Conqueror’s Moon: Part One of the Boreal Moon Tale. Julian May
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drew arcane power from somewhere, fending off frigid paralysis, and flung the iron-bound bucket overhand, dealing the spy a glancing blow on the side of his head. The man blinked, breaking the spell of encroaching ice for a moment, but kept coming. The fatal cold took hold of Snudge again and he hit his adversary in the face with the hot lantern, which promptly went out. The sorcerer tottered and crashed over backwards onto the wet, slippery stones, visible only because of the faint gleam of his amulet. Snudge leapt on top of him, using his fists. Neither of them uttered a sound.
The small man struggled like a mad thing in the dark, exerting uncanny strength. Straddling his adversary’s torso, Snudge felt sinewy fingers seize his neck. Thumbs with nails like steel pincers dug in on each side of his voicebox, bringing pain and roaring dizziness and a red fog pulsing behind his eyes. He couldn’t breathe. His pummeling fists had no effect. He fumbled desperately at his waist, found his little dagger, and grasped it in both hands as he felt death closing in on him. Time for one strike — only one — and instinct or something else taught him the appropriate place to drive in the blade, the sure route to the sorcerer’s heart. He knew how to thrust up under the breastbone, bury the dagger to its hilt, and twist …
Then came an abrupt relaxation of those claw-like hands, the melting of the muscle-fettering ice whose power he had kept at bay for a few critical seconds.
The eerie glow of the sorcerer’s pendant showed Snudge a face contorted with incredulous rage. His heart torn and stilled, the spy bucked upward in a last spasm of agony as all thinking ground inexorably to a halt. There was a rattling exhalation of breath, followed by a blare of windspeech:
Beynor!
A call?
How did the boy do it? How? How? How?
Each soundless demand was fainter than the last, until there was only silence on the wind. The furious glint of talent in the sorcerer’s eyes dwindled to blank nullity and his soul fled to an inaccessible place, leaving only dead flesh and bones behind.
The glow of his pendant winked out.
Snudge took a shuddering breath. For a time he did nothing but draw in sweet air, resisting a powerful urge to spew up his supper. Then he fumbled for the fallen lantern, found and lit it, and stared in wonder at his handiwork.
A human being once alive was slain by him, as dead as a crushed ant or an arrow-shot stag or a chicken with its neck wrung. He felt no remorse, no fear, no sense of relief at escaping whatever perilous enchantment had threatened him — only an empty numbness. Almost without thought he pulled out his blade, wiped it on the wad of torn fustian lining he had crammed into his belt-wallet, and sheathed it. Blood oozed forth from the small wound, not as much as he would have expected. It slowly soaked the man’s linen shirt, but was kept from leaking onto the floor by the waxed leather jacket.
The pendant on the sorcerer’s breast had become a square of ordinary translucent stone, blue-white in color, curiously carved.
A moonstone sigil.
Snudge had read of such a thing in one of the books purloined from Vra-Kilian back at Cala Palace. Sigils were rare artifacts of the Salka monsters, having conjured into them the power of the Beaconfolk. The only human beings possessing them were members of Moss’s Glaumerie Guild, a league of master sorcerers. A sigil could generate a single magical function. This one had obviously produced the strong covering spell of invisibility, but one that could be penetrated by the wearer’s windsight, as ordinary couverture could not.
After a moment’s hesitation Snudge unfastened the gold chain, slipped off the sigil, and thrust the thing into his wallet. The valuable chain he replaced on the dead man’s neck, buttoning his shirt and jacket over it.
Snudge was not that kind of thief.
He took the body by the arms and dragged it over the water-splashed floor into a corner. A few pallets of stuffed sacking had already been laid out as beds for Skellhaven’s men. He arranged the corpse in a fetal curl on one of them, face to the wall as though sleeping, then pulled off the seaboots and set them neatly to one side. He used the wad of fustian to mop up the spilled water as well as he could. Perhaps the floor would dry before anyone else came. He put the sodden cloth into the bucket.
Now I must search, he thought, strangely calm, to see whether any talented person heard the sorcerer’s death-cry.
Shutting his eyes, he became one with the wind again, seeking any trace of awareness, any thin strand of oversight focused on the dead man, exploring nearby first, then outside the castle, and finally sweeping along a narrow path three hundred leagues northward to Royal Fenguard. The effort drenched him with sweat and weakened his muscles so that he almost collapsed. But no magical adept watched from afar, and no ordinary person had heard the brief commotion in the stable and started out to investigate its source.
Deveron Austrey, mankiller, opened his eyes. After his strength returned, he stepped into the dim corridor and used the lantern to examine his clothing, making certain there was no trace of blood. Then he started back to the repository tower, moving slowly like one half-asleep, taking the bucket with him until he could abandon it safely inside the secret passage.
Prince Conrig and Vra-Stergos sat together in a dark part of the ducal library sectioned off by tall stacks. The Companions’ drunken picture-dice game was still proceeding noisily out in the middle of the great round room. The armiger named Saundar Kersey played the lute while Belamil Langsands sang ‘Brown-Eyed Wenches of Garveytown’ in a sweet young tenor. A clock-candle burning atop a nearby reader’s carrel indicated that the ninth hour after noon was three-quarters past. Conrig had only just returned to the tower from the solar after the council of war ended. He described to his brother what had transpired at the meeting.
Stergos listened without comment, his brow furrowed and his hands clasped tightly in his lap. When the prince finished, the alchymist continued to sit without speaking.
‘Don’t you have anything to say, Gossy?’ Conrig was puzzled. ‘The great enterprise is on! What’s wrong?’
Stergos made his decision. ‘Con … you know that I would never do anything to harm you, or to endanger your great dream of Sovereignty.’
The prince stiffened. ‘Go on.’
‘Young Deveron perceived someone windwatching us. Without my permission, he followed the trace to its source and discovered Princess Ullanoth overseeing Castle Vanguard. He identified her positively. She was not protected by any shielding spell.’
‘We knew she had to be the one,’ Conrig said impatiently. ‘What does it matter, since she knows our plans already?’
Stergos was staring miserably at his hands. ‘Deveron saw the princess fashion a Sending. He saw it travel here and meet you in the musicians’ gallery, and he read your lips as you conversed with it. The boy told me of this, unaware that a Sending can appear only to the talented.’
‘So.’ Conrig met his brother’s tear-filled eyes. ‘Now you know.’
‘What I have suspected but tried to ignore, not being willing to accept the truth. You have the talent, but not in its full power, or Vra-Kilian would have identified it in you as he did in me. How Ullanoth discovered your secret, I have no idea.’
‘She might have spied on me and caught me doing something … imprudent.’ Conrig gave a great sigh of resignation. ‘When Snudge innocently found me out four years ago, I considered killing him, but decided he was too valuable to waste — a wild talent unknown to the Brethren: to Vra-Kilian, damn his prying! From time to time, when we were alone, the boy would attempt to teach me magical tricks. I mastered a few: moving small objects a few inches, kindling a flame without a tarnstick. Ulla might have seen me do such a thing. Or perhaps the magic of the Beaconfolk guided her. She Sent herself to me many times and helped me formulate the scheme of Sovereignty.’