Masque of Death (Kormak Book Nine) (The Kormak Saga 9) Read online

  She realised that she had stepped out of the circle of light when the couple had approached. Hastily she stepped back into it. She did not like to be in the dark any more.

  There he was. The Guardian. That was his tall, lean figure. She could see the hilt of the sword protruding across his right shoulder. He gazed around for a moment and then strode straight towards her, his step purposeful. She swallowed. There was no doubt he wanted to speak to her.

  There was something different about him, she realised. In the dim light, she could not quite put her finger on it. She was relieved that he had come, though. He moved towards her with his distinctive animal stride. He looked ready to fight anyone at any time. Good. He would need to be. Once he heard what she had to tell there would be a lot of fighting.

  “I want to speak to you,” Kormak said. “On a matter of great urgency.”

  She felt sick and flinched back as if expecting a blow. The moment she had dreaded for so long was here. Pull yourself together, she thought. You have only one chance at this. Make the man believe you.

  “Guardian of the Dawn—thank the Light that you are here. I am in urgent need of your aid.”

  “This is hardly the most private of places, and I suspect this would be a conversation better held in private.”

  Lady Khiyana looked around. Nobody was within easy eavesdropping distance, but better safe than sorry. “I believe that would be for the best. Let us head to one of the bedrooms. If anybody sees us, they will assume it is an assignation.”

  The Guardian extended his arm, and she hooked own into it. There was something reassuring about the feel of hard muscle against her skin. She started to believe that perhaps everything would be all right after all.

  They walked back inside the mansion. No one paid any attention. They were all far too drunk or far too wrapped up in their own intrigues.

  They made their way up the stairs and along the corridor. In the light from the chandeliers, she suddenly realised what was different about him.

  “You’ve changed into a new costume,” she said. He was wearing a soldier’s tunic and a different sword belt. There was something different about the hilt of his blade as well, and there was no hint of any elder signs. “You’ve come as a soldier.”

  He smiled as if at some private joke. “As a marine actually.”

  “Why did you bother to get changed?” She was just talking for the sake of it. She was nervous and trying to hide it. She hoped that he didn’t notice. She was going to have to be more convincing and more relaxed when it came to her confession.

  “I decided that I wanted to be like everybody else—pretending to be something I am not.”

  “I suppose it was easy enough to swap costumes with one of the marines who came with you.”

  “Easier than you might imagine.”

  A serving girl was staring at him. He smiled at her. The wench licked her lips. Perhaps she thought she was going to be invited into the bedroom as well.

  “Perhaps you’d better run along now,” Lady Khiyana said to her. “The Guardian and I would like to be alone.”

  The smile disappeared from the woman’s face. It was a pretty one too even beneath the skull makeup. She gave a curtsey and backed off down the corridor. The Guardian winked at her as she went. Perhaps he wanted her to remember him for later. Well, no matter. She had things to say to him that would take his mind off serving wenches.

  She listened discretely at the door of the chamber and heard nothing. She pushed the door and stepped inside. It was dark within. The light of the moon filtered in through the glass doors to the balcony. A four poster bed, partially shrouded by a mosquito net dominated the chamber. It was a guest room she was familiar with from previous visits to the Governor’s mansion.

  “So what is it you want to tell me?” Kormak asked. His smile looked more predatory than ever.

  Lady Khiyana took a deep breath. It was now or never. She had best confess before he started interrogating her. “Oh Guardian,” she said. “I have been a weak and foolish woman.”

  “In what way?”

  “First, I need to know you will not judge me too harshly.”

  The Guardian’s face was grim. “I cannot promise you that before I hear what you have to say. If you have something on your conscience, tell me. You have my word I will do what I can for you.”

  That seemed like the best she was going to get so she nodded agreement. “A few years ago I was approached by a friend, an acquaintance really. He belonged to a select group that gave interesting parties.”

  They had been interesting parties too, with some very important people present. There had been the finest wines, sophisticated conversation, sophisticated drugs. She remembered how thrilled she had been to attend the first of them, to be the centre of attention for so many powerful people. It was even more thrilling than taking lovers had been after the first few years of her marriage.

  “The parties were just the beginning. After I had been to a few, the conversations turned to other things, to magic, to immortality, to alchemy, to the preservation and extension of life. One of the men said it was a pity that beauty such as mine should be spoiled by the passage of the years.”

  Tears rolled from her eyes now. She had nodded agreement when she had been told that. It had been foolish vanity, she knew that now, but back then she had thought it only the truth. What mortal would not?

  “That was the first conversation I had with Count Balthazar.”

  She looked at the Guardian to see how he was taking it. The man’s face was a blank mask. He was listening intently. “You must have heard this sort of thing before.”

  “More often than you would think. Go on.”

  “That conversation turned to the topic of alchemy and the preservation of life. Count Balthazar mentioned that the Old Ones who came before us knew so much more about these things than we did, and they had found the way to make their chosen servants immortal, or at least very long-lived.”

  “All that is true,” said Kormak. “But those servants always paid a terrible price in the end.”

  She nodded. “I knew that even then, but I could not help but think about it. I sensed that the Count was watching me carefully, judging my response. He must have seen what he wanted to see because he changed the subject and did not return to it.”

  “Not that night anyway,” Kormak said.

  “You understand.”

  “It is the way certain cults recruit new members.”

  “Yes. Yes. It is.”

  “Please continue. I have the feeling that you are going to tell me something of the utmost importance.”

  He had not struck her. He had not summoned warriors to drag her away to the body-breaking dungeons. He simply seemed to listen more intently. Encouraged she went on. She told him of the round of parties which had become wilder, of the ever more potent drugs that were used, of the way the conversations had of coming back more and more often to the magic of the Old Ones and the secret of immortality.

  Count Balthazar kept talking about alchemy, kept judging her with his wise eyes. In the end, she came out and asked him directly whether he was an alchemist. When he said yes, she had asked him if he would teach her. She begged him to teach her.

  He told her it was a high and serious undertaking, frowned on by the Church, practised in secret to avoid persecution. He could not teach her until she had proven she would not betray him.

  “And how would you do that?” Kormak asked. Lady Khiyana felt certain he already knew the answer. He was just trying to provoke her.

  “I had to do something forbidden, commit a crime that would ensure that if I did betray him, I would suffer the same fate.”

  The Count had not told her this all at once. He had made her work to get that from him. Looking back she could see she had been cleverly manipulated into doing all the work of recruiting herself. At the time, it had not looked like that. Every piece of information she had talked out of him had felt like a small victory.
r />   “Why did you not go immediately to the Church?” Kormak asked. “When Balthazar told you that he dabbled in alchemy. You knew he was talking about a serious sin.”

  “He was, but talk was all it was. It would have been my word against his, and he is a powerful man. There was no proof.”

  “But the thought did occur to you.”

  She felt her face flush. “It did. Even then. I told myself that if I found anything evil, I would report it. But it all seemed so harmless. Just rich people experimenting with drugs and alchemy. There was nothing sinister about it.”

  “There never is, to begin with,” Kormak said. “You agreed to do what was asked of you, in the end, though, didn’t you?”

  “I did. Curiosity overcame me. I wanted what I knew I couldn’t have. I wanted it because it was forbidden.”

  And she had. The allure of the forbidden had been part of the attraction.

  “What did you do?”

  “I took part in a ritual. I sacrificed some birds.”

  “That hardly seems horrific.”

  “The Church forbids it. I made a sacrifice to one of the Old Ones, Xothak, a known enemy of the Sun.”

  “You realise that by confessing this to me you could be put on trial for heresy and witchcraft. The punishment is death.”

  “I no longer care. I am tired of living the way I do. I am tired of the evil I have seen. If you wish to have me killed so be it. But at least my death may have some useful purpose, some meaning.”

  “That is an admirable impulse. There may be hope that your soul can be saved. Perhaps your body too. Pray, continue.”

  “Of course, I learned nothing immediately.”

  The first sacrifice had only been a test to see how far she was prepared to go. There had been more sacrifices, each performed by her hand. She had taken drugs and wine to steady her hand. Each was a step down a dark road. Each made her investment in time and willpower more important. Each made it harder to turn back. It had all felt so inevitable once she was locked inside it.

  She was avoiding what she had done. She did not want to think about it. Even now she could not imagine how she had done it, but now she was more or less sober. At the time, she had been on powerful drugs. She had distanced herself from what she was doing. She had told herself it was all a hallucination or a dream. It had not been.

  She could not bring herself to speak of it. The words stuck in her throat. The Guardian appeared to understand.

  “They accepted you in the end. You did whatever it was that was required of you to make them do that.”

  “Yes, I did it.” Why could she not say what she had done? She had done it after all. How could such an evil deed be easier to perform than to talk about?

  “And then what happened?”

  She had not been let into the secrets of immortality. Not even after she had made the necessary sacrifice. She had done other things for the alchemist. She had seduced powerful men, taken lovers. She had driven her husband mad with jealousy so that he would kill them in duels. She had held the threat of telling him over the heads of others. She had wheedled information from some and stolen things from others. She had helped neutralise Balthazar’s enemies and advance his friends. She had not then known it was all part of a much larger plan.

  She was not proud of herself, but she had done it. She had received rewards too. Small rewards at first. Potions that had made her feel young and happy, that had countered the guilt and depression she so often felt when she was not taking them. She had drunk too much and taken too many lovers, including those she had not been told to take.

  She lost control of herself. She began to drink too much and talk too much. There had been crying jags and spells of wild exultation. And recently she had come to realise that the other members of the cult were looking at her oddly. They were worried about her behaviour. It came to her that was dangerous because she knew now how dangerous these glittering friendly people could be.

  They worshipped not just the Old Ones but Old Ones who had given themselves to the Shadow. They plotted rebellion against the state and the Church. They killed people, and they worked dark magic. She realised that she stayed drunk and high not just from guilt but from fear. There was no one she dared tell.

  “You were afraid of these people, I understand, but why not go to the Church. Frater Ramon would have helped you. He and the Governor would have hunted down the people who had deceived you.”

  “You don’t understand. Frater Ramon is sick, and the Governor is a weak and fearful man.”

  “So you have not talked to anyone about this,” said Kormak.

  “No.”

  The Guardian nodded and paused for a moment as if he were thinking about something. He gazed around the room. The silence grew longer. Her dread mounted. Her fate was entirely in his hands. Still, she felt as if a vast weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

  “It is still possible you might be saved. If you do exactly what I tell you and everything I ask.”

  She saw a small glimmer of hope. Perhaps she could escape from this with her life.

  “You can give me the names of all these people.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are willing to testify under oath and sign your name to a confession?”

  “Yes.”

  “You will betray them even though you have sworn oaths to them and sacrificed human beings for them?”

  “Yes.” She looked up at him and saw something strange written on his face. It might have been sadness. “You don’t believe me.”

  “Unfortunately, I do.”

  “Why, unfortunately?”

  “It does not matter. Take off your clothes.”

  “What? Now hardly seemed the time.”

  “You said you would do anything I asked. Think of this as another test. A final one.”

  So the Guardian was not so different from other men after all. Well, if this were part of the price of freedom she would pay it. She had paid it before.

  She stripped slowly, folding her clothes one by one and setting them down on a chest of drawers. She turned to face him and saw appreciation in his eyes.

  “Lie down on the bed.” She did so, wondering why he had produced the knife. She was still wondering when he drew the razor sharp blade across her throat.

  Chapter Five

  A servant rapped on the door. “Breakfast is served in the main dining room.”

  Kormak rose from where he lay. Rhiana stirred next to him. “My head,” she said. “It feels like a mast fell on it.”

  “If you will drink the local wine,” Kormak said.

  “Oh,” she said. “It’s all starting to come back to me. That is embarrassing.”

  “I don’t think anyone noticed anything you said or did.”

  “Except you. I hope.”

  “Except me.”

  “It seems we are back where we started.”

  “We’re not aboard a ship. I find that a bonus.”

  “You know what I mean. What are we going to do?”

  “Nothing has changed,” Kormak said. “I’m still a Guardian, and you still want to go back to Port Blood. We talked about this on the Pride of Siderea.”

  “You don’t want anything to change. You want to stay just the way you are.”

  “I see that some of the wyrmspike wine is still in your blood. You’re very argumentative this morning.”

  “It takes two to make an argument.”

  “You get no argument from me about that.”

  “Well, that’s a novelty.”

  “I believe the Governor is waiting for our presence.”

  “And you change the subject, as always.”

  Kormak shrugged, rose from the bed and started to get dressed. “I have work to do here and a limited time to do it in.”

  “So you’re off to seek a new way of getting yourself killed.”

  “I hope not. I hope I’m about to start discovering who tried to get King Aemon killed. If I don’t, I may get my
self killed. Prince Taran does not like me, and he likes failure even less.”

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about you.”

  “You don’t need to do anything.”

  “I wish that were true.”

  “Get dressed,” Kormak said. “We are keeping the Governor waiting and Admiral Zamara too.”

  “I don’t think they will be shocked. Not with the way everybody was behaving last night.”

  “Zamara is quite an impressionable soul.”

  “I think he’s going to be out of his depth here.”

  “He might surprise you.”

  “I certainly hope so. For his sake.”

  Rhiana began to get dressed. Kormak watched her as if it was the last time. She was certainly very beautiful, and he would be sad to see her go. But the longer she stayed with him, the more danger she would be in.

  They strode down the stairs into a huge dining room. The Governor was already present, but there was no sign of his female companion from the evening before. Zamara was there along with Terves. The Governor looked up as Kormak entered and said, “Good morning, Guardian. I trust you slept well.”

  “About as well as everybody else,” Kormak said.

  The Governor looked at Rhiana appreciatively and said, “I do not doubt that for a second.” He gestured to the collection of bowls on the table and said, “Help yourself to whatever you want. We do not stand on ceremony here. It’s not like at the King-Emperor’s court. We are somewhat less formal here.”

  “I noticed that last night.”

  The Governor looked away and made a deprecatory gesture with his right hand. “I trust you will not judge me by last night. Like everyone else, I was somewhat the worse for wear. That is not the way things usually go round here. I can assure you, as I was just assuring the Admiral, that I run a very tight ship.”

  As he spoke more and more servants in plain black tunics entered the room, carrying a selection of dishes which they placed upon the table and then withdrew silently as they came. “Do have some of the dried fish, Sir Kormak. I think you will find it is excellent.”