Darkspell - Katharine Kerr [168]
The tattered, oozing corpse stood stock-still. As Nevyn came in, Rhodry flung sword and shield down, dropped to his knees, and vomited, uncaring of who might see him. He heard other voices, then, as men crowded into the chamber. Comyn knelt down beside him just as he was wiping his mouth on his sleeve.
“Are you all right, silver dagger? By the Lord of Hell’s asshole, what was that thing?”
“Cursed if I know, but I’ve never been more grateful for the loan of a shield in my life.”
As he got up, he heard Nevyn chanting in a strange language. When the old man came to the end of it, the corpse buckled, its knees giving way, and settled rather than fell to the floor. Nevyn stamped thrice on the floor. Rhodry saw ugly and deformed Wildfolk dancing on the corpse for one brief moment before they vanished.
“After this, Rhodry lad,” the dweomer-master said, “you might ask my advice before poking around in strange places.”
“You have my sworn word on that.”
And yet the worst horror of all still lay before him. Nevyn walked to the opening in the last chamber and pulled down the blanket to reveal a tiny, windowless room with a piece of black velvet hanging on the curved wall. On it was embroidered an upside-down five-pointed star and some other marks that Rhodry couldn’t recognize. The chamber stank of incense and a fishy sort of smell.
Lying in the middle of the floor was the body of a stout, gray-haired man, his arms outstretched on either side. He looked like an ordinary Cerrmor man, but someone must have hated him, because he’d been stabbed in the chest over and over, so many times, truly, that he must have been long dead before the final blow fell. Although seeing the corpse meant little to Rhodry, merely looking into the room terrified him, so much so that when Nevyn walked in, he wanted to scream at the dweomerman to stay out. He forced himself to follow, but only because he was sure that Nevyn needed guarding. In the dim light it seemed that things moved, half-seen, silent. Nevyn nudged the corpse with the toe of his riding boot.
“Well, Alastyr,” he said, “at last we meet in the flesh. You’ve been very clever, because I don’t remember ever having seen you before.” He glanced at Rhodry. “This is the man who wanted you dead, the one who stood behind Loddlaen in the war.”
More in bewilderment than rage, Rhodry stared at his old enemy. Since he’d been picturing the dark master as a fiend in human form, he was oddly disappointed to find him so ordinary looking. Yet the room was fiendish enough. His irrational terror grew until Nevyn laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
“This danger’s long over,” the dweomerman said. “It’s the touch of elven blood in your veins that makes you so sensitive.”
“Truly?”
“Truly. This is the chamber where Alastyr worked his foul perversions of the dweomer, you see. Ah, ye gods, poor Camdel!”
“What did they do, make him watch?”
“Watch? Hah! They used him for their rituals. He was repeatedly raped in here.”
“Oh, pigs cock! How can you rape a man?”
“Don’t pretend to a naïveté that a court-raised man doesn’t have. You know cursed well what I mean. They cut him when they were doing it, too, to spill blood for their twisted spirits.”
If Rhodry had had anything left to heave, he would have vomited again. Nevyn was watching him.
“Blaen and I are minded to tell the king that Camdel’s dead,” the old man said. “Will your honor allow you to keep our secret?”
Rhodry glanced around the chamber and wondered how it would look to a man thrown down on the floor.
“Maybe Camdel was a thief,” he said at last, “but I for one don’t have one word more to say about that.”
It took Nevyn and Blaen both to get Camdel mounted on a horse they found in the stables, because the young lord was much less than fully conscious. Even with their help, he swayed so alarmingly in the saddle that Nevyn ended up tying him to it. Later Nevyn would remove the ensorcellment—much later, once he’d found another dweomer-worker to start the long process of healing Camdel’s mind.
“Now, here, good sorcerer,” Blaen said. “Are you sure