A Dark Sacrifice Read online

  If I were to fall under a spell, he told himself, it might happen just this way. That he was already deep in enchantment never occurred to him.

  An anteroom cluttered with broken furniture led into a large bedchamber, one that showed signs of occupation within the last century. There was a four-poster bed not much worm-eaten, with hangings not much decayed. When, out of curiosity, he drew back the velvet coverlet, a cloud of dust motes rose and spun in the torchlight, igniting like a thousand tiny suns. The mattress underneath had been reduced to an unpleasant mass of mildewed rags and feathers, but once he restored the worn velvet covering to its former position it seemed the most comfortable resting place he was likely to find.

  He made a swift decision. “I vowed to sleep within these walls to prove that it was safe,” he said, doffing his cloak. He had seen nothing more threatening than old bones—yet there were night terrors that attacked a man sleeping, and those he must test as well.

  The guards set to work immediately to make the room more habitable: stopping up holes in the shutters with scraps of cloth they found on the floor, gathering up broken sticks of furniture in the antechamber and piling them on the hearth. When Nali thrust his torch into the stacked wood, a cheerful blaze sprang up, altering the whole aspect of the room.

  With a little assistance, Kivik began to remove his plate and mail armor. Unthinkingly, he removed the wooden charm as well. Then, in his shirt, leather breeches, and hose, he stretched out on the velvet coverlet. Berin stationed himself at the foot of the bed, Nali by the door. Thanks to the fire, the room was already comfortably warm; in truth, it had become so in a surprisingly short time.

  He had wondered whether sleep would really be possible, but already a delicious drowsiness was stealing over him, and he could scarcely focus his eyes on the ragged bed-curtains. There were pictures worked in faded embroidery, so dim he could hardly make them out. Maidens were turning into owls—or perhaps they were owl-headed witches wandering in a midnight wood—and there were roses, hundreds of perfumed roses like the ones that had invaded some of the rooms, only these had teeth. He was still trying to work out what it all meant when sleep overcame him.

  He woke, or thought he did, some hours later, to find the room wonderfully changed. Instead of wood, a pile of jewels was burning on the hearth, bathing the room in light of the intensest colors. Where things had been shabby and dusty before, all was clean and orderly. It was a moment before he realized, with a jolt, that Berin and Nali were missing.

  He knew his own people too well to imagine they had deserted him willingly. But what could have happened to them? He knew himself a light sleeper, knew he could never have slept through any kind of struggle.

  Climbing out of bed, he buckled on his sword belt, wrapped himself up in his cloak, and went off in search of his guards. The antechamber and corridor outside were illuminated by a soft glow, as from dozens of wax candles. In the way of dreams, none of this seemed strange; instead he found it oddly reassuring. All around him there were moving shadows, though the light was steady and seemed to come from all directions at once.

  Farther down the passageway, he caught just a glimpse of someone disappearing into a cross corridor. He hurried to catch up, and once he rounded the corner he had a clear view of her, drifting (there was no other word for it) along the passage far ahead of him. Yet, though he lengthened his stride and quickened his pace, though she appeared to move no faster, he could not overtake her, or even narrow the distance between them.

  After an immeasurable time of fruitless pursuit, she led him back to the banquet hall. Like the bedchamber, this room was wonderfully altered. Webs, spiders, and lizards had all been cleared away, and a great host had gathered there, as if in expectation of some high festivity. The pale-skinned, violet-eyed witch-folk were only a small part of that varied throng. There were werewolves and Varjolükka; bogwalkers and frost giants; the Folk of the Sea and of the Higher Air; things winged, horned, and hooved. And every one of them—man, woman, and beast—was splendidly robed and jeweled for the feast. Wherever Kivik looked, rings of topaz, opal, and garnet glowed on taloned hands; a string of amber beads encircled a hairy neck; diamonds like tiny stars glittered in luxuriant locks of mermaid green.

  At first, the beauty of the witches delighted him. Never before had he seen such loveliness united with such rare grace of form and movement. Yet gradually he began to feel there was something deadly, something subtly abominable simmering just below the surface, something that made them as unnatural in their own way as the beast-men. The more he gazed, the more he detected hints of an inhuman severity bordering on cruelty, here in the malice of a frigid pair of eyes, there in the scornful twist of an otherwise perfect pair of lips.

  Then he began to hear their voices inside his mind—recognized in those voices a faint echo of the sweet, troublous music that had enchanted him before—and it seemed to him then that their faces were not evil, not cruel, but merely sorrowful. We were betrayed, they told him, by the same master who led us on from wickedness to wickedness, and then sacrificed us to his own ambition. Whatever wrong we did, we have repented many long years. You need not fear us. Indeed, we only wish you well.

  Yet a little burr of doubt continued to prick at his mind. Can the dead lie? He could think of no reason why not—nor any reason to doubt them either.

  Someone was pressing him to drink from a massive goblet rough with unpolished gemstones; he could not see a face, but the hand on the stem was covered in brindled fur. He thought he ought to refuse, he intended to refuse, but his hands seemed to move independently of his head. He raised the cup to his lips and took a sip of the clear, strong wine. The flavor was full and rich—but it left a bitter taste on his tongue.

  He woke with a start, lying on his back in the four-poster bed. Raising his head from the velvet coverlet, he found Berin and Nali still standing guard in the exact same places they had been when he first drifted off. How long had he slept? It could not have been very long, or the boys would have changed their positions, if only a little. Yet what a long and strange dream it had seemed to be!

  Despite the brevity of his nap—and in spite of the lingering aftertaste of the dream wine in his mouth—he felt wonderfully refreshed. Indeed, he felt warm, safe, comfortable right where he was, all these things for the first time in many weeks. Nevertheless, he rose and armed himself with the help of his guards, then led them back through all the mazes of the many-corridored keep.

  Though the plan of the place had puzzled him before, he had no trouble finding his way back to the guardroom and the door to the courtyard. Somehow, the mazes had resolved themselves as he slept.

  Outside, it was full daylight, the sun dazzling off new-fallen snow, but the cold struck him forcibly and the wind tore through him in an icy blast. He no longer had any doubts about moving into the keep. It was folly, he told himself—worse, it was madness—for his people to remain outside in their makeshift shelters.

  As he moved through the outer wards of the fortress with the news of his safe return running on ahead of him, he met up with Skerry and their cousin Winloki standing with heads close together, as if caught in the midst of some private conversation. He greeted them cordially, amused by nearly identical expressions of relief he saw on their faces at finding him whole and sane after his night’s adventures—after all, he had never been in the slightest danger.

  But his amusement faded as he took a longer look at Winloki. Because she had changed; how she had changed! Unlike Skerry, whose gaunt face he had grown accustomed to in stages, seeing him every day, the alteration in her was far more dramatic. There was little left to remind him of the confident, high-spirited girl he had known in Lückenbörg. Her red-gold hair was pinned up in untidy braids; her gown of healer’s grey was threadbare. Dark smudges of exhaustion discolored the skin under her eyes. The long, arduous trek to Tirfang, the privations that she as much as anyone had suffered since, had worn away so much of her beauty that Kivik felt his heart turn o
ver in pity. He promised himself that somehow, someday he would make it up to her.

  In the meantime, there was much to be done, and the sooner started the better for everyone. “Tell Thyra and the other healers, you can choose any room in the keep that you like to serve as an infirmary,” he told her. “I want all of our sick and wounded moved inside immediately.”

  3

  The road was dusty, weary, and long, winding up one gentle rise and down another, across broad grasslands under the glare of the noonday sun. Despite the heat Sindérian’s headache had finally subsided, from a pain that threatened to crack open her skull to a dull throb, a slight blurring around the edges of her vision.

  The falcon that was her father—that had been the wizard Faolein—flew on ahead. At her side walked Prince Ruan, alien and inscrutable as ever, while the guardsman Aell brought up the rear. Her stomach growled with hunger; mornings came far too early during summer in these northern lands, and it had been a long time since breakfast.

  “We might,” said the Prince when they reached the top of the next rise, “like to stop and rest a while in the shade of those trees.” He indicated a little copse of oak and ailum nestled in a hollow west of the road.

  Sindérian swung around to look at him, a motion that sent sharp pains shooting through her head. She was beginning to recover after being beaten against the rocks when their boat sank two days ago near the coast, but it took a long time for a head injury to mend, even when one happened to be a wizard and a healer.

  She frowned at Ruan, as much in puzzlement as in pain. It was not like him to suggest a pause so early in the day; the inhuman vitality he had inherited from his mother’s people, the Ni-Féa Faey, made him always eager to keep going, to press on despite weariness, pain, or tired feet.

  Not, she thought irritably, that he is likely to have experienced such a thing as tired feet in the whole of his life! His unflagging energy—along with a certain shine that never seemed to wear off no matter the hardship—was particularly insufferable at moments like this.

  “Your face is the color of whey, and you look utterly spent,” he said. “A rest now may save trouble later.”

  Sindérian wanted to say no. Despite the warmth of the day, despite weariness and headache, she felt a suffocating sense of urgency. They were, after all, in a race with Ouriána’s minions to reach Lückenbörg, and the price of arriving too late threatened to be disastrously high. But as she wavered indecisively the falcon flew back and landed on her shoulder, cocking his head and regarding her with a fierce golden eye. It made for a startling contrast when her father’s mild, gentle voice spoke inside her head: Be wise, Sindérian, and do as he suggests. A short delay now could make for a swifter pace after.

  With an impatient gesture, she agreed. They could not afford to make mistakes born of haste, and a brief rest in the shade of trees would be very welcome.

  Sitting in the long, cool grass under an oak, Sindérian drew in a deep breath, savoring complex odors of earth and growing things. There was, she believed, something particularly healing about the air here. A green smell in a green land.

  Aell handed her a leather flask, and she took a long drink of water, then passed it on to the Prince. Resting her back against the rugged bark of the trunk, she allowed herself to relax, let her eyes close. Neither sleeping nor dreaming, she reviewed the events of the last few months, watched them pass like so many vivid paintings behind her eyelids.

  It had begun at the wizards’ Scholia on Leal, with that thunderbolt of an announcement that Nimenoë’s daughter still lived. The Princess Guenloie, subject of a hundred prophecies, born to be Ouriána’s bane and the salvation of her foes, had been discovered alive and grown to young womanhood. A small party had been chosen to travel north to the realm of Skyrra, where the girl had been seen, a secret embassy meant to enlist her aid in their ongoing battle against the Empress and to bring her back home to Thäerie, the place of her birth.

  Already, the journey had been long, difficult, and full of unexpected obstacles. Perhaps worst of all was the voyage from Arkenfell, which ended in disaster and left them as they were now, travelling on foot through a foreign land, destitute except for those things they wore or carried with them. At least Prince Ruan had been able to sell the brooch from his cloak, in one of the tiny towns along the coast, and he had used a handful of ivory coins to buy the water flasks and a small amount of food.

  A windstorm of wings fanning against her face brought Sindérian out of her thoughts with a jolt; perhaps she had been dreaming after all. Opening her eyes, she saw Faolein undergoing a new transformation: flesh and bone turning malleable as wax, stretching here, condensing there. In a very short time, a bird of a kind she had never seen before, something between a goshawk and a kestrel, was preening its feathers in the grass at her feet.

  But why this, and why now? she asked. Something that felt like a shard of ice lodged in her throat. Even knowing the thing was impossible without far more magic than they possessed between them, she had hoped against all hope that this change would see her father back in his own shape again.

  We have travelled far beyond the usual hunting grounds of the peregrine, he answered. I believe I may be more at home in these lands as a northern sparrowhawk.

  There was movement on her left, a soft grunt as the Prince and Aell left their seats on the ground. Ruan glanced down at her with a thin smile and a slight lift of the eyebrows. She nodded, accepted the clasp of Aell’s warm, calloused hand, and allowed the man-at-arms to pull her up from the grass to her feet.

  They were four now who had so long been five, because Jago had been lost with the boat, Jago who had been a stalwart, if generally silent, presence throughout the long journey and would be sorely missed. Sindérian knew that her own grief was trivial compared to what the Prince and Aell must be feeling after all the years and battles they had shared with the tall, taciturn guardsman. If they could mask their grief with a stoic resignation, even use the loss to spur them on rather than weaken them, then so could she.

  She drew in a deep, steadying breath, pushed back a strand of dark hair. “I am better for the rest,” she declared. “Let us go swiftly now.”

  They set off again at a much brisker pace than they had used before, and the hawk flew circles around them as they went.

  By necessity, they travelled very light. When they came to a farm, a village, or a settlement, the people were kind, if inclined to be wary, but in the end the farmers and villagers had little to spare, whether to sell or to give.

  “They say they’ve sent great stores of food and other necessities to the capital for the troops that are mustering there,” the Prince reported, after an unsuccessful attempt to buy supplies. And in none of the places where he asked could he find anyone willing to sell him horses to speed their journey—not a shambling old carthorse or a wild, unbroken colt—though he offered all that remained from the sale of the brooch, and his beautiful and costly golden torc besides.

  “Between the King’s levies and the stock they need for farming and breeding, they simply haven’t a nag to be spared—and that is that!” muttered Sindérian. “If we mean to reach the capital, we will have to continue on foot.”

  And so they did, day after day, pacing out the dusty miles of the roads leading north, gradually making their way from the wide meadows, placid rivers, and reedy lakes of the Autlands into the more densely settled country of the Herzenmark, where vast fields of young wheat and rye rippled in the wind. At night they slept walled around by knee-high grasses; by day they developed blisters and wore out the soles of their boots.

  Sometimes a farmwife would offer them fresh curds or buttermilk, and sometimes they were able to buy flat, hard loaves from a village baker. This bread, made with seeds and split peas mixed in with the salt and buckwheat, proved difficult to chew, but it always disappeared before it had a chance to go stale. Otherwise, eggs, cheese, onions, and an unknown root vegetable that flourished in great abundance were the staples th
ey lived on. All of them except Faolein, who naturally hunted, living on field mice and small, careless birds.

  And everything considered, the travellers had a much kinder welcome in Skyrra than any they had received in Arkenfell—which was as surprising as it was convenient. In one place after another, it was easy to see that women and girls were carrying on most of the work of farming and herding, with the help of some grey-bearded ancients, very young boys, and a handful of men who had returned from the wars lamed, blind, missing a hand or an arm. Occasionally, patrols of grim-faced warriors rode by at a brisk pace, proving that the western marches had not been left entirely undefended.

  Yet for Sindérian and her travelling companions this was a peaceful and pleasant time, far removed from the dangers that had dogged their footsteps through Mere, Hythe, and Arkenfell. And the days were so long and bright, the skies so enormous in that broad green country, sometimes the travellers felt giddy with light. None of them had ever been so far north, and the northern summer with its short, warm nights was an astonishment.

  One night, she sat up late studying the sky for portents, a thing she had not dared to do since her first night in Skyrra. There were signs in plenty of conflict and turmoil, particularly among the Hidden Stars—those mysterious bodies and ever-changing constellations that only the magically gifted can see—signs, too, that events were hastening on to some terrific conclusion. She feared those events were leaving her far behind. With her wizard’s sight she watched as a celestial army charged across the sky: crystal-white warriors blazing with light, mounted on fiery rainbow steeds, but their banners were the colors of blood and smoke. For the space of a heartbeat, she thought she could hear the distant hurly-burly of their progress; then all was silent except for the breeze whispering in the grass.