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Diplomacy of Wolves in the House, however, he felt her presence most strongly,
and at least all of those were in the same direction.  Upward, he said.
 She s got to be somewhere above us. He ran for the nearest stairs.
* * *
The Galweigh Wolves chanted in darkness, building a crushing blow against the
Sabir Wolves  one that would strike them just as the Galweigh forces in
Halles would surely defeat the combined
Dokteerak and Sabir forces. Drummers at the four corners of the enormous
workroom pounded out four separate rhythms that wound over and around and
through each other, talking back and forth, moving like smoky voices in and
out of the joined voices of the wizards who spun the destruction and death of
their hereditary enemies out of syllables and will. No fires illuminated the
windowless room, yet there was light  a soft glow that flowed around the
sacrifices who begged for their lives in their cage in the center of the room.
And there was, uncharacteristically, the smell of honeysuckle, at first soft
and seductive, and then increasingly strong, and laced with scents of death
and decay.
Baird Galweigh, much-Scarred head of the Family s Wolves, threw his head back
and howled the final words of the spell of destruction . . . and as he did, he
felt ancient minds brush against his, and ancient ambitions shiver against
invisible bars. Fear curled in his gut, but he had faced more than fear in his
lifetime, and the promises of his enemies destruction sang louder than the
warnings his gut gave him.
He brought the spell to its conclusion, supported by the will of the rest of
the Wolves.
Lightning crackled in the room, running from the floor up the walls, streaming
across the ceiling, heading toward the Sabir compound, seeking the magical
high ground the spell had made of the Sabir
Wolves. The Galweigh Wolves braced themselves and turned their attention to
their captives, held in the center of the room  captives meant to handle the
rewhah, the equal force of negative energy that would rebound from the spell
just cast. Any part of the rewhah that they didn t absorb, the Wolves would
have to take. And any magic that the Wolves had to absorb would Scar them.
The pressure built in the room, and built, and built, and Baird crouched lower
and lower, mimicking in an unconscious physical display the magical
preparations his body made to ward off the coming blow.
Abruptly the lightning reversed course and poured into the captives, directed
there by the Wolves. The fierce will of the wizards held the magical backwash
on the screaming captives while the energy twisted and mangled their bodies.
But suddenly the lightning spread, and burst free of the bounds, and poured
over the Wolves, too, twisting them and melting them and reshaping them as if
it were fire and they were wax.
The captives exploded in balls of light, vanished in clouds of dust.
The lightning kept coming, and the Wolves began to fall to the floor 
writhing, dying. Baird, in a last moment of clear thought, realized that the
Sabir Wolves had chosen to attack the Galweigh Wolves at the same moment the
Galweigh Wolves had attacked them. He hoped their rewhah was as
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Diplomacy of Wolves uncontrollable; he hoped their death toll was as high.
But the last stimulus to touch his dying senses was not a sense of pain and
fear in the Sabirs. It was the reek of honeysuckle, so strong it seemed a
blanket suffocating him to death.
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Chapter
14
E
nergy sang through the White Hall as the attack spell shattered the Galweigh
Wolves, and the Sabirs braced themselves against the return blow. At the
central pillar, Danya Galweigh screamed and writhed, her body absorbing almost
all of the magical backlash. Her form changed from lovely to hideous as foul
magic poured through her; she sprouted horns and spines, grew scales and fangs
and claws, then shed them for worse and more hideous things; always she melted
and twisted obscenely. But the Sabirs had guessed her strength and her
resilience well, and she buffered them from the deadly rewhah energy, while
the Wolves, by spreading out the slight overflow among themselves, prevented
any one of their number from taking heavy Scars.
What the Sabirs hadn t figured into their careful calculations was a
simultaneous attack from the
Galweighs, and when that spell hit their sacrifice, the combined forces of it
and their own rewhah broke free of the confinements of their spells and the
buffer of the girl. Danya Galweigh sizzled for an instant, and black lightning
coalesced around her; the air filled with smoke and the sickening scent of
decay; she screamed so loudly and with such terror that her throat sounded
like it was tearing itself apart. Then thunder crashed inside the White Hall,
and the girl vanished utterly. And the combined magic of spell and rewhah
smashed down on the Sabir Wolves, unbuffered, undirected, and raw.
Those quickest to understand what was happening  the senior Wolves and the
unholy triad of Andrew, Anwyn, and Crispin  quickly shifted the brunt of the
streaming hell of power onto the younger, weaker Wolves. Thus they survived,
though even they bore fresh Scars. Those who were neither so quick nor so
ruthless died horribly, melting into inhuman forms, changing and changing
until the mutations became too many and too lethal to survive, begging as they
writhed for rescue, collapsing with their pleas unanswered.
The walls of the White Hall began to scream  the babble of a thousand voices,
of a hundred long-dead tongues. Clearly, the survivors heard the sound of a
door opening, though the White Hall had no doors.
Light shimmered, laughter echoed amid the thunder and the lightning, and for
an instant the scent of
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Diplomacy of Wolves honeysuckle became so thick it was suffocating.
The surviving Wolves fell unconscious to the floor, overwhelmed by the force
of whatever it was that had come through that otherworldly door.
* * *
Almost home. Kait watched the great city slide beneath the airible and
wondered if she would have time to visit with her sisters and brothers before
she received her next assignment. She smiled out the window, her mind already
racing ahead to the visit  Drusa was pregnant and Echo had just had a baby,
and Kait, who would never dare have children of her own, loved to feel the
movement of new life in her older sister s belly, and loved to feel her
younger sister s son grip her finger with his tiny hand.
Almost home. Tippa had finally stopped her wailing; Dùghall had promised her a
trip to his islands as consolation, and her choice of the best Imumbarran
weaving. She napped. Dùghall stretched out on one of the velvet-upholstered
benches, reading.
Below and well to her right, she saw the first glimpse of the House. Its ivory
walls surrounded emerald lawn like a ring around a jewel. She sighed. Almost
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home . . . to sisters and brothers and endless cousins; to laughter-spiced
meals taken at the long tables; to talks with her mother as they sat by the
fountains or walked through the hanging garden in the morning; to evening
discussions of city policy and trade and politics with her father and uncles;
to familiar books in the library and the familiar smell and feel of her bed,
her sheets, her room.
She anticipated her return, and wondered if she would be so homesick after
every assignment, or if leaving would get easier with time.
Her head began to ache again.
She blinked, and rubbed absently at her temples. She closed her eyes.
The pain got worse. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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