“You’re joking!” he protested.
Eneko gazed at him mildly, and said nothing. It was left to Diego to state the obvious.
“He most certainly is not.”
VILNA
Not for the first time, the shaman thought longingly of the relative safety of the lakes and forests of Karelen from which he had come. It required all his self-control to keep from trembling. That would be disastrous. His master tolerated fear; he did not tolerate a display of it.
As always in his private chambers, Jagiellon was not wearing the mask which the Grand Duke wore in his public appearances. Jagiellon was officially blind—due to the injuries he had suffered in his desperate attempt to save his father from the assassins who murdered him. Such, at least, was Jagiellon’s claim. The shaman doubted if very many people in Lithuania believed that tale; none at all, in the capital city of Vilna. Most of the populace of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland were quite certain that Jagiellon had organized his father’s murder in order to usurp the throne.
Few of them cared, in truth. Succession in Lithuania was often a bloody affair, to begin with, and in the four years since he ascended to the throne Jagiellon had made it quite clear that he was even more ruthless than his father had been.
But, if they doubted his other claim, few Lithuanians doubted Jagiellon’s claim of blindness. Indeed, they took a certain grim satisfaction in the knowledge. Jagiellon was more savage than his father, true—but at least the father had managed to blind the son before succumbing to the usurpation. Not surprising, really. Jagiellon’s father had been as famous with a blade as Jagiellon himself.
The shaman suffered from no such delusion. In the time since he entered the grand duke’s service, the shaman had realized the truth. Jagiellon had made his way to the throne by delving into magic even blacker than his father had been willing to meddle with. And . . .
Had delved too deeply. The demon Jagiellon had thought to shackle to his service had been too powerful for the rash and ambitious young prince. And so, while Jagiellon had indeed lost his eyes, that loss had been the least of it.
Eyes were still there, after all. Easily seen—naked and visible—with the mask removed. But they were no longer Jagiellon’s eyes, for all that they rested in Jagiellon’s face.
The eyes were black, covered with eyelids so fat and heavy they turned the orbs into mere slits. But the shaman could see them well enough. Far too well. Those eyes had neither pupils nor irises, nor any trace of white eyeball. Ebony-colored and opaque; uniform throughout; appearing, at first, like two agates—until, deep within, the emptiness could be sensed. As if stones were really passageways into some place darker than any night.
“Do it,” commanded Grand Duke Jagiellon, and his huge hand swept across the floor, re-opening the passage.
Stifling a whimper of protest, the shaman underwent the shape-change again. As always, the transition was accompanied by agony—and even more so the passage through which his master sent him. But those agonies were familiar things. The source of the shaman’s terror lay elsewhere.
* * *
Nor did the terror stem from the lagoon itself, as much as the shaman despised the stink of the waters—in his new form even more than he would have in his human one. His fishlike body swam through the murky shallows, nosing the scents drifting through the mud swirls and reeds.
He detected the mage soon enough, as familiar as he now was with that scent. Again, as before, the odor was very faint. The mage remained near water at all times, but rarely ventured into it. To do otherwise would have been dangerous.
More dangerous to leave the water’s vicinity than to enter it, in truth. The shaman’s jaws gaped wide, displaying teeth that could rend human flesh easily. But the display was more for the purpose of driving away the shaman’s own fear than any prospect of savaging the mage. The mage had protectors in these waters. The shaman was not the only thing swimming there which possessed sharp teeth.