“And little wonder,” Thomas rasped as a bare-chested Jacob in torn breeches pushed him back.
“What happened, little warrior, is that you saved us,” he smiled at her, gently stroking her hair back from her face.
“More than that,” Agatha said, looking at her in awe, her eyes misting. “You’re a Maker, Lady Marion. Of that, there is no doubt.”
“What….? What do you mean?”
“The council will want to know of this as soon as possible,” Jacob said solemnly. “The world has not seen a true Maker since Lord Walker left this land to seek his own destiny in the far lands beyond maps. And that was generations ago.”
“Lady,” Marion gasped, sitting up in spite of her pain. “Where is….?” “She is sleeping. She was wounded, but the wounds are minor. And are not infected. She will recover. Thanks to you.”
“Aye,” Thomas agreed, his amber eyes warm with emotion.
“But…..I don’t remember doing anything,” she frowned.
Agatha smiled as she looked at the men. “I suggest I try to explain as we get ready to leave this accursed place,” she told him.
“Aye. We don’t know how long this miracle will last. But I believe a forced march is our best choice just now.
“Pack up, lads. Leave the dead, for I fear we cannot help them anyway.”
“Sever their heads,” Agatha told him quickly as she helped Marion up from where she lay. “’Twill at least keep other leeches from claiming their bodies.”
“Aye,” the senior man-at-arms nodded. “I’ve already got my lads doing just that, Miss Agatha. And we’ll be sending word to the nearest garrison to alert them to this nest of demons,” he spat.
“Just…..Never mind,” Agatha sighed as she helped Marion over to their cart, and into the back of the wagon beside an unconscious lady whose legs were badly clawed. Concerns over her appellations were of hardly any regard just now.
“She’s not infected,” Marion asked anxiously in spite of the earlier assurances.
“Nay. She was cut and scratched, but there’s no sign of the infection. She was very lucky. We all were. Thanks to you,” Agatha said as she went to bring the roan she rode to the back of the wagon, and tied it next to the pack mare. There was no sign of Marion’s mare. She had a good idea what had happened to it.
“Aye, me mum will be wanting a few words with you, lady. Doubt me not,” Duncan told her, looking little discomfited as he set there looking back at them as Agatha climbed up beside the two women in the space made for them.
“Me?” “Well, aye, lady. Not many folks got the power to make the sun rise when it should be sitting, don’t you know? Me, I’ve nev’r seen it’s like. And me mum is a level one spell-caster.”
“I…did...what,” Marion exclaimed, trying to sit up again.
“Easy, Lady Marion,” she said, keeping her from rising again. “I’ll get you some water, and a bit of bread to settle your belly, and build your strength. You’ll need it, for I’ve little doubt your pain is from the spending of the energy it must have taken to spin our world about to bring light to us so swiftly.”
“You jest,” Marion groaned, staring up at the sun now as the carts began to move, and the weeping of relieved slaves could now be heard as her head started to clear. At least, it wasn’t pounding so much any longer. “You think I did that?” “Lady,” Agatha held a waterskin to her lips, helping her drink. “All I know is ten minutes ago, ‘twas newly dark, and we were about to all die horribly.
“Then you screamed something in the old tongue, and the sun all but exploded into the sky, and the demons died like ash on the wind.
“Now, I know I did nothing. I doubt Lady, who was out cold, could do aught.
“And there is more,” she said, taking the water back after Marion drank several deep gulps, and lay back sighing with slightly more energy than before.
“What more could there possibly be after you tell me I made the sun rise some twelve hours early?” “I heard what you said ere you unleashed your magic,” Agatha told her, handing her a thick crust of fairly fresh bread as they both ignored the sway, and jolt of the cart as the caravan picked up speed, trying to make sure to put all the distance possible between them, and the leeches nest.
“What do you mean?” “You watched them taking Lady, and you said, ‘Not again. Not like Sparrow.’ Did you lose another to leeches, too?” “Nay,” she sighed, looking up at the sky past Agatha now. “I….I lost a friend. But not to those creatures, thank the gods.
“’Twas to my own foolishness.”
“What do you mean?” “I….I had a playmate. Well, a young slave girl actually. I say young. I was about nine. She was nearer twenty, and of your race. But we were the best of friends.
“She was quite pretty, too, and on the basis of my father’s house brand, I called her my…..”
“Little bird,” Agatha supplied.
“Aye. I….I suppose you noticed Lady’s brand, then?” “You called her that the other night.”
“Ah. Well, her name was Sparrow. ‘Twas what father called her, anyway.”
“So, what became of her,” Agatha asked, looking into her blue eyes with a soft smile.
“I don’t know. I….I foolishly dared her to go out and play on the icy river with me one winter’s eve. ‘Twas dark, and cold, but I was young, and foolish, and so certain I could…..I could do whatever I wished.”
“We are all like that when young,” Agatha told her.
“I still miss her,” Marion sighed, staring up past the witch with drowsy eyes now.
“What happened, lady?” “She….Nay, I fell in the ice. She…pulled me out, throwing me to the bank, but she slipped back into the water, the ice cracking all around her, and trapping her as the current pulled her away from help. She…..She was never found.
“I….couldn’t even give her a decent burial.”
“Don’t cry, lady,” Agatha smiled. “I doubt she would have wanted you carrying such grief.”
“Father….punished me fiercely,” she murmured, her eyes dropping now, thinking of how he had exiled her as a common serving girl in the king’s court to learn the value of life, and responsibility. His last words had been that he hoped she learned the value of life, for she was never to come home again. He did not wish to see her.
It seemed her father had been in love with Sparrow. Though she was a slave, he had recently lost his wife, her mother, and he had turned his affections to the sympathetic girl who helped them both get through that dark time.
That had been years ago. So many years.
She wondered if her father ever missed her. Then she wondered nothing at all as she slipped into a deep sleep, thanks to the witch’s healing sleep she covertly put upon her, as she had Lady. The two would rest, and by the time they woke, they would be recovered, and refreshed.
“So, you think me mum will notice her, then?” “I imagine the entire world noticed what she just did, Duncan,” she glowered. “And as your mother is the head of the local magic guild, I suppose we’ll be hearing from her soon enough.”
“Aye. You gon’ tell the little lady you’re ‘er little Sparrow?” “Not just yet.”
“Hmph. You still a cold ‘un. Even after the lady saved your frigid hide.”
“And we both know why,” she glowered at her former husband.
“’Twas your own fault. All you had to do was give the old lord a taste, and he would have gone on his way easy enough. ‘Stead o’ cursin’ you with that bloody cold cunny.”
“I prefer to choose my own lovers, thank you.”
“Hmph.”
“And, Duncan.”
“Aye?”
“I’m glad you’re all right, too.”
“Can’t say as much for her cap’n. Stupid fellow hid right where they was crawling to reach the lassies. Ripped him fare to pieces, they did.”
“Let’s not say anything about that to the lady just now, shall we?” “I’d as soon not piss off anyone that can spin the world about, and use a blade like a bloody warrior.
“What are they teachin’ ladies these days,” he snorted.
“I wouldn’t know,” she drawled acidly. “But I do know, Lady Marion is not going to be finishing her tour anytime soon. Not after word gets out she’s a genuine Maker.”
“Yea’,” Duncan nodded. “But bein’ untrained, and all. Don’t you think she’s a bit dangerous, and needs to be taken in hand.”
“Nay. I think the fact she’s come this far without causing anything calamitous proves she’s got a good heart. After all, ‘twas plainly only her concern for Lady that unleashed her power. Mayhap she only draws on it instinctively, when she is under stress. Or trying to protect others.
“’Twould explain a great deal,” she told her ex-husband as they followed Thomas’ breakneck pace up the sloping pass now, the man obviously intending to get over the Spine, and out of the mountains as soon as possible.
“Y’know, though, there’s another problem to deal wif’ the lady.”
“Aye, I know. K’Viit isn’t going to take kindly to anyone interfering with his cubs’ mother.”
“He does seem to have taken to this ‘un more than any of the other wench’s he’s bred.”
“Mayhap he’s sensed Marion is special. As we now know.”
“I jus’ thought,” Duncan rasped, looking incredulous. “A Maker birthing lycanthropes? What kinda’ mix is that gon’ to make?” Agatha grimaced, recalling the mess made by Marcus Walker’s all too human children. Of course, that man had been a virtual demigod, and raised his children in his image. “I think….Marion would ensure they were going to be good men. Like their father.”
“You callin’ Jacob Butler good,” Duncan laughed.
“Now, that’s a first,” a drawling voice remarked from behind them.
Agatha turned to see the man sitting upon his mount, fully clothed again, and smirking at her. “You, complementing me? Is the end that near, Aggie?” “Ha, ha,” she muttered as the tall manbeast eyed Marion.
“So, how is our little heroine doing?” “I put her to sleep. She should be okay in a few hours. She was really wasted.”
“Didja’ know the lady used to be Aggie’s mistress, too,” Duncan chimed up.
Agatha glared as Duncan felt compelled for whatever reasons drove him to shared the tale he had just learned. The big man smiled the whole time as Duncan rattled on, but he never mocked her. He simply nodded at Agatha, and said, “Guess that means you’re even now?” “What do you mean?” “You saved her life. She saved yours. You’re even now.”
“I never looked at it that way even then. The little girl I knew was bright, and friendly, and I loved her like my own child. I would have gladly died for her.”
“Instead, you were saved by a pug-ugly, old man who just happened to sense you had magic in you,” Duncan drawled. “And brought ya’ to me mum for training.”
“Aye,” she glowered at him. “I know that part.”
“K’Viit,” the captain of the guardsmen called. “Best come and look this over,” the man gestured as the manbeast glanced ahead of the caravan, to the sloping path that crested the mountain’s spine.
“I believe your ‘mum’ has come calling, Duncan,” the lycanthrope drawled as he reined his horse around to move toward the front of the caravan. Just a few miles down the slope, a woman clad in bright white stood in the road at the head of nine women in white. Behind them were two, huge men carrying heavy axes. The kind that were rarely used for chopping wood.
“Aye, that’s Lady Evanshire,” Jacob nodded to Thomas and the captain as he paused, then looked back down at the lady who was showing no sign of moving either fore, or back.
“She comes for the lady, doesn’t she,” Thomas guessed grimly.
“Aye. I’ll have a talk with her,” Jacob told him, and rode easily down toward the white witch who headed the guild of magic’s ruling council in the land.
“Hello, Tanya,” K’Viit smiled in a feral manner, showing no pretense with her. “Bit late for you to be strolling through the hills, isn’t it?” “It should be,” the older woman said crisply. “Yet, imagine my surprise when my evening bath was suddenly interrupted by a sudden sunrise.
“And all the magic-sensors in the region began to scream of a new Maker come from out of nowhere.
“And here you are, too. Why am I not surprised?” “I do get around.
“But let us speak privately for a moment, if you don’t mind. For I happen to know more of what is what here than you for once. And I doubt you want your pretty entourage blooded.
“The stains on that white linen would be dreadful,” he snickered.
“I smell the stench of the undead on you, wolf. Is that what caused this disturbance?” “Are you going to let me speak, or are you going to rush blindly in yet again, and make another ruin of innocent lives like you did with Aggie and Duncan?” The woman’s dark eyes rounded in fury, but she bit back any reply, and nodded patiently. “I shall give you five minutes, wolf. Prove to me you have any wit, and I shall perhaps consider what you’ve got to say.”
“’Twould take longer than five minutes to breech your thick skull, Tanya,” he drawled as he gracefully leapt down from his mount, leading her away from her own people with a curt gesture. “But mayhap you’ll heed my wisdom in this matter all the same,” he told her, and began to relay his experience with the Xantian lady who had turned the night into day.
“So, she is a Maker.”
“Aye. But heed me, she also carries my cubs,” he added, stressing that fact. “Also, she is quite willful herself, doubt it not. You will not be able to simply go in, and drag her off.
“Give me a few more weeks with the lady, and let me ease her into understanding what has transpired, and I shall lead her to your guild hall in H’r’lyn in due time, a willing novice, rather than a resentful captive.”
“How can you guarantee such a thing,” Tanya Evanshire demanded of his curtly.
“Allow me to relate one more fact you do not have,” he smiled. “It appears she might well have been Aggie’s young mistress some years back.”
Tanya opened her mouth, but did not speak.
“I see,” she murmured at last after a long pause.
“I thought you might understand. Give us time with the lady. For her sake, as well as that of our own.”
“I will give you one month. But on your honor, wolf, she is not to leave Valdor’s borders. We cannot allow the only Maker born in nine generations to escape us.”
“Trust me,” K’Viit smiled.
“The last time I trusted you, three of my maids were bred with your hellish offspring.”
K’Viit smiled again. “I could have bred you, witch,” he grinned.
She glared at him. “And I would have gelded you.”
“You’d have tried,” he drawled. “So, we have a bargain?” “One month, wolf. Then we shall see if you are to be trusted.”
The woman waved imperiously, and vanished, along with her entire retinue.
“Showoff,” he shouted in her wake, knowing full well she heard him.
“I bought us some time,” he returned to tell Agatha. “But the white witch is determined to own the first Maker in all this long time.”
“Aye, that’s me mum. Ambitious, old crone, even after what ‘appened to us,” he remarked curtly.
“Aye, my sister can be a bitch,” K’Viit who had once been Jacob Evanshire before he changed agreed.
“You are going to have to explain this to me a little more clearly,” Marion said as they traveled on after she woke to a late lunch, or supper, as the case might be. She was back in the wagon, and Lady was dosing again, but had eaten heartily, too, proving she was not infected, since that unnatural disease those leeches carried was known to make the living waste away.
“Recall how I told you that much magic is about simply….borrowing things from elsewhere?” “Aye.”
“Well, it actually takes very little power to transport things, even yourself, or others, from here to there. I could take us back to Kybera, for instance, with a mere incantation, and barely expend any true power.
“Still, most of our known magics are simply….well, shifting things from place to place, or altering those things we borrow. ‘Tis a guild secret, of course,” she said, glancing around to ensure no one heard their speaking.
“And that is how magic workers do their great feats. Such as they are.
“But the Makers, and rare they are, are power incarnate. They create out of their own mind and will. They don’t summon things. They create them, and the most powerful are said to even be able to draw power from the world itself to increase their own might. Lord Walker, the last great Maker of Magics, literally created Valdor out of his will to fashion an empire in his own image. ‘Tis said he simply spoke it into being, and so it was.
“I think you may have that gift, though I am uncertain. ‘Twould take a greater adept than I to truly classify you, lady. But I think you’ve woken what you felt were just….sensations, and what you think, or say, may now literally come into being.
“For Makers do not simply borrow. They can create. Or destroy. They can shift reality, too, and that is what the guild fears more than aught else just now. For if one Maker created Valdor, and lifted the magic guild into power; why, then, cannot another unmake it?” “But…I would never do such a thing,” Marion exclaimed even as she pondered over Lady. Had her very actions actually made a true slave of the princess? That weighed on her, but just now, even that burden was nothing compared to what Agatha was trying to relate to her.
“I believe you. Some others might not. Or, some others might wish to exploit you.”
“Wait. Wait, this is about my power? But I feel the same. I feel no power. Nothing special.”
“Makers rarely manifest instantly, lady, from what I’ve studied.”
“So….this guild wants to…..do what? Lock me up in case I might do something?” “They’ll want to train you, and guide you so you would use your powers as all witches are trained, to aid men. And women,” she smiled. “But I won’t lie. There are those that would like to use you. To even try to strip you of your power to add to their own. Or kill you if they can’t.”
“So….I’ll just leave. We are on our way to K’Zir, after all. I want nothing to do with magic, or anything of the like. I just want…..an ordinary life.”
“That is the one thing a Maker cannot do. Your life will never be ordinary again,” K’Viit told her solemnly.
Both women turned to see him riding beside their cart again.
“I swear, that horse is as sneaky as you,” Agatha complained.
“Thank you. He appreciates the compliment,” he told her as he patted the big black that snorted, and shook his head.
“He would. Males,” Agatha rolled her eyes.
“I just wanted to see how my lady was doing. Recall, you should be eating more, since you are breeding now,” he told Marion.
“I know,” she said, rubbing the slight swelling beneath her dress that was only then growing pronounced. “’Tis almost unbelievable how fast they are growing.”
“They?” “Aye,” she told him. “Lightfoot, Amber, and Small Ear,” she named them, still rubbing her belly.
Then she froze, blinking, and asked, “How did I know…..?” “The magic is growing in you, just as the cubs grow,” he told her solemnly. “Lady, until you learn your worth, you must stay with me. Close to me. For your safety, as well as theirs.”
“But….surely…..?” “Lady, there are those that would as soon slay you outright. Do you think ‘tis taken nine generations to breed another Maker into our world? I’ve known of two possible ones in my time alone. Both were slain ere they could truly manifest.”
“When did my life get so complicated,” she moaned.
“I’d say about the time the midwife dragged y’from the womb, lady,” Duncan chortled.
“Is he always like that,” she asked Agatha.
“Nay,” Agatha sighed.
“Sometimes he’s worse,” K’Viit added.
Marion rolled her eyes. “I just want to go home.”
“And where would home be now, lady,” K’Viit asked.
She looked at him. “I told you, I’m from…..”
“Aye, but would our three cubs…..?” “Two. One is a kit,” she told him.
“Fine,” he chortled. “But would our young be welcome in Xantia,” he asked her pointedly.
“Aye,” he said when she fell silent. “There be few lands that welcome my kind. Never mind we’re not like those leeches. Some fools actually think they can become a lycanthrope by being bitten,” he snorted.
“I’d like to meet the lackwit that started that old wife’s tale.
“The only way you can become a lycanthrope is…..”
“To be born one, or cursed,” Marion said solemnly. “So, which were you?” “I was cursed, actually,” he told her. “My sister was still practicing to be a witch, and, as usual, she didn’t quite know what she was doing at the time.
“She made me the subject of one of her spells, and one morning I woke up as my new, handsome self.”
Duncan snorted.
“Unlike her own son, who proved to be a victim of one of her pupil’s who was just as lackwitted, do you ask me.”
“Your own mother’s student cursed you,” she turned to ask Duncan, who had turned to focus on the road now.
He snorted, and said nothing.
“’Twas an indirect curse, actually. He didn’t see it coming. Frankly, no one did,” K’Viit told her blandly as he eyed Agatha. “You might say, he even brought it on himself for trying to….force an issue.”
Duncan glared at him now, but the man said no more as he lapsed into chortling as he met the glare with indifference.
“Men,” Agatha sighed.
“Aye,” Marion agreed. “Sometimes I think the world would be better off…..”
“Careful, lady,” Agatha caught her hand up, and silenced her. “Remember. We don’t know when your full might could manifest. Or what form it might take.
“A stray word, a careless phrase, and you could well unmake the very world around you.”
Marion stared. “Surely I cannot be….?”
She was met with three solemn gazes.
“You actually think I could do such things? “Lady,” K’Viit reminded her as he glanced upward. “You turned night into day in the span of an eye’s blink.”
“Aye,” Agatha nodded.
Marion sighed. “Well, I don’t know how,” she protested. “I don’t even feel different. I just feel….like me.”
“Aggie, you’re a fourth level….well, technically, a third level witch. Why don’t you quiz her on transmutation? ‘Twould be a starting point. And we do have lots of time,” he told her cryptically, though the woman knew of Tanya Evanshire’s ultimatum by now.
“That’s a good idea,” she nodded, and closed her eyes, and one hand, and opened it to hold out a single, flat copper.
“Lady Marion, take this in your hand. Now, close your eyes, and think…..think about it being not copper, but….silver. Think of a silver tarlek.
“Think of the feel. The size. The weight……” “Like that,” she asked, opening her palm to show the thicker, gleaming coin. “Oh…..Oh, my. “I….I did it,” she exclaimed as she stared at the coin.
“Definitely a Maker,” Duncan drawled as he glanced at the coin.
“Want to try something else,” Agatha asked her lightly.
“This is…..I’m scared. This doesn’t feel right,” she shook her head, flinging the coin from her hand, and watching it vanish as Agatha glanced at it.
“What happened to it,” Marion asked.
“I sent it back to where I borrowed it. The owner should be quite pleased to find himself so enriched.”
“Oh,” Marion swallowed hard as she looked at K’Viit who was smiling at her again.
“What?” “I was just thinking you could be handy to have around next time I’m low on coin,” he chuckled.
“Oaf,” she hissed, tossing a crust of neglected bread from her recent meal at him to bounce off his head. “That was the most…..”
He only laughed.
“Y’ can’t change K’Viit, lady,” Duncan chortled. “’E was warped long afore ‘e turned wolf.”
“And you were always ugly,” K’Viit shot back with a smirk.
Tanya Evanshire stood in the center of her atrium, and watched the trio huddled around the new Maker. They were coddling her. Fools. She should be forced to manifest. To show her power before the more cautious chose to end her life, as they had other Makers in the past.
Overly cautious twits that they were, most of the old men on the guild council still called for the death of anyone found to be a true Maker. They had sent her off to find out what had set off the calamity, as they perceived it, and to locate the potential new Maker before they could manifest.
As the senior member of the guild council, she was trusted with the task that she would have demanded for her own anyway. For she had been waiting for just such a chance for many years. She had been prescient in her long ago youth, and had known she would one day find a Maker, and that Maker would change her life forever.
When she found Agatha, she thought she had found her. She had an ease, and level of power that would have easily made her such a candidate. Only her magics made the slave mark against her invalid, and freed the girl to join the guild. But then that idiot Dominic had to go and put a sex curse on her for refusing his advances. She had not even known of it when her son Duncan, sweet, handsome Duncan, had bid for the girl as his bride.
Being an indulgent parent, she had agreed, despite the girl’s protests.
The wedding night was a disaster. Too late she realized the nature of the curse. Too late, for her son was blighted by its power, and turned into the mockery of the man he had been. Jacob tried to tell her it was karma for what she had done to him all those years ago. She didn’t hear him. Jacob, or K’Viit, as he had become, rarely had much to say that she cared to hear.
Until last week.
A Maker, apparently once Agatha’s mistress, which would have explained her mistake, since the older witch would have possibly absorbed some of the girl’s aura, as even inexperienced Makers did radiate power to magic workers in their immediate vicinity. And even more, this was a Maker with cubs in her belly. Life force was a powerful energy, and if harnessed properly, the miracles she could create would be boundless. She could make Valdor, if not H’r’lyn, the very center of the world. She could be an empress.
And she could restore Duncan to the fine man he should be now. Maybe she would even restore her witless, ever-randy brother to the man he had once been before she had accidentally bound him in his present form.
As to Dominic, well, she had personally dealt with that petty, old man who thought himself above reproach. He now occupied a dank cell somewhere in her palace. While she had blocked the majority of his magics, with his own mystical energies to sustain him, he should yet live a very long time in that fetid, dank hole she had dropped him into some time past.
Focusing on the Maker again, she noted the woman was truly ignorant of her power, and worth, and actually wanted to continue ignoring it. Perfect. For that would make it all the easier to steal her power, and use it as her own. As to the three bumbling protectors with her, she had little fear they would do something to undermine her plans. Let them teach her a bit of harmless slight-of-hand, and pretty tricks. Not even her beloved son Duncan knew enough to be able to stop her once her plan was put into motion. That little fourth level magic worker certainly didn’t have the skill to thwart her. And as to Jacob. Well, he had never thought with the head upon his shoulders. It was ever the one lower down that occupied his time.
Just a few more weeks, and she would be in possession of the greatest power in all the ages. No one would be able to stop her. No one. She chortled in glee as she closed the orb that let her spy on her unwitting accomplishes. Soon the guild would be put a poor joke, and she would be the ultimate power in all the known world.
As she was ever destined to be.
“Tell me again why I’m supposed to be doing this,” Marion rasped, having left the caravan after that first, bizarre encounter with her current companions.
For by then, they had left their horses, and cart, and had bundled packs on their backs as she, Lady, Agatha, K’Viit, and even Duncan now steadily climbed a steep, almost impassible cliff as the lycanthrope slowly led them higher, and higher into the mountains of the Spine, rather than down the other side.
Oddly enough, it was Duncan that answered.
“Y’know yerself, lady,” the little man snapped in a winded manner. “Does me mum have ‘er way, we’d all end up as toys in ‘er experiments. And if me, Jake, and Aggie seem bad, just be thinkin’ on what she’d do to other folk with yer kind o’ power.”
“But I still don’t understand why we have to……”
“Lady, please,” Agatha rasped. “’Tis enough K’Viit has a plan. We dare not speak of it in case one of the white witch’s spies ferrets us out at the very moment ‘tis voiced. Trust me, she has ways of knowing what she should not.
“The illusory spell you helped me set on Sir Clarke’s caravan will be fading soon enough. By then, we must either be beyond her reach, or be prepared to let her remake the world to her twisted desires.”
“Nay. I….I know. I….just hope for all our sakes that K’Viit’s plan works. And that I’m worth all this….trouble.”
“Y’ be that, lady,” Duncan chortled. “Do y’ think me mum would stir ‘erself out of ‘er palace for just anyone? She’s even been known to make the guild council come to H’r’lyn to wait on ‘er, rather than visit the guild when it suits ‘er.”
“She certainly sounds like a…..”
“Do not speak of what you don’t wish to summon, lady,” Agatha stopped her. Her tone was dire, and when she looked back down behind her, Duncan was nodding ominously, putting a finger to his lips.
“I’m just glad that duke’s daughter chose to remain behind in the end,” Marion panted. “Could you imagine a spoiled noblewoman on such a trek as we have experienced?” None of those behind her said anything.
“I’m not spoiled,” she hissed over her shoulder, hearing the doubt in their minds.
“We’re near to the top,” K’Viit bounded back down the narrow path they were scrabbling up, literally on hands and knees, their packs having been dragged up by the stronger, more agile lycanthrope as he all but raced up and down the barely discernible trail.
“I just wished to warn you, we shall have guests when you reach the peak. Lady, I ask you be meek, humble, and very docile, for that is how they expect women to behave.”
“How who expects women to behave,” she grated, eyeing him with very little meekness as she glared at him, her fatigue bringing out her irritability. Among other things.
The smiling man merely winked at her, saying, “You’ll see,” and then scampered back up to the top of the plateau just a few more yards from where the party joined by rope was wearily searching out handholds to gain one more inch at a time.
“I vow, someday I may just……” “Lady Marion,” Duncan and Agatha both hissed.
“I know, I know,” she groaned. “Watch what I say. Watch what I say.”
“Lady,” she called down to the silent member of their troupe that followed Duncan, Agatha leading the way as that was the order insisted upon by K’Viit for reasons only he understood. “Are you all right? Are you making it?” “I’m….fine, mistress,” the young girl called back, panting heavily. “I….won’t fail…..you.”
“I know you won’t,” she called encouragingly to her. “Don’t fret. We’re almost to the top, ‘twould seem, and then…..
“Well, I don’t know,” she admitted.
“I am…..with you, m‘lady,” the young slave girl wheezed, though she truly looked pale beneath her recently acquired tan gained by the past weeks under the unrelenting sun.
Marion realized she looked very little like the spoiled, young princess of a mere month ago. Far from it. Had she truly changed Miranda’s reality, or was her father even now engaged in trying to find them as he railed at his men for their failure to locate his only daughter? She wasn’t sure how to find out, but something in the back of her mind told her the true Miranda was not yet truly lost.
Not yet.
She fervently prayed that was so, for it would be another life she had destroyed if so. For she had learned by now, despite their efforts to hide the fact, that Agatha was her long lost Sparrow, and Duncan had been cursed through her because of a vile, old man who had lusted for the woman who would not give him what he desired. It seemed the only man that could waken, or safely share Agatha’s bed, was her one true love. Whoever that might be, as the woman had no idea herself.
Finally, she heard Agatha give a sigh of relief, and the tautness in her rope went slack as Marion looked up to see someone helping her to her feet even as her head crested the crumpling rocky ledge, and she saw nine men standing back away from the ledge. K’Viit reached for her next, but she was staring at the nine with wide, disbelieving eyes, for they weren’t truly men.
“Well, n’ this is some sight, then,” Duncan drawled as he was virtually hauled up to the level ground next by the bigger manbeast. “I can’t believe even you dared bring us here, you overgrown fur ball.”
“Mistress,” Lady rasped as she smiled in relief when she was pulled up and simply collapsed at her knees, puffing heavily as she sucked air into weary lungs. The young girl’s body was just too thin for such exertions, she realized belatedly. Yet they had no choice but to come here. Didn’t they?
“’Tis all right, little bird,” she absently called her as she stroked her dark auburn hair that was indeed growing out by now. “I believe we are safe.”
“Who is the Maker,” one of the near eight foot, bipedal wolves stepped forward to demand.
Marion had heard of the wolven, the true fathers of the lycanthrope race, but she had never known anyone who could actually claim to have met one of the true sires of their ancient race. Now she was standing before nine of the silver-furred beasts legend claimed were made by Lord Walker himself before he left the world of men.
“Allow me,” K’Viit smiled blandly as he stepped forward.
“Honored Elder, as I said, we have come to you for aid to prevent the abuse of power by one seeking this new Maker.
“Among her guardians are myself, Lady Agatha, a third level magic maker,” he gestured to Agatha, who frowned at his introduction. “Duncan Evanshire, unfortunate victim of my misguided sibling, and Lady, a young slave loyal to her mistress……
“Lady Marion Drake of Xantia, a true Maker,” he gestured to her.
“For you know I do not lie when I say the world lost its night some weeks past. I know of the lady’s great, and dreadful gift, for I was with her as we battled the vile leeches who threatened to overwhelm us until she called forth the daystar, and saved us all.
“Honored Elder,” he bowed this time. “I humbly beg you to allow us sanctuary in your high mountains to prevent the white witch from unleashing damnation on us all does she gain the Maker as her ally. And likely puppet.”
“Do not your own kind demand all Makers die upon recognition,” the tall manbeast growled from his near human snout.
Marion stared at him, her eyes darkening as she understood the implied threat.
“Honored Elder…”
“Enough,” Marion spat, and finished untying the rope from her waist to step forward weary, hungry, and thirsty to glare at the towering brute that made even K’Viit seem small. “I have had enough.
“Listen, you….whatever you are. That witch doesn’t care about you. She doesn’t care about anyone from what I’ve heard.
“She turned her own brother into a wolf, and let her own son be cursed, for pity’s sake.
“Now, you might kill me, you might not. But do you truly think that would end her threat? What is keep her from finding, and claiming the next Maker as her own before anyone realizes what she’s done,” she went on as K’Viit stared in distress, and tried to gesture her to silence.
“Now, I did not climb all the way up here, and drag my friends all this way, just to hear you decide I should just be tossed off the side of a cliff, or something of the like. Either act like a man, and help us stop this madwoman, or tell us where to find someone who will help.”
She stood there glaring at the towering wolven with furious, blue eyes, and the manbeast looked down at her in turn. Then he looked over to K’Viit, and laughed.
“Ah, Elder?” “You did not say she carried your cubs, young one,” the wolven chortled as he squatted to put a large, but only three-fingered hand to Marion’s by now bulging belly.
“Hey,” she gasped, and slapped his hand away. “That’s mine, thank you, sir.”
“She has spirit, K’Viit of Valdor,” the wolven said as he chuckled again. “She will birth strong cubs.”
“Only two. One is a kit. Or so she says,” K’Viit smiled now, sensing the shift in the wolven’s manner.
“I would trust her.” He turned to his own kind, and growled in his own tongue. “She is a Maker.”
“Did we not just say so,” Marion demanded irritably.
K’Viit blinked in astonishment now. “Lady? You….You know the old tongue now?” “Of course not,” she protested. “But he didn’t…..
“Did he,” she asked, and K’Viit and Agatha both nodded.
“Well, bloody hell,” she muttered, her father’s favorite curse.
“You are beginning to manifest,” Agatha told her. “Soon, your power will come at will. And your very word shall be law, and…..” “All right, all right. I get it.
“Just now, all I want to make is a bed, and a meal. I’m starving. I’m tired, and I need a bath.”
“Come,” the head wolven gestured with a sudden show of reverence. “We have food and drink awaiting you. And you may rest as you will, Great Mother.”
“Wait,” she frowned. “You knew I was coming?” “Of course. The prophecy is long remembered among my people. We have been awaiting your coming for generations,” he told her as the other wolven took up their packs for them, and led them past thick trees not to a dank cave, as she half expected, but to a tall, white marble palace that stood within a wall of white marble that was guarded by scores of the wolven. Inside the walls were hundreds more, and lycanthropes in every shape and size. It was a city of manbeasts, though there were human females, and young, too.
“This is fantastic,” Agatha exclaimed.
“I want to hear more about this prophecy,” Marion said as K’Viit stayed close to her side, with Lady plodding wearily behind them, her eyes wide with wonder.
“As you wish,” the wolven that spoke to her earlier nodded. “First, however, I think we should get within the walls of Nordstrom. It’s walls are proof against mystical arts, and will shield you from eyes that might yet seek you out.”
“Though me mum will soon figure it out all the same, why give ‘er a head’s up, hey,” Duncan asked her with a wink.
“You are very odd,” Marion informed the man not for the first time. Then recalled what she had been told of watching her words, and grimaced as if she might have done something wrong.
“Don’t worry, lady,” K’Viit smirked, discerning her direction of thought. “He was always that way.”
“And y’weren’t,” Duncan spat, forgetting their hosts for the moment who merely stared at them in amusement as they led the small band into their city.
Agatha only rolled her eyes as Marion and Lady kept looking around them at the city that stretched out before them.
Tanya Evanshire stared into the still empty orb of seeing, and cursed her brother.
The treacherous wolf had shown his true colors yet again. She should have known. He had been a thorn in her side from the beginning. Even before she had accidentally turned him into a lycanthrope. She wasn’t sure what angered her more. That she had let him fool her, or that she had believed him in the first place.
Treacherous wolf.
She thought of the Maker, and knew there was only place they could have taken her where her mystic orb could not find them. Those accursed wolves were now meddling in her affairs thanks to her brother. Why, she wondered, could Jacob not just hide in the forest, and mask his shame in solitude like anyone else with his cursed condition. No, he had to take pride in it, and flaunt himself across the entire kingdom, even becoming a registered guildsman with the local slave merchants.
Oaf.
Impudent, arrogant, lecherous oaf.
She still had an ace up her sleeve, though. She was still the head of the local magic guild. She had the authority to call special sessions. She had the ability to make things happen herself. Perhaps not as a genuine Maker. But she could still manipulate things to own will if she was clever.
And Tanya knew she was clever.
She had been born clever.
Her destiny, she knew with a searing clarity, would not be denied.
“You’re kidding,” Marion asked.
“Not at all,” Jacob smiled as he stretched out beside her on the bed in the room. “Silver is certain you are what his people have been waiting on for many generations.”
“What do you think,” she asked him quietly, looking over at Lady…..at Miranda, who smiled faintly at her, showing her concern for her as a genuine slave who cared for her mistress as she sat on her cot waiting her next order. Was the princess even still in there?
“What do you mean, what do I think?” “There is…..well, something I should tell you.”
“My sweet lady,” he grinned at her as he flashed his teeth in a charming smile. “You may tell me anything. So prattle on, I am your humble servant, and will attend every word.”
“You are being silly now,” she sighed, then glanced at the door where Lady had been taken to be freshened up for her, and made a silent decision.
“I…..I have to tell you. I am not who you think I am.
“I mean, I am, but….I am not what you think I am,” she said, and shook her head as he frowned.
“Lady, you are confusing me.”
“I am saying this all wrong,” she sighed, leaning back against her pillows to stare at the ceiling. “I…I have to start at the beginning, or you won’t understand.”
“I’m not going anywhere, my love,” he called her.
She groaned.
“It began after Sparrow was lost,” she finally said, refusing to look at him, or his handsome visage again. “Father was infuriated. So much so that he banished me.”
Jacob’s smile faded as he began to frown. “Your father banished you? His own child?” She nodded.
“So, he did not send you on this journey?”
“Please,” she murmured. “Let me finish, else I may never get it all out.”
“Then speak, lady,” he murmured. “I will listen.”
She did, and he did. Not saying a single word, not even when she reached that point where she had finally surrendered her freedom when her uncle arranged for her to serve the T’Gollan king, and play maid, nanny, and tutor to his willful daughter. A true lady, and princess of the realm.
Of that king’s realm, at least.
She continued to the journey that they were taking to sojourn across the known world ere the princess was to greet her betrothed, and wed, and how the storm had blown them badly off course. She spoke of the captain’s idea, and her swift attempts to bend the princess to that ploy to spare all their lives.
And how everything had seemed to go terribly wrong since then.
Only afterward did she turn to look at him.
“Now you may speak, Sir Jacob,” she said quietly, waiting for his condemnation, or worse for having trifled with him so.
Instead of anger, he smiled.
“I suppose you think that, as a loyal Valdoran, I should be quite put out with you.”
“Aye,” she nodded wanly.
“Or that, as a man of any caliber, I should be distressed you so easily fooled me with your silly scheme.”
She did not speak this time. Could not speak. She simply nodded.
“I’m not.”
“You’re….not,” she asked carefully.
He shook his head, still smiling.
“Why not,” she asked a little warily.
Jacob chuckled. “I’m not Valdoran.”
“You’re not?” “Nay. I play at being loyal, and do what I must, but I’ve never cared for this land, nor its witless king, or his witless customs.
“’Tis just the only semi-free land in the nine kingdoms where my kind has any chance of surviving without ending up in a zoo, or a tannery.”
Marion only sighed. “I wish it were not so, Jacob. I can see you are a good man, whatever your heritage.”
He smiled, as he stroked her soft cheek. “As I can see you are a good woman, my kind lady.
“I am just grateful I had the chance to meet you, for I daresay there are those that would have exploited you, or worse, had they been in my place.”
“You are….very kind,” she smiled up at him as he wagged his brows saying, “Well, I do confess I had ulterior motives in following you.”
“Oaf,” she laughed, slapping at his hard body that moved not an inch.
“Feeling better?”
“Aye. Though I would feel better if this were over, and Princess Miranda were delivered safely to her betrothed.
“Whatever become of me, she does not deserve to loose her life so,” she said, looking to her companion who frowned at her as if not understanding what she had just heard.
“There. You see? Your concern for her does you credit. She hardly gave you cause to cherish her, and yet you do. Even now, you fret more for her than yourself. Not many would feel as you do. Especially not after leaning they now harbor such power as to topple kingdoms.”
“I don’t want to topple anything,” she sighed, closing her eyes as she enjoyed having him lay beside her, feeling secure. Secure enough she soon fell fast asleep as her finally full belly, and the soft bed lured her into slumber now that she could finally, and completely relax.
“Yet that is what you might just end up doing,” K’Vitt said quietly as he lay beside her, watching her slip into an exhausted slumber. “And only the gods know what will rise out of what you may yet do.”
“Sleep,” he turned to Lady as he easily rose from Marion’s bed without disturbing her. “Time enough to fret over things you can’t change later, lass,” he told her.
The young redhead bowed, and lay back on her own cot at the far side of her lady’s room. She soon fell asleep, too, and the tall lycanthrope stared at the pair of them for a moment before slipping from the room, and seeking out his other companions.
She was on an endless, dark plain. High grass swayed in the wind that seemed to ebb and flow as if some great creature were breathing just beyond her sight. She looked up, but there were no stars. Nothing. It was just darkness that stretched above her. Around her. In all directions.
She felt a shiver as she looked around, puzzled that she could see even though she was surrounded by darkness. Yet she could see. She could see every blade of grass around her. Every waving stalk that stretched out all around her. Yet she could not see what was out there.
Breathing.
“Hello,” she called out, her voice a bare whisper in the night.
No, not night. Simply….darkness.
She took a single step forward, but nothing changed.
Everything remained dark, everything remained the same.
She had the faintest perception that this must be some manner of dream, and yet it felt uncannily real. She took another step, and the breeze became a wind, slowing the thick, blonde hair from her face that fell unbound over her shoulders. She kept walking, the wind seeming to guide her as it moved counter to what winds should do in her experience, and then saw the silhouette of a man standing before her, looking away from her just ahead. She walked up beside him, and stopped just behind him.
“This is where I first learned of my worth,” the man said in a low, gravely voice.
“Do I know you,” she asked quietly, feeling the power that radiated from him like heat from a hearth in the cold of winter.
She heard a soft chortle as the man looked out at the darkness, his dark sandy hair unfashionably long as it hung about broad, muscular shoulders. He seemed to wear a heavy cloak that covered the rest of him, giving her no clue as to who he might be, or how he was dressed.
“You should know me.
“Just as you should know yourself,” he told her.
“I….should? I don’t understand,” she rasped, looking up at him as she tired to move to his side.
He never moved, and yet she couldn’t seem to get around him. He seemed to stay just ahead of her no matter how she moved, his face set away from her as she stared up at him. She finally stopped trying, and with a heavy sigh, she just stood quietly for a time as she became aware of a growing light emanating from the direction in which he faced.
“You see,” he pointed, his arm now jutting out like a signpost as he gestured to the faint light on the far horizon.
“What is it,” she asked.
“The price of power,” the shadowy silhouette told her in such a sad tone she could swear she felt the grief roll off him in waves.
She looked back toward the light, and saw it was closer now. Saw it was the light of hundreds, no, thousands of fires. Not just lamps, but torches, and even burning buildings. No, cities. Whole cities suddenly seemed to sweep past her, all in flames. All in ruin. She gasped in shock as she saw the thousands upon thousands of dead. Not just warriors, but women and children. Young and old. Men. Beasts. Even manbeasts. All lay about them as the flaming horizon now surrounded them, and flowed around them to replace the dark plain.
She wanted to scream as the stench of decay and death rose to fill her nostrils.
“Make it stop,” she finally managed to choke out.
“I can’t. I never could.
“I started it, but only you can stop it.”
“How,” she all but screamed at the stranger.
He sighed audibly.
“How did you make the sun rise?”
“I….I don’t know.”
“Then you can’t make this stop.
“And if you don’t, no one will.”
“I don’t understand this,” she cried as the man turned away from her, his back fully to her now as he started to walk away.
“Wait. What is happening,” she cried out as the dead began to rise. Pushing themselves up on stiff, shambling limbs, and staggering about blindly as if seeking something which was known only to their unnatural minds.
“Here…..I created leeches,” he told her. “I did not mean to do so, but I did.
“The wars were over. Yet the dead outnumbered the living, so I, in my pride, thought to return life to the dead.
“Instead, I created one more blight to prey on the innocent.”
“You created….?
“You’re Lord Walker. The greatest Maker ever to live,” she realized. “I must be dreaming.”
“Greatest,” the man laughed mockingly. “And, nay, daughter. You are not dreaming. Just as I am not dreaming.
“For in our heart and minds, whatsoever we will is true. This is my truth. My nightmare. And ‘tis all too real.”
“Then unmake it,” she cried, rushing after him as he kept walking through the endless, shambling ranks of the dead.
“I cannot. I have tried.
“’Tis why I gave the magic to the guild. Why I raised a race of wolves to walk as men. To give true men a chance to fight these demons.
“Yet even that went awry,” he sighed as the flames began to fade once more, and she realized the darkness was once more claiming the plain, but now she was fully aware of the lumbering leeches all around her. Even if they did not yet notice her, she was aware of them, and she feared them.
“How,” she called to the man who doubled the distance growing between them with every step.
“I don’t know,” his faint voice carried on the wind to her ears, sounding all the world like a lament.
“Wait, don‘t go,” she begged the darkness that now surrounded her once again as the man seemed to vanish from her awareness. “What do I do?”
There was no answer. Just the wind, and the faint moans of voiceless weeping from all around her.
“Come back,” she cried out, fear rushing in to fill her as the dark seemed suddenly oppressive.
“I never left you, daughter,” the voice whispered in the back of her mind as she spun around, but saw no one, even though her nagging awareness told her someone was just behind her. Just out of her field of vision.
“What….What can I do,” she rasped. “Surely there is something I can do?” The unseen man’s words were soft. Cryptic. “Seek the betrayer, and the betrayed, and the answers will come.
“If you are not wise, you will fall, as I did. And the gods will have little pity on you. I know.”
She spun around again, and saw the tall man standing there. She looked up this time to find him standing behind her, facing her. Only there was no face atop that tall, powerful body. Just a bare, grinning skeleton.
Her scream echoed endlessly as she fled the nightmare in vain that followed her from every direction, as the thousands upon thousands of dead all reached for her at once. All demanding vindication. All moaning her name. She screamed endlessly, and the very ground beneath her began to crumble, and fall apart.
“You wished to see me,” K’Vitt asked.
“Aye,” Agatha told him grimly as she sat on a table beside their packs that had been deposited their earlier, and left as they tended more immediate needs after their long, swift journey. “How is Lady Marion doing?”
“She sleeps for now. Finally. What is so important that you summoned me in the middle of the night?”
“I found something in the captain’s goods that I thought I should show you.”
“The captain? You mean that poor fool Ian Gregory? Thomas must have given it to us, since he was part of the lady’s party.” “Poor fool, indeed,” she said gravely as she held out a small journal. The ship’s log from the look of it, he realized.
“And, in truth, I took his things. I had a sense about them. About him.
“Now I know why.”
The big lycanthrope frowned as he took the small, leather-bound book, and opened it.
“Turn to the last week. ‘Tis….quite informative.”
He opened the pages, flipped through several before he found the last entry, frowning as he read it. He flipped back further, then further still. Reading from the end of Captain Gregory’s last voyage, he began to frown again. Then actually grumbled, almost growling as he continued to read more swiftly, his lips peeling back as he instinctively bared his teeth at the revelations he found within.
“I….I cannot believe this…..madness,” he exclaimed.
“You realize what this means,” Agatha told him.
“More than you know,” he told her darkly.
She narrowed her own dark eyes on him as he closed the journal. “You don’t seem surprised our lady is but a common maid. Or that her slave is the T’Gollan princess.”
“I’m not,” he told her. “She confessed those facts to me earlier.”
“And you said nothing,” the Frankish witch scowled.
“You would have hid your true identity from her.
“Can you blame a pair of frightened women for trying to survive.”
“Lord Ericson would have wanted….”
“Ericson can go rot,” K’Viit snorted. “My allegiance is to the lady.”
“Which one,” Agatha asked of him.
He smiled smugly. “Guess.”
“I would say you were following your prick again, but you’ve already sated your lust on her.”
“This is about more than my lust,” he grunted at her in a disgruntled fashion. “Can you sit there and tell me you feel nothing for your former charge after all this time? Especially knowing what you do now?”
“You know better. I’m already violating every edict of the guild just by helping her as I have. But the princess is another matter…..”
“The lady is a soft heart, as you must know by now. Strike at her slave…..Her charge, and you would strike at her.
“Do you truly want to anger her after seeing firsthand what she can do,” he asked her bluntly.
Agatha stopped at that. She shook her head, and swore beneath her breath.
“And there is still my sister to consider,” he added almost smugly.
“I have not forgotten her,” Agatha said grimly.
“Look at it this way,” he abruptly smiled. “I’m well on my way to winning our wager.”
“What,” she sputtered, looking genuinely confused.
“Be honest. Surely you cannot say you’ve been bored?”
She groaned, and shook her head. “Duncan is right,” she exclaimed as she flung up her hands. “You truly are mad.”
Whatever his response was going to be, it was lost as they heard a shrill scream ring down the corridor from Marion’s room. In the same instant, thunder echoed across the skies. Only they knew it wasn’t thunder. The very earth itself was starting to shake.
“By the gods,” Agatha exclaimed, leaping to her feet to run down the hall. “She’s shaking the entire city.”
“Nay, the entire mountain,” K’Vitt exclaimed as he easily outstripped her, and pulled open the door of the bedchamber where they both recoiled as blazing light poured out of the room, temporarily blinding them both.
“Wha’s ‘appen’ now,” Duncan shouted as he came loping up the hall from his own room, clad only in his breeches.
Which was when Silver himself suddenly appeared, his amber eyes rounded hugely as he stared into the brightness within. “’Tis the prophecy for certain,” he growled, and stepped forward only to forcibly repelled by the light as if it had hands.
“Yer the one for this job, y’lout,” Duncan shouted at him over a growing rumble that was making the very floors dance beneath their feet. “Get in there!”
“And do what,” he shouted even as he pushed into the light, and found it faintly resistant to his approach, but yielding enough he could force his way into it.
“Wake her,” Agatha shouted, thrown to her feet as the rumbling thunder took on an ominous pitch as they heard screams beyond their shelter as stones grated on stones, and began to fall. “She must be dreaming. Wake her, or we may all die with her nightmares.”
Something tore the hands from her, and then she had the sense of something strong and solid surrounding her. She turned, and felt the familiar arms of her lover holding her.
“Jacob,” she named him. “You’re here!”
“Aye, lady. Now, calm down. You’ve got to wake up. Do you hear me? Wake…..
“Wake up,” K’Vitt shouted as he clung to her, barely able to hold onto her body as the light she radiated threatened to throw even him across the room.
He had barely managed to reach her bed, and was astonished to find her floating over three feet off the bed itself, light spilling from her body as her voice screeched in some nameless agony. He grabbed onto her, fighting the forces that came from out of her very being, and shouted to her. Trying to wake her, to calm her.
Finally, abruptly, her eyes opened and she stared up at him.
“Jacob,” she rasped, and her slender arms wound around him. “I….I…..”
“I know, my love,” he soothed her, gently lowering her back to the bed as the light began to fade from the room until the dimness of twilight returned. “You’re safe. You just had a nightmare.”
“’Twas…..horrible,” she told him, weeping as she curled into his arms.
He looked around her, truly astonished that Lady still slept on undisturbed on her cot. Yet everything else in the room had somehow been smashed against the walls with enough force to shatter the furniture into kindling. Stout chests, padded chairs. None of them could be recognized now. All that remained were the bed, and the cot. Oddly enough, Lady, and her little cot had remained as untouched as Marion’s own bed.
He recalled he had last told the girl to sleep, and so she remained obedient even in the wake of the madness raging around her.
“’Twas not all that nice for us either, Lady Marion,” Agatha said as she stepped forward to stand beside the bed, clutching a small, leather journal in one hand. Marion spotted three wolven standing outside her door, all trying to peer inside, but none of them were making a move to enter.
“I….I don’t understand.”
“Lady, your nightmare almost leveled the city,” K’Vitt told her. “I fear you shared your dread with everyone this night.”
“Dear gods,” she moaned, looking even more miserable. “I’m….I’m so sorry.”
“Tell us what you dreamed,” Agatha asked quietly.
She looked up at her “I….I dreamed…..Of a great, empty plain. Then there was…..a man there. And countless leeches, all trying to reach me.
“I…..I think the man……”
“Aye, lady,” K’Vitt urged her gently when she fell silent.
“I….Don’t think I’m crazy, but….I think the man was Lord Walker. The Lord Walker. He came to me, and told me….things.
“He…..He called me daughter,” she said, her confusion evident as she looked up at him. “What do you think that means?”
Agatha was staring at her. “What did he tell you,” she asked curtly. “Can you recall?” “He….He said the wolven…..and magic…..was created to combat the leeches he himself had accidentally unleashed on the world. But he said something went wrong. He said…..I had to fix it.”
The wolven murmured together in the hall as she looked up at Agatha.
“What else,” Agatha asked her, sensing the burden that had somehow increased on her companion.
“He said…..He said I had to find the betrayer, and the betrayed. That until I did, I wouldn’t know the answers, and…..and I might follow him into…..that nightmare,” she shuddered, involuntarily hugging K’Vitt again.
“’Tis the prophecy,” the one she knew was called Silver Farwalker by now told her. “There can be little doubt now,” he told them.
She looked up at him. “I want to hear about this prophecy now,” she told him.
“Prepare yourselves, then,” the tall manbeast nodded his lupine head at her. “K’Vitt, you will bring her to the temple when she is ready. All shall be revealed then.”
“Wait,” Marion called out when the three wolven started to turn away from her door. “Does this prophecy say anything about betrayal?” “Not that we know, Great Mother,” he told her. “Still, even we cannot interpret all the words our Lord and Maker gave us on that grim day he left us to seek his own way. Mayhap you can.”
“Lord Walker left this prophecy,” Agatha said in genuine surprise.
“Of course,” Silver nodded at the small Frankish witch. “’Twas his final gift to us ere he raised Nordstrom into the clouds.”
“Into…..the clouds,” Duncan frowned.
“Aye,” Silver nodded. “Our grand elders tell of a time when Nordstrom was the center of the world. Built in the middle of a great, lush valley so all could come to Lord Walker, and petition him. His last act was to raise our city out of men’s reach so as to protect us from those that might violate the pact betwixt us.
“As they have tried often to do,” he said, looking at Agatha purposely.
She nodded solemnly, but said nothing.
It was then that four younger wolven rushed into the hall, almost colliding with the older wolven, snarling and growling in distressful tones they were so upset. The three looked back at Marion, then turned and left.
“What did they say,” Duncan asked as the hall quickly cleared, and the sounds of running feet and settling stone could be heard outside.
“It makes little sense,” K’Vitt shook his head.
“They said…..the mountains are gone,” Agatha said with genuine awe in her tone as she stared at Marion. “They said…..Nordstrom now sets upon the plains of Valdor.”
All eyes went to Marion as she stared at them.
“I….I didn’t mean…..”
“Dress, lady, and quickly,” K’Vitt told her as he gave her a last, reassuring hug, and released her. “’Tis time we heard this prophecy of the elders.”
“Aye,” Agatha said in the same hushed tone.
“You’re sure it was….me,” Marion asked as they turned to go to give her privacy to dress.
Duncan’s eloquent snort was the only audible reply she received as the trio left the room. It was only then that she realized her clothes, left laying across a chair, were across the room, under a pile of debris. She frowned, trying to understand how that had happened as she realized the room had been strangely emptied of furniture save for her bed, and Lady’s cot.
Then she realized the debris was the furniture, and she moaned in shock as she rose to pull her clothing from the rubble heaped around the walls of the room. “I must be going mad,” she told herself as she began to dress, not even thinking to wake Lady. “’Tis the only explanation.”
TO BE CONTINUED………