Eresken staggered beneath a blow to the very center of his being, senses reeling. Then the presence in his mind was gone, leaving only an echoing memory of helpless blindness. To be used as another’s eyes was bad enough when it was expected, he raged silently; to be taken like that unheralded was infinitely worse. Hastily stifling disloyal anger, Eresken took a deep breath and brought his hands together in front of him, palm to palm and fingers matched and spread. In a soft voice, he recited the incantations to center his mind afresh. That should satisfy any spies lurking to steal his thoughts, he thought in that one secret part of his mind he hoped was still inviolate.
Teiriol’s troop lay all around, some hacked with swords but more struck down by magic. Three were burned beyond recognition by foul, creeping fire. Others lay unmarked but abnormal angles showed bones broken by the hammer blow of unnatural winds. One corpse was still smoking, a black score traced down from head to the shattered ruin of a foot, white bones stark in the charred flesh. Another lay with jaw shattered and hanging limp, the bones of the face broken like an eggshell with fragments driven deep into the brain, which showed gray and gelid in the depths of the wounds.
“How do they do this?” muttered Eresken aloud.
A feeble croak sought to answer him. Eresken looked around, startled. The sound came again and he followed it to the ditch beside the road. Distraught blue eyes looked up from a mire of leaves and blood. “Teiriol?”
“I ran away,” sobbed the younger man. “I ran away. I was trying to bring them all back, trying to get them to rally, but once the lightning started, once I saw Seja hit—” He broke off with a cry of pain and Eresken saw his sword hand was useless, naked spikes of shattered bone sticking out of the wrist, the fingers hanging bloodless and limp, thumb all but severed. Teiriol cradled the ruin of his arm helplessly, weeping like a child.
“What happened?” Eresken shook him furiously but Teiriol was incoherent with pain and distress. Eresken seized his chin and forced it up; Teiriol’s eyes widened at the shock of the sudden assault.
So that was the way of it, Eresken thought grimly as he stripped out memories, heedless of the pain he was inflicting. The mages had hit Teiriol’s men with foulest sorcery, the swordsmen going on to hack down remaining resistance. The Mountain Men had died unable to defend themselves against double assault of spell and blade. The Soluran mage had sprung the woman from the empty air and they had run, the black-haired man slinging the wounded wizard over one shoulder, the traitors to the ancient blood on either side.
Eresken let go his grip on Teiriol and the younger man collapsed. Eresken walked rapidly down the length of road, checking every body, even those unrecognizable lumps of charred flesh. Some lingered, clinging desperately to life despite their injuries. Eresken ruthlessly snuffed any vital spark he found; there were wounds enough to explain the deaths. No one would suspect his hand in so thorough a slaughter and most would have died anyway, without rapid aid at least.
But he still needed Teiriol, for the present. Eresken walked back to the weeping man hunched over his agony. “I must summon help,” he said breathlessly. “I must call Aritane, to bring Sheltya to save those not yet dead.”
“Not yet—” Teiriol lifted his face, incredulous hope shining through the muck and blood. Eresken seized the boy’s surge of longing, seeing Aritane pictured within his mind. He wove that pitiable yearning for home and healing into his own tight-focused appeal, masking his intent with Teiriol’s piercing need.
“You must come, my love. Come to me. We have been betrayed, murdered, slaughtered. You must come.”
Eresken tore himself away from Aritane’s frantic appeals for explanation and direction. Her talents were notable for her race, he thought, but no match for any of his clan. Still, he didn’t have much time. “What is that?” Eresken looked down the road, mouth open.
Teiriol turned his head and Eresken plunged the bitch assassin’s dagger into the base of his skull, twisting the blade to leave the young man twitching helplessly, blindly for an instant of horror before death.
Pursing his lips for a moment, Eresken released the hilt of the dagger. It could stay in the wound for someone else to remark on, another pennyweight in the scales demanding vengeance. He scrambled rapidly up the hillside to the dell where he had been attacked. That whore would pay with her own blood for the shedding of his, he promised grimly. Eresken rummaged among the crisp leaves, peering at the dart he retrieved. There was still a faint smear glistening on it, rainbow mockery as he tilted it to the sunlight. Good enough.
Eresken drove the point into the back of his hand and let himself fall gracelessly to the ground. He seized the dizziness of the drug and nurtured it, forbidding the instinct to drive it from his blood. He heard movement on the road beneath but forced himself to stay motionless. If it were passers-by, no matter. They could hardly remove the bodies before Aritane arrived and no one was going to know any truth beyond what he chose to tell them.
He relaxed into the insidious charm of the poison, mind drifting idly around a hidden tether of inmost consciousness. Aritane’s desperate thoughts brushed past, nearly missing him before horrified realization struck her. Eresken opened the surface of his thoughts to her, seemingly half insensible, coloring the sight of the corpses in his mind’s eye with Teiriol’s shame and anguish. “Beloved…” He infused that one despairing word with all the frustrated passion he sensed in Aritane, with the memory of their discreet kisses, her nervous delight at his exploration of her body, never yet satisfying her cravings, calculated to leave her always longing for more.
Now her hands were beneath his head, cradling him to the soft swell of her bosom, the galloping beat of her blood drumming in his ear, her breath rapid and ragged, hysteria threatening. Eresken warded himself discreetly from that mental turmoil but did nothing to soothe it. Opening his eyes, he let them roll upward before fixing with visible effort on her face.
“What happened?” Aritane was pale as milk, a vein throbbing at her temple.
“We came to parley, as we discussed—” Eresken coughed and tried to rise but collapsed as if the effort were beyond him. “The wizards, all we wanted was their undertaking to leave us to settle our disputes—”
“They attacked you? Under parley?” Aritane was trembling now, fury and shock rippling through her arms as she held Eresken close to her heart.
“We did not expect it.” He allowed himself to feel bemused. “Even if they did not agree, we did not expect to be assaulted.”
“What happened—”
He felt the first confusion clearing from her mind. She was wondering how he was spared when the rest were so bloodily slaughtered. Eresken thrust the image of the redheaded whore at her, no need to dissimulate as he struck her with his disbelief and outrage and the memory of poisoned darts.
“Then she was truly a spy?” cried Aritane in horror.
“Worse, she knew me.” Eresken let Aritane feel the echo of the slut’s hatred. “She was one of those who came to rob my father’s house, at the bidding of the Archmage. They kidnapped me—I feared for my life…” He let her see the little boat driven through the ocean on the glow of false magic, he let her hear the cruel jests about eating him if his captors should go hungry on the voyage. “They came for me again!” Eresken flooded Aritane’s mind with dread of retribution, hiding the fact that it was his father’s wrath he feared. The terror was real enough to make shedding a few stifled tears easy. “I could not help them, I could hear them being killed, but I could not help them.” He thrust image after image of the dying and the dead at Aritane, tainted with the dizzying seduction of the drug. She gasped and clutched him ever tighter.