Lily was like a puppet dancing to the tune of a demented puppeteer. She moved and spoke and performed not of her own violation. She had no will of her own, except deep down where she was pounding at the walls of her own mind and body that imprisoned her. He invaded her with no regard for anything but his own hunger, plundered her memory to take what he wanted. She had no defenses against him. She was not trained to keep unwanted attentions from within the sanctity of her own mind. He had never done it to her before. He'd never had to. She had always been tractable and subservient. Always the perfect, obedient slave. She'd never had anything to hide, so he'd never had the need to rip her open and take what he wanted. She did now.
So many cherished things. She had no notion what he gleaned from her. She had no way of knowing what he left untouched and what he sifted through. He did it with such contemptible ease that she would hardly have know he was there, if he hadn't wanted her to know. If he hadn't taken pleasure in her active knowledge of the violation. He hated her now. She saw it in his eyes. Hate along with something else. Madness that had not been there before. She feared for her friends, that he would harm them merely because they were close to her. But he seemed to care less about the minstrel's. He made them blithely unaware of his existence, even though they passed him a dozen times.
He blanked a part of her mind, everything but the parts it took to perform -- to dance -- and she did so with all the skills available to her. One of her best performances someone - maybe Dell - said. Yoko appeared out of the crowd to catch at her arm, mouthing words of concern. She stared, hopeless and speechless, until something took over her mouth and words that were not her own spouted out. She spun away and left Yoko looking surprised and hurt. Went upstairs where it was dark and quiet and just collapsed into her blankets as if her strings had been cut.
She lay there, the only control she had over her body, the tears that leaked from the corner of her eyes. She had to stop this. She had to find some way to break out of this manipulation. She had to warn Kall-Su. She had to do something -- but gods how could she break free from the Master?
He came upstairs not long after her. She heard his slow passage. He was so changed. So old looking now. How had a man who looked no more than forty aged so quickly in so short a time? He crouched over her, not touching her, breathing hard and furious.
"He was here. Did you see him? That demonspawn. And that little trollop, Yoko. She'll pay for betraying me when I kill him. Do you know what I offered her? That bitch? She chose him!! She chose him over the prophet to the one god. I'll see her burn in hell. But not before he goes first. "
He wasn't talking to her really. He was rambling, demented and irate. Fine. Let him focus on his hatred of Schneider and Yoko. Let him forget the other things. But no --
"Its almost that time, isn't it, girl? When you'll sneak out to meet him. When all that's on your mind is fornication -- you dirty little whore." A sly smile spread over his lined face. He bent close. "Perhaps if you play your part well, I'll reward you. When I possess that body you lust after, I'll come to you and give you one last taste of sin before I send you to hell with the rest of my enemies. You can look into those beautiful eyes and imagine its him. But it won't be."
He laughed and she couldn't even get out the sob of terror that lodged beneath her heart.
Kall-Su had not been able to concentrate since Schneider had asked him if he wanted to go and see Lily sing. It had been a malicious request at best. Schneider was prodding for reaction and how he had gotten on the scent to begin with was mystifying. Schneider had the habit of seeming indifference, which generally hid a too keen perception. One had to be careful around him, lest he shake all the secrets from the rafters like so much dust.
He couldn't read the book anymore, all he was doing was staring at the same page, glossing over words that didn't make sense. He closed it and put it away. He went downstairs to the hall where a few folk had gathered after dinner to while away the time. Gara and Arshes Nei were at the end of the high table, engrossed in conversation regarding men of hers and his left in the eastern mountains. Of the logistics of traveling back, of the best route from here. Of supplies and mounts and the disposition of the southern alliance at their reappearance.
It was depressing, the talk of their exodus. He had never particularly striven after their company, even when they had been campaigning together. He had always distanced himself from getting to close, cleaving dearly to the reputation he had made for himself as Ice Lord. Ruthless and cold and unapproachable. The only regard he had ever actively sought was Schneider's and that had been a fickle regard at best. It was better now. A boundary had been crossed -- he didn't know where exactly -- that had changed things. Aside from that one terrible month, this winter had been -- agreeable. The castle was warmer than it had ever been and that had nothing to do with the addition of rugs and tapestries and cushions for all the benches.
He would miss Gara's bluster and unrefined good cheer. He would even miss Arshes with her cold sarcasm and her disdain which always had the flavor of sibling rivalry. He didn't want to think about Schneider's plans and he very badly did not want to think about the intangible thing that pulled Lily away and what that would mean when it happened.
He must have looked disconsolate, because Gara looked up at him and frowned and asked what was wrong. He shook his head, denying that anything was. Pushing maudlin thoughts away.
"When do you think you'll leave?" he asked to detour the subject.
"Next few weeks maybe. Some of my men are staying. A few of them have made attachments to local girls. I encouraged them not to break them if they're serious."
"They'll find places in my service." Kall promised.
"I'd stay if I thought this bandit thing was going to heat up, but it looks like its going to stew for a long while. No reason to sit around and wait for them to creep down out of the tundra. Not that you can't handle it by yourself, but I wouldn't have minded sinking my teeth into it. They got my ire up with that stunt, let me tell you."
"Of course." He agreed tonelessly.
Gara kept frowning at him. "If you need my services you just call, you know that."
He inclined his head, wanting to drift away outside, maybe walk about the gardens that were beginning to come into early summer growth. It would be as good a means as any to while away the time until he could go and meet Lily.
The stars were out in blatant brilliance. It was a fine, quiet night. Any activity within the yard that surrounded the castle was centered either about the main gates where the barracks and stables were located or around the kitchen, which seemed to never completely shut down. There were so few folk who cared about the gardens. He hardly did, except for an occasional place out of doors to find solitude. He supposed there was a gardener on staff, for the hedges had been trimmed and the weeds trimmed on regular basis. Someone had to be doing it. It struck him as odd, to think that he had people working for him and he didn't even know what jobs they did, much less their faces. He barely took the interest to remember the faces of the main castle staff. He was better with the faces of the men at arms, but only those that had been with him for years. He had become over time, isolated and reclusive, spending far more time fending off alliances than building them. Tonight's morose musings on upcoming departures only drove home how very isolated a world he had made for himself. It was safe though. So much safer not to feel, than to feel and be hurt when the things he became attached to went away. And they always did.
Time to seek Lily. He fastened the buttons of the loose, silken house jacket, ever articulate in the face he presented the world. He left the grounds, silent as a whisper and with none the wiser. Set foot to ground in the circle beyond the inn where she stayed. There was a stable on one side and a series of shops, closed for the night around the others. In the center a low stone fountain that had presumably not worked for years dominated the circle. The stable used it to water its charges. The stars lit the cobbles fairly well, but there were still shadows clinging to the buildings.
Whether she wanted to or not, he would press her for an answer to the question of whether she would stay or go, tonight. It was too much of a burning need for him to know to let it lie any longer.
He did not see her immediately after he'd landed. He searched the shadows for her, taking a few steps into the circle towards the fountain. She might have been delayed in the tavern. The business might have been so good that the tavern owner prolonged his hours and insisted the minstrels play longer.
But then he saw her. She stepped out of the shadows of a furrier's shop. Slim and graceful, she moved into the starlight and stood staring at him across the distance of the circle. The fountain was between them. He moved around it, since she had stopped. She held herself stiffly, her head high, her dark eyes shadows that the starlight could not penetrate.
Something was wrong, he thought and on the heels of that, the presumption that she had made her choice, that she had decided finally that she would not stay here. He faltered, not particularly eager to confirm that suspicion.
"Lily?" he asked, uncertainly, because she made no move to speak or step closer to him. "Are you all right?"
A breath. Two and he thought her hands were trembling. "Yes. I'm fine." She said finally, haltingly. Something glinted in the fey light. A tear that gathered at the corner of her eye and threatened to spill. Concerned, he stepped forward.
Movement caught his eye. The tapping of a wooden cane upon cobblestone. An old man moved out of the shadows. Thin and gray haired, face so gouged by lines that it was a latticework of shadow. He stopped behind Lily, laid one hand upon her shoulder under the fall of her dark hair. A familiar touch. Kall-Su stared, confused. He knew her minstrel friends by sight, but not this old man. The old man leaned and seemed to whisper something in her ear. She did not flinch from it, or take her eyes from Kall.
He was affronted by it. By this unexpected intrusion that she allowed. By the whisper that spoke of secrets shared that he was on the outside of. If she was playing some game, it was beyond him.
"Lily, what is this? Who is this?"
The old man lifted his eyes and the starlight revealed a sharp, predatory gaze. "Don't you remember me, Kall-Su?"
He blinked, the eyes, the smooth sibilance of the voice bringing simultaneous blows of recognition. The Prophet.
Before he had even drawn a shocked breath he was throwing up shields and something was slamming against them. No magic that even tickled the air in the circle, but the insidious mental kind of assault that the Prophet was so good at. No time to think how he had gotten here. How he had entwined Lily in his web. He could not let the pounding of his heart, or the fear that he couldn't quite dam, distract him. Something slipped past his mental shields as if they were water, and visions of darkness and torment blinded him. He reeled, staggered back and felt the stone of the fountain against his thighs.
No. Force it out. Don't crumble. Oh, please, please don't crumble. He summoned power, mouthed the desperate words to a spell and the energy crackled in the air around him.
"It will kill her before it kills me, boy." Those hated lips sneered. Those skeletal hands tightened around Lily and she stood passively, numbly in the grasp. He hadn't even thought, in his panic. He would have cast that spell and obliterated her and it probably would not have been enough to take out the Prophet.
He felt the magic that ensnared her now. There was no effort to hide it. The same mind magic that was trying to worm its way inside his head. Familiar, crawling fingers that he loathed. He tried to shake them off, tried to regain a portion of control.
"Let her go." He hissed, voice low and trembling. Trying to think of something to do that would separate her from him. He didn't trust his own ability to deal with this. To his core he was shaken and fear and magic did not always make stable bedfellows. Summon Schneider, then. Anyway he could. A blast of power would do it. Something loud enough to alert anyone magic sensitive that something was afoot.
"I don't want her." The Prophet said.
Kall-Su knew that. He pulled the power that had dissipated back down around him. Angelo shook his head.
"She'll die. And it will be by your hand. I'll channel any energy that is released in this circle through her, whether it be your spell or mine, she'll be the conduit. There'll be nothing left of simple mortal flesh to revive."
It was possible, since he was in contact with her that he could do such a thing. He looked at her face. Her eyes had a bit more life to them now. Frantic and huge. Do it. She mouthed the words. Then, struggling to break free of the will that held her she whispered.
"Do it, Kall."
"She'll die for you. How noble." Angelo sneered. "Will you kill her? Or shall I?"
Something static and lethal gathered about Angelo and Lily. She stiffened, as magic induced pain seared her nerves.
"No." Kall-Su cried.
"Drop the shields, then. They're stronger than I remembered. You impress me."
"No." Lily was shaking her head. Tears streamed down her cheeks. "Please no."
He needed her gone from here. He needed her not to be a barrier between him and the Prophet. Distract the vile creature then. He knew the best way to do that. He knew very well, what passions drove this man. He bowed his head in capitulation, let his shields drop, one by one, shuddering in horror that he was doing it at all.
Not a second was wasted. The Prophet slammed into him with all his considerable mental abilities. Flooded his mind with all the things he had used to shatter him months before, found all the weaknesses and used them to rip him asunder. He screamed, folding to his knees, doubling over and clutching at his head as if it might explode. Vaguely he heard Lily scream with him. Vaguely he thought he saw Angelo let her go and take a step towards him. He flung out shields unexpectedly, putting them not on himself, but on her. He threw every bit of power his scattered wits could find onto that protection, breaking the hold the Prophet had over her.
Angelo realized it. Hissed in irritation and threw out a hand to cast a spell on her.
"Run." Kall-Su screamed at her, keeping those shields upon her and when she hesitated, staring at him as if she were thinking about stubbornly refusing to flee, he flung out his own arm and summoned a wind that picked her up bodily and flung her out of the circle and tumbled her none too gently on the street beyond it. He started to bring something more dangerous down upon Angelo, but the man lashed out with the end of his staff and caught him on the side of the head with it. That was as disorienting as the mental violation. He curled on his side on the cobblestones, blood leaking from his ear, concentrating on keeping up the protections on Lily while the pain thrummed noisily inside his head.
The air hummed with the release of a spell. The heat of it made the night air shimmer. A high impact fireball spell. He heard her scream even before it hit her. Felt it impact shields of his making and felt them shudder. If it got through she wouldn't have the magical reserves to recover. Please, please let the shields hold. He didn't know whether they did or did not. Angelo turned back to him, muttering curses. The air shimmered and seemed to tear behind the Prophet. The man stepped towards him, cane raised as if to strike. Kall drew in a hissed breath and called down the quickest, easiest strike he could. A fist of energy formed in the air above their heads and slammed down towards the Prophet. But the man wasn't there. The rip in space slipped forward and swallowed him a moment before it arched down and consumed Kall-Su.
The blast hit the cobbles and blasted out a pit as wide as a man and half as deep. Somewhere a dog barked at the disturbance. No one was in the circle to hear it.
Lily slammed into the corner of a building, screaming as a comet of fire obliterated her. She held up her hands, squeezing her eyes shut, expecting burning, horrible pain and discovering nothing but a warmth that was uncomfortable but not unbearable. She fell to her knees as it dissipated, scrambling mindlessly to the dark cover of an alley, not at the moment thinking of anything but escape. She sat there, huddled against piles of trash from the tavern, sobbing, chest hurting from a terror that had resided there for too long. But her mind, even numb with fear, was hers again.
There was a loud crack of impact from outside the ally, then silence. Profound silence. She lowered her head into her hands, pulling at her hair in misery. What had she, in her weakness, wrought? The fool. The great fool, to have sacrificed himself for her. She climbed unsteadily to her feet and staggered out of the alley, pausing cautiously at the corner to see if Angelo still waited to destroy her. But he wasn't there. And Kall-Su wasn't. There was only a crater beyond the fountain, from which smoke trailed lazily upwards.
Oh, gods, gods, no. She stood swaying, tears streaming down her face. Devastation hit her like a fist. She stumbled against a wall from it. She did not doubt, for one second that the Master could and would do what he had promised. He was so powerful. So invasive and he had already broken Kall-Su once. Had already been on the verge of taking what he wanted. She screamed into the night, a wail of desperation and denial. Of loss, because Lily could not conceive of how it could be stopped.
"I said no." Yoko primly crossed her arms and searched about for her sewing, which sat in a basket by the fire. She was being unreasonable. Schneider was becoming irritated with her.
"You were the one that wanted to go there, tonight." He said sulkily. "Don't blame me if things didn't turn out like you wanted."
"I'm not. I'm just not in the mood tonight." She turned irate amber eyes towards him, ready to spar. She said something else, but he hardly caught it, attention drawn elsewhere.
The skin on the back of his hands tingled. There was the thrumming awareness of a fair amount of energy being released and not far away. So close in fact that he could almost sense the heat of it. A fire spell. A high impact, focused fireball spell. Arshes was the only wizard in the city other than himself, capable of that particular spell, but he knew the flavor of her magic as well as he knew his own, and it didn't taste of her. But it was vaguely familiar. Then on the heels of the first a second, non-elemental strike that boomed through the city like thunder. The windows rattled. Yoko jumped up, startled.
"Damnit." He hissed. He did know the signature of that casting. The sure premonition of disaster reared up within him. That first spell. That first spell -- he had felt its aroma before. He whipped out a hand and the window, along with the wall around it exploded outwards. Her was out of it before the glass and stone had even hit the ground. Flying low over the city, homing in on the dissipating pulse of energies.
Nothing more. Not a single whisper of magic. But the impact zone still radiated it. Not a block down from the very tavern he and Yoko had been earlier that evening People crowded the street in confusion. The wall of a building smoldered, burnt and charred. Beyond that was a cul-de-sac with a blasted out crater in its center. Water leaked over the cobblestones, the wall of a large fountain ruptured and spilling all its contents. The crater was already a quarter full of dark water. Other than that, it was empty, people only just starting to creep closer to see what had happened.
"Where the hell are you?" He touched ground, creating a powerful witchlight that chased the shadows away. It hovered over his head like a thing alive and the folk who had been edging closer to the circle gasped and surged backwards. Except for one figure, who broke though the bewildered people and rushed headlong towards him. He almost blasted her backwards out of hand, high strung and having damned, damned unnerving suspicions about that first spell. But he recognized her. Recognized the lingering traces of magic upon her. Familiar benign magic.
She almost slammed into him, slipping on the wet cobblestones, clutched at the sleeve of his shirt with desperate fingers. She was crying and hyperventilating so badly that he could hardly interpret her babbling.
"G--ggods! Y-y-you've g-g-ot to h-help him. I-it's m-m-my fault. My fault. I c-c-ouldn't s-stop it."
He caught hold of her shoulders hard enough to hurt and shook her. Her head snapped back and forth like a dolls. She kept trying frantically to grab at him. "What happened?" he demanded. "Tell me what happened?"
"M-m-master." She got out and seemed to shrivel in upon herself with that proclamation. He stared at her. Pushed her away and cursed. He'd know it. He'd damn well known that spell aura.
"Where the fuck is Kall?" He stabbed a finger at her, accusing her, ready to tear her apart if she had been responsible for something happening to him.
"I don't know." She whimpered. "Gone. Gone."
He took a threatening step towards her. "What do you mean it was your fault?"
"Darshe -- no." Arshes came up behind him. He hadn't even realized she'd arrived. She had a naked sword in her hands and was half dressed at best. "She wouldn't have hurt him. Give her a chance to explain."
He glared at her interference. It was hard to back down, the rage and the dread had his blood at the boiling point. The girl was cowering, looking miserable and guilty. Arshes laid a hand on his arm, carefully. He took a breath and backed up a step to distance himself. Arshes stepped around the edge of the crater, bent down nest to the girl and asked in a low, gentle voice.
"Calm down, Lily. Hysterics will gain us nothing. Breath. And tell us what happened?"