“No, no,” she repeated, her eyes white all around. “Not Her. Not Her-“
Stilcho hesitated. He remembered that fear; that all-consuming fear he felt of
Ischade, of Haught, of everything that had had power over him-but he’d forgotten
it as well. Death had burned the fear out of him. He felt danger, desperation,
and the latent death that pervaded this house and this afternoon-but bowel
numbing fear no longer had a claim on him.
“I’m going to save Strat-hide him until they come for him. I’m going to save me,
too. I’m lucky today, Moria: I’m alive and I’m lucky. Even without the
horse….”
But he wasn’t without the bay horse. The bloody rag had landed on the carved
stone steps that had been, many years ago, the Peres family’s pride. The bay
pounded on the steps, surrounded but unaffected by ward-fire. It scented Strat’s
blood soaking into the wood planks of the lower hallway and heard his anguish.
Trumpeting a loyalty that transcended life and death, it reared, flailing at the
ephemeral flames which engulfed it. Stilcho watched as the mortal image of the
horse vanished and the other one became a black void.
“Moria, the back stairs, the servant’s stairs to the kitchen, where are they?
It’s only a matter of time.”
Candlelight flickered over Ischade’s dark-clad body. She had collapsed backwards
into her silken lair. Her hair made tangled webs around her face and shoulders.
One arm arced around her head, the other fell limply across her waist; both were
marked with dark gashes where the priest’s glass had cut her. Ischade had death