“Simply because you can do a thing, does not mean you should do it,” Marion echoed one of Silver’s adages she had recently learned. “Think of all you miss carrying yourself hither and yon through the mists and ether.
“You do not see the stars,” she said, looking up at the bright sky full of twinkling stars. “You do not feel the soft breezes that cool the day’s heat, or…..
“Enjoy the wondrous tea that Sir Ian has made for us,” she added after a sip of the steaming tea.
“You jest,” Tanya scoffed as she looked at her with the same condescension she had expressed since they had bypassed the region of the leeches, and reappeared not far from Elvantia where Marion had made the declaration they would continue the journey on foot.
“Considering the world we occupy, and the things we both know we yet face, Lady Tanya, you should realize I do not jest.”
Tanya said nothing as one of the men handed her tea in a tin mug with far less deference that the other man had shown Marion. None of the powerfully built young men seemed to understand her worth, and she had silently vowed they would yet bow to her before she was finished with them. The entire world would bow. She would see to it.
“What concerns you, lady,” Marion asked her as Ian announced the roasting hares he had caught earlier were about ready.
“What do you know of my concerns,” she muttered darkly. “Are you a mind-mage, too,” she asked caustically.
“Mayhap I could be. I do not know, as I am still learning my way, to be honest.
“Still, I do sense things.
“Not that I need such empathy to discern you are caught up in deep thought of something which troubles you.”
Tanya eyed her briefly, then broke eye contact, fearing the common wench might yet realize her intent. She thought quickly, and asked, “I was wondering about my son. I wondered if ‘tis true that you had restored him to his true self.”
“Aye. He is now the same young man he was years past when he was first touched by that dreadful enchantment upon Sparrow….that is, Agatha.”
“Aye, I heard that…..you once knew the woman.”
“True,” Marion nodded as she held out her cup for Ian to refill it, thanking him as he did. “She was my….companion for a time when I was still a child.”
“I would not think a farmsteader would waste precious coin on…..”
“My father might have worked his own land, but he did it by choice, for his love of growing things. He is a nobleman of some rank in Trinidad, though.
“I would have thought a lady of your standing would have discerned that much had you been Agatha’s mentor, and instructor for so long.”
“Your Sparrow spoke little about her past, and shared even less,” Tanya grumbled, surprised to find the woman had noble blood. She hardly carried herself as a true noblewoman, whatever her indifference to rank.
“Ah, well, the woman I remembered was far more forthcoming. I suppose….she had to learn to hide her heart from what I’ve learned of her trials since…..I lost her.”
“When will you tell me why we are going to my home,” Tanya blurted out, looking into her eyes again, risking a moment of contact as she did.
“I sense I must meet someone there,” she told her casually as she dropped her own gaze to the tea she sipped as Ian began slicing portions from the roasting meat to fill a small plate for her. “Someone, whom I hope, will clear up a mystery, and help me prevent the destruction of our world.”
“Your….vision of destruction…..do you know what causes it,” she asked.
“In part,” she nodded.
“What is it,” she asked. “What do you know that makes such a catastrophe possible?”
“When I am certain, I will tell you,” Marion told her. “For I sense you will help me prevent it.
“At the least, you are certainly involved.
“I only know I must go to H’r’lyn, or I can do nothing to stop what may yet come.”
“But….isn’t the future set? How can you avoid what is certain, and set as sure as the past that is but better known?”
“There is a future that is not set, and it borders the paths and choices each of us make, Lady Tanya. Surely, an adept such as yourself knows this much?
“The decisions we make sharpen and shape the future we make for ourselves, and our world. My choice is to prevent what may yet be, lest we all cease to be if I fail.
“If we fail,” she added quietly.
“Then,” Tanya murmured as she watched the wolven serve Marion with obvious veneration she felt more suited to her own person. “Let us pray we do not fail.”
“Indeed,” Marion murmured, and bit into the tender flesh that was surprisingly good, since she knew how bland hare could be at times.
Ian smiled faintly at her expression of delight, and went back to his duties. Beyond the camp, no less than three of her escort remained on watch, seemingly inexhaustible as they kept true to their charge to see her safely to her destination, and back.
Tanya had little doubt she would have to deal with the six wolven before she could do anything with the Maker. Once in her own tower, in her own stronghold, she had little doubt she would be able to manage all she had planned, and take the Maker’s power, no matter what she had to do to succeed. For she was more than certain that once she had the power the woman seemed to disdain using that she would not only spare the world disaster, but make it a paradise.
Especially for herself.
“You let her go,” Jacob all but shouted at Silver, still astonished at the changes around him, and in him. He knew the beast within him was gone now, and knew that he was free of its monthly curse. Still, he still felt that deep connection to Marion, and to the young she yet carried.
“’Twas her wish,” Silver told Jacob who was far more upset than he thought when he first heard the news of what had happened in the wake of the wolven’s change earlier that morning.
He had known it was her even as he woke, feeling his body reshape itself in the image Marion held in her mind of his people. A noble image he now mirrored as well, his hair being just as silver, his eyes as amber as all those wolven around him.
A few of the worse scars he had carried from years past were even gone, and he realized he was as she saw him. Just as every other wolven in the city was as she viewed them. A proud, noble people. Or as Silver had put it, gallant sons of the Mother who had come to her family to set matters right.
All he knew was that when he sought her out to express his delight in the changes around him, as much as in himself, she was not to be found. Then the news came that she had addressed the guild band, and sent them on a quest of her own before going off with his accursed sister. Her escort aside, Silver didn’t seem to realize how dangerous Tanya could be at times.
Most especially such times as now, when she was caught up in her own visions of destiny, and hungering for power.
He and Duncan both knew just how far the woman was prepared to go, and what she was willing to sacrifice.
Literally anything, and anyone.
Including his trusting Marion, and their unborn children.
“I should go after her,” he decided as he glared at Silver.
“You cannot. She instructed me that you, most of all, had to remain here. She charged you with Lady’s safety until her return.”
“I believe Tylva is more than capable of keeping an eye on his lover,” he grumbled darkly. “That pair kept me up half the night with their rutting.”
“Are you sure ‘twas their youthful bonding? Or was it mayhap envy that you could not share such pleasures with your own mate,” Silver asked blandly.
Jacob glared at him. “I don’t care what shape you wear. You can be very annoying, high priest,” he muttered.
Silver smiled as Duncan appeared behind him, asking, “Did it ever occur you to, Jacob, that ‘tis just you?”
Jacob glared at him, but said nothing.
Agatha had just entered the receiving hall of their quarters, and was looking troubled.
“What is it, lass,” Duncan asked as she approached them.
“I had….a disturbing dream. And I…..I…..
“Who are you,” she frowned, looking up at the tall, silver-haired priest.
“Things have been going on while you slept the day away, Aggie,” Jacob told her curtly, his worry still coloring his tone. “Or haven’t you not noticed the family resemblance,” he asked as she looked from him to Silver, and back again.
“By the Ancients,” she murmured, realizing only then what must have happened. “How….?”
“Our lass is starting to work her will upon the world,” Duncan told her. “And ‘twould seem she has more of a will than any of us first guessed.”
Agatha looked all the more troubled at that.
“What was your dream, that it disturbed you so,” Silver asked her kindly.
“I dreamed…..Marion was struck down by a false friend.
“That….That her death resurrected Lord Walker, who in his own rage, ravaged the world itself.”
Jacob glanced around uneasily. “I….had that same dream.”
“As did I,” Duncan admitted only then.
“’Twas not a dream,” Silver told them. “Somehow, you have shared the vision that opened before the Great Mother this past evening.
“’Tis that vision she now seeks to thwart.”
“By putting herself in the very heart of danger,” Jacob protested.
“What,” Agatha frowned.
“She left with my sister,” he told them.
None of them liked that idea.
Lady smiled as she stroked Tylva’s smooth, now hairless chest as she lay beside him in his bed.
“If possible,” the young redhead smiled at her lover. “I think you are even more handsome,” she told him as her hand moved down to grasp the root of his sex, and her own pleasure she had found when she sought him out, and invited him to her room.
He had responded by bringing her to his own room.
She still remembered feeling the warm silk of his furry body as he had stroked, and nuzzled her. She remembered the first, blissful thrust of his male shaft into her virgin body, and blithely ignored that moment of sharp pain as his very embrace flooded her senses with the joy of his touch.
She had cried out as he filled her, stretching her as her own fingers had never before managed, and she felt such bliss as even her mistress’ tongue had not given her. She moaned, and cried out as he had thrust into her again and again, and spent himself in her body time and again as he had tirelessly spent the long night teaching her all the myriad ways lovers might seek pleasure one with another.
Finally, late into the night, or early that morning, she wasn’t sure which, she had woke to find the handsome young wolven devoid of hair, and yet as handsome in her eyes as he had ever been. She noted his eyes remained as golden as his hair remained silver, and his touch still thrilled her as he woke to reach instinctively for her before he realized himself what had become of him.
He barely spent any time gawking at his transformation, preferring to experiment with his now more human body as they melded time and again as it seemed they were as filled with desire as they had been at the start, and not even aching muscles, or sore flesh could deter that passion.
Lips now melded with more ease, and tongues dueled frantically as they meshed as one, and they passed the morning hours once more locked in blissful surrender to the oldest passion of all.
“Never leave me,” she murmured as she clung to his lean, young body.
“Never,” Tylvan agreed as he arched his hips up at the soft juncture of her body where they joined when she had rolled over atop him to impale herself.
Tylvan was fifteen, two years older than Lady herself, though she had thought him younger. Still, he was inexperienced with women of any age, and had found himself much in love with the young redhead who had so easily surrendered to him without any reluctance, and disdain as he had seen in some of the human visitors that had come to their city over the years.
Just then he could not envision ever living another day without her.
“If I must,” he vowed as he murmured into the lips he kissed repeatedly, and frantically. “I shall purchase you from your lady, our Mother.”
“Oh, but….she may not sell me. There are….things betwixt us, you see, and….”
“I care not. I love you, Lady,” she heard him say, and thrilled to hear it. “I will never give you up. Even must I steal you away.”
She smiled, and hugged him with all the strength in her thin arms. She knew it was unlikely she would be taken from her mistress, for she could not even think of serving another. Yet she did love Tylvan, and found great pleasure in his arms.
“Mayhap,” she murmured, “My mistress will consent to remain here. Then, we need not fear parting.”
“We should speak to Silver,” he told her. “As high priest, he could wed us,” he told her earnestly as he now lay beneath her, unmoving, content to feel her liquid core wrapped around his still turgid shaft that had proven its worth yet again.
“You would wed…..a slave,” she asked a little apprehensively.
“Here, you would be a wife first, and foremost. My wife. For surely this miracle I have experienced in your arms this night was a sign. A blessing of our joining.”
“How I wish it were so,” she murmured, though a small part of her still denied this new life, and an even greater part of her rebelled at leaving her mistress’s service.
“We are still three days from my hall,” Tanya told Marion as they left the boundary markers that informed them they were leaving Valdor, and entering the smaller land of H’r’lyn that was once ruled by a Valdoran regent, but now bowed to her whim and will.
Having the status as the guild leader, and the white witch, she had little trouble in wresting the regency from the tired, old man King Ericson IV had appointed. Not had the king any problem with her stewardship since she kept her taxes paid, and afforded him the usual meaningless courtesies to keep his agents silent.
“Then in three days we shall reach your hall,” Marion told her.
“We could be there in a few minutes would you simply allow me…..”
“Nay. I prefer the patient approach,” she told the white-haired woman. “And I would like to see this new land.
“I have not traveled so much in all my life,” she smiled at the woman. “I find I quite enjoy it.”
“You enjoy saddle sores, dust, and vermin?”
Marion laughed, and looked around her. “Do you not see the beauty of the land, lady,” she asked. “Look at the rich fields that will soon bless your people with a fine harvest. The flowers in the meadows to enchant young girls who dream of their own romances despite their youth.
“The fragrant, fresh air that invigorates you……”
“I daresay you inherited your sire’s love of the land,” Tanya drawled, suspecting her nonsensical stance was likely what gave her such a common air.
Marion seemed to sadden at that. “I barely remember my sire at times,” she confessed. “’Tis odd, but at times, I remember more of my mother, who died early in my life, than my father, who raised me for years afterward.”
“Ah, mayhap you do not wish to remember him. Mayhap he abused you, and…..?”
“Nay,” she sighed. “Father never abused me. Not even when…..”
“Aye,” Tanya asked, noting the woman’s grief had deepened.
“Not even when I cost Sparrow her life, or so I thought at the time.”
“Tell me of that,” she asked, seeing a sore point in her life that she might be able to exploit.
“’Tis done, Lady Tanya,” Marion suddenly smiled at her, and shook her head. “Suffice to say I paid penance for the deed, and I am now quite cheered at finding my dear friend alive, and doing well.”
“You would call her dismal life well?”
“She has friends who care for her, and stand by her. ‘Tis all we can truly ask for in this life,” she remarked.
“Nay, you can always ask for more,” Tanya blurted. “And if need be, the query can become a demand.”
Marion shook her head, her smile fading at that telling comment. “Lady, that is the kind of speech a tyrant would make.
“Surely, as head of your guild, you are wiser than that?”
Tanya smiled, regrouping her thoughts as she realized the woman was sharper than she had first guessed.
“As head of my guild,” she told her. “I must often view the world from several perspectives at once. Sometimes they become confused in my thoughts,” she allowed.
“Best to know yourself, then, than to know all. For knowledge of the self is the greatest wisdom of all.
“A friend taught me that,” she told her sagely.
“Aye,” she demurred. “He sounds like…..a canny fellow.”
“He is,” Marion smiled again. “He is that.”
Tanya merely nodded thoughtfully, and worked on masking the rest of her thoughts, her true thoughts, from the maker’s too-knowing gaze.
Anthony Winters, ninth king of T’Goll frowned at the lean, dark-haired lad standing before him. Had the boy not appeared before him like one of those accursed guild masters, he would never even have allowed the trespasser to speak, but the Lion of Kentsforde, as he was known to his enemies, was a man who had learned wisdom over the long years.
“You expect me to simply go to Valdor, to this Nordstrom, at your assurance I have been summoned with safe conduct by….…by a Maker of this infamous Walker’s lineage,” he demanded of the lad.
“I bring this invitation to you with a seal of safe passage by Lord Eric IV himself, great lord,” Timium bowed to him, carrying no pretenses with him as he addressed the burly, redheaded king with a beard that nearly hid his entire face.
Anthony stared at the virtual child that bowed to him, offering the sealed missive, and reached out to take it only after he recognized the seal of the Valdoran king upon it. “I suppose the lord of Paigantia will be there as well?”
“He will. All nine great lords will be there. The Maker has summoned you all.
“Even now, my colleagues in the guild are inviting each of them to Nordstrom, where it now sits upon the plains of Grayhawken for all the world to see, and once more reach.”
As he spoke, Timium had moved a single hand, and a vision of a sprawling plain filled the dimly lit throne room that rushed up to white, marble walls of an impressive city that gleamed jewel like in the overhead sun.
“You can put away your toys, lad,” Anthony growled. “My own advisors have already brought me news of the earth being leveled in that realm of late.”
“I only sought to reassure you, great lord….”
“I shall come,” Anthony snapped as he stood, his short, barrel-chest frame moved with surprising grace as he flexed muscles that proved his stocky build was still one of a powerful man yet in his prime. “But I will not deliver myself into a trap.
“My legions will come with me.”
“Come as you wish, Lord Winters. All I know is what I have told you.
“I go now to see what other service I might yet offer my colleagues.”
“As you will,” Anthony grumbled as the lad simply vanished as abruptly as he had come, unnerving some of his court that knew nothing of the guild mages, or their ways.
“Arrogant pup,” he growled, then shouted for his captains.
Finally, he thought grimly. He would find that preening lout that had denied his daughter had ever arrived. Finally, he would tear the truth from the devil, and learn what had become his precious child who had strangely disappeared almost three months ago without so much as a trace.
“’Tis a solemn, but joyful occasion we celebrate this day,” Silver said as he looked down at the city gathered in and around the temple.
“By the eyes of the Ancients every upon us, and the great Creator who sent the blessing of his Daughter, the Mother to us, we gather this afternoon to join these young together in a sacred bond of marriage that binds body, heart, and soul as one to create a life that will find expression in their own unique path that will enrich all who encounter them.
“Tylvan, a son of our great city, and a young man of courage, strength, and virtue,” the high priest continued, “Hereby offers his body, heart, and soul to the protection, and cherishing of our new sister Lady, who has illuminated our city with her kindness, love, and selfless service to those around her.
Agatha smiled as she watched the young couple wed, sniffing softly.
Jacob grumbled, giving her a faint smirk, but Duncan stayed blatantly silent as he studied he pair.
The laws of Nordstrom, apparently, negated the laws of men when it came to slavery. Lady, despite her low status in the nine kingdoms, was an equal in Nordstrom, and eligible to wed, or be wed. The lovers looked at one another with a blissful gaze, and when the time came, shared a kiss that expressed their love and passion.
“I wonder what our lass is going to think of this,” Duncan murmured as he spoke up after the binding of the vows.
“Since when did she become our lass,” Jacob glowered at him.
“Save it for another time, you two,” Agatha chided them.
“Aye, save it,” Jacob snapped at Duncan. “I happen to know the lady would be very happy to know Lady is happy.”
Agatha considered his words, and nodded. “Well said,” she agreed solemnly.
Jacob gaped at her, surprised at the praise, and then shook his head even as he glanced to where someone was speaking to Silver as the couple left the temple to the cheers of the gathered people.
“’Twould seem the trouble is about to start in earnest,” he told her. “The watch just spotted Valdoran banners approaching from the southeast.”
“That could be trouble, but it need not be….”
“And Xantian banners from the northwest.”
“Trouble,” Duncan grimaced, knowing the two lands had been engaged in conflict, both declared, and undeclared, for years now. “I hope the Maker is not delayed. We may yet need her again.”
Tanya sat in her sanctum, staring at the Maker across a large, viewing sphere, and frowned at the gray mist that filled the device whenever she tried to conjure the future she had always known was her own.
“You see, lady,” Marion told her. “Desire may show you a possible future, but if you are free from desire, you have the chance to see all possibilities as one.”
“Enough,” she finally spat. “All this babble may show does not change the one truth I know,” she told in a cold, curt manner.
“And what is that truth,” Marion asked, looking at her as if only just seeing her.
For days, they had ridden across the miles separating her from her own land, and for days she had been lectured by the common wench who felt her nonsense was some manner of grand wisdom. For days she, in turn, had tried to play things subtly, and hint at the suggestion as herself for a guide and adviser, yet the simple woman refused to take those allusions seriously, if she even perceived them at all. She tried her best to get the Maker to see that she was the best suited to hold and use the power of a Maker.
Then, too, there were those frustratingly, annoying bodyguards who had proved immune to her magics when she tried to enchant them to rid herself of them. Even now, they were uncomfortably close, likely listening at the very door to her inner sanctum, ready to spring into the room without warning if they felt their mistress were in peril.
“So, what is it you’re trying to show me now,” Tanya asked, having grown oddly weary after the long ride to H’r’lyn, followed by the endless banter the woman employed to drop sly comments of the future, fate, and the cost of power in her ears.
What wearied her all the more was the woman’s lackwitted approach to power that could literally shape, and reshape worlds.
“I am the only one fit to wield this power,” she told her, and rose to take Marion by the shoulders, her piercing eyes locking on Marion’s green orbs now. “And if you value your friends, your unborn, and most especially your own life, you will yield that power to me now,” she ordered as shouts and fists pounding on the magically sealed outer doors betrayed the bodyguard’s inability to reach them.
“I cannot just give what is a part of me to another,” she frowned.
“Aye, you can. As Lord Walker imparted a degree of his magics to the guild, and the world itself, so you can will it to another.
“And you will.
“To me. Or you will learn just how much power I already hold when I use it to crush all you hold dear.”
“Never,” Marion hissed, and tried to pull away.
“Yield the power to its rightful mistress, or die,” Tanya screeched. “I am its true mistress. I have foreseen it.”
“Nay,” she hissed again, still locked in Tanya’s unyielding grip even as she willed the door to open to allow her guard entry.
To her shock, the door did not open.
Her escort did not enter.
“Little fool,” she told her, her eyes locked on her own. “I am the power in this sanctum. None enter, or depart, save I allow it,” she informed her as waves of power began to swell around both women.
“You must….stop this,” Marion told her desperately as she tried in vain to pull free.
Tanya, however, had long since mastered the art of siphoning power from another with her mere touch. With her hands locked to Marion’s slighter frame, the older woman was pulling the energies contained within her free of her control. All she had to do was reach out, and suck them in, and soon she would have more than enough power of her own to complete the shift of the Maker’s ultimate abilities to herself, and then….…then she would rule the world.
And Creation itself.
It was her destiny.
She foresaw nothing else save that one, perfect victory that would allow her ascend over all.
Heedless of all but her own will, she ignored the roiling energies now filling the chamber, smashing, and destroying all about them as the two women struggled in the center of the private sanctum. Years of knowledge, and memorabilia vanished after being shattered, shred, or smashed before simply vaporizing as the waves grew stronger, and more violent.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Marion screamed.
“I do,” Tanya spat back. “I am power. I will be power. That is all that matters,” she screamed, and in that instant, she became an omnipotent, unstoppable wave of pure force that exploded out from her sanctum, leveling the walls, and structures of her grand city before spreading out in a shockwave that blasted all before it.
Stunned eyes somehow saw that nothing was left before the power that would not be contained. Power without limit, without control, literally sheared the surface of the entire earth, and the world itself was scoured clean in an instant, leaving only death and ruin behind.
Tanya would have screamed, but she had no throat. No voice to rise in it if she had. Nothing was left of her to express her utter horror, and disbelief at what had happened in what should have been her moment of triumph.
The very wind was stilled by her explosion of rage, or else it might have moaned for her.
Then she felt tears wetting pale cheeks, and she looked up from the untouched sphere of seeing, and stared into soft, green eyes.
“That,” Marion told her as she ended the hellish vision. “Is what would happen did you succeed in your ploy,” she told her.
“You….You knew all along,” the white witch rasped. “You knew, and…..still you came with me? Risking…..Everything?”
“I had to show you the truth on your own grounds, else you would not have believed me. I wanted to show you what would happen did you wrest the power from me that safely resides only within my body,” she told her, and gestured at the globe that began to clear at once, its misty panorama starting to take on form that stretched out from the sphere, and spread across her sanctum to fill her gaze as is the scene before her were being carried out in reality.
“By the Ancients,” the white witch exclaimed as she looked into globe, and even deeper. Right into her own secret heart.
This time, she saw the past. She saw a proud, haughty, young girl who cursed her own brother, and inadvertently cursed her own son by her daring, and conceit. She saw the old man damned to a lingering end in a hellish existence of his own as penance for his role in that blight she had helped bring about by being deaf to the truth.
She saw again that even without power, true power, she would have blighted many more lives did she continue to act on her own self-important vision of personal destiny. She saw it all at once, and without respite, and it cracked what remained of her resolve.
“Enough,” she rasped, but this time it was less a command, and more a plea.
Marion waved a hand, and the visions ended.
Tanya looked up at her. Then looked down. “I suppose….you will punish me now,” she asked with more than a little dread.
Marion looked genuinely surprised. “Why,” she asked.
“Because…..Because I have betrayed so many,” she said, and suddenly began to wail as she added, “Because I would have betrayed you, too.”
“Seek the betrayer……and the betrayed,” Marion echoed the words from her vision.
“What,” Tanya asked, unable to understand her now.
Marion smiled. “Someone told me to seek certain people. I am certain,” she told her. “You are the betrayer.”
“That goes without saying,” she sniffed, wiping away the tears that still stunned her. “But…why?”
“That, I do not yet know. I only know I must seek you out, and then…..I am to….understand something. Still, I must yet find the betrayed.”
“Mayhap….Dominic,” she asked. “I….I betrayed him as much as any other in my time.
“Moreso, mayhap, since he was both lover, and apprentice in our time.”
Marion nodded. “Even if he is not the one I seek, ‘twould be wrong to leave him as you have all these years.
“For the sake of your own soul, you must restore him, Lady Tanya,” she told her quietly as she continued to kneel in her place before the small table where the orb rested, now clear, and quiet.
Tanya had rose by then, looking away, and refusing to even glance at that mystic sphere that had never before shown her such a nightmare as she had just experienced. It was more than just seeing. Beyond even a vision. It was as if it had actually happened. She could still feel the lingering remnants of her own unrelenting terror at the sheer helplessness at being an unguided power of destruction turned loose upon the unsuspecting world.
“I begin to see why they championed you, Lady Marion,” Tanya sighed, staring out a high window. “You are truly a gentle soul, and filled with compassion for even those that do not deserve it,” she realized.
“Everyone deserves compassion, lady,” Marion told her. “And if I understand, ‘tis because I have already lived through my own nightmares long before I came to this place.”
She glanced back at the blonde she had so callously dismissed as simple, and smiled faintly. “I believe, Lady Marion, you are exactly the right person to wear the mantle of Maker for our world. Mayhap,” she speculated, “You might just do a better job at righting the world than your great ancestor did at its start.”
Marion shook her head. “I am not here to impress my will upon anyone, Lady Tanya. Not even you.
“I am….I am a guide. An instructor. Nothing more,” she said, taking as her example the high priest who in only a few days had led her from frightened novice to nearly competent acolyte.
Tanya said nothing as she turned to regard her again, but not quite meeting her gaze as she did so. “All the same,” she told her quietly. “I, and the guild, are yours to command.
“For I hereby pledge to stand by you, little matter the cost.”
“’Tis a heady vow, lady. Are you certain….?”
“Can I do any less than my own brother, or my son,” she asked quietly as she turned toward the door.
“They never gave me any vows,” she frowned.
“Lady, the day they defied me, and carried you to Nordstrom, they as much as put their lives into your service and keeping.
“In my folly, I might have afflicted them, but none know them half so well as I.
“I know they would follow you through the gates of hell, and death itself.”
Marion remembered that dry, chilling vision of the world if she failed, and shuddered.
“Lady?”
“A timely reminder, Lady Tanya,” she said quietly as she shook her head. “Let us go and find this Dominic.
“Whether he is the one I seek, or not, ‘tis time for you to make amends.”
“I understand,” she nodded, and unsealing the door, she led the way past her escort that followed after Marion who followed her.
He had lived in agony for untold years.
Pain was not the true source of that agony.
Ignorance, and helplessness caused his anguish.
Once a powerful mage, schooled by the white witch herself that had touched, and blessed him with her own person, he had been raised from a mere farmsteader’s son to that of a powerful guilder. He had wealth, power, and rank that rivaled some lords.
Until his own appetites came back to haunt him.
Having cursed a willful wench he had desired for spurning him, he inadvertently cursed his mentor’s own son, and turned the white witch from ally to enemy.
With her own unique gifts, she had stripped him of his magical might, and left him in a dank cell with just enough of his former magics to keep himself alive despite the torment he now endured on a daily basis. Hunger, thirst, and near blindness in the stygian depths of her dungeon were his only companions. None of it was as bad as the sheer lack of human companionship that was slowly, and inexorably driving him mad.
His sentence seemed eternal, and his very senses constantly played tricks on his questing mind that sought any sign of comfort. Any sign of hope. Even now, he thought he heard the hollow echo of steps approaching his tiny, dank cell when he knew none ever approached here. Not here.
He often heard those steps.
Often imagined Tanya herself stepping through the door to restore him in an act of pity. Of contrition.
He knew better.
There was no pity in the white witch’s heart.
No consolation for him in that cold, ambitious creature.
He was not even allowed the solace of death, as he was kept alive despite the haunting deprivations and near madness that taunted, and plagued mind and body until at times he simply screamed at the darkness, daring it to retaliate.
He heard the steps stop, and he sank back to the filthy, stone floor, grateful the hallucination had ended. Miserable beyond telling that it had been yet another illusion of a slowly twisted mind.
He wondered how much more he could bear when the door suddenly opened of its own will, and two women of great beauty filled the frame with their light.
“Dominic,” the golden-haired vision murmured, staring at the naked, hairy man clad only in his own filth as he was chained to the walls that held him. “You are free.”
He wanted to laugh. To shriek hysterically at this new scenario that was quite realistic to his dreaming mind, but he was abruptly standing before the women, clean, clad in his own clothes, and even groomed as if he were back at his own manor, rather than in a reeking dungeon.
“Have I….finally gone mad,” he dared whisper as he realized he was still standing before the women. Still clean. Still clothed.
“Nay, Dominic,” the white-haired phantasm told him with such sincere regret in her tone that he knew she couldn’t be real. “You are free.”
He shook his head as the woman with long, white hair took his trembling left hand, and he felt a rush of invigorating energies flood him.
“There. Your magics are restored, and you are once more the man you were ere you came here.
“Leave, if you wish, but ere you go, Lady Marion wishes to speak to you.”
“Lady…..Marion,” he blinked, looking truly stunned as it began to dawn on him he might just be truly free, and this was not one of his accursed delusions.
“Sir Dominic,” she nodded. “I would like to speak to you about someone. Someone you named Agatha.”
“The Frankish wench,” he frowned uneasily. “Gods curse me, but I wish I had never pulled that girl from the water.”
“I am here to thank you for that act of kindness,” Marion told him. “Agatha is precious to me, and for whatever the reasons, you saved her life, and that is what concerns me.
“Please, tell me of that time,” she asked.
Dominic glanced around, still gaunt, and hollow-cheeked from years of deprivation despite his miraculous restoration. “I….Well, there….truly isn’t much to say.
“I was riding south from Trinidad, along the river in late winter some years past, as I recall.
“I heard a soft thud, and looked down to see a face pressed to the ice from below. A very pretty face, I recall,” he sighed wistfully. “As you must see, I’ve rarely drawn a woman’s favors with this mug,” he said, and gestured at his truly haggard features.
“Still, I thought a pretty wench whose life was spared might just show me some favor.
“So, I grabbed my axe, and cut the ice open to pull her free.
“Just in time, too, for she was nigh dead even as I dragged her out of that chilling water.
“Yet….she didn’t take fever, or grow ill. She recovered day by day, so I realized she must be blessed with some bit of magics.
“Which was when I decided to bring her to…..my mentor,” he said, only then looking back at a still contrite Tanya. Was the woman truly the white witch he knew? If so, what had happened to her?
“Please, go on.”
“Ere I did….I confess, I tried to….force her. She refused, and was quite good at convincing me to leave her be,” he told her blandly.
“He told me she put his own dagger to her throat before he could blink,” Tanya smiled faintly as she relayed the tale.
Dominic frowned as he looked again at that white-haired woman. Only Tanya knew that tale, for he had relayed it to no one else. Only he, and the Frank had known of what he did, or tried to do. Frankly, his magics aside, he was too ashamed of having his own dagger drawn against him, and being threatened by a mere slip of a girl.
“Aye, she did,” he finally nodded. “Still, I let her go.”
“Not before you set that dreadful enchantment on her.”
“Aye, the sex-curse,” he nodded, eyeing the blonde cautiously. Would she now punish him? Was this was the apparent freedom was about? A chance to deepen his misery, and twist his own daggers in his wounds, so to speak?
“I….I decided, if I could not enjoy her, then none would.
“That only her one true, and destined love would be able to touch her without being afflicted by the most dreadful curse his own mind could conjure.
“In Sir Duncan’s case…..”
“I have met Sir Duncan, and I assure you, he is once more quite himself,” Marion told him kindly.
“But…..how,” he frowned, knowing a sex-curse had no annulling spell. That only by finding her destined heart-mate could the woman ever know happiness of any kind with a lover, and end the enchantment on her past victims.
“Lady Marion is a Maker,” Tanya told him quietly.
Dominic’s eyes rounded hugely.
“And she has consented to serve you? Will you now use your great and terrible power to…..?”
“I only wish to help others, sir,” Marion cut him off before he could frighten himself to death as he turned as pale and ashen as the stones around them.
“H-Help,” he rasped.
“Mayhap if we left this place, the reality of his liberty would impress itself more firmly upon his mind,” Marion suggested.
“Aye, you are right.
“Come, Dom,” she called him as she once did when there had been a fondness between them. “Let us go up, and enjoy a late meal while we finish speaking.”
“And then what,” he asked suspiciously.
“And then,” Tanya told him quietly. “You are free to leave, if that is what you wish.”
He looked between the two, and frowned. “This is not….a trick?”
“Nay. Come,” Marion told him, and turned to lead the way out.
“Don’t fret over the wolven,” Tanya told him. “They are the lady’s guard.”
“Those….are wolven,” Dominic frowned as he eyed the tall, exotic appearing, but quite human escorts who moved in tandem with the blonde lady who Tanya claimed was a Maker.
“There are….quite a few changes you’ll need to learn about,” Tanya told him. “Come. I shall have the kitchen prepare us a late feast.”
“Lord Winters is here,” Silver told Jacob as the young half blood, as he was still known, joined him atop the wall were no less than five of the nine great kings had arrived by now.
Valdor and Xantia were but the first, and closest to arrive, wasting little time in staking out camps close to the main gates. Next came the K’Zir regent, followed soon after by the Frankish ka. Now the king of T’Goll was arriving, and as all of those before, he brought a powerful army with him, banners flying, and weapons at the ready.
“In a few hours, the prince of the Western Isles will arrive, and with him, the king, and prince of Paigantia.”
“What of Galdor, or Verikas?”
“They are close, but not yet within range of our scouts. I believe ‘twill be another few days ere we even get word of their approach.”
“I take it you have heard nothing from….”
“The Great Mother will come in her own time.
“I suspect she awaits the final king’s arrival. ‘Tis plain she is well able to come and go as she wishes now.”
“I just wondered….about our cubs….
“Our babes,” he muttered, still adjusting to the change in his standing in the world.
“If they have changed, as we have changed, then you will have to wait another half years span ere you will greet these young,” Silver smiled.
“Be patient,” he advised. “The Mother will come when she comes. Trust in her will, and believe in her wisdom.”
“I’ve never been good at blind faith,” he muttered. “I know my sister.
“If there is a way to screw these things up. She’ll find it.”
“And if there is a way to fix things, the Mother will find it,” Silver countered.
Jacob snorted.
“You were far more respectful when you first arrived, young one,” Silver smiled without any real censure.
“Well, you were more impressive then,” he muttered.
“And, ironically, you were less worried.”
Jacob had nothing to say to that.
“Lady still needs her help. “That’s her father down there, you know. You have to wonder what he’s thinking about all this. Or what he intends to do. Especially once he finds out who Lady is, and who the Maker is,” he grumbled.
“Which is why I will tell him as I have told the others. The Great Mother will address them all once they have all arrived.”
“So, you’re not telling them she isn’t even here,” he realized.
“Why bother,” he asked. “She’ll be here soon enough.”
“Right,” he grumbled, and went back to staring out at the growing legions of armed men that made him very, very nervous.
Especially considering half those kings were at war with one another. Or were close to it.
“So, you were to seek us out,” Dominic asked.
“Aye. I don’t know why. And to be honest, I’m not even sure if you are the ones referred to as yet.
“I only know, when I find those I seek, I’m supposed to understand what it is I need to know. Whatever that might be.
“I just hope to forge a lasting peace, and stop any disasters that might yet destroy our world if I don’t manage this truce.”
“Yet, by refreshing Lady Tanya’s heart, did you not end that possible future,” he asked.
“One of a dozen-dozen fates, sir,” she told him as they sat talking before the hearth of the common room in the main receiving hall, her escort dozing around her. Or so they seemed to be doing for the moment. She wasn’t fooled for a second.
Nor did she think Dominic was fooled.
“I see. The direction remains possible, even if one potential outcome has been rendered improbable,” he nodded.
“You are wise, sir,” she nodded.
“I think you should have been the mentor. Lady Tanya is powerful, but she lacks the wisdom you seem to possess.”
“The white witch was ever more interested in results than instruction,” he sighed.
“You are fond of her?”
“Aye. Even after what she did, I…..I care for her.
“I was beyond ecstatic the day she took me as her novice.
“Just as I was crushed beyond hope when she betrayed me.”
Marion couldn’t help the look inward, and as she did she made another realization. “Duncan is your son,” she realized with a shock.
“Aye. I was….most grateful he inherited his mother’s handsome looks rather than mine.”
“You’ve a good heart, Dominic,” he was told. “That is to be equally treasured.”
“I’ve my faults, lady, don’t doubt it.”
“I don’t. Just as you shouldn’t doubt I have mine, too.
“How do you think my Sparrow ended up in that river?”
Dominic blinked, and stared. “Surely not you….?”
“Aye. Suffice to say, I was at fault. And for years, I thought I had slain her. ‘Twas a nightmare that would not end. ‘Twas a relief beyond measure the day I learned Sparrow had survived.”
“I…believe I know how you felt.”
She smiled faintly. “Mayhap you do. But….my relief did not truly come until I knew Sparrow did not fault me. That she never once blamed me for what befell her.”
“You would have been but a child at the time,” he scoffed. “You cannot blame a child….”
“Some might. Not that it mattered. I blamed myself.”
“And so smothered your own potential out of grief, keeping anyone from ever realizing what grew within you, waiting to emerge,” he realized as he put things together on his own.
“As I said. You are most wise, sir,” he was told again.
“So, what comes next?”
“I must go back to Nordstrom very soon.
“The nine kings are not the only ones gathering before those walls.
“The guild is even now raising its best, and most powerful. They intend to take by force what they could not manage with subtlety.
“Nay, the vision of the wasteland still lies before me,” she smiled sadly. “And I’ve yet to gain the wisdom, or understanding needed to stop it.
“I begin to understand Lord Walker more these days, when he told me he could not seem to do anything to stop what he was trying to repair from the start.”
“So, you might yet unleash an even greater plague upon the world.
“Little wonder the guild chose to expunge any hint of a Maker from this world.”
“They acted selfishly, to hold onto their own power,” Tanya said as she came into the room with fresh wine she had went to find herself, proving how much she had apparently changed.
“Aye, they did not care about this world, or Lord Walker’s plans, or bequests.
“They simply wanted to hold onto the status quo, and keep their personal power. I know,” she scowled. “I embodied that same selfish ambition, and honed it to as fine an edge as sanity allowed.
“Thankfully, my eyes were opened ere I could impale us all upon that very sharp stake.”
“For which I, for one, am truly thankful,” Dominic told her as he took the wine she offered, and smiled at her.
“Thank you,” Marion told her as she took her own glass from her, sipping the spiced wine.
“And thank you,” Tanya told her, “For being such a gullible, trusting fool.”
Marion said nothing. Nor did Dominic. Both of them were staring blankly thanks to the drugged wine she had fed them.
“Just because I cannot contain the power you hold, does not mean I cannot control it,” the witch smiled coldly. “And as I am very good at controlling inferior minds. I shall be able to simply use you as I would any other subordinate, or tool at my disposal,” she smiled coldly as she sipped her own, untainted wine. Not like the wine she had served them, or the wretched bodyguards.
“And, you, dear Dominic, shall be my blind to dupe anyone else that thinks to thwart me.
“Ere I am done, I shall be seen the savior of our land, and you, the treacherous rogue you have long been painted in your absence by my careful foresight,” she smiled coldly.
Neither victim replied. Thanks to her potions, they had no will left save her own. Finally, her destiny would be her own to seize. Finally, her dreams would come to pass, and nothing could stop that. Nothing at all.
“The kings are all here. Even Crelandia’s queen,” Jacob told Agatha. “Don’t you think she should be arriving soon,” he asked her a bit impatiently.
Agatha looked up from where she had been meditating herself in her room until interrupted and frowned. “She isn’t back yet?”
“Nay,” he told her. “I just came from the walls, and the kings are starting to get weary of Silver’s bland reassurances. If she doesn’t show soon, they are going to turn on one another, and we’ll have the start of a new war right here at our very door.”
“We can’t do anything until she returns,” Duncan reminded them as he joined them. “And Silver is asking for both of you. He’s returning to the wall even now. Something about….a premonition.”
They both turned to study the tall, handsome young man who had a new lease on life thanks to their missing companion, and nodded. “Thank you, Duncan,” she told him. “We’ll be there shortly.”
“I’m not sure if I like the high priest’s premonitions or not,” Jacob told Agatha as he offered her a hand which she surprised him by taking. “His warnings tend to be end up being understated, and far too late.”
“Most premonitions usually are, simply because they are misunderstood in the first place,” she reminded him. “Or are you telling me you understood the wolven prophecy all these years when you dragged us to this city?”
“Frankly, I had all but forgotten it,” he admitted. “And I never did much faith in it.
“I mean, Makers, and Mothers, and all that? ‘Tis all a bit unbelievable, as much as it is confusing.”
“Look in the mirror, and tell me that again,” Agatha smiled thinly as she brushed off the gown she had been given to wear since their arrival, and led the way out of the room.
“Nag, nag, nag. You know, you haven’t changed a bit.
“And I still haven’t heard you admit I won our little wager yet,” he complained.
“Speaking of changing,” she muttered, casting a bleak eye at him over her shoulder. “I think Duncan was right about you. You likely were as big a witless rogue ere you were cursed, as later.”
He snorted, and smirked faintly as he told her, “I may choose to enjoy life, Aggie, but that does not mean I am blind.
“I do my fretting on the inside, where ‘tis not so easily seen, since ‘tis of little use one way, or the other.
“Still, I am worried. My sister knows nothing but her own ambition. And she’s been fixated on her own destiny for as long as I can remember.”
“That, I well know,” Agatha told her. “Still, if I’ve learned anything from my own studies, ‘tis that destiny rarely shapes up the way you imagined it. Futures are, as Silver would say, more than difficult to interpret even when the images are set clearly before us.”
“Spoken like the confusing witch you are, Aggie,” he sighed as they left their quarters, and headed toward the front gates where Silver stood awaiting them, his priestly robes a bright beacon even in the glare of the early morning sun beating down upon them.
Even as they approached, one of the men on the walls signaled.
“The Mother has returned,” the high priest told them as they waited for his words.
“Thank the Maker,” Jacob rasped with genuine relief.
“She is the Maker,” Aggie reminded him.
“Oh…..Shut up,” he growled as he turned to lead the way out up to the ladder that would let them see out over the high walls, and join Silver who stood looking down at the gathered throngs of men with his usual serenity.
“Makes you think he knows it all, doesn’t he,” he grumbled as they climbed up the steep stairs.
Aggie, careful of her dress’ hem, merely grunted her reply. A noncommittal one at that.
“You are the Maker,” a burly, bearded man asked as he looked down at Tanya with disdain as her translucent, white robe swirled around her body as she preceded the more matronly Marion whose golden hair was now braided into a tight bun atop her head as she followed the white witch.
Clad in a simple, gray dress, she looked more like a common servant, as did the older man with genuinely unpleasant features that skulked after them in servant’s livery. Only Tanya looked regal, or even alert as her companions seemed almost vapid in their manner.
“I represent her, and she will not reveal herself until she is assured all the kings are gathered, and there are not any signs of treachery,” Tanya told the man who stood outside the large tent where the gathered kings and leaders of the nine great lands were waiting.
“The king, and the other lords and ladies of our world, are waiting within, and as instructed, wait alone.
“That said, only the Maker is allowed to enter,” the big freeman drawled as he put a hand on his sword’s hilt at his side.
“I am the guild mistress, and representative of the Maker,” she told him, her eyes glittering with power. “Stand aside, or I, and the Maker, shall depart, and your kings and ladies may sit on their collective asses while we make our own decisions without their regard.”
The freeman’s confident poise shattered in that single moment, and he stood aside, drawing open the tent flap to allow her to enter. The two listless servants followed without a word, but the freeman could not make himself care. Something in those cold eyes had made him not want to even argue about those two.
Tanya smirked, shoving a hand through her thick, silvery-white mane, and posed before the eleven men and women in the tent who had stopped their arguing and posturing the moment she had entered to stare at her.
“Lady Evanshire,” King Eric Ericson IV blurted out as soon as Valdor’s king spotted her. “What news do you bring us from the magic guild?”
“From the guild, naught of import,” she smiled at the old fool who had been so easily deceived over the years.
“From myself, more than could imagine.
“Marion,” she said as she looked back at the blankly staring blonde. “I want all these people placed under my power and authority. I want to control every one of them henceforth,” she told her firmly.
“Aye, mistress,” the true Maker replied in a dull monotone as Tanya chortled.
Right before the tent was filled with shrill screaming, and crying as she turned to gape at the sight of eleven small babes in swaddling clothes lain out before her.
“By the Ancients,” she cried in horror, turning back to Marion. “What have you done, you stupid bitch?”
“Obeyed your order, mistress,” the woman replied blandly, her tone devoid of any spirit, or life.
“This is not what I wanted,” she howled, and clapped her hands to her ears as the babies continued to shriek and howl in obvious distress.
“What is wrong with them,” she demanded even as she felt a curious tugging at her usually comfortable body that now felt like a nagging ache she could not quite place.
“’Tis feeding time, mistress.
“As you wished, they are now under your absolute control. You must feed them, for ‘tis their meal time.”
“F-F-Feed them,” Tanya choked, only belatedly recognizing the throb of her painfully swollen breasts filled with milk that needed easing. “All of them,” she exclaimed in horror as memories of being placed in charge of the eleven royal bastards filled her mind, along with memories of constantly feeding, changing, and tending the babies now before her.
“You are capable, mistress,” Marion assured her in that same lifeless tone that was starting to be annoying. “You are their mistress. Their nursemaid. Their absolute ruler in all things.”
She felt milk leaking from her nipples, and recoiled from the thought of feeding eleven greedy babies when the memory of her sole, true child at her breast was enough to make her cringe.
“Nay. I did not ask for this,” she shouted over the wailing.
“You wished absolute power and control.”
“Aye, as adults. I want to control them as peers,” she shouted, her head truly starting to throb. “Now, make that happen.”
“As you will, mistress,” Marion responded listlessly, and the wailing suddenly stopped.
Even as Tanya was suddenly aware of eleven, coy expressions around her.
“Mistress, when do we get to meet all the handsome soldiers,” a sultry pouting redhead that looked much like Eric’s daughter asked as she rose from a pallet where ten other young women in varying stages of dress reclined.
All of them, like Tanya’s own gown, now very immodest, and revealing.
She ignored the transformed king, and turned to Marion.
“What in the name of the seven hells are you doing,” she hissed as ‘Erica’ stepped forward, her hips swaying sensually, and embraced her from behind.
“I want to plaaaaaaay, mistress,” the obvious whore complained.
“As you commanded, mistress.”
“This is not what I ordered,” she wailed as new memories flooded her mind. Memories of being a pleasure girl, and rising in the guild ranks to become the mistress of almost a score of girls currently attached to a Valdoran contingent that made them, and her, little more than camp followers.
“This is outrageous,” she shrieked in spite of her own growing headache as Erica’s fingers slid slower, seeking her own naked sex beneath her too high skirt.
“’Tis just what you ordered, mistress. Absolute control over adult peers.”
“I wanted to……
“Oh, never mind. Just restore everyone in this tent to the way they should be,” she shouted, her breasts still swollen and leaking, and her head still throbbing as Erica nibbled at her left ear.
“As you will, mistress,” came the expected reply, and Tanya was suddenly standing before the kings and queens of the world who were glaring at her.
“Well, Mistress Evanshire,” Eric was demanding. “What news do you have for us?”
Marion stepped forward, and in but an eye blink, her simple dress was once more the sturdy, but finely made traveling garb she had been wearing just a few days ago. Beside her, Dominic was once more in his own finery that was tailored to his now thinner body.
“I believe we should handle this, Mistress Evanshire,” Marion told her, her green eyes bright, and very alert. “Or do you require further instruction in the abuses of power not meant for you?”
Tanya stared at her, looking more like a petulant child robbed of a pretty toy than a guild mistress in charge of magics in an entire kingdom. “Nay,” she rasped. “This is not fair. This is not….”
“Lord Dominic,” Marion turned to him.
“I shall tend to the lady, Lady,” he bowed to her. “Do as you must.”
“Thank you, my lord.
“I believe my companions await you outside the city gates. Will you take my greetings to them, and bid them wait upon me.”
“Aye, Lady Marion,” he bowed again. “Come along, my love,” Dominic took Tanya’s arm, and all but tugged her after him. “You’ve done enough mischief this day.”
“Just what is going on here,” the dark-eyed queen of Crelandia demanded, her long braids flying as she looked from Dominic, to Marion, and back around.
“Aye, mistress,” Eric demanded, rising from the chair he had occupied before the conference table set in the tent for them.
“I can explain everything, and I will,” Marion told them as she went not to the head of the table, as expected, but to one side near the foot, where she took the place of a petitioner, rather than of prestige. “I only ask that you hear me out, good lords and ladies of our lands.”
“Mother,” Duncan smiled as Tanya was all but dragged toward the small group standing just outside the gates of Nordstrom that were parted just enough for them to step out.
“Duncan,” she exclaimed, her hesitation lost as she looked on her son for the first time in years as he should have been. “’Tis true? You are whole?”
“Thanks to the lady,” Duncan told her. “I do hope you weren’t making trouble for her,” he said, eyeing Dominic with a curious gaze.
“Remember who you address, lad,” Jacob snorted. “When has my sister not been making trouble for someone.”
“Go chase a cat,” Tanya huffed, glaring at him.
“You’re the one that should have been wolven. You’re such an obvious……..”
“Jacob,” Agatha snapped.
“She started it,” the amber-eyed halfling grumbled
“I see some things haven’t changed while I was….away,” Dominic noted as he addressed Agatha.
“Nothing ever does. Or so ‘twould seem,” she remarked as she nodded to her former master and mentor.
“Did you lose weight,” Duncan asked him idly as Jacob and Tanya stood glaring at one another.
Dominic only smiled.
The hidden members of the guild stared at Tanya arguing with her feral sibling as she was all but dragged out of the conference tent after delivering the Maker to the assembled rulers. “Something went wrong,” Tilgar remarked brusquely. “Never have I seen Lady Tanya dismissed so.”
“Nor dragged about like a common wench,” Tara Bishop almost tittered at seeing such an ugly man literally manhandling the haughty guild mistress with such impunity.
“I do not think we can count on Lady Evanshire any longer,” Moshian told him companions. “If we are to neutralize the threat of this willful new Maker, we must do it ourselves.”
“How?”
“I have an idea,” Timium spoke up, though he kept his head respectfully bowed to avert his gaze from his superiors. “Do you wish to hear it,” the slave adept asked as if unsure if he should even been heeded by such grand magic users.
Life as a slave had made him more than a little submissive, and learning under a cruel mentor had taught him that his ideas did not always have merit. If anything, he had grown to doubt himself far more than not in spite of the fact his abilities were enough to make him more than a peer among those around him.
“Tell us,” Moshian nodded to the young man.
Marion froze, her smile fading as she looked at the nine men and two women who were surprisingly patient as they listened to her tale of how she had come to be, and what had brought her to Nordstrom. The only one yet to relax was King Winters, and she understood that. He was simply surprising her by not saying a word of his missing daughter, nor confronting her about her glossing over the princess-turned-slave’s role in her journey.
That was not what now troubled her.
She felt a greater sense of foreboding than ever before, and even as she tried to focus on that sense of foreboding, Silver burst into the gathering, and sought her out, his amber eyes locking upon her in but an instant.
“The magic guilders have unleashed a horde of leeches upon us,” he rasped. “We must get everyone into the city ere night falls.
“And get everyone out of the tents before……”
The screams began even before he could finish.
“The fools,” she gasped, even as a pale, skeletal hand dug up from beneath the hard earth near her feet, making her leap back as the arm was soon joined by another as the macabre creature struggled to pull itself out of the ground.
“God’s bones,” Ericson hissed, leaping back as Prince T’Chal of the Western Isles glared at the thing before drawing his sword, and neatly beheading it.
“Everyone outside into the sun,” Marion called as Silver vanished as fast as he had come, shouting as he spread the word.
Only the shouts and screams from around them told her the things were finding all too many victims before anyone could be warned. Worse, some of the cries sounded more like men fighting men, and she realized the general confusion caused by panic must have the assembled legions turning on one another.
“My lords. Ladies,” she gasped as she rushed from the tent at the side of the Frankish ka who shielded her with his own ax he had drawn as more of the creatures had dug up out of the ground. “You must stop your men from fighting one another, and get them into the city before the sun sets.
“Anyone outside the city at dusk is going to die,” she told them needlessly as the tent before them bulged with obscene life as one leech risked reaching out for another victim who ran up to check on his king.
The sun instantly vaporized that diseased flesh, but not before jagged nails had raked the side of the young freeman, making him reel in horror as he clapped a hand to his torn flesh in horror.
“Don’t worry,” Marion stepped forward to simply touch him, healing the wound instantly. “Now, go and warn anyone not aware of what is happening.
“They cannot fight themselves. They must escape the tents and shelters where these things are gathering, and get into the city.”
She looked up as the rulers of the known world followed her gaze to the bright star that hung heavy in the sky, as if aware that they had little time if they were to save anyone.
“Forget your rivalries,” she told them as her eyes fell on the eleven. “Either you cooperate, or watch your countrymen die.
“Quickly now,” she said as Prince Eric, his father’s son from the look of his broad shoulders, turned to his sire, and said, “I trust her, father.
“Best we follow her, for I know of little that can stop a mob of hungry leeches once they amass in darkness.”
“But….why did the guild turn on us,” Eric IV protested as Anthony Winters glared at Marion one last time, and then turned to head toward his own encampment, though it was as panicked as the rest.
“Just be sure you watch over my daughter, woman,” he bellowed, and charged toward that fray without looking back.
“Sir Ian,” Marion blurted when the tall guardsmen suddenly appeared at her side one more.
“Lord Silver wants you inside the gates at once ere these fools decide to target you,” the young wolven told her.
Behind him, her usual escort of men-at-arms had reappeared, and it seemed with dispelling Tanya’s enchantment on them all, she had also restored her bodyguard, left behind as pups in her kennels after she had been drugged.
“Wait,” Queen Evelyn of Crelandia called out, her young daughter at her side. “Will the city truly be safe? Can the creatures not dig into the buildings?”
“Nay,” Marion told her. “The whole of Nordstrom is enchanted to prevent invasion from any source. Even leeches cannot breach its defenses.”
“Then, please, Lady Marion, take Inza with you until I can rejoin her,” she asked her, looking at her daughter who eyed her mother with panic.
“But, mother…..?”
“I must do as the lady bids, Inza. I can do that all the better not fretting about you getting hurt in the chaos,” she told her as men continued to shout, scream, and curse as the ring of steel-on-steel began to sound all too frequently.
That in itself said how little even the kings were yet managing to do to calm the assembled legions.
“Go. As your queen, I command you, lass.”
“Quickly, my lady. We should get you inside ere the press at the gates begin,” Ian pressed her as Inza gave a heartfelt groan as her mother loped away toward a waiting mare she mounted to gallop right through the crowd, the long spear in her hand aiding her in parting the crowd around her.
Fortunately, she used the butt.
“Aye,” she agreed, and gave the twelve year old princess a smile of confidence, and took her hand to lead her inside.
“And,” she added, “We must prepare the city’s defenses lest we end up overwhelmed by those we hope to save.”
“Lord Silver, and the elders are already making arrangements even now.”
“Good.”
Overhead, the sun continued to slide all too swiftly toward the horizon as the sounds of fear and panic echoed behind her. Marion caught sight of Agatha not far off as she entered the city with a stream of frightened freemen, and then lost sight of her.
She wasn’t sure where the guild mages had gone, but she could guess they were far from the danger they had stirred, but close enough to see if their mischief bore whatever fruit they desired. She hoped the lot of them found themselves in a pit full of leeches before she caught herself. Firmly negating that thought, she focused on the current dilemma, and led the young Amazon toward Silver, hoping he could put her someplace out of the way so she could turn her attentions to those that might need her.
The last thing they needed were infected men carrying the leeches’ blight into the city with them.
Even as she approached the high priest, a rumbling explosion filled the air, and the sounds of men screaming was heard only secondarily after the first thunderous echo faded.
She turned back toward the gate, and stared in horror.
One of the legion’s present must have triggered a catapult.
The walls and gates were safe enough, enchanted as they were to resist any egress. The ground before the open gates, however, was not a smoldering pit almost twelve feet deep, with scores of deep and dying within as the sun continued to set. Even if the gates closed now, there was a huge gaping hole where the leeches could easily enter the city.
“To the gates,” Silver shouted as men continued to rush in from outside.
“To the gates,” others cried. “We must close the gates,” they cried as they saw what only those close to the damage already knew.
“Great Maker,” Silver rasped as the sun began to set, and Marion stood before the smoldering chasm and saw the leeches rising like human wheat as far as the eye could see in the gathering gloom of dusk.
She saw in that brief instant her first vision, where she was overwhelmed by the darkness when the Maker’s power first came to her. She saw the world overrun by the hungry, slavering creatures, and she knew it began here.
And she did not know what to do to stop it.