She stepped aside to admit them, and Dav sailed in serenely, bowing unctuously as he passed. But Nessian was quite mistaken: Rothesay did not wish to see the lady Carialla at all; not now. Stiff with reluctance, yet having no choice that she could see, she started after Dav one more time, stepped on the toe of her shoe, and fell sprawling upon Carialla’s floor. It was an exquisite carpet under her nose, she had to admit, but its beauty doubtlessly improved with a certain distance.

The heavy door shut all but silently. As she struggled for her feet, tangled with sword, scrip, cloak, and trembling, she heard Dav say dryly, “I have brought you a present, my dear.”

“Thank you,” Carialla replied through her teeth.

Then Dav‘s hand was under her elbow, and Rothesay found herself effortlessly restored to her feet. He dusted her off, straightened out the sword, adjusted her cloak, and then, scrutinizing her face, whipped out a handkerchief and wiped briskly at her nose, cheeks, and chin. Making do with the result, he took her shoulders and turned her to face an impatient, wary Carialla.

“Mistress, it gives me extraordinary pleasure,” said Dav, grandly and trying not to laugh, “to present to you—Rothesay, Lady Cherusay’s daughter.”

Carialla’s scathing eyes lashed at the Master. Finding no trace of trickery, for all his amusement, she turned to critique this gift. “Indeed? And where did you happen to find such a treasure?”

“In Nancaras—adrift out of old Paddy’s northern den,” said Dav softly.

The hairs prickled at the nape of Rothesay’s neck with superstitious alarm at that irreverence; but she was thoroughly gratified by Carialla’s “Oh!” as though Padriag’s very name were voucher enough.

The Mistress of Colderwild Hall studied her narrowly, trying to piece together Cherusay’s blood, Alrulf’s outworn rags, and the wizard’s villa. Rothesay, wondering if these two were husband and wife, or at any rate lovers—no, that thought died even as it was born; man and wife, perhaps—wondered if Carialla thought she were Dav’s latest amusement. But the quizzical look from Mistress to Master had nothing of either suspicion or anger in it.

Dav returned Carialla’s gaze. “She tends pigs, too,” he said levelly.

That was the nicest thing Rothesay had heard on any voice in weeks. “Some of my best friends are pigs,” she assured Carialla, an edge of desperation in her voice. The lady only gazed at her for a moment, then closed her eyes expressively. With a wave of a thin white hand, then, she beckoned them to the fire.

They were in a warm and cozy apartment, carpeted and hung about with tapestries of rich and intricate design that soaked up the flickering firelight. Two big carven chairs sat companionably about the hearth; before a tall, slender window shuttered now against the night, there hung a wide loom; there was a work in progress. In another window, a candle burned on the deep sill. There were tables in the corner, a workbench of some sort and a slanted writing-desk; and all around the fireplace the walls were lined from floor to lofty ceiling with shelves full of books, piled scrolls, and curios including, at a guess, half a dozen human skulls. A full skeleton hung on wires in a niche, and someone in execrable humor had vested him with a jaunty plumed cap, a smoking-pipe in his teeth and his hand bones fastened around a drinking horn. Rothesay averted her eyes, feeling that even an enemy, dead, deserved more respect than this poor chap suffered. Dark reds were everywhere in the apartment, and browns, and traces of dull green and black, and here and there a glint of crystal or gold: altogether, she thought, like stepping inside a bloodstone.

The big chairs were fatly cushioned in stuffed silks. Carialla waved Rothesay to one, settled herself into the other, set Dav on a stool before her, and began unwrapping his arm.

“I thought you went after a swordsman?”

“Rothesay it is,” said Dav, cheerfully improbable. Rothesay, perched on the edge of her chair and trying to find some way to sit with the responsible weapon, made a swift attempt to lift it up to show her and, forgetting her strength, nearly threw herself out of the seat. Dav buried his face in Carialla’s lap and pounded out his silent mirth on the arm-cushion. After a moment’s tolerance, Carialla seized him by the hair and straightened him up again.

“Ah, my dear,” he began a trifle breathlessly, smiling broadly.

A soft knock at the door interrupted him, and Nessian entered even as Carialla barked, “Come!” He bore a huge tray heavy with many vessels, whence came heartbreakingly toothsome aromas, and Rothesay devoutly wished for a dearth of suppertime ceremony.

“Ah!” Dav sighed. “This is why I keep you, Ness. Courtiers must watch their toes scrupulously; but a good cook may take all the liberties he pleases. Unhand me, woman! I have great matters to—ow!”

“I’ll unhand you when I’m done,” said Carialla coolly. “Here, boy—bring that to me.”

A child of perhaps ten had come in behind Nessian, lugging a large urn. He set it between Carialla and the fire, laid some clean white cloths in her hand, and at her nod of dismissal, dashed off again.

“Who was that?” Rothesay asked, shy, but irritated that the boy was given no name.

“Flick, they call him,” said Carialla, not looking up. “Cisconnar is his right name; I advise you not to use it to his face.”

Nessian was at Rothesay’s elbow, uncovering dishes in deft and eerie silence and piling their contents in attractive patterns on a long white plate. There was complex cookery here: she recognized the young scallions, left long, green and fresh; and the yellow flowers and twigs shining out of some of the stuffs must be carrot bits; but most of the ingredients, however homely and familiar they might have been in their original character, were become mysterious strangers decked in exotic and unlikely raiment.

Nessian held out the finished art, so full that only some of the edges of the plate showed, and with a shock Rothesay realized that the whole thing was for her. Mother Goddess! There’s enough here for my whole family!

The old man’s misty eyebrows lifted delicately at her evident dismay. “There is something you find unacceptable?”

“What?” she started, staring up at him, unable to grasp the concept of unacceptable food.

Dav turned around sharply. “Take it and eat. Nessian, this is Rothesay. You needn’t take it as a compliment if she cleans that plate: she hasn’t eaten often enough to know the difference between beauty and ballast. Incidentally, she is our newest novice. Go ahead and quarter her with the Silver, but I want her dressed in the Black.”

Nessian blinked. Even Carialla paused to look up. “In the Black,” the old man agreed after a pause, inclining his white head in the faintest nod of acquiescence, though it was plain that he meant to have an explanation.

Carialla was more direct. “Why?”

“That should become superbly clear—tomorrow. In the meantime, Ness, I hope we have something in the presses to fit her, for I grant those bits of dustclouts she’s wearing only a few hours more endurance.” As though clothes had reminded him, he turned to Carialla. “We are wanting a Cleansing, Priestess. We have killed today.”

She closed her steely eyes wearily. “You are the damnedest nuisance. Who, by the way?” Then, sharply: “‘We’?”

Rothesay’s first step into culinary heaven tripped over a memory of eyes, bloodshot and empty, in a face she could not recall wearing any living expression. The food wedged vengefully in her throat; was that where her sword had—where she had. . . .

She was startled out of a grisly eternity by the feel of something cold and hard pressing into her hand. “Awp!” She jerked back, feeling it as the sword hilt, and sloshed cold wine onto her knees. Dav patiently closed her fingers on the goblet stem, draped a napkin across her lap, suggested she get a grip on the cup if not herself, and returned to Carialla.

Rothesay sipped gingerly at first, in case Runedaur wine jumped out of the cup and slapped one around the way the stuff that was not water in Dav‘s flask did. The wine behaved itself. It behaved very well indeed. As Padriag preferred beer, she seldom had wine; only if Widow Pinnar had a bit to share on a high holy day, the local vintage, of course, and well watered to conserve an old woman’s resources. This wine was not local, it was one of the best in Peria, if not the best in Colderwild’s cellars, and it was not watered at all. Rothesay drank it with astonished relish.

She set to again on Nessian’s tasteful platter, having learned at Poverty’s knee that a faint or squeamish appetite was a luxury she could ill afford. ‘Eat up, the Holies only know when you’ll eat again,’ old Auntie Megar used to order, when she would bring her niece’s orphans a pot of something hot: a gruff old sow, but full of kindness little the worse for being righteous, and full of good advice: eat. So she obeyed now, and washed down every savory mouthful with the sweet, fragrant wine as an exquisite counterpoint. She thought she could tolerate a great deal to be able to eat like this every once in a while.

On honest reflection now, food or no food, she had very little of which to complain. Of course Master Dav made his own rules—that was endemic to being nobility—but more important, he was a living monument to intellectual prowess. That sword-like mind, cutting cleanly through rubbish and confusion, excited and stimulated her, and the only boon she craved was to be allowed to watch it work. She looked at him with shining eyes, where he perched still on the stool at Carialla’s feet and bent over the plate they shared on the Lady’s lap.

Carialla, noticing her gaze, motioned to Nessian, who went at once to refill Rothesay’s cup.

And the awesome Lady: what power lay incarnate in her! how gracious she was, to receive such a tattered scrap of girl-thing as Rothesay in her very quarters, and set before her food and drink for a princess! Rothesay met the lady’s dark and piercing eyes with a huge, happy smile, and waved her goblet in salute. A minute nod from Carialla, unnoticed by Rothesay, and Nessian collared the floating goblet and filled it again. . . .

“. . . And, wouldn’t thee know’st, that bad old sow took t’ kitten like ’t was all of her ain—”

Slowly, so perhaps she would not notice it had been absent, Sense slunk back into Rothesay’s wine-dark brain. Dav and Carialla sat like carven stone, staring at her with glittering eyes, silent, fascinated—but not, she suspected, with her story. Her cup was empty, her plate gone (empty, if the weight in her belly meant anything, though she could not recall eating); Nessian’s fingers touched the goblet’s bowl, and she snatched it away protectively, horrified.

“Incredible,” murmured Carialla.

Why do I have to keep mentioning pigs to this lady? “Not sho incredible ash your forb—frob—forber—courtesy, m’lady,” Rothesay mumbled back, responding to a remark she belatedly realized had not been meant for her at all. Oh, stupid!

Carialla’s eyes flashed. “You mistake me,” she said, showing her teeth. “You are not likely to credit me with courtesy again.” She broke off a piece of dark bread, powdered it with something white, and passed it to Rothesay, who, having no alternative idea, ate it, worrying. Not courtesy?

Lord and lady conferred quietly, and then Carialla rose swiftly and strode from the apartments. Dav turned to watch his new possession eat; Rothesay, more dreadfully clearheaded with every bite, suddenly found it impossible to chew with so dry a mouth, and no place to set the last bit of bread aside. She swallowed at last, the lump sticking painfully in her chest, and waved the remainder helplessly. “I can’t eat all this, lord. . . .”

Dav grinned, anticipating something awful. “You will learn soon enough not to say that again,” he laughed softly. Then he was on his feet. “Come, chit; bring your bread. One last, er, adventure, and then you shall have a real bed to sleep in.” His eyes danced over her and he shrugged coyly: “All by yourself, too!” She blushed.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

Out Carialla’s carven door, down polished halls and stairs, to darker, rough-hewn corridors well underground they strode together, seeing few others, and those running. Rothesay, freed from Dav’s disconcerting stare, ate up the bread and, feeling steadier now, ventured to ask, “Where is everybody?”

“Playing.” An arrow whirred between their heads. Rothesay tripped; Dav paid no heed.

But Colderwild was vast and intricate, and not all the players she had seen or guessed at outside would fill a quarter of these halls. When she said as much, Dav shrugged.

“Sometimes we host two or three of the other houses at once,” he offered.

“Still not enough.”

“No.” He stopped by a curious silver-chased door and laid a finger to his lips. “One of the mysteries of our Order,” he whispered dramatically, and opened the door, leaving her wondering if the mystery were the numbers of Runedaur or the lightless chamber within.

Down a dark tunnel she glimpsed Carialla by a fire far off in an echoing hall, seeming to stand in a sphere of firelight suspended in cavernous night. Then Dav whisked her aside into a small room. Mirrored candles lit the room through drifting steam. Rothesay smelled hot lavender-scented water before she saw the great copper tub in middle of the raw stone floor, and her heart leaped. A bath—a hot bath, and the Runedaur rich enough to buy more soap than she could use! She looked about for a clothes peg. Dav‘s blue satin tunic hung on it.

“Drop them on the floor,” he advised, working on a boot. “You won’t be wearing them again anyway; although—” he suddenly snagged the ragged hem and fingered it, “we may keep them for costume.”

He returned to the boot. Rothesay clung to her bits of dustclout. They were all she had: her cloak, her scrip, and her sword she thought were still in Carialla’s apartments, though no memory remained of having removed them. Damn that wine. And Carialla. And Nessian. And this whole horrible establishment!

And the most horrible part of it all now tossed his boots negligently aside, stood up and—Rothesay spun away with a little gasp as Dav loosed his belt.

His mocking voice followed over her shoulder. “You might wait a private turn. You might ask Sothia to draw a second bath. You might draw me into a lengthy and ultimately pointless discussion upon the nature of modesty and being obsessively clothed. You have only to ask my lady—to wait a bit.”

Rothesay turned back to him slowly, stricken, her thoughts fluttering like a trapped bird between the two imponderables: challenging Carialla’s temper; or bathing! with the master marauder of all Peria. . . .

The master marauder, wearing earrings and a wild, antic look, stalked up to her as she stood paralyzed with dismay. For a long moment he gazed deep into her horror-dark eyes.

“BOO!” he boomed, leaping straight up and flailing. Descending, his hand caught her thin shoulder in a hard grip, and he commanded magnificently, “Choose now to have always been free to bear the naked truth and delight the way out of darkness! —the teacher has spoken,” he added, pointedly.

Utterly baffled, Rothesay’s brain grabbed for what sense it could, and chucked her confusion with her clothes in an echo of Dav‘s abandon.

“Good. Bathe.” Dav slipped sensuously into the bath. Naked, Rothesay danced anxiously on the flags, then plunged in after, hasty for the cover of the water.

She drew into a little ball on her side of the tub, to avoid the touch of Dav‘s feet stretched out beside her. Dav offered her a white cloth and a soap from a little stand beside the tub; she accepted them numbly, trying to figure just what had happened to get her into this position. For one wonderful moment, she had felt—well, like a prisoner released into sunshine, and the whole world was so simple, and easy. Dav vanished underwater, scrubbing at his hair; she watched the bubbles. Runedaur magic: demon-sprung, people said; Master Padriag had never offered an opinion. One of Dav‘s feet broke the water beside her, and she stifled a lunatic urge to play piggies on the slender toes. Nothing will ever get this insane again. Ever. Gingerly, she applied her soap.

“I used to collect virgins,” Dav remarked conversationally, surfacing again. Rothesay submerged. The hair of Dav‘s thigh tickled across her buttock, however, and she came up swiftly, trying to pretend her fiery blush came from the heat of the water.

“I did. I admit it,” he went on, as if she had expressed interest. “A grotesque folly on my part.” His voice was taut, as if indeed confessing an error.

Rothesay peeked out of her washcloth. “Why?”

“Exactly, chit. ‘Why?’ indeed? Because a man is supposed to do so,” he replied, apparently mistaking her question. “Virgins are the great prize; are they not? Four years.” He glared at her sternly and waggled an admonitory washcloth. “Four years. I admit this only to show how easy it is to slip into thoughtlessness, how comfortable to accept someone else’s thinking. Four years I persisted in this mindlessness. I was eighteen before I allied myself—with myself; before I sided with my own observations in the face of the world’s opinions; before I acknowledged what I had known for years.” He glared now into memory, only able to admit the blunder because denial would be a still greater breach.

“What was that?” Rothesay asked shyly.

“Virgins are boring,” said Dav flatly. “When was the last time you washed your hair?”

“What?”

“That long ago? You’ll wash it now, chit.”

Twenty minutes later Rothesay stood wrapped in a huge white towel of delicious softness and cedared fragrance, between Dav‘s widespread feet as he finished plaiting her still-dripping hair. The braid he had made went down her back, and she was glad to be thus turned away from him, for he was still naked, wearing only a cloth across his neck to keep his own hair from dripping down his back. She had a vague idea of what an adult male might look like, unclad, thanks to the lewd humor of some Harrowater youths who thought it a great joke to flash their genitals at Anie’s daughters. The girls had always played their part, shrieking and running and setting Alrulf up for yet another fight; but she had not looked closely then, and did not want to now. Still, she could hardly help but know that the Master’s body was as lean as his face, not heavily muscled, but sharply defined, every vein and sinew cleanly cut as if from sleek brown river stone; and liberally scarred: the Master of Runedaur had lived no gentle life. Queer now to find him placidly braiding a young village waif’s hair and singing softly, as if nothing else mattered in all the world.

He had washed it for her, too, out of swift exasperation with her own childish efforts: her scalp still tingled in the afterglow of the vigorous massage from his fingertips. And she had scarcely set comb-tooth to hair before he had relieved her of that as well.

She sighed. She was deeply confused, and tired of it. “You’re mad, you know.”

She could feel him tying something to the end of her braid. “Hmm?”

“Mad. You. Nessian. This whole place—it’s nothing like the normal world!”

She felt him stand. A gentle but compelling hand on her shoulder turned her to face him. It was a rude remark, and she knew it; but she meant it, and she was too tired to apologize for stating an honest opinion: if he chose to run a madhouse, let him accept the consequences. She met his eyes squarely, not caring if he would hit her again.

He studied her face. He was not angry; nor amused. Seeming to satisfy himself of her sincerity, he said in a strange quiet voice, “Believe me, I know well you do not say that for compliment’s sake; nevertheless—I am unspeakably grateful.” And he swept her a deep and splendid bow.

Rothesay stared. Dav stared back—and snatched her towel. “Awp!” she squeaked. Dav scrutinized her, despite her floundering, like a horse trader at purchase, snorted, and returned the cloth to her.

“We’ll see what a few weeks’ decent eating shall do. I wonder: do you need to eat more to support Arngas’s strength?” He frowned thoughtfully, but squandered little time on the question, and turned back to the big towel chest.

The garment he offered was a simple shift without sleeves, woven of old linen, thin, soft, supple as water. She held it dumbly as he shut the chest, apparently taking none for himself.

“Er—aren’t you—?”

“I go before my Lord as He will take me in the end anyway,” said Dav, abandoning his towel completely.

Rothesay looked at the linen. It was so thin, and short, as to be almost no clothing at all anyway. This is my world now, and my life. . . . Slowly she handed it back. Sighing deeply, then, she drew off her towel, folded it slowly, and laid it on Dav’s stool. The worst of this, she thought, looking at her hands, is having no pockets. . . .

Dav spoke no word, but silently opened the door to the chamber beyond. She hesitated.

“Master,” she ventured, rubbing vaguely at her hips in an instinctive search for pockets, “do you really worship—Death?”

He laughed quietly. “A year’s answer or none, chit; both yes and no will lie to you now. You tell me—a year hence.” And he stepped out into darkness.

This great chamber gathered gloom like closely-held breath. Hushed, expectant, Rothesay followed her new master along the wall, which leaned out away from her in tiers to quickly vanish from view. Clothed with the dark, as it were, she lost some of her affronted modesty; the freedom of nudity was a luxury seldom indulged, and she delighted in the rare pleasure of cold silken air caressing her in unexpected ways. She forbore to speak, or to question: the silence was complete, save for the stone under her slapping bare feet. Dav trod silently. Embarrassed, she corrected her own footfall till only a soft whisper remained that she could not wholly erase. How did he do that?

Soon enough, they faced Carialla. Hooded and gowned in lustrous milky satin spilling like moonlight about her, she sat enthroned upon a gleaming black chair, iron or wood, intricately wrought. Fire danced in the great brazier at her feet, and sweet incense embraced them in drifting veils.

Out here the floor was worked and polished. As she approached the fire, Rothesay realized that Carialla was not at the center, but just within a circle Rothesay could see inlaid in the stone, a handspan wide and gleaming like her own sword: Móriad-steel. More elaborate designs of the same stuff vanished into the shadow of the brazier itself.

At the edge of the circle, Dav stopped. So did Rothesay, in the brazier‘s revealing light trying to find some nonchalant crossing of her arms that afforded any concealment.

In the hollow dark, Carialla’s voice rang low, casting shivering echoes through the unseen vastnesses.

“What would you at the Fire of Death, bloody-handed ones?”

Dav answered clearly, “We have turned life against life, and brought Death untimely, before His office.”

The reminder struck Rothesay like a physical blow. Rich supper and richer wine threatened to erupt from her; fighting it down, she shuddered and shook, buffeted by a gale of anguish. Demon-spurred memory rode the wings of storm through her brain. Baths, nakedness, wine, riot, betraying highways, vast mazelike cities and condemned vagabonds, alien circle-stones, yellow eyes and dragon orders, haunted battlefields, barrows, sword-changing, and murder, murder twice over—all the nightmare since gathering pokeweed in the hills of home howled in unanswerable torment. She longed to wake to the wizard’s apple-loft, or the drafty old hut and Brannar’s saucy laughter; or to a half-remembered nest of creamy linen that smelled of spruce and dark lavender-washed hair. She dropped to a crouch and clutched at her knees.

“What would you at the Fire of Death, bloody-handed ones?” she challenged again.

“We have paid evil with evil, and are taken in Evil’s snare,” Dav replied. Rothesay shuddered.

Carialla softened. “What would you, children?”

Dav spread his hands. “We would transform our evil, and sow life anew,”

Evil! I don’t want to be someone who has killed a person, she cried out silently. Pointlessly: nothing, no part of the fabled Runedaur magic could alter that at all.

“Dare the circle.”

Carialla rose from her seat, half-circled the brazier and stood before them, a dim silhouette haloed in gossamer gold where the light touched the translucence of her robes. She raised a small silver knife, then swept a symbolic Door for them to enter. Taking Dav’s hand, she drew him in between her and the fire, then looked down at the miserable huddle that was Rothesay. The priestess had seen this sort of thing often enough before, knew well the terrible vulnerability of a soul in such a state, a vulnerability that Runedaur training alone, as far as she knew, could armor—and that let such training succeed at all. Dav, she knew, would have been working towards this since he had first collected the girl. For all that, however, her impatience remained unappeased. Stifling a sigh, she reached down and closed a slender but commanding hand on the girl’s arm.

Rothesay, riven from any will of her own, suffered herself to be pulled to her feet and drawn towards the fire. She drew a shaky breath that trembled towards a sob, and let a sudden whiff of the incense distract her. This was high ritual before the gods; she should be paying attention. Dav had said something—curious. Transformation? What was that? What about atonement, and not ever being able to make up for taking a human life?

Dav knelt by the fire. Clumsily, Rothesay copied him. Carialla completed her circle, plunged a hand into a dark urn by her chair and cast a grey powder into the brazier. The fire smothered, and darkness fell. A thick sweetness billowed out, threatening to smother everyone; Rothesay’s eyes stung and watered, sending twin rivulets coursing down her cheeks.

A lone, hollow-throated bell tolled once. The fire reincarnated in unearthly tongues of blue and violet. Carialla sang out in the Old High tongue beyond the reach of Rothesay’s understanding, and Dav prostrated himself on the floor. She followed suit. Above them, Carialla circled, chanting.

Rothesay found the smooth stone pleasantly cold to her skin, and its hardness softened by the fact that the hour was well past midnight of a day of dream and nightmare tangled beyond ravelling. Before the Runedaur witch completed her second orbit, Rothesay was asleep.