Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [155]
“Are you thinking of escaping on your own, lad?” Alastyr growled. “I have ways of finding you if you try.”
“Naught of the sort, master.”
Alastyr’s dweomer told him that the apprentice was speaking the truth, but still he felt some other thought, hiding below the surface of his mind. It was time, he decided, to put his apprentice in his place a bit.
“Take care of the horses and your pet,” he said. “I need to be alone to do a working.”
Sarcyn went out to the stable of the isolated farm they’d appropriated by the simple means of killing the old farmer who owned it. Crouched in the straw of an empty stall was the farmhand, whom they’d left alive because he looked useful. A solid, middle-aged man of about forty, he was so thoroughly ensorcelled that he rose to his feet obediently the moment Sarcyn snapped his fingers.
“Feed and water the horses,” the apprentice said. “Then come into the kitchen for my next order.”
He nodded agreement, swaying as if he were drunk.
The kitchen was a big quarter-round room, set off from the rest of the house by wickerwork partitions. It was an old-style house, with one hearth in the middle under a smoke hole in the thatched roof. In the straw on the floor Camdel lay curled up like a baby. When they were rummaging through the farm, Sarcyn had found an iron chain with a cuff that had been doubtless used at one point for restraining an ox. Now it coupled Camdel’s ankle to an iron ring for hanging a pot by the hearth. When Sarcyn unlatched it, Camdel moaned and sat up.
“Want some breakfast, my noble sir? There’s proper barley porridge.”
Unshaven and filthy, the lordling nodded. Later, Sarcyn decided, he would let the creature bathe.
“The worst is almost over,” he said with bravado he didn’t feel. “Once we’re back in Bardek, we’ll have a good place to live and get you some decent clothes and suchlike.”
Camdel forced out a tremulous smile. It was odd, Sarcyn thought, how men differed. Some fought his domination to the very end; others found they had a taste for the strange sexual pleasures that he introduced them to. In a very satisfying way Camdel was one of the latter. As he watched the lord eat his breakfast, Sarcyn realized that he was glad of Camdel’s tastes. He felt an odd emotion gnawing and nagging at him, so unfamiliar that it took him a long time to identify it: guilt. All at once he remembered being a small child and weeping over Alastyr’s rape. It was worth it, he told himself, because he brought me to the warrior’s path. The reassurance rang hollow even to him.
Sarcyn strode to the door and found the farmhand waiting, as numb as a beast. Sarcyn sent out a line of light and fastened it around his aura, then sent the aura spinning.
“You’re going to fetch us more food. You’re going to say naught but the tale we told you. Look at me, man.”
The farmhand looked up and stared into his eyes.
“I’ll go get the rabbits,” he whispered. “I’ll say naught but the tale you told me.”
“Good. Then get on your way.”
The farmhand rose and shuffled away to the stables. Sarcyn walked through the little chambers, fanned out around the hearth, into the storeroom. There he stopped, grunting in surprise. Alastyr stood before the window, and the corpse of the dead farmer was standing, too, a pale thing, gray and bloodless, but moving nonetheless, swaying on awkward feet. Alastyr shot his apprentice a sour smile of triumph.
“I bound Wildfolk into it. They’ll keep it alive for some time, and it’ll do our bidding. Now, tell me, you little dog, can you match my power in that?”
“I can’t, master, truly.”
“Then mind what you say to me, or you’ll end up the same way one fine day.”
Sarcyn felt a revulsion so strong that he wanted to turn and run from the chamber, but he forced himself to stare at the thing calmly while the master gloated over it. He had the brief thought of trying to escape, but he knew that he was in this dark muck too deep to get out.
Nevyn insisted