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BOOK VI

1

The gate to the bor-Benliman tomb was chained and padlocked: the new owners had decided to bar intruders, even though they didn't own this corner of the property.

Garric felt fierce indignation fill him. "They had no right," he whispered as he reached for his sword hilt. With this sword on his waist, his anger was no longer a frustrated, inward-turning thing. If someone wronged him, they'd learn—

Tenoctris touched his sword hand.

Garric looked at the old woman in embarrassment. He let the sword's weight slide it back into the scabbard. "I was just going to cut the chain," he muttered in embarrassment. "It's soft iron. This sword can..."

"I think we can do with less noise," Tenoctris said. That was all that reached her lips, but there were questions in her eyes. She lifted the padlock in her cupped palms.

Garric blushed, wondering how much of that outburst was him and how much was the king who laughed in his mind. He'd never thought of himself as someone who threw his weight around; but then, he'd never had any weight. He wasn't sure what had changed, but the sword he now wore wasn't the only factor.

Tenoctris murmured a spell while still holding the lock. Cold blue light gleamed from the padlock's interior. Metal pinged musically; the hasp fell open.

"I said I wasn't a very powerful wizard," Tenoctris said as she removed the lock. "I didn't say I wasn't a wizard at all."

Garric unwrapped the chain from around the iron gate and post, being particularly careful not to clank the metal together. Now that he was using his senses rather than reacting to provocation by a fat landowner who didn't believe the law affected a rich man's prerogatives, he could hear low chanting. The air rumbled as though stirred by a distant surf.

Garric thought he saw blue light flicker at the corners of his eyes. He glanced at Tenoctris. She nodded, grim-faced, and walked into the fenced enclosure ahead of him.

Garric thought of drawing the sword; he kept his hands at his sides instead. The only use for the sword at this moment was to be a crutch for his spirit. If Garric couldn't be a man except when he held a sword, he wasn't a man he'd have wanted to know.

The window on this side of the groundskeeper's lodge was round and eight inches in diameter. Crossbars divided the unglazed opening into four, and ivy grew across it as well.

Garric brushed back leaves so that he and Tenoctris had a clear view of the interior. Some moonlight entered by the similar window on the other side, but the real illumination was the haze of blue fire in which stood a plump, balding man who chanted in Benlo's voice.

The bronze casket lay empty against the crosswall separating the lodge from the tomb in the other half of the building. The lid hung open, showing the white satin liner.

The chanting wizard wore a burial shift. On the floor beside him was the mummy of a woman, her cheeks sunken and the tendons of the interlaced fingers standing out like ropes. There was no sign of overt decay.

The other bodies in the family tomb weren't preserved any better than Benlo's own; Garric had spent enough time among the crumbling caskets to know that. It must have been while on his travels that Benlo learned the embalming technique he applied to his late wife—among the Isles, or perhaps on the other planes to which his wizardry took him.

Liane lay on the wizard's other side. She was as still as her dead mother.

Benlo raised the pudgy arms of the body he wore. He spoke, but Garric no longer heard the words of the incantation. The cosmos pulsed, growing alternately tighter and looser with the movements of Benlo's lips.

A thread of blue light as dense as a sword edge bound Mazzona's forehead to that of her silent daughter. The thread grew thicker and even brighter as the wizard chanted.

"Can you distract him?" Tenoctris whispered. "Otherwise I don't have enough power to..."

Garric nodded. The door of the groundskeeper's lodge was wood rather than metal, but he could see through the window that it was closed by a bar as thick as his arm. He couldn't kick his way in, and hacking the door down with the sword would take longer than he wanted to delay. Besides, there was another locked gate between him and the doorway.

He stepped away from the window. This was the sort of problem Garric understood. Wizardry and monsters had been no part of his life until he met Tenoctris, but he had plenty of experience with making holes in solid objects.

Garric judged the balance of the stone bench planted in front of the tomb. He knelt and used the strength of his legs to lift the seat off its two supports. He didn't know what the slab weighed. Enough, he expected; and if the wall took more than one blow, well, it'd get whatever was required.

Tenoctris stepped out of the way as Garric waddled forward with his battering ram. The old woman looked impressed as she watched him.

Garric took a last step, swinging the bench with the strength of his shoulders in addition to his forward momentum. The blunt stone hammer hit squarely over the window opening. The frame and wall disintegrated in an avalanche of smashed bricks and old mortar.

The crashing destruction was muted by the soundless weight of Benlo's invocation. The wizard's lips continued to move without missing a beat.

The bench stuck halfway through the crumbling wall. Garric shoved the end sideways, levering bricks away. He jerked the slab clear, then crawled into the room shimmering with azure magic.

The wizard's silent thunder paused, though the pressure of unseen forces continued to squeeze Garric. He couldn't imagine how they felt to Tenoctris, who understood them the way Garric understood a towering storm-tossed wave.

Benlo turned his head. All the strength left Garric's limbs. He sprawled on the pile of shattered rubble, choking on mortar dust but unable even to override reflex and hold his breath. His outflung hand touched Liane's arm. Her flesh was as hard as the bricks beneath him.

Benlo extended his hand toward Garric's head. His thumb and fingers were spread like a crab's pincer. Blue flame crackled between the fingertips.

Mazzona sat up behind the wizard. Her chest swelled and she screamed, "Help! Help!"

Benlo turned. "Mazzona!" he said.

Still seated, the mummy backed awkwardly to the far wall. There was a look of horror on Mazzona's pinched face. "Help!" she screamed again. "This monster's killing my daughter! Help!"

"Mazzona my love," Benlo said. He reached out toward his wife. Garric still couldn't move, but he felt the hidden pressure draining from the tomb.

"Monster!" Mazzona cried. She was trying to stand, but there wasn't quite enough strength in her mummified arms to lift her up the wall. "Loathsome monster!"

"My love..." Benlo said in a liquid voice that blurred out on the final syllable. The blue radiance faded quickly, like water draining through a hole in a bucket.

The mummified woman stiffened, then slumped sideways. Her right hand broke off as her body fell.

The corpse Benlo wore remained standing for a few moments more. Patches of blue mold spread across the cheeks like fire in dry grass; a stench of corruption filled the narrow room. Weeks of deferred dissolution were taking place in a matter of seconds.

His eyeballs began to drip. The corpse fell onto its face, no longer animated by Benlo's soul. The flesh squelched wetly as it hit the floor.

"May the Shepherd guide him safe," Garric whispered. He knew he was physically able to get up now, but he wasn't mentally ready.

He hadn't much cared for Benlo when he was a living man. As a dead soul inhabiting another man's corpse, the wizard was terrifying. Garric had been able to function only because he had to function, had to act to save Liane and probably Tenoctris despite his fear. To save his friends.

But no human being really deserved the fate that Benlo had brought on himself.

Liane's arm quivered. Her chest rose and fell again.

She was alive.

Garric scrambled to his feet. His muscles prickled as though he'd been sitting in a way that cut off circulation, but full feeling was coming back.

"He was going to transfer his wife's spirit to Liane's body," Tenoctris said softly. She was still outside the tomb. "That's why he had to have Liane. The link between mother and daughter was necessary, even for a wizard as powerful as Benlo. Even for the part of Benlo that remained."

Liane murmured as if she were having a bad dream. Her hands opened and closed.

Garric looked at the old woman. "Don't tell her that," he said. The steel in his voice surprised him. "She doesn't need to know."

"No," Tenoctris said. "She doesn't need to know."

Garric unbarred the door and opened it, then picked up Liane. He needed to get out of this room. He needed to get away from the stench, both physical and spiritual, of what had happened here.

"He was so powerful," Tenoctris said. "It was all I could do just to redirect the forces he'd raised. To nudge them aside by the slightest degree. It was like standing in a millrace...."

She touched the lock on the wicket gate; it clanked open. The door of the groundskeeper's shed gave onto the grounds of the main property, not the alcove of which it was a part. Garric carried Liane into the ivy-bordered alley, leaving both gates ajar behind him. A watchman holding a halberd crosswise at waist height eyed them from near the house. Tenoctris bowed to the man and followed Garric out.

Liane stirred. The old woman put her hand on the girl's forehead. Garric couldn't tell whether the gesture was wizardry or normal human kindness.

Liane opened her eyes and said, "Garric? Am I alive?"

Garric set Liane on her feet, keeping his hold around the girl's shoulders until they were both sure her legs would support her. "I guess you are," he said. "There was a while I wouldn't have bet on it."

"Who was the man who attacked us?" Liane asked. Her voice had a distant quality. Either the girl was still feeling the effects of her captivity or the cool demeanor was her conscious attempt to keep from screaming.

Garric looked toward Tenoctris for an answer. The old woman was staring intently at the sky to the south of them.

"Oh!" she said in embarrassment. "The creature that attacked you, Liane...that was a ghoul of sorts, haunting tombs. He's dead now, gone forever."

She shook herself, then sighed. "Something is happening near the palace," she said. "Something very serious."

She gave Liane a smile of tired affection. Garric realized that his lifting the stone bench was nothing compared to the effort this frail old woman must have expended to defeat the greater wizard.

"Liane," Tenoctris said, "the creature who attacked you was acting on his own, at least there at the end. The activities of the Hooded One and those of a rival of his are separate; and one or both are going on nearby."

Liane forced a smile. "Those are what we came to deal with," she said. She noticed Garric's frown and added with a touch of anger, "I'm all right! It's there we'll learn who sent my father to Haft and his death, won't we?"

"We may indeed," Tenoctris said. She put her arm around Liane's and began walking toward the climax of forces which her wizard's mind saw reflected in the sky.

Garric walked on Liane's other side; glad of the presence of his sword, gladder still to have his companions.

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