As she watched the orange tongues flick at the chair, she thought again of the selkie’s warning: ... more than it has wanted anything in a thousand years.
She spoke a spell that would expose any more runes such as she had found on Kerim, but there were no more in the room. A focus rune, though, was much less powerful than an active rune unless it was being used and would not reveal itself easily to her spelling, nor would any other simple rune.
There was no real reason to suspect a second focus rune. They were uncommonly used, for the same reason familiars were avoided —if destroyed they could seriously hurt the mage whose creatures they were. All the same, if the Reeve’s selkie was right, Kerim was important to the demon. She turned on her heel and strode back to the bed.
“Shamera, why did you throw my chair into the fireplace?” Kerim’s voice was abnormally reasonable.
Ignoring him. Sham yanked on the heavy down-filled tick that had settled at the foot of the bed. She searched it thoroughly before throwing it onto the floor. Muttering nastily, she started to tear away the sheets, and her hand touched a section of the robe Kerim had been wearing. With her heightened senses she could almost see the magic imbued in the fabric.
The rune on the robe was a lesser one, not a focus rune but another binding rune—far simpler than the one Kerim had worn. It was the sort of thing one would put on an animal so that it would not wander away. Far easier, she thought, to turn such a simple rune into a stronger, more powerful sign than to try it from scratch. The great mages, she knew, used to transfer a rune from one surface to another. The means had been lost to time, but perhaps the demon still knew the method. Kerim could have been ensorcelled again by morning.
As she stepped through the assorted bedding on the way to the fireplace with the remnants of Kerim’s robe, Sham’s foot knocked her knife from the folds of the tick and sent it clattering across the floor. She scooped it up and continued on her way.
The flames were still spitting high with the magic she’d fed them earlier. With the addition of the bedrobe, they turned purple and shot up through the chimney with such force that it dislodged months of old ashes. As the soot fell into the fireplace, it was consumed in the superheated flames, creating a shower of bright sparkles like a thousand falling stars.
Sham started back toward the bed when she heard the slight scuff of the “secret” panel sliding open behind her. She jumped sideways with reflexive speed, holding her knife in a fighter’s grip as she turned to face the gaping opening in the wall.
For a moment nothing happened, and she took a cautious step toward the dark passage doorway. The dim glint of light on metal was her only warning as a sword swept through the air.
Frantically, she threw herself to one side, rolling over the top of a waist-high table to put it between her and the sword wielder. As her attacker stepped toward her, the firelight threw his face into high relief.
“Ven?” said Kerim, incredulously.
Even knowing that this could not possibly be the Reeve’s brother, Sham couldn’t detect anything about the man that appeared unnatural, not even the aura of magic that she’d felt when the demon had attacked her before.
“What do you want?” she asked, snatching a heavy, leather-covered shield from the wall and heaving it at the golem as she tried to get some distance between herself and the creature. The knife she held was balanced for throwing, but she didn’t want to use it and lose her only weapon.
“Mine. He is mine,” hissed the thing that wore Lord Ven’s body, knocking the shield aside easily as he slid over the table that blocked his path.
“No,” answered Sham as the creature started toward her in a trained warrior’s rush.
She took three steps back and rumpled the rug under his feet with a touch of magic. He stumbled heavily, but recovered faster than she’d hoped: many automatons were clumsy things. Twisting and scrambling, she evaded him, managing to nick his arm with her knife as she slipped past him. She saw the blood on his arm, but knew it had been chance more than skill on her part.
He held the advantage of reach and strength. Sham’s lowborn knife-fighting skills meant nothing unless she risked breaking through his guard and closing in with him. She was deterred by the recollection that one of the attributes the golem enjoyed was disproportionate strength. As if to confirm her thoughts, a blow of his sword reduced a sturdy oaken chair to a broken shadow of itself and she decided to try magic instead.
She began to weave a spell to cause the cloth on his body to stiffen and imprison him in its hold, but she was just an instant too slow. Lord Ven closed in and swung his sword at her throat. She managed to deflect his blow with her knife, but the force of his strike wrenched her wrist painfully. Sham lost control of the magic she’d gathered and the embroidered chair that sat by the fireplace burst into sudden flame. She took a quick step back and hit her elbow painfully against the wall—there was no more room to retreat.
Breathing hard, Sham ducked under Lord Ven’s second strike. As she ran under the blade he reversed his stroke, catching her brutally on the back of her wounded thigh with the pommel. The blow drove her to the ground where she hit her chin on the floor with stunning force.
Face down, she missed exactly what happened next, but there was a shrill cry and the sound of sharp metal imbedding itself in flesh. Frantically, Sham scrabbled forward and then twisted to her feet.
Lord Ven stood facing her with an oddly blank look and something dark pushed out of his chest; Kerim swayed unsteadily behind him—though he stood without aid. Sham jumped to her feet as the Reeve collapsed to his knees, sweat beading his forehead as a tribute to the effort it had cost him to stay on his feet so long.
The demon’s creature fell limply forward, and the great blue sword slipped out of its back and sang out as it hit the floor. Sham stared at the motionless body, gasping hollowly for breath.
“You’re not hurt?” rasped Kerim.
She shook her head. “No, and I have you to thank for it. I wouldn’t have lasted much longer against it.” She chose the neuter pronoun deliberately in order to remind Kerim, if he needed reminding, that the thing he’d just killed had not been his brother.
Nodding, the Reeve collapsed backward until he was seated on the ground with his back supported by a heavy chest. He tilled his head back and closed his eyes.
“Shamera, would you get Dickon? His rooms are down the hall. I think we could use his help to take care of the body.”
“Right,” she replied, frowning with worry as she looked at Kerim’s pale face.
She didn’t realize until she was halfway to the door that she still held her knife in her right hand. Shaking her head at herself, she started to set it on a table. It wouldn’t do for the Reeve’s mistress to run about the Castle at night with a knife.
“Shamera!”
The urgency in the Reeve’s tone caused her to spin around.
Kerim’s blue sword in one hand, Lord Ven’s simulacrum advanced with a stealthy gait that changed to an awkward run as she finished her turn. Almost without thought she ducked under his swing and imbedded her knife deeply into the creature’s eye.
“Plague’s spawn!” spat out Sham in revulsion as she was carried to the floor in the thing’s embrace. She scrambled frantically until she was free of its convulsive movements, jerking her knife out of the body so she’d still have a weapon if it came at her again. “Tide take it! Why can’t this thing just stay dead?”
As she spoke the body, still writhing, vanished with a loud cracking sound, leaving the blue sword behind. She lunged to her feet and spat a filthy word, wiping her forehead with the back of the hand that held her knife.