Katharine Kerr - Darkspell

In either wall were openings, hung with blankets. Since the one to his right would lead to the kitchen and Camdel, Rhodry decided to go left. He approached the opening cautiously, then flicked up his sword and pulled down the blanket. As it crumpled, he saw a bedchamber, with fresh straw on the floor and a couple of hay-filled pallets. He walked in, spotting several bedrolls and piles of saddlebags, all strewn about as if someone had recently searched through them. Although it looked like perfectly ordinary gear, he refused to touch it. For all he knew, it was filled with strange magicks.

The blanket over the next opening was pulled to one side. He peered into a chamber, far bigger than the last two, where plowshares, old horse gear, and a couple of pieces of broken furniture lay scattered about. Sitting by the doorway on the far side was a corpse, a gray, puffy thing dressed in farmer’s clothing and holding a woodcutter’s ax in both hands. Rhodry assumed that the farmer must have tried to defend himself as the dark dweomer overwhelmed and slew him.

“Well, old man,” he said as he walked in, “we’ll get you a proper burial.”

The corpse raised its head and looked at him. Rhodry yelped aloud and stood frozen for a moment as it slowly lurched to its feet. Although its eye sockets were empty, it raised the ax and staggered toward him just as if it could see. Rhodry wanted to gag, but he flung up his shield and stepped aside as a clumsy blow swung down and missed him. When the thing turned toward him, he swung his sword up under its slow parry and caught it full across the throat. There was a gush of some dark liquid with an acrid smell, but the corpse calmly raised the ax again and stepped forward.

Rhodry’s berserker laugh rose in his mouth. Sobbing and chortling, he dodged, lunged, and hacked into the corpse’s armpit. Although more stinking liquid spewed, the thing came on and swung down at him. When he caught the blow on his shield, he heard the wood crack; the unnatural warrior was strong. His laughter rose to a howl as he swung up hard and cut the thing’s right arm half-off. It merely shifted the weight on the ax to its left hand and swung again. With a dodge he darted round and stabbed it in the back. Slowly it turned to face him.

Distantly Rhodry heard voices yelling, coming closer, but he kept all his concentration on the ax as the thing swung it from side to side as if it would cut Rhodry down like a tree. He dodged, caught a blow on his shield, and sliced its arm open, but still it swung. He was hampered by the clutter in the room as they went round and round. All at once he slipped; the ax sailed by, a bare inch from his head. He jumped up, shrieking with laughter, and put all his berserker’s strength into the blow. The sword bit deep and cracked bone as it caught the thing on the back of the neck.

Its head dangling from a strip of skin and muscle, the corpse swung the ax full into Rhodry’s shield. The wood and leather split and cracked to the boss, and half the shield fell away. Rhodry ducked and dodged, then swung at its left arm. Although it dropped the ax at last, still it kept coming for him. He leaped back fast. It seemed that being touched by its fingers would be worse than the blow of a blade. Desperately he sliced its abdomen open. No guts spilled, and still it came for him.

“Halt in the name of the Master of the Aethyr!”

The tattered, oozing corpse stood stock-still. As Nevyn came in, Rhodry flung sword and shield down, dropped to his knees, and vomited, uncaring of who might see him. He heard other voices, then, as men crowded into the chamber. Comyn knelt down beside him just as he was wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“Are you all right, silver dagger? By the Lord of Hell’s asshole, what was that thing?”

“Cursed if I know, but I’ve never been more grateful for the loan of a shield in my life.”

As he got up, he heard Nevyn chanting in a strange language. When the old man came to the end of it, the corpse buckled, its knees giving way, and settled rather than fell to the floor. Nevyn stamped thrice on the floor. Rhodry saw ugly and deformed Wildfolk dancing on the corpse for one brief moment before they vanished.

“After this, Rhodry lad,” the dweomer-master said, “you might ask my advice before poking around in strange places.”

“You have my sworn word on that.”

And yet the worst horror of all still lay before him. Nevyn walked to the opening in the last chamber and pulled down the blanket to reveal a tiny, windowless room with a piece of black velvet hanging on the curved wall. On it was embroidered an upside-down five-pointed star and some other marks that Rhodry couldn’t recognize. The chamber stank of incense and a fishy sort of smell.

Lying in the middle of the floor was the body of a stout, gray-haired man, his arms outstretched on either side. He looked like an ordinary Cerrmor man, but someone must have hated him, because he’d been stabbed in the chest over and over, so many times, truly, that he must have been long dead before the final blow fell. Although seeing the corpse meant little to Rhodry, merely looking into the room terrified him, so much so that when Nevyn walked in, he wanted to scream at the dweomerman to stay out. He forced himself to follow, but only because he was sure that Nevyn needed guarding. In the dim light it seemed that things moved, half-seen, silent. Nevyn nudged the corpse with the toe of his riding boot.

“Well, Alastyr,” he said, “at last we meet in the flesh. You’ve been very clever, because I don’t remember ever having seen you before.” He glanced at Rhodry. “This is the man who wanted you dead, the one who stood behind Loddlaen in the war.”

More in bewilderment than rage, Rhodry stared at his old enemy. Since he’d been picturing the dark master as a fiend in human form, he was oddly disappointed to find him so ordinary looking. Yet the room was fiendish enough. His irrational terror grew until Nevyn laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“This danger’s long over,” the dweomerman said. “It’s the touch of elven blood in your veins that makes you so sensitive.”

“Truly?”

“Truly. This is the chamber where Alastyr worked his foul perversions of the dweomer, you see. Ah, ye gods, poor Camdel!”

“What did they do, make him watch?”

“Watch? Hah! They used him for their rituals. He was repeatedly raped in here.”

“Oh, pigs cock! How can you rape a man?”

“Don’t pretend to a naïveté that a court-raised man doesn’t have. You know cursed well what I mean. They cut him when they were doing it, too, to spill blood for their twisted spirits.”

If Rhodry had had anything left to heave, he would have vomited again. Nevyn was watching him.

“Blaen and I are minded to tell the king that Camdel’s dead,” the old man said. “Will your honor allow you to keep our secret?”

Rhodry glanced around the chamber and wondered how it would look to a man thrown down on the floor.

“Maybe Camdel was a thief,” he said at last, “but I for one don’t have one word more to say about that.”

It took Nevyn and Blaen both to get Camdel mounted on a horse they found in the stables, because the young lord was much less than fully conscious. Even with their help, he swayed so alarmingly in the saddle that Nevyn ended up tying him to it. Later Nevyn would remove the ensorcellment—much later, once he’d found another dweomer-worker to start the long process of healing Camdel’s mind.

“Now, here, good sorcerer,” Blaen said. “Are you sure you’re going to be safe out here alone?”

“Quite sure. The work I have to do won’t take that long. I should return to the dun in time for the noon meal.”

“No doubt you know your own affairs best, then, and I don’t care to know what they are.”