The Witches of Wenshar by Barbara Hambly

Author:Barbara Hambly [Hambly, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453216804
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2011-10-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

“THE DEMONS WERE THERE. I know, I saw them.”

“Are you saying you think they did it?” Incarsyn asked from his place on Osgard’s left.

Nanciormis sneered, “Don’t be an ass, man.”

Osgard’s bloodshot green eyes narrowed. “If you saw them, they couldn’t have been demons, Captain. Demons are...”

“Invisible,” Sun Wolf finished, slouching back in his black oak chair at the fireplace end of the High Table and studying the three men facing him across the length of the dark board. “I know.” Through the line of tall southern windows the sun slanted in hard bars of horizontal gold, but around them, the Fortress of Tandieras was unwontedly quiet. Not until sunup would any man or woman of the guards venture into the empty quarter to fetch forth Egaldus’ remains, but the rumor had swept the place like a chaparral fire after a dry summer. Sun Wolf could hear the murmur of it, breathing like wind in the corners of the servants’ halls; he could feel the silence as he or Kaletha passed.

He went on, “I don’t know why I’ve always been able to see them, but I have. It may come of being mageborn...”

“Kaletha can’t,” Nanciormis pointed out promptly. “Nor, to the best of my knowledge, can...” He just barely broke off the word Tazey at a furious glare from the King.

“It is said among my people,” Incarsyn put in, “that those who can see demons do so because they are themselves demon-spawned.”

“That’s rubbish,” the King snapped.

“So there are those among you who can do it?” Sun Wolf asked thoughtfully, raking the Lord of the Dunes with his single golden eye.

The young man nodded, but he didn’t look comfortable about the whole subject. Since yesterday, he had the pale, shaken appearance of one in the grip of some heavy and unaccustomed thinking.

At Osgard’s invitation, the Lord of the Dunes had come to this council, but Sun Wolf, feeling the subpulse of politics between the three men, sensed that the request had been a false one. He had sat there through Sun Wolf’s recital of his second investigation of the empty quarter last night and of the finding of what was left of Egaldus’ body, looking handsome and exotic and a little puzzled in his gold-stitched tunic and snowy cloak. Neither Nanciormis nor Osgard had much to ask him—he was there simply, Sun Wolf guessed, to remind him that he was still pledged to become Osgard’s son-in-law, no matter what afterthoughts might be now churning through his mind.

Nanciormis said, “In any case it’s foolish to believe it was demons. They are incapable of harming man.”

“Not necessarily,” the Wolf said. “There have been biting-demons, stone-throwers...”

“But certainly none capable of doing that kind of damage.”

Incarsyn folded one white hand upon the other and appeared to study for a moment the circle of glinting fire thrown by the facets of his ruby ring. Then he looked up again. “Among my people, it was said that such things happened to those who ran afoul of the Witches of Wenshar.

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