III
III
THE BLIGHT OF TORRESDYR
THE GATEKEEPER of the king’s palace leaned against the lichened stone of the barbican. He squinted up at the stranger on the tired gelding and spoke in a voice gone rusty as the hinges he tended. “So, ye would hear the story of the Blight? Why ask here? Any man in the city could tell you.”
Unmoved by the sarcasm, Korendir said, “I want the truth, not tales told in taverns by the tap.” He paused, aware haste would earn nothing but the gatekeeper’s contempt.
At last the old man kicked at the weeds underfoot and gestured toward crumbled stone walls. “Torresdyr was a fair land once. But the old king committed an injustice. Now lord and farmsteader suffer alike.” Then, irritation intensified, he accused, “Why care? Ye look to be poor as the rest of us.”
Korendir’s hand stayed quiet on the rein and his eyes remained expectant.
Discomfortable under that steady gaze, the old man shrugged; in plain phrases he described how the fairest of the Eleven Kingdoms became cursed.
A generation past, when the current king’s sire ruled the land, Torresdyr employed a court wizard to provide fashionable wonders for the revels. Iraz of Idmire last held that post. Though his face and one eye had been grotesquely scarred by a miscast spell, he was without dispute the finest master of lesser magic in the Eleven Kingdoms. Not all his spells were illusions. Iraz could make roses bloom at wintertide, and pears grow from thorn branches. His skills became the envy of rival courtiers, and he rose quickly to fame and favor. Quartered like a lord in the palace, he fell in love with the king’s second daughter and got her with child.
The king’s rage knew no bounds. Rather than grant consent for his daughter to wed a man who was scarred, landless, and untitled, he ordered Iraz imprisoned. The princess was sent to a distant keep to bear her wizard’s bastard in shame. On the eve she went into labor, the king’s wardens discovered Iraz’s cell empty, the steel lock a misshapen ruin. Left in runes on the dungeon wall was a threat that the wizard would marry the princess, else curse all the land to misfortune.
The king mustered his men-at-arms, yet before they could march, the princess died in childbed. Inflamed with grief, Iraz of Idmire claimed both her surviving daughter and the tower for his own.
His walls were defended with sorcery, and weapons in the hands of soldiers could not breach his spells. Fearing Iraz’s threat of vengeance, the king appealed to the White Circle, the mightiest enchanters on Aerith and as far beyond the powers of mortal wizards as sunlight above plain clay. To aid the king’s cause, the White Circle created a wardstone of tallix crystal. The completed gem was round as a man’s fist, each of two thousand two hundred and forty facets angled to deflect one aspect of ill fortune.
“Guard it well,” warned the Archmaster when he gave the talisman to the king. “There shall not be another.”
Iraz labored seventeen years on his curse against the king. Its final consummation claimed his life, but his illegitimate daughter Anthei survived him. Grieving alone in her tower, she saw a land unspoiled under sunlight. Angered that her father’s death had achieved no vengeance, she swore to see his work complete.
On the old king’s death, Anthei made her way to court. There, with her beauty and knowledge of Iraz’s arts, she beguiled the distraught prince and stole the wardstone away. Secure within her tower, she worked foul sorcery upon the White Circle’s defenses and at last limited their virtues to the gardens surrounding her keep.
The Blight of Iraz fell in full measure upon Torresdyr. Crops withered, and starvation shriveled the livestock in pasture and barn. Children sickened with fever, cloth mildewed upon the loom; the sun vanished behind a mantle of mist and did not reappear. Country folk fled over the mountains to Northengard, but the Blight traveled with them, and their farmsteads did not prosper.
Torresdyr’s young king issued a proclamation challenging any man of courage to regain the wardstone, great wealth to be awarded the one who succeeded. Seventy-four tried only to fail. Anthei delighted in returning their corpses. Hopelessness and poverty overran the court of Torresdyr and adventurers ceased to appear at the royal gates. The king grew old. Ruined by apathy and misfortune, he offered his crown for recovery of the wardstone, but no man came forward to risk his life for the rule of a desolate land.
“You’re the first to answer that challenge in many a weary year,” the gatekeeper finished. He spat in the dust. “But don’t you know? You ride for a hopeless cause. The king bartered his crown to the traders for cloth. Men say Anthei’s tower holds treasure, but wizard’s gold carries a bane. Only a fool would chance death for such stakes.”
“I’m going anyway.” Calm to the point of obsession, Korendir asked questions until the gatekeeper tired of giving answers. Words had no power to unravel Anthei’s sorceries; the old man gave vent to annoyance. He turned his back and set his hands to the winches. Chain clanked. The gates which guarded the royal palace began ponderously to close. Yet before the rusted portals completed their groaning descent, Korendir passed through and turned his gelding’s wheezing nose northwest. He would persist on his fool’s errand to pursue Torresdyr’s lost wardstone and no man’s argument would deter him.
* * *
Anthei’s tower rose above the flats on the Jardine Sea. There shone the only sunlight in Torresdyr since the wardstone spared her grounds alone from the Blight. Although blue sky showed intermittently over the surrounding acres, Korendir covered the final league upon roads overgrown with brown bracken; the farmsteads on either side stood abandoned. The gatekeeper claimed children had died of poisoning after tasting the fruit which ripened on the trees near Anthei’s walls. Other folk whispered in dread of the guardians that protected her gates.
Korendir rounded the final bend in the hills near sunset. Ahead he saw a great stone keep silhouetted against the gray breakers of the shoreline. Walled round with the famed white agate of Torresdyr, Anthei’s gardens were a marvel in the midst of a wasteland. With cold eyes, Korendir studied the beauty of rare blossoms and exotic trees. The wind filled his nostrils with the perfume of flowering vines and the sour smell of salt off the sea; a third scent intermingled with these, a sharp tang of woodsmoke which did not fit.
Korendir drew rein. As his gelding halted, he noticed one other in Torresdyr who had disregarded rumor’s warning; a white-haired man crouched over a fire toasting barley cakes almost within the shadow of Anthei’s walls. Korendir’s frown lifted. He set his heels to the gelding’s sides and called out in a rare display of pleasure.
“Haldeth!”
The man by the fire glanced up and shaded seamed features with one hand. Then he stood and grinned until the gelding’s walk brought its rider within earshot. “I guessed you’d be along. Hadn’t we promised to see this through together?”
Korendir dismounted. He closed the remaining distance with impatience, but when he reached Haldeth’s side, his face showed nothing of his earlier welcome. “What changed your mind?”
Caught in that critical gaze, Haldeth felt suddenly exposed. “I hope you like barley cakes,” he said evasively. He took the gelding’s hackamore and motioned toward the camp. “Eat. I’ll tend your animal.”
“He’s called Snail.” Even more spare with words than usual, Korendir sat on a log by the fire. “Let him go. He never strays.”
Haldeth slipped the hackamore over the gelding’s ears and watched it snuffle the grass and begin to graze. Presently he chose a seat beside his friend. Yet after the surprise of reunion, awkwardness settled between the two men. Haldeth knew better than to press with questions. Instead, he prepared a mix of barley dough and told of a gamble on a card game that had won him employment at a forge. On impulse, he had bought back the fake rubies from the Mhurga galley’s figurehead. One he wore set in silver as a belt buckle; the other he kept loose with his coins.
“I wanted the things to remind me.” The smith’s hands stilled over the flour sack, and his eyes lost focus into distance. “Something by which to recall that the cost of survival came dear.”
If Korendir also thought of loved ones left barbarously slaughtered, he ventured nothing in comment. Since time had not blunted his reserve, Haldeth most wisely kept silent.
* * *
Perched beside a lancet window beneath the tower’s upper battlement, the witch Anthei leaned across the sill and braided a clothyard length of pale gold hair. Intent as a cat, she studied the man recently arrived; this one she knew had come with the king’s blessing, his intent to destroy her father’s vengeance against the court of Torresdyr. Very soon he would be dead. Anthei had savored the challenge, even toyed with the lives of seventy-four of his predecessors; but this time she did not smile with her customary anticipation. Never before had a man approached her tower unarmed. Now, one had dared. The precedence disturbed her.
Korendir, she heard the white-haired smith call him. The word did not harbor any resonance of power. Yet names could be misleading. Shabby clothing and cracked boots could not hide the bronze hair and cold light eyes, coloring unknown on Aerith except among the blood of White Circle enchanters. Anthei knotted her braid with slender fingers and fretfully started another.
In the campsite, Korendir leaned forward and burned his fingers on a barley cake. He swore mildly, sat back, and blew on his blistered thumb with the chagrin of a common vagabond. Assured now of his mortality, Anthei eliminated the fear that the White Circle had sent an initiate against her. She pulled a blood-red ribbon from her lap and bound it into her hair with langorous enjoyment. She had been left to herself for a very long time. Sage or fool, this man’s struggles would amuse her well before he died; the corpse she returned to the King of Torresdyr would hereafter deter even the most destitute adventurerer from fouling her garden air with cooking smoke.
While twilight settled ghostly gray over her tower, Anthei leaned on her elbows and began very softly to sing. Intent on their supper, the mortals below never noticed Korendir’s gelding raise its gaunt head, ears pricked taut with attention.
* * *
Night fell. The dunes muffled the boom of the surf and the snap of burning logs seemed brittle, almost crushed by the weight of a greater silence. When the gelding sucked a sudden, sharp breath into its damaged lungs, the sound parted the air like the rip of a knife through cloth.
“Snail!” Korendir leaped to his feet. A barley cake fell from loosened fingers as he ran, but his action came too late. The gelding gathered itself on bony haunches and launched itself over Anthei’s garden wall.
The horse’s forehooves flung a spray of gravel as it landed on the pathway beyond. Its form became hidden in darkness, but a quavering scream betrayed its suffering. Haldeth surged to his feet. He seized a brand from the fire and raced for Anthei’s front gate.
Korendir checked, whirled, and saw the streaming sparks thrown off by the torch. Guessing Haldeth’s intent, he shouted. “Don’t touch the latch!” But his warning was masked by the gelding’s dying convulsions. The smith rushed heedlessly onward.
Running also, Korendir tore the belt from his tunic. The buckle was plain wrought metal, next to worthless. But earlier he had noticed Anthei’s gates were forged entirely of bronze; perhaps, like an earth witch, she could not make a spell which ruled cold iron.
The horse’s cries shuddered into silence. Korendir reached the wall, unslung belt in hand. Again he shouted, but not before Haldeth raised the outer bar. Utterly deaf to his peril, the smith flung wide the gate.
Torchlight grazed flickering highlights across bronze as the heavy grille swung inward. The white expanse of a footpath glimmered through the gloom beyond. At first glance it appeared deserted, but a closer look showed a red-cheeked country matron with a bucket; two pretty, dark-eyed daughters clung to her gray wool skirts. The sight of Haldeth lit their faces with radiant welcome. The girls called to their father and joyously skipped toward the gate.
Haldeth gasped in hoarse disbelief. “Lindey!” He surged forward.
“No!” Korendir jerked his friend cruelly back. “Lindey’s dead, slaughtered by Mhurgai along with both of your children.”
Haldeth twisted around in rebuttal. He lifted his torch in a vicious swing straight at his companion’s head.
Korendir ducked, showered by sparks. “Lindey’s dead! Anthei’s conjured her image to trap you.”
Haldeth wrenched free. The child in the lead had nearly reached his outstretched hand. Left no space for finesse, Korendir spun the smith away and chopped his hold free of the latch. Next he whipped his belt in a wide arc before him. The buckle passed clean through the cheek of the running little girl. Her face crumpled, marred like a reflection on ruffled water. Briefly Korendir glimpsed spread claws and a ravening beast’s mouth before Anthei’s illusion restored the innocent features of a child. Without break in motion, he hooked his belt on a wrought bronze spike and dragged the gate panel shut. The bar fell with a clank. Korendir stepped back. Narrowly spared from one threat, he had no thought for another. The fist that slammed his shoulder from behind caught him utterly unprepared.
Korendir staggered sideways in a half-spin. Blinded by flamelight as Haldeth jabbed the torch at his face, he blocked the attack with his forearm. Fire licked his sleeve. Seared by pain, he shouted again. “Lindey’s dead!”
Crazed by Anthei’s sorceries, Haldeth charged in for another blow. Korendir lashed back with the belt, then launched shoulder first into his companion’s stomach. Haldeth clawed for balance and fell. He dropped the torch. Fire laced through dried grass and lit the hellish struggles of the men.
Locked in conflict, Korendir and Haldeth rolled across the ground. Crushed against a shoulder corded with muscle from the forge, Korendir counterstruck with precision. Haldeth jerked once. He released his hold on a grunt of agony, and the fight raged on in unchecked, primordial ferocity. The grass fire spread by the torch became quenched by tumbling bodies.
Trapped in a second hold, Korendir fought to suck air past the knuckles which ground at his windpipe. Dizzied to the edge of consciousness, he banged his belt buckle edgewise on the side of Haldeth’s skull. The smith’s head snapped back, a nasty gash opened above the ear; his arms went mercifully limp. Korendir shook off his friend’s unconscious bulk and swore with expressive vehemence. After a pause to assess his own damages, he arose and searched with bleeding fingers among the grass until he hooked the cord of Snail’s hackamore. He used the reins to bind Haldeth hand and foot. Then, after a lingering glance toward Anthei’s darkened tower, he fetched the pan used to mix barley dough and stumbled through the dunes to fetch seawater.
* * *
Haldeth groaned as Korendir knelt to cleanse the cut on his scalp. The sting of salt water roused him back to consciousness, and the first words he uttered framed a ritual malediction that would have shaken a seasoned man-at-arms. Korendir continued his ministrations without twitching a muscle. He rinsed the blood from Haldeth’s hair, emptied the fouled pan over a tuft of smouldering grass, then returned and looped his belt securely around the smith’s neck. Haldeth’s curses continued as he tethered the end to a log by the fire. After testing the knots, Korendir climbed into a tree overlooking Anthei’s garden. There he remained, though Haldeth screamed abuse at him for the remainder of the night.
Silence returned with the sunrise. Beyond the wall, where the gelding had leaped, the new morning revealed shrubbery festooned with gobbets of flesh. The path was splattered scarlet for yards in each direction, and not so much as a sliver of bone remained of the equine victim of the carnage. Korendir removed a gaze cold as ice from the garden. He lowered himself to the ground and guardedly approached the ash of last night’s fire.
Haldeth lay asleep. Torn earth at his hands and feet told of exhaustive struggles to free himself. Korendir bent to check the frayed cord at his wrists, and roused by that slight movement, Haldeth stirred. He attempted to rise and gagged, jerked up short by the belt.
The smith let his head fall back. “Great Neth,” he murmured. Lucid at last, and afflicted with a misery of aches, he focused on his companion. Beneath the soot which smudged cheek and forehead, Korendir’s skin was raw with burns; absent was the grim expression, replaced by an intense compassion. Haldeth caught his breath, and as if startled by that slight sound, Korendir turned sharply away.
Unsure whether the moment’s revelation had been supplied by his own imagination, Haldeth spoke gruffly. “Neth, lad, you’re a sight to make a young maid faint. You’ll scar badly unless you tend those cuts.”
“Stay clear of Anthei’s gates, and I’ll try.” Korendir yanked the stake from the ground. All businesslike efficiency, he loosened the belt and set his hands to the knots restraining Haldeth’s wrists. “Have you any more barley flour?”
Still prone, Haldeth gestured at the satchel left beside the dead embers of the fire. While Korendir tossed away the hackamore string and busied himself with the contents, Haldeth worked the bindings from his feet.
The smith sat up. Wincing from stiffened muscles, he accepted barley gruel from fingers as marked as his own and said, “What do you plan to do?”
Korendir never looked up. “Avenge Snail.” The words left no space for compromise. Finished with eating, he vanished beyond the dunes, and later reappeared with a clean face. For an interval after that he stared at Anthei’s tower, the agate walls now innocently mellowed under sunlight. At length he retrieved his belt.
“I have a task for you,” he said to Haldeth as he cinched the buckle at his waist. “Half a league back lies an abandoned forge. Would you go there and make a fire hot enough for tinker’s work?”
Affronted, Haldeth set his bowl aside. “Better you asked whether any tools remain for my use.”
“The Blight will have warped them, I expect.” Korendir bent and adjusted his boots. “I’ll come at noon. Wait for me, and try not to crush your great thumbs under any hammers.”
Haldeth took a swipe at him. Korendir ducked clear and with maddening purpose strode off into trackless bracken. His companion stared after, and only then realized he had neglected to ask what Korendir wished him to forge.
“Arrogant get of a sow!” Haldeth yelled. “What idiocy are you about?”
But Korendir had vanished beyond earshot into the scrub behind the dunes.
* * *
Shivering beneath mouldering thatch, Haldeth bent over the firepit in the abandoned smithy and coaxed damp kindling into coals. He cursed steadily in monologue, and did not see Korendir enter, laden with rusted ironware. Looted without discrimination from the surrounding farmsteads, the collection included anything from chipped axe blades to punctured buckets. Warned by a metallic clank, Haldeth looked up in time to cringe; Korendir unburdened his load with an ear-jarring crash just beyond the threshold. He ignored the smith’s yelp of annoyance, but moved to the canted work table and laid out his other acquisitions: a dusty lump of tallow, the haftless remains of a kitchen knife, and several soggy grouse feathers.
“Have you ever cut fletching?” he inquired of Haldeth.
“No.” The smith swung around and gave free rein to irritation. “Nor will I. If you plan to make paste with my barley flour, take it from your dinner ration.”
Korendir smoothed one of the feathers against his forearm. “You can forge a score of arrowheads, surely?”
“Out of iron!” Haldeth laughed, incredulous. Korendir paused, a quill poised between long fingers. “They needn’t be pretty to look upon.”
“Pretty!” Haldeth kicked the nearest corroded pot and bashed a hole through its base. He dared not say what he felt, that arrows could never breach Anthei’s fortress; Korendir would be killed. Too distressed to stay silent, he threw up his hands in disgust. “Neth, man, the Blight afflicts everything in this Kingdom, even the building of fires. Broadheads forged in this place will hold no edge, and anything iron will rust to nithering bits.”
Now dangerously still, Korendir said, “I don’t intend to keep them.” He selected a stick from the kindling pile and deliberately began to strip the bark. Left no option but to work, Haldeth stalked over to the junk pile by the door and rummaged for suitable scrap.
* * *
By sundown, the two men had completed a crude sheaf of arrows. They returned to the campsite, where Korendir put the finishing twist on a bowstring fashioned from Snail’s hackamore cord.
Haldeth looked on with a frown. “Those arrows would barely dent the skin of a pumpkin. No doubt Anthei is laughing at you.”
“Let her.” Korendir set the bow aside, dumped tallow into the cookpot and waited while it melted over the fire. He used the softened wax to stop his ears, then muffled his head under the hood of his cloak. “Shout at me.”
Haldeth complied, splitting the evening stillness with an epithet.
Korendir nodded, oblivious, and shouldered his arrows and bow. He climbed the tree beside Anthei’s garden. There, straddling a limb, he scratched numerals into five of the broadheads, thereby destroying the point on the sixth. He shot the first marked shaft in a long arc over the wall. After wobbly, erratic descent, the arrow cracked resoundingly against Anthei’s door; rebound spun it clattering end over end down the stair by the entry.
Korendir adjusted his position against the tree trunk. Affected by the Blight, his shafts would win no tournament, but for the purpose he intended they would serve. Twilight settled swiftly over the land; only minutes remained before darkness spoiled his marksmanship.
* * *
From the tower’s lancet window, Anthei watched Korendir drop arrows at intervals along her garden path. Their eccentric flight betrayed makeshift origins, and admiring a skill which mastered the adverse effects of the Blight, Anthei released the catch on her casement. Leaning outward, she began the song which had lured the horse the previous evening; only this time she tuned her spell for the archer who had ridden it.
Korendir’s hand held steady on the bowstring. His final arrow bit just inside the gate, scattering white gravel in the gloom. Well into her song of summoning, Anthei waited for the man to display the first spoiling traces of restlessness. Korendir dropped lightly to the ground. Shadow flickered at his heels as he paused by the fire to collect a rusted heap of ironware. Deaf to the smith’s encouragement, he removed the scrap to the gate and arranged a crude barrier between its posts.
Anthei frowned from her seat by the window. Had the man been susceptible to her spell, he should have entered her garden without any delay for precautions. Intrigued by his resistance, Anthei placed a perfectly shaped fist on the sill and pitched her call an octave higher.
Korendir glanced at the tower. His manner reflected no urgency as he arranged his remaining arrows point first in the dirt. He tested the tension of his bow, then raised a booted foot. Careful to keep his flesh from any contact with the bronze, he eased the bar from its setting and kicked the gate sharply inward.
Anthei abandoned her call mid-phrase. Against this man, the lure was useless. The witch’s eyes narrowed with fresh interest as she assessed his poised stance between her gateposts. Korendir had withstood the murder of his beast and a summoning geas; Anthei waited to see how he would manage her guardians.
* * *
The bronze grill grated to a stop to reveal a pristine expanse of white walkway. But the path with its borders of flowering shrubs stayed empty only an instant. Motion flurried the plants on either side, and the cat-shaped forms of Anthei’s guardians hurtled forth. They numbered three. Black-and-white striped coats rippled over muscle as they sprang for the intruder at the gate. Manes of stiffened quills framed eyes like coals and needlefanged muzzles bared to snarls.
As the beasts bore down on him, Korendir bent his bow. With steady eyes he sighted their run, and the gravel which scattered under the stretch and spring of each stride. Lethal as they seemed, their charge was indirect; Anthei’s guardians swerved to avoid the broadheads left imbedded in the path. Conjured from earth magic, they appeared to be chary of cold iron. Gratified to see his hunch confirmed, Korendir kicked a kettle into a clanking roll across their path.
The leading guardian spat. It dropped into a crouch, forepaws flexed to expose claws like skewers, with barbs to entrap as well as maul.
Korendir fired his arrow. The shot took the creature point-blank through the eye. Smoke boiled from the wound. The beast’s scream shivered the night, a sound that engendered terror to freeze the heart. By the fireside, Haldeth buried his head in his arms.
At the gateway, deafened by wax, Korendir nocked another shaft.
The remaining guardians circled their fallen, whose convulsions plowed furrows in the path. They paced to the barrier of ironware, ringed tails lashing with agitation. Korendir drew his bow. The nearer guardian hissed. It raked out with a barbed forepaw, and disturbed currents of air brushed Korendir’s knuckles. He aimed for the soft triangle of the throat and released.
The arrow flew true. Maddened by the bite of iron in its flesh, the beast launched into the air. Smoke billowed from its muzzle. Korendir backstepped clear. Undeterred by its baleful, screeching cry, he sent a second shaft into its exposed underbelly. The guardian crashed full length across his barrier. Pots scattered from the impact and the beast’s form unravelled into fumes. Stung blind by stinking vapor, Korendir blinked away tears and saw the last guardian leap over the corpses of its fellows. He nocked another arrow; and the Blight-cursed cotton bowstring snapped between his fingers.
The guardian sprang for the kill.
Korendir dove flat. Frantically he scrabbled for a fragment of metal as the guardian hurtled overhead. His hands hooked on nothing but weedstalks. The beast landed, whirled and charged again. Korendir rolled and fetched bruisingly against a farmwife’s flatiron. Too late, his fist closed over the rusted handle. The guardian regained balance and lunged with a snarl for his throat.
Braced for impact, Korendir raised the iron. He thought to ram the beast between its gaping jaws, but understood his plight was hopeless. Claws would rake him before the silly wedge of metal could connect. His agonized death would follow swiftly.
Locked to the gaze of murderous red eyes, Korendir did not see the pan hurled in from the sidelines until it bashed the creature in the flank. The guardian twisted mid-leap and spun with bared teeth toward Haldeth, who ran weaponless into the fray. Cat-muscles bunched for attack. In desperation, Korendir chopped his flatiron into the creature’s neck. Smoke plumed from the contact. Choked by fumes, Korendir seized his last arrow and rammed the guardian through to the heart. Its dying swipe caught him in the calf. Hooked by barbed claws, he crashed to the ground while around him the conjured mass of bone and muscle unbound into ugly coils of smoke.
Haldeth dragged him clear. Coughing and dizzied from the acrid tang of spells, the smith labored to catch his breath as Korendir stirred, rolled, and violently vomited his supper.
Haldeth steadied his friend’s shoulder until the spasms ceased. “Are you all right?”
Korendir ignored him, shivering. After a moment he picked the wax from his ears and raised a face transparently pale. “What a cruel end for Snail. Those horrors ate even his hooves.”
“He’s avenged,” Haldeth said shortly. Unreassured by the small talk, he hauled Korendir to his feet. “Come back to the fire and let me tend that leg.”
“Not yet.” Korendir shook free and straightened. “I’m going in.” His gray eyes shifted pointedly to the corpses left steaming on the path. “If I wait, Anthei will have another spell guarding her gates. I must go now, or not at all.”
Haldeth responded with reluctance. “Will you be careful?”
Korendir brushed rust flakes from his hands and laughed low in his throat. “I’ll watch the odds.”
Haldeth looked on, appalled, as his friend tossed his tallow plugs aside. No words were suitable for the occasion, but as always Korendir did not care. He strode limping to the garden wall, and without an instant’s hesitation, scaled the stone and dropped on his feet in Anthei’s rose bed.
* * *
Curled comfortably on cushions in her tower window, the witch wrinkled her nose at the stench of ruined spells. “Clever man,” she whispered.
Had Korendir entered through the main gate, he would now be quite dead. Since he had not, Anthei switched tactics to counter. Leaning her elbows on the sill, she framed the man between the angle of her thumb and fingers, and her voice measured phrases to a different tune. Darkness spread like a pall over her garden. Shrub, path, and starlight vanished, as if Neth’s creation had never existed.