“I am sorry,” the shatra said. “I warned you. Do you want to try again?”
Ellador began massaging his wrist with his other hand, but looked at Tesk, startled. “Why would I want to try again?” He held up the knife. “That’s enough blood right there.”
Garander could barely see the speck of dark red on the tip of the blade. “It is?” he asked. He looked at Tesk’s throat, and saw the tiniest of scratches, no bigger than a spider’s bite.
“I told you I didn’t need much,” Ellador said, and Garander thought he sounded a bit smug. “Now I need to mark you with it.” He dabbed the index finger of his other hand on the dagger, then reached out and drew a faint line across Tesk’s throat with the blood. The shatra did not resist.
“A few more marks might be useful, but that one will probably do,” the wizard said. Then he waved the dagger in a peculiar zigzag motion, and said something that did not sound like anything that should come from a human throat.
Garander was about to ask a question when the dagger began glowing faintly purple. He stared as the wizard continued his incantation.
Then Ellador finished his chant with a flourish, and lowered the dagger. Garander turned back to Tesk, to see what he thought.
Then he stopped, and swallowed to keep from vomiting.
Tesk’s throat had been laid open clear to the spine, and thick, dark blood was spilling out. The shatra’s face was ashen gray, with bluish blotches on the cheekbones; blood dribbled from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. He was obviously dead-but still upright, still moving. “Gods!” Garander exclaimed.
“Oh, good,” Ellador said, smiling. “It worked.”
“It…” Garander said, but was unable to force more words out.
“I do not feel anything unusual,” Tesk said, and thick blackened blood ran from his mouth with every word. The effect was appalling.
“There’s no reason you should,” Ellador said. “But if you look in a mirror, you’ll see. And if you need more blood for some reason-say, you don’t think there’s enough on one of your arms-just cough, and you should have plenty.”
Garander swallowed again.
Tesk looked at him. “I feel no different,” he said.
“Believe me, you look different,” Garander told him.
“I’ve done what I promised,” Ellador said. “I’ll be going back to camp now.”
“Yes, of course,” Garander said, still staring in horror at Tesk. “I’ll go with you, so you don’t get lost.”
“Thank you,” the wizard said. “I’d appreciate that.”
Tesk said, “My appearance is different?”
“Oh, yes,” Garander said. “All you have to do is lie still, and no one will doubt you’re dead.”
“You don’t have a heartbeat or a pulse,” Ellador added helpfully. “And no one can hear you breathe or see your chest move.”
“I do not feel different,” Tesk said again.
“We have to go,” Garander said. “You go fetch those supplies we talked about, and find someplace convenient where I can show you to people. Maybe cough some blood on the stuff. I’ll see you in the morning, and we can arrange the viewings.”
“Viewings?” Tesk snorted, spraying clotted blood from his nose. “You make it sound like an exhibition.”
“That’s what it is,” Garander said. “Now, go get your things!”
Looking slightly annoyed, Tesk turned and leapt up into a nearby tree, then vanished in the spring foliage.
Garander did not watch him go; he did not want to look at the ghastly illusion the spell created. Instead he took the Ethsharite wizard by the arm and said, “This way.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Velnira! Come with me, please!” Garander tried to sound genuinely desperate.
The baron’s chamberlain looked up from her breakfast, blinking in the bright morning sun. “Why?” she asked. “What is it?”
“It’s the shatra!”
Her eyes narrowed. “What about it?”
“He…it…it’s terrible!”
Velnira set her plate aside, and asked Burz, “What’s he talking about?”
“I don’t know,” Burz said. “He just said it was urgent, and I knew he was in on all the talking, so I let him past.”
She looked questioningly at Garander.
“Something terrible has happened!” he said. “I think he may be dead.”
Her eyes narrowed. “The shatra? Dead?”
“I…I think so.”
“What about his magic?” she asked warily.
“You mean why didn’t it protect him? I don’t know! His talismans are still there, so-come and see!”
Velnira frowned and got to her feet. She told Burz, “You’re coming with us.” She pointed to another soldier, a man Garander did not know, and said, “You, too.” She ordered a third, “Inform the baron, and see which magicians are available. Have the magicians ready, in case I send for them.” Then she turned to Garander. “Show us,” she said.
Garander turned and trotted eastward, glancing back over his shoulder to make sure the others were following. Burz took the lead, then Velnira, and the other soldier brought up the rear as the farm boy led them across the field and into the woods beyond.
“I was coming to see whether he wanted to talk to anyone this morning, and I found him,” Garander said as he pushed through the underbrush. “I came straight to you-I thought the baron ought to know.”
“You haven’t told anyone else?” Velnira asked, as she stumbled over a fallen log.
“No,” Garander said. “I’m a loyal subject of Lord Dakkar, so I came to you first.”
“Hmph.”
Then Garander brought them around the trunk of a big oak, and there was Tesk, lying on his back in a pool of blood, his head flung back across a fallen branch, his helmet half off, and his throat exposed-both the outside of his throat, and the inside. Raw red flesh and a glimpse of white bone lay open in a shaft of sunlight, and the bits of skin around the wound that weren’t covered in blackening blood were grayish-white.
Even though Garander knew it was an illusion, he shuddered at the sight. He heard Burz choke, and Velnira gasped and stepped back at her first glimpse of the downed shatra.
“I think one of the mizagars may have turned on him,” Garander said. “Or maybe his own demon, because he was talking to Ethsharites.”
“He looks like he’s been dead for days,” Burz said.
“We spoke to it last night,” Velnira said. “Maybe it’s decaying quickly because some preserving magic is gone, and it’s making up for all those years time was kept at bay.”
Garander was pleased that he did not need to make that suggestion himself; he did not want to appear to have all the answers, as that might arouse suspicion. He was just a farmer, after all, not a magician or scholar.
“Go fetch the magicians,” Velnira ordered the soldier behind her. “Tell Lord Dakkar that the shatra is dead, and we await his instructions.”
“Should he tell Lady Shasha?” Garander asked. “She ought to know, too, shouldn’t she?”
Velnira threw him a sharp glance, and then looked at Tesk’s body-and at his equipment, scattered on the ground around him. “Make sure none of the Ethsharites see you,” she told the soldier. “We want to keep this quiet for now. Don’t let anyone see you or the magicians when you bring them back-maybe one of them can work a spell to ensure that.”
“I’ll do my best,” the soldier said, with a bob of his head. Then he was gone, crashing through the underbrush.
“All his weapons are still here,” Burz remarked. “Whatever killed him didn’t rob him.”
“Maybe there’s a protective spell on them,” Garander suggested. “Or maybe it really was a mizagar-they wouldn’t have any use for all those tools and talismans.”
“Maybe,” Velnira said.
“What should we do?” Garander asked.
“We wait,” Velnira told him. She gestured at a mound of dead leaves. “Have a seat, if you want.”