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manner. How could he possibly know so many things that she did not?
"If you know so much, then why haven't you hunted these creatures down?"
"Because I am not you," he answered calmly.
She stood up again, pacing. "I don't even know where to look. How do I
start?"
Without warning, his expression became closed, as if he were a living book
suddenly tired of producing information. He got up, went to the door, opened
it, and repeated, "Use the dog."
Her fear concerning her fate threatened to emerge once more as the tangle of
coincidences grew more entwined. How did Chap fit into all this?
Welstiel's opening of the door announced the end of her visit. Besides, he
was apparently strong willed, and any further pushing on her part might lead
to alienating the only outside source of information she'd found so far. She
stepped into the hall and then turned back to him. "How do I kill them?"
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"You already know. You've practiced it for years." Without another word, he
closed the door. Magiere made her way quickly back up the stairs, and hurried
through the lobby, glancing once at Loni on her way out of the foyer. For all
Welstiel's cryptic discussions, only two points truly bothered her. First, to
the best of her knowledge, Welstiel had never even seen Chap, but he knew a
great deal about the animal. And second, he either knew or pretended to know
aspects of her past that she did not. Though that last issue troubled her
some, she'd never really cared about her past. There was little worth
remembering.
In the years before Leesil, all she had was loneliness, which turned to
hardness, which turned to cold hatred of anyone superstitious. A mother she'd
never known was long dead, and her father had abandoned her to a life among
cruel peasants who punished her for being spawned by him. Why would she want
to remember such things? Why would she want to look back? There was nothing
worth concern in the past.
As she walked quickly toward home, she noticed the sun had dropped a bit
lower. She suddenly felt an urgency to get back to Leesil. For all his cryptic
words, Welstiel was right about one thing. They had to give up their defensive
position and go after their enemies and they had only a few hours to prepare
before sundown.
Sitting on his bed in his room, in complete solitude, Leesil decided that he
hated uncertainty more than anything else, perhaps even more than sobriety. At
the moment, he was as sober as a virtuous deity, and that condition gave him
clarity another distasteful state of affairs.
Unlike Magiere, he'd neither bathed nor slept and the odors of blood, smoke,
and red wine permeated his nostrils. He knew he should go downstairs and wash,
but something kept him here in his room.
Brenden had left the tavern for his home, promising to return soon with
appropriate weapons. Caleb had taken Rose into their room several hours ago so
he could speak with her. He had closed the door and not come out. Chap still
lay by Beth-rae's body, which Caleb had carefully cleaned and laid out in the
kitchen in case anyone stopped by to pay respects. And Magiere had disappeared
sometime during the afternoon.
Leesil was alone and sober. He was not sure which of those conditions he
disliked more.
He went over to a small chest Caleb had given him for storage. Since
Constable Ellinwood's examination of the murder scene or lack of it Leesil had
taken a few private moments to remove Ratboy's dagger from under his clothes,
clean Chap's blood from the blade, and store it away. He now pulled it from
the chest, careful to grab it by the blade and not the handle. Even while
cleaning it, he'd been careful not to wash the handle, for that was the one
place he could be certain Ratboy had touched. He would have need of any
lingering trace of presence the dusty little invader had left behind.
And once again, uncertainty gnawed at him. Dropping to his knees, he pried up
two floorboards that he'd loosened the first night they'd arrived. A long,
rectangular box lay inside where he'd hidden it. Even touching the container
made him shiver with revulsion, but he never once in his life considered
throwing it away. He pulled out the box and opened it.
Inside lay weapons and tools of unmatched elven craftsmanship, given to him
by his mother on his seventeenth birthday. They were not what any boy would
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have wanted as a gift. Two stilettos as thin as darning needles rested beneath
a garroting wire with narrow metal handles. Alongside them was a curved blade
sharp enough to cut bone with minimal effort. Hidden inside the lid behind a
folding cover was a set of thin metal picks that in his hands could unlatch
any lock. Just inanimate objects, but the sight of them almost drove him down
to the wine barrel and his cup.
He closed his eyes and breathed deep, long, and hard for several moments.
Drunk, he was no use to Magiere. But the close proximity of these items and
his current sobriety allowed in a rush of memories he'd fought for half his
life to keep at bay. Eyes still shut, he could feel the pain.
Rich green shades and the enormous trees of his birthplace appeared. So
beautiful. Magiere had never traveled north as far as Doyasag, his place of
birth, and he'd never bothered describing it to her. Joining the game with her
had been the start of his new life, his erasure of past deeds. He'd left it
all behind the night they met.
The fresh smells and scenery of his homeland were merely a painted canvas
that hid a mass of power-hungry men who struggled for domination. Instead of
being ruled by a king, the country was held by a warlord named Darmouth, who
saw treason all around nun. Warlords who rule need spies and other hidden
servants, and Leesil was fifteen years old and nearly seven years into his
training before realizing his father and mother did not simply work for Lord
Darmouth. Darmouth owned them.
Leesil's mother's tan skin and golden hair, her exotic elven heritage, made
her a useful weapon as she created the illusion of a tall but delicate girl or
a rare foreign beauty. His father, for his part, could blend into the shadows
as if made of dust in the air, and his passing left no mark and made no sound. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]