The Sentinel Mage

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT





THE WAILING ACCOMPANIED them for the rest of the afternoon, rising and falling with the wind. Even though he knew it wasn’t the voices of the dead, even though he’d seen some of the holes the wind whistled through, the ghost-like sound made Harkeld’s skin crawl.

The witch, Gerit, flew back as the sun set, landing beside one of the fires. Harkeld looked away. The other shapeshifters hid their changes—or at the very least, didn’t try to draw attention to themselves; Gerit seemed to derive perverse pleasure in the hastily averted heads, the mutterings of shock and distaste. He delights in disgusting us, he thought sourly.

“Ditmer’s only three or so leagues ahead of us,” Gerit said once he’d dragged on his clothes.

“Three leagues?” Tomas looked at him, startled.

Gerit grunted, a sound Harkeld took to mean Yes, and hunkered down at the firepit, holding out his hands to the flames. “He’s pushed his horses too hard, stupid whoreson. Several of ‘em are lame.”

“Three leagues,” Tomas repeated thoughtfully. He fetched the map and spread it on the ground. “We’ll catch up with him tomorrow.”

“We have the advantage of numbers,” his sergeant said, a lean man with sun-browned skin creased like leather.

“Yes.” Tomas grinned, his teeth gleaming in the firelight. “This is a battle Ditmer won’t win.”

They went without tents again; sleeping on the sand was easier, quicker. It was also colder. Harkeld wrapped himself in two blankets and lay down alongside his armsman. Despite his physical tiredness, sleep took a long time to come.





“HOLD HIM DOWN.”

Harkeld jerked awake. Someone pinned him to the ground, a heavy weight on his back. He smelled sawdust and dirt: the training arena.

“His right hand.” The voice was Jaegar’s.

Harkeld bucked and struggled, trying to break free. The weight on his back became heavier, almost crushing. He could scarcely breathe. Hard fingers gripped his right wrist, extending his arm. He heard the sleek sound of a sword blade sliding from its scabbard.

“Hold him still.”

Panic kicked in Harkeld’s chest, and with the panic was the sensation of flames igniting inside him. Fire crackled through his veins and danced over his skin, lighting up the arena. He saw Jaegar’s face, saw the crown woven into his hair, saw the upraised sword—

Harkeld jerked awake, a shout in his throat and a feeling of fire in his blood. His heart galloped in his chest, kicking against his ribs.

“Nightmare?” a woman asked alongside him.

Harkeld took a deep, shuddering breath. He turned his head.

Fingers lightly touched his cheek, stroking. “It was just a dream.”

“I know.” He rolled on his side, reaching for her, drawing her close.

Slender arms came around his neck.

For several minutes he just held her, while the thunderous pace of his pulse slowed and the sensation of fire running through him faded. Then he bent his head and found her mouth. It opened to him shyly.

The kiss was slow, thorough. Heat began to rise in him again. Not flames, this time, but arousal. Harkeld slid his hands down the smoothness of her back and pressed her more closely to him—the softness of her breasts and belly, the tickling curls at her groin. Heat flushed sharply under his skin—and with it, urgency. He nudged her legs apart with his knee. This was what he needed: the warmth and softness of a woman, the uncomplicated pleasure of sex.

She broke their kiss and drew back slightly. “Harkeld...I’ve never done this before.”

He knew that voice. With the recognition came an image of her face: gray eyes, black hair, pale skin.





HARKELD JERKED AWAKE. He stared up at a starry sky. Night air was cold on his face. A body was pressed against his side: Justen. He heard his armsman’s slow breathing.

Tell me I didn’t just dream that.

He scrubbed his face with a hand, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to erase the dream from his mind—the witch’s mouth opening for his kiss, her body pressing so softly and warmly against him. He’d been about to bed her, to bury himself in her. His body still wanted to. Arousal thrummed in his blood.

Not a witch. Never a witch.

Harkeld opened his eyes and stared up at the glittering stars. There was no wind, no wailing coming from the sandstone, no—

He stiffened. What was that?

Harkeld held his breath, listening. He heard the sound of men breathing in their sleep, the soft crunch of sand as the sentries paced, and then at the edge of his hearing...a faint scream?

He pushed up on one elbow. One of the sentries heard the movement. Starlight glinted on the man’s cheek as he turned his head. “Sire?”

“Did you hear that?” Harkeld asked in a low voice.

“Hear what?”

He didn’t answer, just listened, his ears straining. The faint sound came again. “That,” he said. “Screaming.”

“It’s just the wind, sire.”

The sentry was right—he knew that—but his subconscious told him there was danger out there, that something prowled in the darkness, that the distant screams came from a man’s throat, not wind blowing through holes bored in rock.

Next I’ll be believing in ghosts.

Harkeld shook his head angrily and lay back down. He pulled the blankets tightly around himself and shut his eyes.





THEY SET OFF before dawn. No one said anything, but Innis was aware of a change in the soldiers’ mood. They loaded the packhorses with efficiency, but there was an edge of suppressed excitement as they worked, a quiet, grim eagerness. Captain Ditmer’s party was less than ten miles ahead. Today they’d engage him and his men in battle.

And kill them.

She set her jaw and mounted, bringing her horse alongside Prince Harkeld’s.

The canyon seemed particularly gray this morning, the pre-dawn light leaching the sandstone of color. Even when the sky above their heads had lightened to a pale blue, the grayness persisted. Shadows seemed to cling to them all, man and beast.

The first puff of a dry breeze blew along the canyon from the desert. In its wake came a wail from the cliffs. Innis repressed a shiver and looked around her. Dawn was past, and yet shadows still shrouded the canyon—

The moment of insight was sharp. Fool, they’re not ordinary shadows. It was the curse she was seeing, lying over them all, cloaking face and form more heavily than it had before.

Innis dropped back slightly from her place beside Prince Harkeld and caught Dareus’s eye. A moment later he cantered up alongside her. “Do you see them?” she asked in low voice. “The curse shadows? They’re darker.”

Dareus glanced around. His eyes narrowed.

Innis touched her heels to her horse’s flanks, coming abreast of Prince Harkeld again. The wailing rose around them, and with it, her uneasiness.

“We must halt!” Dareus called out.

Prince Tomas reined his horse, slowing it. “What?”

“The curse,” Dareus said tersely. “Something’s happening.”

Tomas shouted a command. His voice echoed off the walls, blending with another keening wail.

The soldiers ahead of them halted.

Prince Tomas swung around to face Dareus. “What do you mean, happening?”

“The curse,” Dareus said. “Something’s changed.”

“Changed? How?”

“I don’t know.” Dareus dismounted.

“What are you doing?” Prince Tomas demanded.

“Checking the water.”

Innis jumped down from her horse and followed with the princes. They scrambled over the boulders of the dry riverbed after Dareus.

“You think the curse is in the water here?” Prince Tomas asked, his voice slightly higher than normal.

“It shouldn’t be. Not yet.” Dareus reached the trickling river. “Ivek created the curse to rise in the east and pass across the land until it set in the west, like the sun.”

Tomas nodded. “That’s what the stories say.”

Dareus dropped down on one knee and scooped water in his cupped hands.

They crowded close—the princes, Gerit and Cora, herself—and watched as Dareus looked intently at the water. He raised it to his face, almost as if he smelled it.

“Well?” Prince Tomas asked. “Is it cursed?”

Dareus shook his head. “No. The water’s fine.” He opened his hands, letting the water splash to the ground, and turned his head, still crouched on one knee, scanning the canyon. “But something has changed. And not for the better.”

“You’re certain about the water?”

“Yes.” Dareus stood, his face set in a frown.

“Perhaps the curse is stronger here because we’re nearing one of the anchor stones,” Innis said.

“Perhaps. But I don’t like it. It’s...dangerous.”

Innis followed his gaze, seeing the dark veil of the curse resting heavily on them all.

“It’s not right,” Dareus muttered under his breath.

Movement caught her eye: a hawk arrowing downward. Petrus, from its pale breast.

The hawk swept low over the dry riverbed, alighted on a boulder, and changed form. Petrus stood there, his face grim. “Ditmer’s soldiers are all dead.”

“Dead!” exclaimed Prince Tomas. “How—”

“I don’t know,” Petrus said. “There was fighting, but I don’t think they were killed by men.”

“Why not?” Cora asked. In contrast to Prince Tomas, her voice was calm.

“They’ve been torn to pieces.”

Wailing whispered in the air around them, lifting the hairs on the nape of Innis’s neck. “Wild animals?”

Gerit snorted. “Here?”

“Could it be the curse?” Prince Harkeld asked.

“I don’t see how.” Dareus began the scrambling journey back over the boulders to where the horses waited.





THEY RODE WARILY, the soldiers drawing close around them. Innis was aware of the weight of the sword strapped to her back, the snug fit of the baldric across her chest. Foreboding grew inside her—the stark barrenness of the canyon, the wailing that filled the dry air, the dark curse shadows, the tombs honeycombing the cliffs—all seemed filled with menace.

“Horses!”

The shouted word brought her head around. One of the soldiers was pointing ahead.

There were indeed horses, in a tight, nervous cluster on the other side of the stony riverbed.

They slowed to a trot. “Ditmer’s,” Tomas said as they came closer. “Do you think?”

Innis nodded silently.

They halted. The horses stared at them uneasily, jostling each other.

“Do we take them with us?” a soldier asked.

Innis glanced back at the long train of horses behind them—their own packhorses, and Captain Anselm’s captured horses. “They’ll die if we don’t.” There was water here for the beasts, but no food.

“We’ll take them if we find supplies for them,” Tomas said. “Ditmer’s camp must be nearby.”

They cantered again. The beat of hooves echoed back at them from the sandstone. The canyon swung east, the cliffs pulling back as it widened.

Tomas reined in his horse. “What the—”

Innis followed his gaze. The tombs lining the base of the cliffs had been broken open. Dark holes gaped in the stonework.

The damage looked fresh; the little piles of rubble hadn’t been dispersed by the wind.

Gerit pushed his horse forward. “It wasn’t like this a few days ago.”

“Did Ditmer’s men loot the tombs?” Prince Harkeld asked.

Gerit shrugged. “Not that I saw.”

“They were fools if they did,” Tomas said. “There’s no treasure in these tombs. Everyone knows that.”

Innis glimpsed what looked like a pile of dead leaves and bleached sticks inside the tomb nearest her. She averted her gaze.

A hundred yards further on, a wolf sat beside a stunted thorn bush. It shifted into Ebril as they approached.

“As far as I can tell, no one other than Ditmer and his men were here last night,” he said, shading his eyes against the sun as he looked up at them. “The only human scents here belong to the dead.”

“Animals?” one of the soldiers asked.

Ebril shook his head. “Only their horses.”

“What do you smell?” Dareus asked.

“Ditmer’s men. His horses. And the bodies from the tombs.”

“From the tombs?” Tomas said. “Why would you smell them?”

“See for yourself.” Ebril gestured behind him.

Tomas dismounted and strode in the direction Ebril pointed. Prince Harkeld followed.

Innis hastily slid from her horse, hurrying to keep up with the princes, the long sword in its scabbard slapping against her back. Behind her she heard the crunch of booted feet on stony ground as others followed.

The ground rose slightly in a low hump, and on the other side—

Innis halted alongside the two Princes. She blinked, and for a moment was unable to take in what she saw. It was beyond comprehension, beyond what was possible. Not real. This isn’t real.

Bodies lay strewn on the ground. Not one of them was whole. Limbs were scattered like children’s toys. She saw legs and arms, a headless torso resting against a lump of red sandstone, and then she caught the stench of death—the heavy, coppery smell of blood, the smell of urine, of excrement, the smell of intestines torn open and exposed to the air.

Someone to her left began to retch. The smell of bile joined the others—a stomach-turning medley.

Innis swallowed and clenched her jaw. Her gaze jerked from one item to the next: a boot with someone’s foot still in it; an outflung arm, its hand loosely curled around the hilt of a sword; a head staring at her from beside a thorn bush, eyes dusted with gritty red sand.

She looked away, towards the broken tombs, but even there, the slaughter continued: body parts were strewn across the churned-up sand.

“They’d raided the tombs,” Ebril said quietly. “See? There are lots of pieces of the bodies.”

Now that he pointed it out, she saw them: the dirty gray-white of old bones breaking through a covering of leathery skin, clumps of matted hair like dried brown grass, a grinning, toothless skull.

“But why would they desecrate the tombs?” Prince Harkeld asked. “You said there was no treasure.”

“There isn’t,” Tomas said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Everyone in Lundegaard,” Innis said. “But these men were from Osgaard. They may not have known.”

Prince Harkeld glanced at her and gave a curt nod of agreement.

Tomas stepped forward, and then looked back at Dareus, his expression as baffled as his voice. “What happened here?”

Dareus joined the prince, his face grim as he surveyed the litter of body parts. “There’s no blood on any of the swords.”

A number of weapons lay on the ground: daggers, dirks, swords. The blades glinted in the sunlight, clean.

“They weren’t attacked by men, then,” Tomas said. “Or animals.”

Someone muttered behind her. Innis caught the word faintly: witches.

She opened her mouth to refute the charge, and then closed it. She was Justen, not a mage. If I knew nothing of magic, what would I think? she asked herself, staring at the massacre. Her eyes fastened on a hand lying palm-up on the sand, the fingers curled slightly as if in supplication. The fingernails were ragged, bitten almost to the quick. Magic couldn’t tear men limb from limb, but the soldiers didn’t know that—and nor would Justen.

Innis waited for the soldier behind her to speak his accusation more loudly. He didn’t.

Then I shall. “Witches?”

Dareus glanced at her, his gaze sharp. Tomas looked at her, too. He gave a small nod and turned to Dareus. “Did your witches do this?”

Gerit pushed forward, anger livid on his face. “You whoreson—”

Dareus held up his hand, silencing Gerit. “No,” he told Tomas. “We did not do this.” There was no bluster in his voice, just a calm matter-of-factness that made his words utterly believable.

Prince Harkeld stirred beside her. “What of other witches?”

Ebril shook his head. “The only scents here belong to the dead. No one else was here last night.”

“But the tracks—” Tomas gestured to the sand surrounding them. It was churned as if a hundred men had fought here, tracks leading in all directions.

“Go only to the tombs.”

Beside her, Prince Harkeld rubbed his face. She heard the rasp of stubble beneath his hand. “Could the ancient Massens have left spells?” he asked. “Could this be punishment for Ditmer pillaging the tombs?”

The question hung in the silence for a moment.

“Is that possible?” Tomas asked Dareus.

“Magic can’t do this to people.”

“Then what killed them?”

Dareus shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Wind gusted up the canyon behind them, bringing with it a flurry of sand and a long, sobbing note.

“Is this all of them?” a soldier asked.

Tomas shrugged and turned to face the slaughter again. “How does one count—?”

“The heads,” Cora said. “Count the heads.”

Innis obeyed automatically, her eyes skipping from one head to the next—eyes closed, eyes open and staring up at the sky, eyes looking straight at her.

“Fourteen,” someone said.

“That’s all of them, then,” Tomas said. “No survivors.”

Innis looked down at the ground in front of her—red sand, red pebbles, a spraying arc of dried blood. Against the red of sand and stone, the blood looked almost black.

“They were sleeping,” Tomas said.

She looked up.

Tomas walked among the dead, placing his feet with care. “See?” He pointed. “Many of them weren’t fully clothed.”

A noise came from behind her. Innis jerked around, reaching for her sword. The noise came a second time: nothing but the wind stirring the dry branches of a thorn bush.

Ditmer’s supplies lay undisturbed, a neat cache in a sandy hollow. Grimly, hastily, the soldiers gathered Ditmer’s horses and strapped on the new loads of food and firewood, grain for the horses, bundles of arrows.

“Do we bury them?” someone asked, when it was done.

If they’d killed Ditmer’s men themselves, they wouldn’t have buried them, but Innis understood the question: the violated bodies seemed to deserve some mark of respect.

Tomas shook his head. “I want to get as far away from here as possible.”

A final item lay half-buried in the sand. Innis picked it up: a sack tied with a drawstring. The weave was tight, the stitching sturdy. She opened it. Inside was a second sack, folded, and an empty silver flask. For a moment she stood staring at it, her brow creased. An empty silver flask? What use—

Then she understood: one sack was for Prince Harkeld’s head, the other for his hands, the flask for his blood. She grimaced, and glanced at the massacred soldiers. They had deserved to die.

But not like this, a voice inside her whispered. Not ripped apart.

She threw the sacks and flask aside.

“What was that?” Prince Harkeld asked.

“Nothing.”

They mounted. “Stay alert,” Tomas instructed his soldiers.

They departed at a hard canter, two hawks skimming ahead of them and another soaring high in the sky. The red sandstone walls towered threateningly over them and the very air they breathed seemed filled with menace. The broken tombs were like eyes, staring at them.

After a quarter of a mile the damage to the tombs stopped. Innis should have felt easier, safer, but she didn’t. What had killed Ditmer and his men? Where was it now?