The Malmillard Codex (23 page)

Valaren laid a shaking, palsied hand on
Val's unresponsive arm and gave him a slight tug towards the window
and his sister.

Val took one step and was still.

"Come along, brother," snapped Isole; she
tapped impatient fingers against the top of the stool. "See, the
first star has already taken its place in the sky. Soon it will be
the time of the change, and we must be ready to grasp that arcane
power while we may."

Madryn twisted and pulled against the
unforgiving iron about her wrists.

"Valerik. Valerik!" she called, her voice
frantic as she too saw a single bright star peering in at the
window. "Valerik, hear me, please."

Isole reached for a tiny lancet that lay as
a page marker across an open book that rested on the windowsill.
Holding the sharp instrument between two ivory fingers, she leaned
over to read from the exposed page, her thin lips moving silently
as she repeated certain words to herself.

Valaren prodded Val's unresponsive body a
second time. Again, the ensorcelled body made a single step.

Another prod.

A single step.

A prod.

A step.

At last, a blank-eyed Val stood just in
front of the small stool, whereon sat four black bowls with their
weight of scarlet fluid.

Isole looked up from her studies and grinned
in appreciation at the husky, massive body that towered over even
her great height.

Madryn twisted against the cruel, cold
metal, then saw with a sinking heart another star blink into
existence outside the window, beside its sibling. The ruddy sky was
darkening perceptibly, taking on an indigo tinge. It would darken
to black in less that a score of minutes, she calculated, as each
star blazed forth, each opening the way for its succeeding
brethren.

But there was something strange about the
twinkling stars, something Madryn had not seen during that last,
horrid, painful night she had spent chained to this table.

What was it?

"Valerik," Madryn called, her voice a
frenzied plea.

Isole seized a filthy rag stained with
ominous ochre tints, then stepped to the table where Madryn was
bound.

"Keep quiet," hissed the pale woman. She
stuffed the rag hard into Madryn's mouth. "It will be our turn soon
enough."

"Oh, I don't think so," squeaked a familiar
squeaky voice.

Madryn wrenched her head from side to side,
trying to expel the noisome rag, trying to see around the skeletal
figure that blocked her view of the doorway.

The doorway from which a familiar squeak had
just come.

But Isole was frozen in place and, try as
she would, Madryn could see nothing past the woman's thin but
elongated form. The stinking rag sickened her, and she could feel
the bile rising up her throat, threatening to gag and strangle
her.

Madryn swallowed it down. Not now; she
didn't have time to choke to death just now.

For that was Garet's voice. She recognized
it now, even from those five words, even in this hideous place
where he should never be.

But how? Why? Didn't the little simpleton
know that these two would slaughter him, as swiftly and
thoughtlessly as an insect squashed beneath a boot?

Madryn struggled to fight down her
terror—even as a tiny whisper of hope struggled up from deep inside
her.

A hope that she knew must be—had to
be—false.

"I told you I did not like the smell of him,
my sister," whined Valaren as he shuffled away from the solid form
of the enslaved Val to stand beside his towering sister. "See. I
told you so."

"Be quiet, you fool," snapped Isole. Her
bony hands were clasped behind her narrow back—and the tiny sliver
of sharp-edged lancet twinkled between thumb and finger.

Madryn flung her head back and forth, trying
to dislodge the malodorous rag that threatened to cut off all air
to her laboring lungs.

"So," said Isole in a sibilant whisper, "our
other visitor has decided to make his appearance."

Madryn stopped her struggles for a brief
instant, listening, listening. She heard the patter of small feet
against cold stone floor. She strained to see around the unholy
siblings that blocked her view, her tongue working against the mass
in her mouth.

A further patter of feet, and at last Madryn
could see…

Garet, standing close enough to Val's
unresponsive figure to lay a hand on his rock-hard chest. Garet,
his shorn head jutting out on its skinny neck from his overlarge
tunic and jerkin, his baggy breeches cinched tight with a bit of
rope, a flash of dirty toes showing through the end of a battered
boot, standing quite at his ease in this frightful, frigid room.
The boy would have been a figure of fun in any other
circumstances.

But here, now, he looked to Madryn every
inch a savior.

Though what this scrawny boy could do, she
had no idea.

"The Malmillard have decided to take a hand
at last, I see." Isole's words amazed Madryn to the very depths of
her frightened soul. "To what do we owe the honor of this visit,
wizardling?"

"We have waited, as we always do, until the
proper time, Isole," said Garet, his usual squeak miraculously in
abeyance. "It is our way, after all. As you, above all others
should know full well."

Garet raised a hand and laid three dirty
fingertips against Val's rigid belly.

A tremor went through that stolid form. If
Madryn had been gazing into Val's dull black eyes, she would have
seen a startled look flash across them, like lightning imprisoned
in a bottle…only to die away like a snuffed candle.

But Madryn could not see that faint
look.

"You forget, I was cast out from your august
assemblage," Isole snapped, her gaunt face creased into a snarling
mask. "I was not deemed worthy to be counted among your
members."

Garet laughed. "No, you weren't, were you?"
he agreed. "Never will be, neither, with your shoddy tricks and
cheap spells. You and your useless brother have been thorns in our
sides for too long, Isole. It is not the Malmillard way to
interfere with ordinary folk, nor with those who use their powers
for good. But you and Valaren Starseeker, who feed your own
weaknesses off the weaknesses of others—your time has passed."

Isole stalked forward, her hands still
behind her back, out of Garet's sight. She stopped in front of the
dirty boy—the dirty boy who was so much more than he seemed—her
towering form dwarfing his minute frame. She glared down at him,
her fiery eyes throwing out palpable sparks in the icy room.

"Do you think you have the power, little
man, to harm me or my brother? Here, in our homeland? Here, where
our illustrious father still resides?"

"Ah, yes, why so he does," said Garet with a
grin, his head crooked to one side as he gazed up, up into her
stormy face. "He still resides here—in the stony form to which your
pride, your ignorance—your bungling condemned him. Your poor
father…frozen into an idol that weeps endless obsidian tears."

Isole glared down at Garet's unassuming
form, her red eyes snapping and crackling in ire. "He deserved it,"
she snarled. "He tried to keep me from my dearest brother."

"How did your father do that?" Garet asked
as he cast a wondering gaze at her skeletal form. "Oh, yes, I
remember now! By making you so ugly that Valaren was forced to
another world for the release of his desires, wasn't it? Is that
not the real reason Valaren left you here, while he departed to the
warmth of that other world beyond the portal—to slake his hungers
while he grew in wickedness with the ready assistance of so many,
many others?"

The gag was loosening in Madryn's mouth,
driven out by her pressing tongue. Her hands twisted inside the
iron manacles as her eyes flicked from one to the other of the two
who argued in the center of the room—Isole, enraged, her hands
still toying with the sharp-edged lancet behind her back—Garet,
looking cheerful, happy and completely at home—and the other two
who waited with her for the argument to end. Val's frozen form
still stood, unmoving and silent; Valaren waited impatiently by the
open window, his eyes locked on the wrangling pair, his drooling
mouth stretched into a glassy, expectant smile.

Outside in the darkening sky another star
winked into glittering life.

"Enough of your insults," said Isole, as if
the star had announced its appearance with a shout, "we have no
time for this now. Brother?"

Valaren shuffled forward. Pallid fingers
reached for Val's unresponsive hand, seized it, and pulled the
rigid figure toward the carved stool that held the onyx bowls full
of Madryn's blood.

"I'm glad you're here, Malmillard-spawn,"
said Isole as she smiled down at Garet. "Your words cannot anger me
any longer. You may see how my power has grown, and then take word
of them back to your jealous brethren. Watch, watch, weakling,
while the bloods of four mingle and interchange…watch while the
transitional powers of this land, our home, are harnessed and
contained…watch, little fool, while two die… and two more become
whole again."

Isole's voice had taken on arcane and
hideous cadences as she glared with bloody eyes at the short form
that stood so calmly before her.

Outside the window, another star opened its
glittering eye and peered down with amused interest at the
tableau.

Six left,
Madryn thought desperately.
Six more, and the portal will open…and we will all die.

Garet grinned. "Very impressive, Isole.
What's your next trick, pulling a rabbit from a jug?"

Isole flung her long arms over her head.
They stretched, lengths of bone only lightly covered with pale
skin, up toward the high arched ceiling. One had had its fingers
outspread, and tiny sparks crackled in the spaces between the
fingers. The other was closed in a tight fist, with a blue nimbus
enclosing it.

Madryn knew what was hidden inside that
glowing, milky fist. She worked harder against the gag that kept
her from shouting a warning to Garet.

Valaren positioned Val's unresponsive body
to one side of the stool, and took his own place opposite. The onyx
bowls, their ruddy contents shimmering in starlight, bubbled and
smoked in response to the great forces released in the room. Cold
winds whipped about the upper levels of the study, danced across
the floor, birthing minute whirlwinds of choking gray dust.

"Now you will see what you and your proud
members expelled from their coven," Isole shouted.

Madryn, at last, spat out the gag.

"Garet," she shouted, her voice hoarse and
rough, "she has a blade!"

Garet looked up and a wide-eyed expression
of surprise and shock spread across his grimy face. Even as he
gazed upward, the tiny lancet plunged toward his unprotected
heart.

Madryn held her breath as the tiny, gleaming
point sped along its short journey, its tender destination a
beating, living heart.

Garet flung up a hand, mouthed three words,
and the downward path of the silvery sliver slowed.

Slowed, but did not desist. Still, his spell
gave Garet enough time to jerk aside. The descending blade slashed
across his ragged shirt, slicing through the flimsy cloth like a
razor.

A thin stream of blood began to seep into
the dirty linen.

"There is entirely too much blood in this
place," Garet said crossly as he fingered his ruined shirt. "I've
had quite enough of it."

With a negligent wave of one small hand,
Garet turned…and pattered out the door.

"A coward, like
all his kind." Isole sneered as she watched the door slam behind
Garet's departing figure. Then she cast a quick look out the
window.

Ten stars shone within that frame.

"Come, Valaren, we have but little time left
to us," Isole said. "Get the woman, and I shall bleed your new body
to gain nourishment for my spells."

Valaren hobbled to the table where Madryn
was sprawled. With a wave of one trembling hand all the manacles
fell away, with a rattling clank of chain, onto the stone floor.
Valaren seized a handful of Madryn's hair and jerked her, with
unexpected strength, off the table.

Madryn fell to hands and knees on the cold,
hard floor. She tried to rise, but weakness overcame her. With a
hand still entangled in her tawny hair, Valaren gave a yank and
began to drag her toward the tableau before the window.

"Hurry, brother," snapped Isole. "Two more
stars and the portal opens. Then, the powers for transference will
be at their greatest. Hurry, brother!"

"I'm trying my best," whined Valaren as he
tugged and pulled at the kneeling Madryn.

"Here, let me show you how to handle the
bitch," snarled Isole. She reached out and slashed the lancet
across the frozen Val's wrist. At once, a thin trickle of ruby
blood began to seep from it, to fall into one of the onyx bowls
over which Isole held his hand. "I'll cut his throat next if you
don't move!" she warned Madryn.

"Not my beautiful new body, sister," pleaded
Valaren.

"Fool," snapped Isole. With a satisfied
sneer at Madryn scrambling forward on hands and knees, Isole
continued, "See, brother, how she moves now? Even now, so close to
both their deaths, she cannot see him harmed."

A shiver, almost unnoticeable, went through
Val's placid form…even as his blood dripped into an onyx bowl, its
contents simmering and bubbling.

"What a pity we cannot keep the merest bit
of her alive, sister," said Valaren as he shuffled after Madryn.
"What a sweet revenge, to realize that she herself condemned her
lover to eternal enslavement."

"Sweet indeed, brother. But we dare not
chance it, not if I'm to acquire her body as you do the slave's.
Surely, it will be sweet enough to watch the last remnants of him
die as you enter his body and take it for your own?"