The Dragon Revenant - Katharine Kerr [54]
Once they were back in the privacy of their inn chamber, Jill asked Salamander whether he thought this mysterious trader, was the same man whose trail they’d crossed in Daradion.
“I’d wager a goodly sum, truly. But how odd this is! If he’s asking questions of merchants, he can’t know how to scry. Unless, of course, he never saw Rhodry before, but why would the Dark Brotherhood send someone like that?”
“Maybe he is just a trader. He might not be from the Dark Brotherhood at all.”
“Then what about that poor little spirit I saw in Daradion? Oh, I don’t know, Jill! Ye gods, I feel like a farm-wife chasing chickens into her henhouse. Two pop out again for every blasted one that goes in!”
The first time that Baruma saw the wolf, he thought nothing of it, because he was staying in an inn whose owner kept a pack of hunting dogs. He was by then traveling through the mountains in northern Surtinna, working his way closer to the Old One’s isolated estate but taking his time to allow the blood guild to recapture Rhodry, and he’d stopped for the night in a small town some miles east of Vardeth. Just at twilight he was crossing the courtyard on his way to his chamber after a dinner out, when he saw, on the far side of the compound, a large black dog standing and watching him as he went upstairs—an event of absolutely no moment, or so he thought at the time. Later that evening, he heard a paw scratch briefly at his door and a canine whine, but he ignored it. Sure enough, in a few minutes he heard human footsteps come down the hall, and at their approach, the scratching stopped, as if the dog had gone off with its master.
The next time, however, he realized the truth. He had reached Vardeth and was staying in an expensive inn right down in the center of town near the Plaza of Government, the kind of establishment where large dogs are most unwelcome. Again at twilight he was crossing the walled garden when he saw the black creature drinking at the tiled fountain. This time he saw clearly that it was no dog, but an enormous wolf. When the beast raised its head to look at him, no water dripped from its jaws. Immediately Baruma threw up his hand and sketched a banishing sigil, but the wolf ignored it. Throwing back its head in a soundless howl, it loped toward him, snapped at him, and vanished as silently as it had come. Shaking a little, Baruma hurried to his suite. He was just barring the door behind him when he looked around and saw the wolf lolling on the divan.
“Get out!”
Here in the privacy of his chamber he could work a full banishing ritual, and this time the wolf did indeed disappear at his final command—only to come back with the dawn. When he opened his eyes, he found it standing on his chest and growling soundlessly into his face. With a barely stifled scream he sat up and began sketching the ritual. The wolf was so heavy when he threw it off that he knew it had been sent by someone with real skill in the dark arts; the thought-form had been ensouled with a great deal of magnetism. He was sure that it had been sent by one of his enemies in the circles of initiates and would-be initiates that buzzed around the dark dweomer like flies around manure; after all, his rivals had to try to remove him from competition just as surely as he had to best them. He concentrated on doing a thorough banishing this time, and when he was done, he set astral seals over himself as well.
Yet at twilight the wolf came back. Over the next few days it dogged him wherever he went, ignoring his mighty curses by the Dark Names and his threats of demons and annihilation. Although it never tried to do him physical harm, still it frightened him, popping up at every corner, it seemed, or padding after him down dark streets.