The sound of footfalls stopped abruptly, and the boy felt a chill go through him. Was the figure turning? Did it know he was there? Though Grince was afraid to look, the fear of not knowing if he was being stalked was far worse. After a brief struggle with the shreds of his courage, he opened his eyes and sneaked a quick look around the corner.
“Alms, great Lady? Spare a copper for a poor old blind woman?”
Grince started at the sound of the quavering voice. To his dismay, he saw a beggar grope her stooped and halting way toward the brooding figure. The unsuspecting crone had claimed she was blind—he supposed that accounted for the fact that she had not run off in terror, as the other beggars had—but how had she known that the mantled stranger was female? The old woman shuffled forward into the dim pool of light from the lamp that hung on the corner building at the end of the street. The figure in the black cloak stepped forward, arm extended, and Grince—astounded that the blind crone should have met with such easy success—thought, Damn—what was I afraid of? I’ve missed my chance. Then that thought, and all others, fled from the young thief’smind. The outstretched hand flashed white in the light of the lamp as it touched the crone—and the blind old beggar crumpled into a limp, dark heap of rags on the cobbles. Grince heard a soft laugh, as chill and cheerless as a winter’s dawn, as the figure continued on its way, rounding the corner and passing out of sight.
Minutes crawled by, and the slumped shape of the beggar woman in the roadway did not move. It was much later than that before the terrified boy dared venture from his hiding place. Cold and hunger drove him out in the end, as did the threat of the impending dawn and the thought of his poor puppy, still shut in its basket and cold and hungry, too. In order to reach his own alley, Grince had to cross the street and go almost as far as the lower corner—much too near, in his estimation, to the body of the crone. But if he wanted to reach the longed-for safety of his lair, he had no other choice. I’ll just run, he thought. I’ll run right past her, and I won’t look, because if I do…
When it came to it, of course, he couldn’t help but look. Though he ran as fast as he could, especially when he neared the shapeless heap, it was as if Grince’s eyes had been hooked by a fishing line that the body was reeling in. For many nights afterward he had reason to curse his curiosity. His footsteps faltered, and his breath congealed in his throat at the sight before him. Though the body was grotesquely twisted, the face was half turned toward him, the milky, sightless eyes rolled back in death. In the lamplight he could see the bloodless pallor of its sagging, wrinkled skin—and the expression of stark terror sealed into the features in that last moment of fading life. On the old woman’s forehead, like a brand, was the mark of a hand that burned in flaming silver.
Suddenly, Grince found his wits again. With a yelp of terror he fled, back to the safety of his den in the arcade, tumbling in through the window without a thought for the drop on the other side. Without pause he snatched up Warrior’s basket and dived into the spurious safety of his bed, where he huddled, wild-eyed and trembling, clutching the puppy to him for comfort, biting his lip to keep back tears. It was a good thing he had Warrior, he thought. Without the dog to care for, he doubted that he would ever find the courage to venture out into the streets again.
Though the nighttime thoroughfares of Nexis were aswarm with the usual human detritus of beggars, whores, and footpads, Eliseth made her way through the dark back streets without concern. Even though she was disguised by the billowing drapes of her hooded cloak, there was an aura about her, a sense of presence that bespoke both power and peril. Only one had dared approach her—and that one had been blind. Almost contemptuously, Eliseth had extinguished the faltering flame of the old beggar’s life with a single touch, taking in its energy to add to her growing powers. To her surprise, even such a used and faded existence had provided her a tingling jolt of energy that coursed through her veins like wine and felt so good—so very good—that she understood at last why Miathan had become addicted to his human sacrifices. Well, well, she thought. We live and learn. I must look into this matter further—but not tonight. Tonight the Weather-Mage had other business, and her hurrying steps had almost brought her to her goaclass="underline" the place she had located by scrying crystal; the home of the one she sought.
The bakery had been repainted on the inside and limewashed without, and the floors and windows sparkled. The crumbling brickwork and the sagging roof had all been well repaired. Bern had worked hard to undo all the depredations left by his father’s neglect—with one exception. The business was still a failure for one single, simple reason: there wasn’t a scrap of flour to be had in Nexis for love or money.
Bern was sitting—as was his habit on these long, sleepless nights—in the downstairs room that was the bakery itself, a bottle at his elbow and his feet up on a convenient ledge in the warm brickwork of the older, smaller oven. Almost as a ritual, Bern still kept the great fires of the ovens alight: both the original one and the new one he had built to augment it in more hopeful days, when Tori was newly dead and the business was his own at last. They warmed the house but did little to assuage the cold, creeping sense of failure within the baker’s heart. He had betrayed the rebels and murdered his father to get this business for himself—and what had been the point? Supplies of flour and yeast had run out during the dark and endless winter, and the girl he had planned to marry—a dark-haired lass with flashing eyes, the daughter of a widowed dressmaker who lived nearby—had left him when his black moods and evil tempers had become too much for her to bear. Bern cursed aloud. It was so bloody unfair! As soon as he had achieved his lifelong ambition, the glowing dream had turned to ashes in his hands.
In the midst of his brooding, Bern must have dozed, for he was jolted rudely awake by the slam of a wind-caught door. The curse that instantly sprang to his lips died there, unut-tered, as he opened his eyes to see a tall, black-cloaked shape that towered over him, its face concealed within the shadows of a hood. His hand, flung out instinctively to reach the long iron poker, the nearest available weapon, froze, extended in midair. Then, without a word, the figure extended white and shapely hands, and pushed the hood back from her face. “You!” Bern gasped—and then, gabbling apologies, he fell to his knees before the figure of the Weather-Mage.
Eliseth laughed. “Indeed, Mortal, it is I. Did you never think, after the night you came running to the Academy to betray your father, that you would see me again?”
Bern, who in fact had thought no such thing, remained groveling in terrified silence. The Magewoman laughed again, and stepped over his prostrate form to take the best chair by the fire. “Have you fallen on such hard times, baker, that you offer no refreshment to your guests?” she asked him sharply.
“My Lady—I beg your pardon.” Bern leapt up on shaky legs and ran to fetch a crystal goblet that had been part of his mother’s dowry, and a flask of good wine, all too scarce these days, that he had been saving for a celebration—or an emergency such as this. Setting them on the low table before his terrifying guest, he poured for her with shaking hands, while Eliseth pushed back her heavy mantle and held out her slender white hands to the dancing flames. Taking his own cup, still filled with the rough, inferior stuff with which he had been drowning his sorrows, he took the other chair, restraining himself with an effort from pushing it farther away from the cold-eyed Mage. All the while, his mind had been racing. What could she want from him? How could he possibly placate her?
Eliseth, watching him sidelong from under her lashes, let the baker writhe in silence for a while before putting him out of his suspense. At last, when she judged that his curiosity and fear had reached the exploding point, she began to speak: