The Black Raven. Katharine Kerr

sunset light Loc Vaedd gleamed, a green jewel set in snow. Evandar took another step and found himself standing on Citadel’s peak among the wind-twisted trees, the highest point of Cerr Cawnen, a city of circles. In the middle stood the rocky peak of Citadel Island. Around it stretched the blue-green lake, fed by hot springs and thus free of ice even in the dead of winter. At the edge of the lake on crannogs and shore stood the tangled houses of the city proper, while around them ran a huge circle of stone walls, where the town militia guarded shut gates. Just the summer before, Cerr Cawnen had received a warning that the savage Horsekin tribes of the far north were on the move, and such warnings were best attended to.

      In fact, even though the town drowsed in blessed ignorance, a human being lived among them who spied for the Horsekin. Some twenty feet below Evandar’s perch, on the east side of Citadel’s peak a tunnel mouth gaped among tumbled chunks of stone and broken masonry. It led to an ancient temple, cracked and half-buried by an earthquake a long while previous. Evandar started to go down, but he saw the spy – Raena, her name was – climbing up the path from the town below. He stepped back into the trees to avoid her. Even though she was young and pretty in a fleshy sort of way, she walked bent over like an old woman as she struggled up the slope in her long cloak. When at the tunnel mouth she paused to pull her dark hair back from her face, Evandar could see the livid marks like bruises under her eyes and the pallor of her skin. Quite possibly Shaetano was using her as wood to fuel his fires even as she thought she was using him to serve her Horsekin masters.

      Raena climbed down into the tunnel. Evandar waited a long moment, then shrank his form and turned himself into a large black dog. His nails clicked on stone as he followed her in. After a few yards the tunnel turned dark enough to hide him, but ahead, through the big split in the wall that formed the entrance to the temple room, he could see the silver glow of Raena’s dweomer light. He stopped to one side of the narrow entrance and listened, head cocked to one side, ears pricked, long tongue lolling. At first he heard nothing but Raena’s voice, chanting in a long wail and rise; then Shaetano joined her, speaking in the dialect of the Rhiddaer.

      ‘What would you have of me, O my priestess?’

      ‘To worship thee, Lord Havoc, O great one, and beg for knowledge.’

      Evandar growled, then let himself expand until he could take back his normal elven form.

      ‘All my knowledge shall be yours,’ Shaetano was saying. ‘What wouldst thou learn?’

      ‘One riddle does make my heart burn within me. Where does she dwell now, my Alshandra? Why will she not come to me again? Why has she deserted me, my own true goddess, she whom I worship above all other gods?’

      ‘Ah, this be a matter most recondite and admirable. Far far beyond what you would call the world does she dwell, in an ineffable refulgence.’

      Evandar stepped through the opening. Dressed all in black, one arm raised in a dramatic flourish, Shaetano stood before a kneeling Raena.

      ‘You might at least speak clearly,’ Evandar remarked. ‘How is the poor woman supposed to understand nonsense like that?’

      Raena screamed. Shaetano’s form wavered, as if he were about to step onto a Mother-road and disappear, then held steady as he held his ground. Evandar turned to Raena with a sigh.

      ‘She never was a goddess, woman!’ Evandar snapped. ‘And now she’s dead. You were there, you saw her die.’

      ‘I saw naught of the sort!’ Raena scrambled to her feet. ‘She did but return to her own country. And she be a goddess. I do ken this deep in my heart, you stinking blasphemer! And she lives, I do ken that she lives still. Who are you, that lies like maggots fall from your lips?’

      ‘I am Lord Harmony,’ Evandar said to her. ‘And your Lord Havoc is my brother. Flee this place! Leave us!’

      Raena hesitated. Evandar raised a hand and called down the blue etheric fire, leaping and flashing at his fingertips. Raena squealed, then edged past him to squeeze through the entrance. He could hear her footsteps as she dashed down the tunnel. When he turned back, Shaetano was leaning insolently against the wall, arms crossed over his chest. In the shifting silver light he looked very like a fox in man’s clothing. Russet hair sprouted from his face; his ears stood up sharply on the top of his head; his nose was black and shiny. Only his eyes were fully elven, a shifting gold and green.

      ‘More and more you become your avatar, brother,’ Evandar said.

      Shaetano swore. For a moment his image wavered; when it stabilized, his ears had migrated back to the sides of his head, and his skin was smooth, with only a roach of red hair pluming on his skull. His shiny black nose, however, seemed permanently fox, twitching a little in the cold damp air.

      ‘That’s better,’ Evandar said. ‘Now then, I want a word with you. Though I’ll admit to being surprised you’ll stay and listen to it.’

      ‘You can’t kill me. Don’t you remember what you said, that day upon the battle plain? You and I were born joined. You were the candle flame and I the shadow it cast? Well, elder brother,’ Shaetano paused for a smile, ‘if you kill me, who knows what will happen to you?’

      ‘Here! How do you know that? I was talking with Dalla, and you were long gone by then.’

      ‘I have my ways.’ He curled a hand that was more like a paw and smiled at his black claws. ‘And my allies.’

      ‘Ah, I see. Your little raven was spying even then, was she? Very well. Say it I did. You learn your lessons well.’

      ‘And haven’t you been my most excellent teacher?’ Again that smug smile. ‘So talk away. What is it that you want with me now? I’ll listen, though I may not answer.’

      Evandar restrained the impulse to strangle him there and then, even if his own neck twisted.

      ‘Ask I shall,’ Evandar said aloud. ‘What are you doing to this woman, pretending to be a god and filling her head with portentous words?’

      ‘Doing to her? She’s grateful. She begs me for knowledge.’

      ‘And did she beg you to kill young Demet the weaver’s son?’

      Shaetano winced and looked down at the floor.

      ‘I didn’t mean to do that. Truly! He came bursting in here with a sword in his hand and iron cloth all over his chest. It stung me like fire. I was half-mad from it.’

      ‘And you did what?’

      ‘I just wanted to make him go away.’ Shaetano’s voice slipped and wavered. ‘I shoved him, and the iron stung me, and so I threw him back against the wall.’ He looked up, and his eyes gleamed green in the silver witch-light. ‘I didn’t know how hard. His head – it hit the stone.’

      ‘Why wasn’t there a mark on him then, where his skull got smashed?’

      Caught in his lie Shaetano snarled and flung up both hands. Evandar crossed his arms over his chest and merely looked at him. In a moment Shaetano looked down.

      ‘I don’t know how I killed him. I did somewhat, I waved my hands at him because of the stinking iron. And rage flew out, and somehow his life – it spilled away.’

      ‘What did this rage look like?’

      ‘Naught. I mean, it wasn’t a thing you could see. But he screamed and flung himself back and – and died.’

      ‘You truly don’t know what killed him?’

      ‘I don’t.’ Shaetano looked up, and suddenly he snarled again. ‘Oh, and what’s it to you?’

      ‘My heart aches for his young widow. Little Niffa. She mourns him every day still.’

      Shaetano stared at him, his mouth half-open. White fangs gleamed.

      ‘What’s this, younger brother?’ Evandar said with a grin. ‘I see the word grief means naught to you. Let me tell you an interesting thing. I now know a great many things that you