me all you see,” Ducasien said earnestly. He bent forward, his arm around Inyx. “There must be details you can ferret out with this wondrous talent of yours, Julinne. Show me. Show us.”
“It,” said Nowless, “does not work that way with her. Not always. Julinne’s wondrous fair talent is limited, even at the best of times. What hellish horrors she has been through makes it all the more difficult for her.”
“Julinne,” said Inyx, reaching out and holding one of the woman’s hands in both of hers, “this is a turning point in history. With your vision of the grey-clads’ base we can eliminate them. We can drive them from this world once and for all time.”
Julinne nodded, a bleak expression on her face. “I am unable to choose between my sight and the seeing.”
“Try,” urged Inyx. “For all those you’ve lost to those accursed butchers, try.”
Julinne turned a shade whiter; it made her look less healthy than many corpses Inyx had seen along the Road. Julinne had lost four children and a husband to Claybore’s troops and along with the heartbreak came a boon. The shock of the loss had broken the woman’s spirit and, ironically, had given her the gift required to defeat the grey-clads.
“How many?” asked Ducasien, his voice low and soothing.
Julinne’s eyes glazed over. “Four hundred and some.”
“When will they all be together? When will the commandant muster his troops?” Ducasien and Inyx exchanged worried looks. Julinne turned even paler and her entire body trembled like a leaf in a high wind. Even her teeth chattered in reaction.
“A fortnight from now. They gather to… to…”
“Yes?” Inyx held the woman’s hand and squeezed reassuringly. “What is their plan?”
“I see it so clearly,” Julinne said. “But the words. The words refuse to come.”
“This is harmful to her,” protested Nowless. “We cannot go on.”
“We must!” snapped Ducasien. “I tell you this is the only chance we will have to destroy them, gather them in one spot and close the trap around them.” He clapped his hands together. Jaw set and face grim, Ducasien brooked no argument.
“So many of us have died,” moaned Julinne.
“More will unless you tell us the plan.” Inyx listened carefully as Julinne’s lips barely moved. The whispered words began to make sense and she passed them along to Ducasien and Nowless. When the woman’s vision of the future had come to an end, she slumped forward. Inyx caught her and gently laid her down. Julinne slept deeply.
Ducasien motioned for them to leave the woman. He, Inyx, and Nowless walked the perimeter of the guerrilla camp, discussing all Julinne had seen.
“They feel they have committed enough outrage,” said Ducasien. “The time is ripe for them to systematically eliminate us.”
“The countryside is properly dispirited,” admitted Nowless. “Even our finest victories do little to help when the farmers know that the bedamned grey-clads might descend on them at any time and burn them out.”
“They have no confidence in us,” said Inyx. “But we need that. Without full support by the time the soldiers gather at the fort, we are lost.”
“You have a plan?” asked Ducasien.
Inyx nodded, brushing away her long, dark hair. Her blue eyes sparkled as she launched into it.
“A resounding defeat for a small group of them will set us up nicely,” she said. “We show the countryside we can prevail. That will align them with us. But the victory cannot be so great that it alerts the greys.”
“You’re thinking thoughts of Marktown?” asked Nowless. “The garrison there is undermanned, yet it is a key position for them.”
“It will be our most dangerous raid yet,” said Inyx, “but if we succeed, we will have won.”
“Not quite,” said Ducasien. “Their mage will have returned from his circuit. The fort will boast both soldiers and ward spells. The mage is not overly good, but he is better than none at all, which is what we have.” Ducasien clasped his hands behind his back and walked on. Nowless said nothing as he turned and left.
Inyx watched Ducasien, thinking that they ought to have a mage.
“Lan,” she said softly, then hastened after Ducasien.