Simon had never seen Yvian of Karsten, but now he did not mistake the harsh jut of chin, the sandy brows which were a bushy bar across the nose. The sleekness of soft living had not altogether wiped away the forceful mercenary who had fought battles to become my lord duke.
He wore only a loose over-robe which had fallen apart at Koris’ handling so that the powerful body, seamed with old scars, was bare, save for a wide, wet, red band at his middle His breath came in great sobbing gulps, and with every moment of his arching chest, that band grew wider.
Koris kneeled beside the duke, so that he could look into Yvian’s face, meet his eyes.
“Where is she?” It was asked with no outer heat, merely a determination to be answered. But Simon doubted if any words could now reach Yvian.
“Where—is—she?” Koris repeated. Under his hand the ax moved, catching light from the window, reflecting it into Yvian’s face.
It seemed to Simon that the dying man’s attention was not for his questioner, but rather centered on that uncanny weapon, long since fashioned by a non-human smith. Yvian’s lips moved, shaped a word, and then a second audible enough—
“Volt—” He made an effort which was visible, looking from the ax to him who held it. And there was a kind of puzzlement in his eyes. Koris must have guessed the source of that for he leaned the closer to speak.
“Volt’s ax—and I am he who bears it—Koris of Gorm!”
But Yvian’s only answer was a ghostly grin, a stretch of lips which matched the slash of his death wound. He struggled to speak a moment later.
“Gorm, is it? Then you will know your masters. I wish them well—hell-cat—”
One hand freed its hold on the covers and he struck up, his closed fist merely touching Koris’ jaw before it fell limply back, that last effort having carried him over the final border into the waiting dark.
Save for Yvian they found these chambers bare, nor were the other two entrances unbarred. Koris, who had led that whirlwind search, came back wide-eyed.
“She was here!”
Simon agreed to that, but Yvian’s dying words were in his mind. Why had the duke spoke of “your masters” and connected that with Gorm? For Estcarp he would more rightly have said, “your mistresses.” All Karsten knew that the council of witches ruled the north. But Gorm had had grim masters—the Kolder! Someone had started the fighting here, and it had not been Estcarp work. Loyse was gone; Yvian given his death wound.
But they had little time to search farther. A band of the duke’s guards came seeking their commander and the Borderers needs must fight their way to make a stand elsewhere.
It was late night and Estcarp was indeed in Kars, when Simon slumped in a chair and chewed at a strip of meat, trying to listen to reports, to assess what had been done here.
“We cannot continue to hold Kars,” Guttorm of the Falconers slopped wine from a bottle into a cup, his hand shaking with fatigue. He had led the vans which had cut their way in from the north gate and he had been ten hours at the business of reaching where he now sat.
“We never intended to do so,” Simon swallowed his mouthful to answer. “What we came here to do—”
“Is not done!” The full thud was Koris’ ax punctuating his speech, haft butt against the floor. “She is not in the city, unless they have hidden her away so that even the witch can not sense her, and that I do not believe!”
Ingvald settled a slinged arm with a grimace of pain.
“Nor do I. But the witch says there is no trace. It is as if she never was—or now is—”
Simon stirred. “And there is one way of hiding which blanks out the power—”
“Kolder,” Koris replied evenly. Simon thought that he already had accepted that dour possibility.
“Kolder,” Simon agreed. “What have we learned from our prisoners—that suddenly, shortly after dawn yesterday, within the citadel some of the officers were given messages, all purporting to come from the duke, all definitely ordering them to quietly assemble the men under their command and then move in on each other! Each commander was told that one of his own fellows was the traitor. Could anything cause greater confusion? Then, unable to reach Yvian, even when they were beginning to realize their orders were wrong, the fighting became more intense as the rumor spread that Yvian had been killed by this one or that.”
“A cover, and none of our doing,” Guttorm stated, “it was only Yvian’s own force involved.”
“A cover,” Simon nodded. “And the only act which might be so covered was Yvian’s death. With his forces sadly split, too broken to organize a hunt for any murderer.”
“Maybe not just Yvian,” Koris broke in, “maybe also—Loyse!”
“But why?” Frankly that puzzled Simon. Unless—his tired mind moved slowly but it moved—unless Kolder wanted her for bait.
“I do not know, but I shall find out!” Once more the butt of Volt’s gift struck the floor with emphatic force.
* * *
* * *
6 DUCHESS OF KARSTEN
LOYSE SAT on the wide bed with her knees drawn up, her arms clasped around them, her eyes for that naked blade resting before her. What was Aldis’ purpose? It could not be that the duke’s mistress thought she would lose her power over Yvian. His need for Loyse was one of expediency only. And Aldis who had ruled him so long would not be easily unseated.
But—Loyse’s tongue tip ran along dry lips as she remembered. When Jaelithe had been a seeress in Kars months ago, Aldis had come to her secretly, to buy a spell to keep Yvian truly hers. And she must have believed in the necessity and efficiency of that or she would not have come. Then, in that later battle of wills —when the Guardians had used the most potent sendings they could conjure—Aldis (by image) had been the target of Jaelithe’s attack. By all the arts of Estcarp certain temporary commands had then been planted in her to use her influence upon Yvian to further the witches’ desires.
Now Loyse could not reconcile this present Aldis with the one she had so long thought upon. This Aldis would not have sought out Jaelithe, save for a contest of strengths. Had that been the real purpose of that visit to the witch of Estcarp? No! Jaelithe’s own power would have revealed to her any such plan behind Aldis’ seeking. She had then come honestly for her love potion.
And it was the truth that Aldis had been put under control for a period at the battle of wills before the taking of Gorm, even though that had been done from a distance and through images only. A failure there, too, Jaelithe would have known immediately.
Loyse gnawed on her lower lip and continued to stare at the dagger. She herself had failed in meeting with the duke’s leman—she had been too assured when she should have been simple and bewildered. Somehow she had been turned inside out, assessed, by opposition she must respect—or fear? Aldis was not Aldis as she had expected her to be. And now, Aldis was playing some game of her own, in which she considered Loyse to be a piece to be moved at her pleasure.
Patiently the girl fought down both hot anger and the tinge of fear which followed the facing of that fact. Ostensibly she had been brought out of Estcarp because she was Yvian’s wife by ax marriage. What did Yvian gain by her coming? First, what he had wanted from the beginning—Verlaine with its sea-brought treasure, its fortress, its lower harbor which, with the reef knowledge of its men, would give him a fine raiding port from which to prey on Estcarp.
Second, she was of the old nobility, and perhaps that fact might reconcile the aloof houses to Yvian. The tales out of Kars were that he desired to cut old ties with the mercenaries, establish his ducal throne more firmly by uniting with the rulers of the past.
Third—Loyse hugged her knees more tightly—third, her flight from Verlaine, her joining with his enemies in Estcarp, must have been a goad to personal anger and a wound to his self-esteem. And—those few hints from Aldis—perhaps he chewed now upon the fact that she had sworn betrothal with Koris, that she preferred the outcast of Gorm to the Duke of Karsten. Her lips curled; as if there could be any question between them! Koris was . . . Koris! All she had ever wanted or could want in her life!
Three reasons to bring her here, yet behind them she sensed a shadowy fourth. And, sitting there in the gray of dawn, Loyse tried to summon it into the open. Not Yvian’s reason, but Aldis’? And why she was sure of that she could not have told either, but that it was true she had no doubt at all.