Metron might not be a trustworthy friend, but the Intercessor was a deadly enemy. If Tint’s long jaws tore Metron’s throat out, it was hard to see how Garric and his new colleagues would survive the efforts of Protectors of the Peace guided by wizardry.
The trail Tint followed led around the back of the U-shaped villa, past outbuildings and a litter of broken vehicles and equipment. Geese, roosting for the night, quacked nervously awake. Garric expected a watchman to appear, but the only response from the house was the squeak of a shutter being eased open enough for an eye to peer out.
Garric frowned, wondering if the noise would warn Metron. He snorted. No, of course not. The wizard was neither a countryman nor—from what Garric had seen—interested enough in anything but his own desires.
Besides, Garric had nothing to apologize for even if Metron learned he was being watched. The wizard was the one who needed to explain where he was sneaking off to.
The track led toward the boathouse in the grove as Vascay had guessed. Garric saw a flicker of light through the willows. It could have come from a fire, but he thought there was the peculiar rosy tinge of wizardlight.
Maybe that was just nervousness. He grimaced and checked the javelin’s balance.
Tint rose to a half crouch and sniffed the air, then dropped back on all fours to enter the grove. Wizardry didn’t seem to bother the beastgirl the way it did many men.
Garric’s concern wasn’t so much for what Metron intended to do—which for the moment at least could be expected to advance the plans that the bandits had agreed to—but rather for what the wizard might do if he blundered. In Garric’s experience, most wizards had more power than judgment; they were like blind men swinging swords.
He thought of Tenoctris and smiled. Tenoctris used the slight power she had to carve minute changes into the cosmos. The Kingdom of the Isles stood in his day because of the consummate skill with which Tenoctris worked.
Garric walked cautiously after Tint. The path wasn’t overgrown, but branches had encroached from either side, narrowing it to the width of a single person. The woods of the borough where timber was a valuable commodity were never so ragged as this. This undergrowth would’ve been pruned back, for kindling and to prevent it from crowding the roots of the great trees whose dead branches were the hamlet’s major source of firewood.
Tint clicked her teeth and halted. She stood with a hand on the trunk of the beech that had been planted to shade the boathouse. Garric looked past her.
Metron knelt on the dock where Garric had pulled him up from the water. He chanted in time to the motions of his ivory athame, but his words of power were muted by the distance.
A ball of red light formed in the air over the dock. It shrank down to a vivid pinpoint but didn’t vanish as Garric expected. For a moment the light waxed and waned like a candleflame with the athame’s rhythm; then it steadied, angry and bright.
Metron stopped chanting and sagged. Tint growled deep in her throat. Garric placed his left hand on her shoulders, the way he’d have calmed—steadied, at least—a dog.
At first Garric thought that Metron had finished his business when he ceased chanting, but after a pause the wizard gave a sigh of exhaustion and brought something out of the purse hanging around his neck. Distance kept Garric from being sure, but he guessed it was the ring he’d watched Metron place there when Vascay handed it over.
Instead of resuming his incantation, Metron held the ring out between thumb and forefinger. Garric’s eyes narrowed in puzzlement.
Light winked from the outstretched hand. Metron was positioning the ring so that his bead of wizardlight shone through the tiny sapphire, casting the pattern of its facets onto the pond’s still surface. He adjusted the jewel carefully, looking onto the water beside him.
“We go now, Gar?” Tint asked. “Catch goose and eat, maybe?”
Her voice shocked Garric, though it probably didn’t carry to the wizard. Without thinking, Garric pinched the beastgirl’s long muzzle closed. She jerked away with a snarl, baring her fangs.
Garric stepped back, putting the big beech between him and the wizard. He raised his left hand empty and held the javelin out to the side. He’d treated the beastgirl with disrespect; she’d responded as she’d have done to a member of her tribe who overstepped proper bounds.
But Garric’s body wasn’t as sturdy as those of the beastgirl’s siblings. Tint would be very sorry if she nipped off Gar’s finger, but it could happen regardless.
Horrified at what reflex had made her do to her dominant male, Tint flung herself on the ground and squirmed to Garric’s feet. “Tint sorry!” she moaned. Misery kept her voice low, though she’d obviously forgotten that Garric wanted silence. “Gar hold Tint? Tint sorry!”
Garric knelt and stroked her. “Hush, now, Tint,” he whispered. “Stay quiet for now, then we’ll go back to the stable.”
The beastgirl continued to whimper quietly, but the sound was no more disturbing than her belly rustling on the dry leaves. Garric leaned past the tree trunk again to watch Metron.
The wizard still held the ring. The pond stirred where its patterned light fell. A head and then its torso as well rose from the water. Metron spoke in a voice like the squeal of a hinge binding.
The chitinous figure chirped back in reply. It had four arms and a triangular head that seemed too small to hold a brain. Garric knew that slender, deadly praying mantises wreaked havoc with fellow insects who devoured garden plants, but he’d always found them frighteningly alien. This creature looked like a mantis the size of a man.
Tint watched also, crouched on all fours. Garric felt her body tense; he put his hand on her shoulder again, gripping this time lest his mere touch not be enough to restrain her. She growled like ice sliding from roof slates in the dead of winter.
Metron and the creature continued to converse. The wizard’s screeches were unpleasant, but the replies were worse. It was as though a star had chosen to speak from the night sky.
The creature raised its lower pair of arms in a signal; the upper set were edged and toothed for weapons. Metron bowed and swiped his athame through the bead of wizardlight.
It winked out. Metron lowered his hand, then dropped the ring back into his pouch.
Garric expected the creature to sink into the water the way it had risen; instead it went translucent and lost structure as it vanished. It was like watching a dust cloud disperse. For a moment a shadow showed on the still water; then it too was gone and with it the last sign of the thing that Metron had summoned to him.
The wizard remained where he was, drained by his art. When Metron got his strength back, he’d return to the stable and the bandits with whom he had allied himself.
Garric let out the breath he found he’d been holding. “Let’s go, Tint,” he murmured. He stroked the coarse fur of her back. “Let’s go back to our friends.”
He guessed he’d let her snatch a goose on the way. It wouldn’t be theft: Ceto’s purse had enough copper in it to stand the cost of the bird, and Garric figured the beastgirl had earned more than that today.
Besides, Garric wanted somebody to be pleased about the events of this night.
“Nosabao steseon phontaueella…” Alecto chanted, using the flat of her athame’s blade as a mirror to direct firelight into the branches of the cedar tree she and Ilna sheltered under. “Aiphno ohtikalak….”
Ilna squatted primly, watching Alecto blank-faced but with a feeling of distaste…which made her angry at herself. She’d watched other wizards work and had aided them. The only reason this business bothered her was that she intensely disliked the woman who was performing it.