The workroom was swept clean, and there was only one source of flame: a tiny candle sheltered by a glass chimney. Zorsha took no chances when working with explosives; no Seeker would, nor would any of those of the Watchers whose duties included handling such things.
"This is what makes the lightnings?" Yuchai asked, regarding the little pile of black powder in the palm of his outstretched hand with doubt and puzzlement.
"Only that," Zorsha agreed. "Doesn't look like much, does it?"
"Not really." Yuchai poured it carefully back into the little leather sack Zorsha held open, and dusted his hands off on a bit of cloth. "It looks like dirt. Or ashes."
Zorsha grinned, a little tightly. "Trust me, it isn't dirt, and it's every bit as dangerous as real lightning. Listen, Yuchai, Felaras gave me open-ended permission to show you whatever you wanted to know in the meeting I had with her last night—and that 'everything' includes the fire-throwers. You told me a while ago that Jegrai wanted you to learn about them. Well, now Felaras figures he should know. But we're dealing with perilous stuff here—there've been Seekers and Watchers both blown to little bits just because some tiny thing went wrong. Still want to go on? It isn't just the explosives that are dangerous—even knowing about how they work could put your life in danger, outside these walls. There've been members of the Order tortured to death over this stuff."
He hefted the little bag of black powder. Yuchai bit his lip, but shook his head stubbornly. "I want to know. Even if Jegrai hadn't asked me to learn about it, I'd have wanted to know. You told me it wasn't magic. That meant it was something anybody could learn. If anybody could, I wanted to."
"I'm going to start by showing you a few things. First, I'm going to light a little bit of this stuff in the open." Zorsha poured a tiny pile of the explosive powder on a metal plate, set the plate on the workbench, and carefully uncovered the candle. With equal care he touched the candle to the pile. Yuchai watched in fascination as it sparked, and then went up in a poof of smoke, consumed in a bare instant of time.
"Now, this little paper tube has about the same amount of the powder packed into it." Zorsha took one of the tiny firecrackers used at festivals out of a metal-lined drawer in his workbench. "There's also a little bit of the powder wound into the paper fuse—that's the twist of paper sticking out of the end. Now watch."
He put the cracker on the plate, lit the fuse, and stood back. The fuse was a short one; he'd barely gotten out of the way when the cracker exploded. Yuchai jumped nearly a foot into the air.
"Now . . . logic, Yuchai. What was the difference between the firecracker and the pile of gunpowder?"
The boy's brows knitted for a moment.
"Think hard."
Yuchai shook his head, defeated.
"In the firecracker the force of burning was confined. It had nowhere to go, so it broke its container."
Yuchai's eyes lit. "like putting a lid on a boiling pot?"
Zorsha chuckled with delight. "Damn good!" Impulsively he hugged Yuchai's thin shoulders, and the boy's whole face lit up. "Now watch this."
He took another firecracker and this time put a small metal measuring cup over it, leaving only the fuse sticking out. He lit the fuse.
This time Yuchai was prepared for the noise and didn't jump, but his mouth formed a soundless "oh" when the metal measure was thrown into the air and off the table.
"Now, what was the difference there?"
"The—force was more confined?"
"Partially. It was also confined so that it could only go in one direction. Obviously, the force was too small to move the table, so it could only move the cup."
"You use the—confined force—to throw things?" Yuchai hazarded. "like a catapult, only farther and faster?"
"In part; look here." He rummaged through his document-drawer and pulled out a drawing of one of the hand-cannon. "Now, this is a drawing of a fire-thrower—a small one. You pack the explosive powder down in here, see? Then you add paper, you stuff it in so that it blocks all the cracks, so that the force can't escape around the edges of whatever you're going to use as shot. Then you put in the shot, then more paper. The shot is usually a round metal ball, very heavy."
Yuchai crowded up under his arm, studying the drawing with an intensity that allowed no distractions.
"Look here—here's the hole that the fuse goes in; you light that, and when the powder explodes, the ball is propelled out."
"But Jegrai said that the ground before him exploded—like lightning had struck there. No matter how hard a metal ball hit, it wouldn't do that."
"That's the fire-throwers we have on the walls—another kind." He pulled out a second drawing. "We call this one a mortar; it doesn't send things as far, because we don't use as heavy a charge, and we let a little more of the force escape by not using wadding. What it does fire is something like a very large firecracker, but one made of cast iron; which, as I showed you, is brittle enough to shatter if struck hard enough. When you light the fuse on the mortar, you also light the fuse on the canister, which is timed so that it goes off when it hits the ground. Mortars are a lot more dangerous to the handlers than the cannon, because the act of firing them can set off the charge in the shell."
"The fire gets through the shell?"
"No. It isn't just fire that can set off the gunpowder."
Zorsha put a firecracker unobtrusively on the bench, and pulled out a hammer.
"Impact can do it too."
He brought the hammer down squarely on the firecracker—and Yuchai jumped back, wide-eyed, at the crack of the explosion.
"You see? Hard enough impact sets it off."
The boy stared at the blackened place on the bench for a moment, while Zorsha rubbed his tingling fingers. It was an effective demonstration of how dangerous gunpowder could be—but a little hard on the hand.
"Zorsha, I am probably a fool—and I am not very learned," Yuchai said, shyly, but with those intense eyes focused on Zorsha's face. "But—I have a question. Two questions?"
"Go ahead."
"In battle, even our arrows often bounce off armor. The Suno laugh at arrow-fall when they are in full armoring; not even our bows can pierce metal. But—could—could a man not make an arrowhead, hollow, with the powder inside? And when it struck the armor or the shield, would it not explode?"
"Hladyr bless," Zorsha breathed. "I never thought of that. Even if it did very little damage it would certainly frighten whoever it hit white! And if it hit a rider—"
"The horse would bolt," Yuchai said simply. "No horse would abide that without being trained to it. A few archers could scatter an entire force of heavy cavalry, could they not?"
"They could—gods above and below, they certainly could. And your other question?"
"You told me of the Sabirn-fire, the fire that water only spreads? And you told me that you could not use it very often because it was so dangerous?"
"So dangerous we've seldom even used it with catapults. All it would take would be for the jars to break open a little, and the fire would be all over the catapult and crew."
"But cast iron is tougher than pottery, and still breaks. Why do you not put it in the hollow canisters of the mortars? You could throw it far beyond the lines of your allies. You could destroy the siege engines you told me of before they were even put into play. You would not even need to hit anything exactly, only near it, because the fire would splash and spread. You could take whole groups of fighters that way. Am I not right?"
"Yuchai—" Zorsha looked aghast at the boy. "Yuchai, that is a terrible thought."
The boy hugged his arms to his chest, as if to ward off a sudden chill, and his face took on a strange, masklike appearance. "If you made these shells, you could hurl such things at the Talchai when they came—you could burn them, burn them up. They couldn't stand against you, no matter how many warriors they had."
Zorsha took the boy's thin shoulders in his hands and shook him. "Yuchai, you can't mean that—you've never seen the fire; I have—it's a terrible thing, a weapon of absolute desperation."
"The Talchai are terrible!" the boy cried, his voice spiraling up and cracking. "The Talchai are—are—"
The boy's voice abruptly went flat and dead; his eyes stared at the stone wall of Zorsha's workroom, but plainly did not see it. His young face held more pain than Zorsha had ever imagined in his life.
The young Hand stared at what he had thought was just an extraordinarily bright boy. The "boy's" face was transformed, aged, and so bleak Zorsha would not have known him. He looked a hundred years old, and sick to death. And when he began to whisper in a harsh, strained voice, Zorsha thought, aghast, No puppy is going to heal this.
"If I saw them drowning, I would call for rain! If I saw them burning, I would throw oil upon them! I hate them, I hate them, and I want to see them die, terribly, horribly, I'd set demons on them if I could!"
He started to laugh, in that same suppressed way he'd spoken—but it was hopeless, hysterical laughter. It tore at the heart, and the boy began to tremble all over, then to shake.
Zorsha couldn't bear it. He seized the boy and held him close, face against his chest. For one moment there was nothing but silence.
Then the boy made a choking sound, and seized him with all the desperation of a drowning child.
Zorsha hugged him tighter, and Yuchai clung to him and began to speak again; slowly at first, brokenly—but then the words began pouring from him in a kind of deadly monotone, a flood of appalling words.
Words that blanched Zorsha and made him tremble; words telling of atrocities committed on the Vredai that exceeded Zorsha's wildest nightmares.
This was not imagined, or something the boy had embroidered with his own fantasy; no one could have imagined a massacre like the one Yuchai was describing, a hellish kind of festival of blood and death. Zorsha could hardly begin to take it in. Every incident the boy recited was worse than the one before—and Zorsha began to realize with soul-chilling horror that the boy had witnessed all this rapine and slaughter in a single afternoon.
For Yuchai was reciting the tale of the raid by the Talchai on the Vredai camp—a raid that had been staged when most of the weapon-bearers were out of camp on hunts or guarding the herds. There had only been the sick, women with young children, the elderly, and the children themselves. Of which Yuchai had been one. One small boy who escaped the fate of his playmates only because he had been hidden in a thicket of bushes as part of a game.
Gods, what was he? Ten? Eleven? Old enough to remember everything clearly—oh, gods, what can I do? What can I say?
It was the voice that was the worst—that dull, monotonous recitation of horrors. That, and the way the boy clutched at him, seeking a shelter from his own memories.
"Yuchai . . ." Zorsha couldn't think what to do to comfort him. Could there be comfort? "Yuchai—Yuchai, stop it! Listen to me!" Zorsha's own face was wet with tears as he shook the boy's shoulders and got him to look up at him. "Listen, Yuchai, listen to me—it won't happen again! Not ever! I pledge you on my life, I won't let it happen!"
The boy stared at him blankly for a moment—then burst into tears.
Zorsha just held him, rocking back and forth a little, weeping with him. It was all he could do.
Gods, gods—who made him hold all this inside? Who left this to fester? Or—gods, are they all like this? Every survivor down in that camp?
Appalling sobs shook the child, tearing themselves up out of his throat and racking his thin body.
In that moment Zorsha learned how to hate.
The study was very dark; very quiet. Felaras listened to Zorsha's tight-voiced recitation with growing nausea. She had no doubt that he was retelling the tale exactly as the boy had told it to him; he was white as salt, and just barely under control. She had never seen him so angry—she rather doubted anyone had. Zorsha the calm, the easygoing, the half-asleep—Zorsha had just been awakened to something he'd never anticipated.
When Zorsha finished, she steepled her fingers just below the level of her eyes and looked at him as searchingly as she had ever measured anyone.
His face was as tightly controlled as his voice had been—but just beneath that tight control there still was a terrible and implacable anger. Merely speaking had not purged him of it; if anything, it had intensified it. She was finding herself very glad that she was not the object of it.
"And your analysis?" she said, finally.
"I was trained to always demand both sides of a story, Felaras. Frankly, I don't care to hear the other side of this one. I really don't want to know what could bring men to act like that—like rabid beasts. All I want to do is destroy the beasts and the thing that made them that way. Which, to my analysis, is the Talchai and the Suno."
"That's not a rational way of looking at something—"
"I don't want to be rational!" he hissed. "You weren't with the boy down there; I was. You didn't look into that dead little face—into those hopeless eyes. This was a fourteen-year-old boy, Felaras! A child that age couldn't make something like this up!"
"I never suggested that he had," she said, overcome by a profound weariness for a moment. Why me? Why is it me who must face this? Deal with this? Somehow rectify this? "Is he all right?"
"I think so. As all right as he'll ever be. When he ran out of strength to cry, I carried him back to his room; Kasha got Boitan and Boitan gave him something that made him sleep. Boitan said he thinks this actually did the boy some good—'catharsis,' he called it." Zorsha shook his head, and only now did Felaras see that his eyes were red from weeping of his own. "I stayed with him until he was under. Kasha's with him now, and his dog." He clenched his hands on the arms of the chair; a white-knuckled grip that would have cracked weaker wood. "Felaras, the weapons the boy suggested are inhumane—and I want to construct them. I want to use them. I want to drive home the lesson that what the Talchai did will be paid for. I want them to think that every god above and every demon below has turned its hand against them. I want to make retribution so terrible that no one will ever contemplate atrocity like that against anyone again. And I want the Talchai, above all else, to know the reason why this is falling on them."
She parted her hands and looked at them with surprise; they were shaking. She'd thought her control was better than that—but the story had gotten past her defenses enough to make her tremble with the effort of holding in her own reaction. "Do me this favor, Zorsha. First, sleep on it. Second, speak with Jegrai and Northwind. Then decide. If you still want to construct these things—I'll back you. Reasonable?"
He nodded curtly.
"I'm going to ask a very personal question, and remember, it's because I've made you my successor and I have to know your strengths and your weaknesses. Why this boy? You haven't—" Her face flamed with embarrassment, and she looked away.
He read the embarrassment correctly, and snorted. "No, Felaras, I'm not a pederast. Gods help him, that would be the last thing Yuchai would need! No, set your mind at ease on that subject; I still want Kasha, quite healthily, let me tell you. It's because—I look at Yuchai, and I see myself all over again. He's enough like me inside to be my own son—more like me, probably, than a son would be. I've come to love him for his brave little soul and his bright mind as surely as if he'd been born my son." His face hardened. "And they hurt him. Hurt him in a way no physician can deal with. I think that no matter what Boitan says, the only thing that's going to truly let him heal and let him put his mind on something besides revenge is to get revenge. Or at least the promise of it."
Felaras nodded, slowly. "That makes a peculiar kind of sense." She cleared her throat a little. "I shouldn't admit this, but I agree with you. On everything. Just follow through on those promises, all right? Let's at least give this the appearance of rational thinking."
The chair legs scraped harshly on the floor as he pushed away from the desk and stood up. "I'd like to stay with him in case he has nightmares. Boitan thought he might."
"Fine, go ahead," she replied absently, still trying to make some kind of sense out of the catalog of horrors Zorsha had recited so tonelessly. "Send Kasha back here, would you?"
She stared at the flame of the single candle on her desk, letting it mesmerize her, trying to see some reason, any reason, behind what seemed so unreasonable. The things the Order, as a group and as individuals, had endured in the past—those things were actually understandable. Fear of the unknown, hatred for the foreign, greed, the desire for power—all normal human motivations. But this—
Even at third hand, it chilled her. Jegrai hadn't gone into the personal details of what had happened to his Clan. If he had, she might well have given him his bargain months before. But then again, she might have suspected an adult of fabricating at least part of the story—
Poor Yuchai. She couldn't begin to imagine what it had been like to live through it.
A shadow passed between her eyes and the candle flame, and she started.
Kasha was sitting on the edge of her desk, and had just waved her hand in front of Felaras's eyes to get her attention.
"I had a word with Shenshu and Demonsbane," she said quietly. "They've been figuring the boy for a breakdown for a while. Seems his father is one of those stone-faced, iron-willed types who finds any show of emotion something less than honorable. They're relieved, both that it came, and that Yuchai had an acceptable father-substitute with him to get him through the worst of it. They couldn't speak too highly of Zorsha, both for his handling of the situation and for his compassion. Right now, so far as Shenshu's concerned, Zorsha hung the moon."
Felaras shook her head. "That's not what's bothering me. It's why. How could human beings do that to other human beings?"
Kasha sighed. "I can only tell you what they told me. First, that this Khene Sen is just as charismatic and persuasive as -Jegrai—and he's twelve years older. He had a lot of time to get his people brought around to his way of thinking. Second, that Sen's mother was Suno; an alliance marriage. Now think about what Teo told us: the Suno consider all other races to be inferior. Fit only to serve, to enslave."
Felaras nodded, seeing the pieces falling into place, seeing the pattern start to emerge.
"Put those two things together, add what the Suno have probably been telling Khene Sen, about how superior, how great a leader he is, and about how much they can give him—and then produce Jegrai. Charismatic, brilliant—and young. Young enough to beat Sen just by outliving him. And you get?"
Felaras sucked in a breath. "A very frightened man; a man who sees the possibility of being cornered staring him in the face. A man who sees the way to exterminate that threat now if he just acts quickly enough."
Kasha nodded. "That was basically what Demonsbane figured. 'Exterminate' is a good word-choice—remembering that Sen is half-Suno."
"Uh-huh; I can see that, especially if he's been doing his best to ignore the nomad half of his breeding. He wouldn't let his people see it as anything other than exterminating a dangerous predator—no worse than killing, oh, a plague of rats. But why not just use assassination?"
Kasha shrugged. "Damned if I know. Maybe because if Sen had pulled that little trick, he'd have lost everybody but his own Clan. The other Clans would have reckoned that if Sen would use a dishonorable tactic like assassination on Jegrai, he'd be perfectly willing to use it on anybody. Remember, even Sen pays at least lip-service to honor."
"So he makes it look honorable—at least to his own folk—to take Jegrai out by getting rid of the entire Clan?"
"Exactly. And by the time he got finished speaking to his fighters, they'd be ready to exterminate with enthusiasm. Remember, I've been there when Jegrai primed us to go hunting the rebels; I know what that kind of speaker can do. Frankly, we are just damned lucky Jegrai is rational, reasonable, and willing to listen to anybody's side."
"But why haven't we seen other children as emotionally scarred as Yuchai?" That was the last piece that wouldn't drop into place.
Kasha looked sick. "Felaras—we haven't seen any, because there aren't any. Haven't you noticed? Yuchai is the only young adolescent. Fourteen and over—now eighteen and over—were out with the herds. Younger than ten—some managed to hide and didn't see the actual slaughter. But all the rest, including Yuchai's peer group, were out in the open and cut down. That poor boy is the only child that saw what happened and was old enough to remember it clearly."
"Oh, gods—"
"Felaras, if anyone can purge him of this, it'll be his own people and ours working together. He's in the best possible hands." She smiled, a kind of rueful, self-deprecating smile. "I never knew Zorsha had this in him, frankly. One of the things that always annoyed me a bit was the way he seemed to drift through emotional encounters without ever getting pulled into the current. Teo has always cared passionately for things, and showed it. Zorsha always seemed . . . half asleep. I guess I was wrong about him."
"Looks like you might have been, a bit. But if you were, so was I." Felaras stretched out her ringers, and winced as the knuckles popped. "Kasha, you have just done me a world of good. I didn't know what to make of this story. It sounded like these Talchai were all mad, or drugged, or—or bespelled."
"Oh, no doubt there was some of that last, too. Demonsbane thinks Sen has a whole stable of very powerful wizards. With enough folk luck-wishing him while he was speaking, he could likely get anybody to believe anything."
"That, I can deal with. That, I can defend against. Furthermore—" she paused as a thought struck her. "You know, it would do no harm to spread a couple of these stories of Yuchai's about the Order. Let our people get some notion of what's out there. We won't frighten the timid ones any more than they already are, and we might give the complacent ones some food for reflection. I think that most of them can add two and two—and realize that even if we'd had nothing to do with Jegrai, mad dogs like the Talchai seem to be would still tear our throats out in passing."
"Done," Kasha nodded. "I'll get Father and Boitan on it, and Kitri. Now, as your duly appointed watchdog, I say you should hie yourself off to bed before you fall over at your desk. You're beginning to sound a little drunk, and that's nothing more than fatigue."
Felaras stood up slowly, and wanted to groan—every joint ached. "Rain coming," she observed. "Before too long, by the way my knees feel."
As if to substantiate her observation, a very distant murmur of thunder mumbled at the open window, and there was a barely visible flicker of light that showed against the edge of the mountains beyond.
"Then you need to get to bed," Kasha said sternly.
"I need to make my rounds, first," she replied just as stubbornly. "Then I'd like to look in on the boy, I think. Have a word with one of the other nomads myself, first."
Kasha shrugged, and spread her hands in defeat. "All right, have it your way. You will anyway. I'll tell you what, I'll put everything to rights, and then catch up with you. I'm not exactly ready to embrace the god of slumber myself just yet. Too many things to think about."
"And most of them grim." Felaras moved around her desk, and paused in the door. "Thanks . . ."
"Oh, get. You're so tired you'd make more of a mess than you'd clean up, putting things back in the wrong places," Kasha mocked. "And then tomorrow morning it would be 'Kasha, I can't find this, Kasha, have you seen that, Kasha, where did I put my stylus—'"
"Enough, enough!" Felaras ducked her head and winced. "I yield, I yield! I'll see you in a bit."
"Don't let anyone trap you into a night-long discussion."
Felaras let the door close on that last admonition, and headed stiffly down the corridor.
Gods. I'm getting old. I feel it more every time it rains. She sighed, and rubbed the knuckles of her writing hand. I should complain—there's a child in the room next to mine with a soul in ragged little shreds. There's a young man down at the bottom of the mountain with the lives of his people literally in his hands. My successor has just learned the hard way how vile men can be. And I'm fretting because my bones ache when it rains.
The Fortress could well have been deserted; the lamps along the corridor were turned to their lowest, and there was nothing to break the silence except her own footsteps. Being so high up on the Pass was a mixed blessing in summer—the air cooled down rapidly at night, but that same cold gave nearly everyone over the age of forty stiff joints overnight.
Still, the cool of the corridor was a blessed relief from the blazing sun that had baked its way even into Felaras's study. This was the time of year when the Master's Folly was not so foolish after all—if you were young enough not to have to worry about aching bones when there was dew on your bed come the dawn.
Selfish, selfish, thinking about myself, my aching bones. Or—is it? Maybe not. No, I'm not fretting because my bones ache—I'm fretting because that aching is the sign that my time is getting shorter. I'm getting old—my joints are going, but how long does my mind have? Or the rest of me? Will I have enough time to give Zorsha the training he needs? Did I wait too long before picking one of the lads? Gods, I wish you'd give me some notion of how much time I've got left.
As if answering her unspoken prayer, thunder boomed almost directly overhead, so close that she could feel the stone of the Fortress vibrating with it under her feet.
She sniffed, and took the turning that led to the old dead-ended corridor lined with workrooms on both sides. Telling me that's hubris, gods? Or just warning me that however long I have, it's not going to seem like enough time?
This time there was a pause before the thunder pealed again, and she almost smiled at the realization that she had been on the verge of looking to the thunder to answer her.
The corridor was properly deserted at this hour—but it was part of the rounds. If there was anyone working here this late, Felaras wanted to be aware of the fact. Gods, I'm as bad as Diermud. Next thing you know, I'll be talking to quartz crystals—and listening for answers. If fancies begin, can senility be far behind?
Something impinged on, then disrupted her thoughts. A current of air, a shadow that didn't belong—whatever it was that alerted her allowed reflex to save her life.
She only knew that she sensed—wrong—and dropped to the floor and shoulder-rolled without a thought for aching joints and fragile bones.
And a stone came hissing past the place where her head had been to smack into the stone of the wall and clatter to the floor.
She was on her feet again with her back to the wall and her eyes scanning the corridor in two heartbeats. And cursing the carelessness that had left her belt-knife on her desk, where she'd used it to slit open some letters.
A blot of shadow separated from the rest and moved toward her, bulking huge against the wall. Blocky, looking like it should be clumsy—and moving like a hunting lion. Only one person within these walls looked and moved like that, or carried himself with his shoulders so high and tense.
"Zetren," she whispered.
He moved into the light. "Witch," he snarled, as thunder crashed again overhead. "Bitch-queen, think you're going to be a queen, don't you? Think this pretty boy barbarian's going to set you up as Mother-Goddess and then conquer the world for you, do you? Reckon you can use the rest of us as a staircase to a throne—"
"Zetren," she said, honestly bewildered, feeling the wall behind her for support. "What in hell are you talking about?"
He ignored her—really, it didn't even seem as if he'd heard her. "Going to make us all your little fetch-and-carrys, like you did with those three lackeys of yours, aren't you? Figure you've got us all outsmarted—"
"Zetren—"
"I was too smart for you, bitch. I saw where you were going, even if nobody else believed me. I had you figured. And you can ill-wish me all you want, but this time it isn't going to stop me—"
He lunged for her, and she dodged and spun herself out of his way with real, cold fear closing around her throat. This corridor was deserted; there were no eager young Hands down here this night. Zetren was stronger than she was—faster; she couldn't possibly outrun him, even if she could get past him into the clear corridor.
She couldn't outlast him, either.
And she didn't dare take him on hand-to-hand; he hadn't been spending the last few years pushing papers around, he was in better shape than she was. He'd make pulp out of her.
"Zetren, what in hell do you think you're doing?" she gasped, sidestepping a deadly blow aimed at her neck, throwing herself away from him, and coming up against the stone wall with force that would leave her bruised. "You hurt me, and—"
"Not going to hurt you, bitch," he snarled, the red madness of the bear brought to bay in his eyes. "Going to kill you—"
He lashed out again; this time she managed to get in a quick side-kick of her own to his midsection and get out of grabbing distance, further down toward the dead end, before he could react. He oofed under the impact, but recovered quickly and pivoted into a counterattack faster than she would have believed possible.
"Going to kill you," he growled again, as thunder shook the walls, destroying her hope of anyone hearing a call for help. "Drop you down your own damn staircase. Senile old bitch trips and falls—no one'll think anything about it."
She didn't even waste a breath pointing out that bruises from blows and bruises from falling look a great deal different. Zetren wouldn't listen—and anyway, what would it matter to her at that point? She'd be dead, and beyond being concerned—
He kicked, and she squirmed aside, but his foot brushed her hip and made her spin into the wall. He followed up on the kick with unnatural speed, and she only avoided his clutching hands because he'd come in to strangle rather than to strike.
He's really going to kill me—oh, gods—For the first time in years she panicked—and though it was going to do no good at all, cried out her fear.
Thunder crashed again, drowning her voice, and Zetren grinned.
"How's it feel to be the helpless one, bitch?" he laughed. "Hows it feel to—"
He was enjoying this too much, and not paying attention to her. She was too good a fighter to let that pass. This time she lunged for his throat, fingers stiffened—
And connected, but at the last minute her traitor knee gave way under her, and turned what would have been at the least a disabling blow into one that simply hurt. And she fell in a half-crouching position, unbalanced and terribly vulnerable.
He half roared, half choked, and reacted to the blow, kicking out at her with the power of a catapult.
This time he connected squarely with her ribs before she could scramble out of the way, and sent her crashing into the wall, her impact only partially under control. A tearing pain in her knee as she hit sent her dropping to the floor in agony, and she looked up a moment later to see him advancing slowly on her through a blur of tears of pain.
Oh, gods—not like—dammit, I'm not done yet!
Thunder, drowning everything; her desperate "No!" and his laugh; she could only see his mouth working, couldn't hear him at all. He reached for her—and before he could touch her, suddenly stiffened.
His eyes nearly popped out of his head, and his mouth worked again, but this time the shape was all wrong for a laugh—and as she shrank back against the stone, he collapsed like a deflated bladder, coming down in a heap with one hand brushing her foot.
She stared, unable to believe in her deliverance, while nearly constant thunder reverberated overhead.
It wasn't sound that alerted her again—it was movement, movement down at the open end of the corridor.
Kasha walked slowly through the light and shadow patterns made by the tiny lamps on the wall toward her, stalking the length of the corridor, something swinging from her hand.
A sling.
About then Felaras's nose told her that Zetren was no longer among the living.
For a moment more she sat in a kind of paralysis, both of mind and body, as the thunderstorm passed on and the nearly continuous shocks of the thunder faded into the distance.
Kasha prodded the body with her toe, then rolled it out of the way and wordlessly reached out her hand toward her superior. Felaras took it, climbing painfully to her feet. Her knee burned like somebody'd set it on fire.
"Found the sling back where he'd dropped it. How badly did he hurt you?" Kasha asked, tightly.
Felaras tried putting weight on the leg—it felt like bloody hell, but she could hobble on it. "Knee," she gasped, around tears of pain. "Sprained or torn muscle, I think. Still works, so it isn't broken. And I'm bruised some. That's all."
"You're just damned lucky I was coming after you," her aid said angrily, then, "Oh, gods, Felaras, what am I saying? Why should you have to guard your back against your own people? We aren't assassins!"
"Kash—" she got out as she gritted her teeth against pain that was threatening to make her pass out. "—orders. Me to room. Boitan to me. Zorsha too. Now."
It happened so quickly she was tempted to believe in a magic other than ill-wishings.
"All right," she said, as Boitan's pain medication began to make the room blur and slip sideways a little. "Have we all got our stories straight?"
Zorsha nodded. "Zetren fell off the wall during the storm. Nobody knows what he was doing up there; it wasn't his watch, and that part of the wall is bad when it's raining. You slipped on the stairs when the thunder startled you, and wrecked your knee. Right now we only know about you, we don't know about Zetren. Ardun is going to 'find' him a little bit after dawn."
"Good. Simple enough to be believed." She started to nod off, and caught herself with a jerk.
"Felaras, why the subterfuge?" Boitan asked.
"Kash—"
"Zetren said something to her about 'ill-wishing.' Boitan, this is to be dead-secret; Felaras and I are both wizards, and we've been detecting somebody trying to work against her since early spring."
Boitan sucked in his breath in surprise, bit his lip, and nodded.
"Now since that predates the Vredai, it has to be somebody in the Vale or the Order."
"It seems likely," Zorsha interjected, "at least to me, that this 'enemy' found that his wishes weren't working—"
Felaras nodded tiredly. "Defense 'shield.' Have to train you in that, boy. Master has to have it."
Zorsha started, and she grinned weakly. "One of prime requisites for being candidate is wizard-power. Didn't know you had it, hm?"
"No—" he replied, looking stunned.
"Felaras thinks that when this wizard found himself blocked, he must have turned his attentions to someone with a known grudge against her, but with less protection. Zetren, basically."
"Had it too, not's good's I am, good enough to know someone stronger was on him, not good enough to deflect it," she explained, her words beginning to slur despite her efforts at control. "'F he'd made it to Master, he'd've had t' get a Second like Kash t' handle that."
"So, unbalanced as we know he was, the ill-wishing took him right over the edge?" Boitan breathed. "And with Zetren, there's only one direction that would lead. . . ."
"Got it," Felaras replied, catching herself again and forcing herself aware. "Good 'sassination try. Couldn't know Kash's been playin' shadow since we felt ill-wishing start."
"But why the subterfuge?" Boitan asked.
"Rule one of the Watchers," Zorsha said. "Keep the enemy confused. As long as we stick to this story, he'll never know how close he came to his goal. That might drive him out of cover, where we can do something about him. But damn if I like the idea of there being a traitor in our ranks."
"Wait a minute—how do you know—"
"What else could it be?" Zorsha said simply. "Who else would have known to target Zetren? Who else would have known of the long-standing grudge he held? To outsiders we've been very careful to present a united front."
"'Xactly," Felaras said. "Kash I trust. Zorsh too. Nothin' for either of them t'gain. Ardun's fine, an' you, Boitan. Same logic. Could be anyone else. So . . . keep 'em confused an' see what . . . crawls . . . out."
She yawned, and fought her eyes open again, to see Boitan looking stern.
"Everybody out," he said. "Zorsha, you stay with the boy, and that will put you within shouting distance if there is trouble tonight. Kasha, you set up in the anteroom. There won't be anybody climbing in the window, not unless they're half-spider. And you—"
He glared at Felaras. She tried to glare back, without success.
"Stop fighting the drug and get some rest!"
"But . . . I . . ." she protested, and then made the fatal error of relaxing just a little. She slid into sleep, fighting it every inch of the way.