VIII
Loogan and Gorgo weren't the only ones who had disappeared. So had Kindrie and Jorin. The healer must have woken in time to hear Jame conversing familiarly with a "demon" and bolted, the ounce scampering after him.
Damnation.
Wet weather had somehow allowed the Wilden Witch to snatch an Old Pantheon rain god and his priest in the midst of their ritual lavations. She hadn't been able to hold them, but with that sort of power she was bound to try again, this time maybe conjuring something less ambitious but more effective—like a real demon. And it would be after Kindrie, whom Jame had just sworn to protect.
"It never rains," as Loogan might say, "without drowning someone."
At least the tracks of both Shanir and ounce showed clearly in the soft earth, heading upward from the road. Jame followed at a trot. Overhead, the clouds went from gray to black, edged by that unearthly yellow light which still spread out from the towers of Wilden. The weirding mist trailed down in darkening veils.
At first, Jame thought that the diminishing light was to blame when the prints of Kindrie's bare feet seemed to distort. She crouched, peering. No. The outer toes did splay at right angles to elongated feet, with indentations at the end of each toe that suggested claws.
Something ran after the Shanir, treading in his footprints step by step.
As she rose to follow, the back of her head seemed to explode.
Ancestors be praised for long hair was her first dazed thought thereafter. Once again, the thick, coiled braid under her cap had saved her skull from fracture or worse.
Then she became aware of weight, pinning her to the ground, and of cool air, moving across her face. Someone had removed her mask. She rather thought, too, that she was being sat on.
All she saw at first, though, through cautious, slitted eyes, was the nearly empty food sack bobbing over her. Withered apples flew out of it as if by themselves. Above and behind it hovered angry eyes without a face—bloodshot whites, yellow irises, hardly ever blinking. When they did, the pressure on her eased and the food bag sagged, as if for a moment her assailant became the shadow after which his guild was named.
The empty sack went flying. Crooked, yellow teeth bared at her in a snarl, which she smashed with a handy rock.
Free. On her feet. Running, closely pursued.
Tripped by a root, Jame turned her stumble into a lunge for the nearest sapling, bearing it down with her weight, then rolling off to let it whip back. Yellow eyes hastily shut. The slender trunk passed between where they had been. She tried to rise, but a freezing numbness had seized her legs. The assassin's shadow swarmed up her body, ending in two very real if invisible hands about her throat. Yellow eyes glared down at her, unblinking.
"Where is it?" a thick tongue hissed in midair, like an adder in a cage of rotten ivory, spitting blood and fragments of broken teeth in her face. "The book, you witch, the Book Bound in Pale Leather. Where?"
"I-I don't have it." Sweet Trinity, who had told him about that? Marc, Graykin, Kindrie . . . . "Ishtier?"
The grip on her throat tightened. "That priest-spawn! What has he told you, bitch? What?"
What could Ishtier have told her, except perhaps how he had forced a master assassin to attempt theft for him? If the guilds of the Central Lands were like their eastern counterparts, the Bashti thieves would howl over this.
Broken teeth sneered. "Bluffing, weren't you? As if a whore's-daughter ever knew anything."
White flashed. The Ivory Knife. Oh lord, where had he found to hide that?
"Guild Master," she heard herself croak. "I know this much: why the blooding at Gothregor failed."
The Knife hesitated. Her neck felt cold, where the blade so nearly touched it.
"Why, bint?"
"The 'prentices were unprepared and under-trained."
He slapped her, hard, across her injured cheek. "One of them gave you that, at least."
"No," said Jame, through sudden pain, tasting blood.
"Then not. Kencyr are too stupid to lie. Under-trained, how?"
"Not enough fighting experience." Amazing, how she found herself reporting as a journeyman to a master, if of different disciplines. "Too much dependence on shadow-casting techniques, under adverse conditions."
"Unprepared for what?"
"Partly, for me."
He struck again, harder. She almost lunged upward into the sharp ivory, a risk she might have taken with any other knife.
"Why don't you put that thing away, master, and try your own luck with me?"
He gave a sharp bark of laughter. "I tested your sort thirty-four years ago, sow. Soft throats and soft kills—except for the one who led me such a chase and the other one who cursed. Red-eyed whore . . . !"
A red-eyed maledight . . . .
"Brenwyr?" Jame said, stupidly.
"That was the name. Unprepared for what else, slut?"
"For Old Man Tishooo, who blew away their souls, and for a shadow-demon named Bane, who fed on them. In fact," she added, carefully, "if you were to look above you now . . . ."
He laughed again, harshly. "Kencyr never lie, but 'if' cuts no bread."
"This time," said Jame, "it does."
Bane dropped on the assassin out of a tree, like a coat of shadows. The guild master gasped. His frantic efforts to shrug off his tenebrous assailant became the jerky movements of a man being clothed against his will. His shoulders twitched as the other settled over them. His arms stretched and his hands flexed into gloves of living shadow. The Ivory Knife wobbled in his loosened grip, directly over Jame's face.
"Watch it!" she said.
Bane looked down at her. What Jame saw was the shadowy mask of his features, through which the assassin's eyes stared wildly. What he saw, for the first time, was her injured face, freshly bloodied. His grip on the guild master tightened. The man shrieked, and dropped the Ivory Knife.
"Eeee!" said Jame.
How she managed it, she never knew. A moment later, though, Jame found herself sprawling a dozen feet from where the Knife quivered upright in the sod, the grass dying around it.
Something unseen was blundering away through the trees, trailing a thin wail as much of rage as fear. The master assassin had bolted. Now there was a mount which would need some taming, even for such a rider. With luck, they would break each other's neck, Jame thought sourly, wiping her face. So much for Kindrie's first aid.
Sweet Trinity. Kindrie.
She snatched up the Ivory Knife and ran back the way she had come. Here was the clearing where the assassin had jumped her, her mask, cap, and linen bandage laying where he had dropped them. Beyond, those curious, composite footprints led on upslope. She followed, toward the sound of raised voices.