The Brush of Black Wings Read online

  She sighed and rose to join him, smoothing down the wrinkles in her twisted skirts before taking up a spot near the brazier to warm her hands. The residual heat from lovemaking had evaporated, leaving her to shiver and wish she hadn’t abandoned her cloak in the kitchen. The cold affected her more now than it had an hour earlier. Silhara had drawn not only power from her, but body heat as well it seemed.

  He came to stand before to her, still bearing the remnants of the seer-bonding in the faint glow on his skin and clothes. His calloused fingers traveled the line of her collarbones above her tunic. “I’d give back to you the strength I took, but I’d rather not risk killing you.”

  Her Gift, a well from which a powerful mage like Silhara might drink, carried dangers beyond defense of its host. The weakest spells turned potent, beneficial ones murderous. Silhara had brought down a god with her Gift’s help. She was willing to deal with a day of yawning and accomplishing little. Far better that than being immolated on the spot by a well-meaning spouse and her own magery.

  “Did you want to try a spell of your own?”

  Martise shook her head. “It probably won’t work. You know the nature of a Gift doesn’t change. It’s simply refined or suppressed.”

  Silhara tucked her close to him. She savored his body heat, the scent of neroli oil and the faint musk of love-making that clung to him. “You won’t know for sure unless you try,” he said.

  Her time would be much better spent in Neith’s library, hunting for a book or scroll that might shed light on the mysterious words the demon had uttered before it tried to drag her into the temple’s confines.

  “Kashaptu, mi peti babka.”

  A greeting of some kind, spoken in a language she didn’t recognize. It sounded...old. Arcane and forgotten.

  “Martise.” Silhara nudged her attention back to him.

  “As you wish,” she said and stepped out of his embrace. The spell she attempted offered little challenge, even for a first-year Conclave novitiate—lighting the wick of a nearby candle. To no one’s surprise, the candle remained unlit. She tried several more incantations, some difficult, others as easy as the first. She was no more successful now than she was when Silhara first had her try years ago.

  “Maybe I took too much of your power,” he said.

  Martise’s shoulders sagged. “No. I’m not completely drained. I still feel it inside me.” She gave him a humorless smile. “I will live out my days wondering which is worse—not having it at all or not being able to use it myself.”

  A flash of sympathy passed through Silhara’s gaze. She was obviously more tired than she thought if she imagined such a thing in his eyes.

  “It isn’t yours to command for invocation,” he said. “But you put it to use when you fended off whatever appeared in the ruin this morning.” He crossed his arms and tapped his chin with one ink-stained finger. “What made your Gift appear after four years—”

  “Nine months, thirteen days, six hours,” she completed for him.

  Silhara tensed, and his face took on a drawn look. “You regretted its loss more than you led me to believe.”

  Martise chewed her lip, wishing she wasn’t so tired and her tongue so loose with her words. Guilt lay behind his cool expression. Misplaced guilt, but guilt nonetheless. They’d both come away from the battle with Corruption certain Silhara had leached her dry of her Gift in his bid to destroy the god. They were wrong.

  She reached for his hand to lace her fingers with his. “I didn’t lose it. I gave it up. Willingly. I’d do it again if you asked. But I did mourn its absence, useless as it is to me.”

  He tugged her back into his hold. “Not useless. Dangerous. You know my thoughts about your Gift, Martise. Left solely to me, I’d bleed it out of you a second time and make sure I took all of it. Its power is coveted. You’ve known slavery; you’ve never known the kind of slavery such a Gift would induce.”

  She laid her head on his chest. His heart beat a comforting rhythm in her ear. “I know, I know. The reasonable part of me agrees with everything you said. I don’t want to lure demons or be used by power-crazed mages like poor Zafira was, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t reluctant to destroy my Gift.”

  He tipped her chin up so she’d meet his gaze. “Then you and I shall bargain. You keep your Gift until you say otherwise. But we take up where we left off those years ago. I’ll teach you to bury it—as deep as it lay buried after Corruption’s defeat. If Cael can’t sense it, neither will any mage or cursed Conclave priest. You’ll stay away from any of the temple ruins in the wood, and you’re never to seer-bond with anyone but me. Agreed?”

  Martise rubbed her chin against his finger. “Agreed.” A very reasonable bargain, and she had no intention of going anywhere near one of the woodland temples ever again—not even for Gurn’s mushrooms.

  They spent the next several moments exchanging slow, languid kisses until Martise put some much needed distance between herself and Silhara. The chamber was as frigid as when she left the bed’s warmth, but she fanned herself with her hand to cool off. Silhara’s knowing smirk earned him a roll of her eyes.

  She left him to retrieve a shawl from the chest at the end of their bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. “Don’t you want to try out a spell yourself? Break a window? Open the shutters from across the room?”

  He snorted. “No. Your power runs through me like hot Dragon Piss. If I try to open a shutter, I’ll likely blow out the wall. I’ll never hear the end of it from Gurn.”

  Martise groaned. “Gurn. He won’t forgive us. Breakfast is long cold by now.”

  Silhara smothered the coals in the brazier. “Considering breakfast almost got you abducted and likely worse, he can damn well take the trouble to reheat the plates.”

  “You know what he’ll say,” she said as he ushered her toward the door.

  He shrugged and followed her into the black hallway. “For a man with no tongue, he talks far too much for my liking.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Gurn surprised them both by not only having the food reheated when they returned to the kitchen but a new pot of tea readied to replace the one that had turned cold and bitter. He did gesture to Martise behind Silhara’s back, a sign she easily translated to the usual “horse’s ass.”

  “I saw that,” Silhara said and frowned at the extra orange left beside his plate and cup—Gurn’s small revenge for having his first efforts ruined by Silhara’s prolonged stay in his bedchamber with Martise. It didn’t help that they were oranges bought from another grower.

  In a petty act of revenge for Silhara’s resistance, the god Corruption had destroyed the orange grove that was once not only Neith’s source of income but also Silhara’s love, second only to Martise. She hadn’t always understood his attachment to the grove until he’d revealed his history and what it represented—proof of his ability not only to overcome a childhood of deprivation and violence but to remain independent of the loathed priesthood who’d first sought to control him and then kill him.

  Young orange trees grew where the burnt remains of the first trees fertilized the soil, their slender branches as yet unable to offer sanctuary to the crows that called Neith home. Conclave, which once considered the Master of Crows an unpredictable adversary at best and a heretical threat at worst, had shown its gratitude for his role in destroying Corruption by offering saplings and labor to plant them in the ruins of the first grove. The irony wasn’t lost on Martise.

  Silhara sat down next to her, his upper lip curled into a sneer as he contemplated one of the oranges by his plate. “These aren’t even half as sweet as the ones I grew, and the flesh is dry. Eridici Halt is skiving me into penury with these things. I can’t wait until we see the first fruit from Neith’s trees.”

  Martise poured tea into his cup. “You’ll still hate them, sweet or not.” An orange grower he was, but Silhara loathed their taste. He ate them anyway in an act of defiance against an inner demon that refused to fade from memory.


  “Aye, I will, but at least they’ll be mine to hate, and I won’t be paying good coin for inferior produce.” He tossed one of the oranges back to Gurn and set to peeling the one he kept. “One of these days I’m going to kill you,” he told the giant in mild tones.

  Gurn sipped his tea and gave a scornful chuff. Martise grinned. During the many years Gurn had served Silhara, he’d likely heard that threat more times than he could count and considered it with all the seriousness it deserved.

  The servant did question them about their grim arrival, and his countenance grew darker as Martise recounted the events in the wood. He signed to Silhara who shrugged in reply.

  “It’s just a ruin choked with ivy. I’ve no idea what drew the entity.” He forked one of the cooked mushrooms Martise had gathered into his mouth and chewed before continuing. “I’ve searched every temple and rubble heap in that forest. Not even a hint of magic until now.”

  Martise avoided looking at him for fear of Gurn seeing the silent message passed between them—that her Gift, reawakened, had somehow drawn the intruder. Silhara had been insistent for his own safety and hers, that Gurn remain ignorant of her particular Gift even when they thought it obliterated in Corruption’s defeat. He’d only witnessed the aftermath of the battle and never saw Martise’s role in helping Silhara destroy the god.

  The mute servant was perceptive. He likely guessed long ago that Martise’s Gift had somehow manifested, but if neither she nor Silhara spoke of it, no forced seer bonding by Conclave could make Gurn reveal that which he didn’t know. She didn’t want to tempt him into asking the wrong questions because of glances she exchanged with Silhara. While the mage might lie as easily as he breathed, she’d find it difficult, especially to someone she considered a valued friend.

  Gurn turned his gaze to Cael who stretched out by the door that opened to the bailey. The dog rested his head on his paws, a faint reddish glow still lingering in his eyes. The servant signed even faster, shoulders hunched and features pinched into worried folds and lines.

  Martise held up her hands. “Oh trust me. I have no intention of going anywhere near that place. One scare per morning is more than enough excitement for me.” She pushed her portion of the parasol mushrooms around her plate. She liked the delicacy well enough, but after her earlier struggle with the temple’s visitor, she’d lost her taste for them and slid the plate to Silhara to finish.

  His free hand trailed the length of her back in a comforting touch. “As soon as I’m done here, I’ll return to the temple.”

  “But you already put up wards.”

  “I just want to take a second look. See if there’s something I missed. If not in the temple itself, then around it. I’ll take Cael with me.” He downed his tea and made to rise.

  Martise caught his hand to stop him. “Please be careful.” Silhara’s seer bonding and the merging of his Gift with hers had cleansed her of most of the entity’s taint, but a little still lingered in her nostrils—dark sorcery and madness.

  His lips were soft on hers before he straightened and left the table. His faint smile belied the cold gleam in his eyes. “I’ll be the most dangerous thing in the wood. Whatever might linger there will regret trying with me what it tried with you.”

  He left for the temple with Cael in tow while Martise helped Gurn scrub pots and dishes and carry firewood into the kitchen. She didn’t argue when he shooed her off afterwards, eager to ransack Neith’s extensive library for any information that might give a clue about her would-be abductor.

  Without the heat of a hearth to warm it, the library was colder than a tomb. Martise had wrapped in her cloak and slipped on gloves before leaving the kitchen, but she still shivered in the room’s vast space. Her breath fogged in front of her, and a thin layer of ice painted the windows, obscuring the landscape.

  She had lived at Neith first as both apprentice and spy and then wife to the man she’d come to betray. In that time, she’d only explored a fraction of the books and scrolls stored in the library. Conclave’s own library was considered a wonder of the known world, and as a novitiate, Martise had spent many hours researching, learning and receiving lessons from the priests. They were the stolen moments she held dear of her time with the priesthood, but nothing compared to her joy in digging freely through this treasure trove of knowledge. Somewhere in here lay clues to the entity who had tried first by coaxing, and then by force, to bring her into the temple with him.

  Dust billowed in clouds around her as she removed a selection of tomes and scrolls from the various shelves and took up her favorite spot to study the words written by scribes and mages long passed.

  The tallow candle she lit swirled tendrils of pungent black smoke in the air but did an adequate job of illuminating the faded script on yellowed parchment. Martise scratched out notes with her quill on her own stack of parchment. Words spoken in eerie intonations seemed less obscure once she wrote them down.

  Kashaptu, mi peti babka.

  Only one of the words seemed vaguely familiar, and then just a portion of it. Martise returned to the shelves, pulling out books until she found two she wanted. All words had roots, foundations upon which languages were built and transformed. The scribes of Conclave always taught that first to the novitiates, a way to grasp all languages and spells, even if it wasn’t the student’s mother tongue. Martise put that training to use.

  The Makkadians were not known for great magic, but they were famous as beast masters. Raptors, bears, big cats—trained and put to use in matters of war and pageantry for any kingdom willing to pay the price for their expertise in beast-charming. The Makkadians were especially famous for breeding and training magefinders and called them kashkuli—witch hunters.

  Martise prayed the path she followed in this research was the right one. If not, then she was about to waste hours of time trying to decipher the strange words whose echo still sent chills down her spine.

  The ringing of the kitchen bell signaled lunch a few hours later, and she left the library, frozen to the bone, fingers stiff from the cold and copious amounts of note-taking. Silhara and Cael strode through the bailey door just as Gurn set a much welcomed bowl of hot stew in front of her.

  Snowflakes dusted Silhara’s eyelashes, quickly melting until they streamed down his face like tears. He wiped at them impatiently and tossed his damp cloak and gloves on the drying rack near the hearth. His gaze sought Martise. “You found something,” he said abruptly.

  She raised her tea cup in salute. “I did. What about you?”

  He shook his head, dropping onto the bench next to her. “Nothing if you’re only looking with your main senses. Not even a thrum of magery, which in its way is odd.” He accepted the cup of tea Gurn handed him with a nod of thanks. “All the ruins in the woods are old, that one more ancient than most. The earth holds the ghosts of rituals. You can feel it in your feet sometimes. I didn’t feel anything around that one. It’s dead. Too dead.”

  The mild nausea that blossomed in her belly when she finally translated the entity’s words threatened to boil up toward her throat. She took a bracing swallow of tea, wishing for once that it was something stronger like the tongue-scorching Peleta’s Fire Silhara stored on a nearby shelf.

  “Martise?” Silhara’s raspy voice lowered another octave, and his black eyes glittered. “What is it?” His hand was gentle on her shoulder, a contrast to his dour expression.

  “If I’m right in my research, and I believe I am, I translated what the demon said.”

  Silhara’s eyebrows rose. “And?”

  She pushed her bowl away, all appetite gone. “It’s ancient Makkadian and means ‘Witch, open the gate for me.’” The way his lips flattened against his teeth and his eyes narrowed made her heart beat harder. When Silhara showed concern, it was wise to be afraid.

  “Are you certain?”

  “As certain as I can be with the knowledge available to me. ‘Kul’ is Makkadian for ‘hunter.’ A ‘kash’ is a vulgar term for a prostitute, but
its original meaning is ‘witch.’ The Makkadians call magefinders ‘kashkuli.’ Witch hunters.” She shivered and pressed against Silhara’s side for warmth. “I traced the language back to its roots. ‘Kashaptu’ is an early feminine form for ‘witch.’ Whoever appeared in the temple, spoke a form of Makkadian not heard in a long time.”

  Gurn sketched rapid patterns in the air, almost too fast for Martise to follow. Silhara read them with ease. He wore a menacing expression sure to scare the blood thin in any who didn’t call him friend.

  “I won’t just tear it down,” he almost snarled at Gurn. “I’ll burn it down and salt the earth. Whatever that thing is, it has no business here and certainly none with my wife.” He stroked Martise’s braid before taking up his spoon to stir his stew. “You might as well eat,” he told her. “You’ll be sharing the library with me, and we’ve a long day and evening ahead of us.”

  He joined her in the library after lunch, leaving instructions with Gurn to keep the teapot full and send up the bottle of Dragon Piss just in case. Once in the privacy of the library, Martise threw her arms around Silhara and hugged him hard.

  “I’m afraid,” she whispered into his neck.

  “Only fools and dead men have no fear, Martise. And the former often become the latter because of the lack.” He tilted her face up to his with the touch of a fingertip under her chin. Her candle had guttered, and the winter light through the frosted windows washed the color from the library and Silhara’s stern features. “I will do all in my power to protect you.”

  She offered him an anemic smile. “I know. I’m a fortunate wife to have a god-smiter for a husband.”

  “Looks like a demon slayer as well now.”

  Her hands twisted the fabric of his wool tunic. “Do you think it’s a demon?”

  He shrugged. “That’s my first thought. It asked you to open a gate. Gates between worlds maybe. Such things seek travel that way. The temple might have been such a gate once. The demon sensed your magic and saw it as a means to break the lock.”