Still wearing that terrible grin, Halonter swung his sword in a deft arc that severed a row of fresh, unlit candles and the neck of one of Marlin’s oldest decanters, slicing it without shattering the vessel or toppling it.
Marlin shivered at the thought of how sharp the ghost’s blade must be.
“No, I couldn’t,” he answered himself shakily.
“No,” Halonter hissed, “you couldn’t.”
He took a menacing step forward, until he was against the table and Marlin could smell Halonter’s faint, acrid reek. Like soured wine and a mix of many spices.
“More fool you,” the ghost added, shoving the table forward.
It might well have pinned Marlin painfully against his best sideboard, but fortunately for the noble, a stone replica of a figurehead of a long-ago Stormserpent ship flanked the piece, massive and solid and as immobile as the wall behind it. The table struck it and could be shoved no farther.
With a snarl the ghost spun around and stalked away, across the room.
“Relve!” he spat. “How did he fare?”
“I-I-”
Stammering in dread, Marlin had gotten no farther by the time the wall Halonter had come through glowed blue again-a dark, feeble blue-that became the hunched-over, staggering Relve Langral.
The second ghost’s flames were weak, flickering shadows, and he looked as if he’d lost a brawl with a cleaver-wielding butcher. Or three.
“You,” he snarled at Marlin, “sent me up against some sort of mighty phantom! A mistress of the blade, or lady master of the blade, or whatever the tluin one calls a woman who can make her sword dance and pirouette and pour stlarning wine for her! Her sword was part of her-its touch seared me! She could fly; she could fade away; it was all I could stlarned well do to parry! Send me no more to fight proud ghost princesses in their very palaces! Bah!”
He lashed out with his sword, but the slash that should have shattered a row of unopened, expensive bottles of vintages from afar sliced only empty air as his leg gave way. Langral staggered helplessly sideways and crashed to Marlin’s carpet.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Marlin gabbled desperately, rushing to help the fallen rogue-but halting abruptly as Halonter thrust out his blade warningly.
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Use us wisely,” Halonter hissed. “Less often. And not soon. We both need time to heal.”
“You can heal in-in here?” Marlin burst out, waving the Chalice.
Halonter gave him a long and silent look that clashed in its naked balefulness with his wide and tireless smile.
Marlin shrank back from him, then scuttled to the side door and through it into his robing room, hurriedly shoving a chair to block the closed door. From behind it, he began forcing the two blueflame ghosts back into their items.
Halonter said not a word but never stopped glaring. From the floor, Relve became hissingly, profanely hostile.
It was not until they were both gone, and Marlin was standing alone and drenched with sweat, that he realized what had frightened him most of all.
Both ghosts had been deeply scared.
Well, so was he.
“I must flee Suzail,” he told the room around him, grimly. “Right now.”
Kicking the chair aside, he strode back to the table, set the Chalice on it, then stormed around the room plucking up things he’d need.
“Weathercloak, lantern, coins in plenty, spare dagger, my old hunting boots rather than these stylish things…”
The King’s Forest came into his head. Yes, that’s where he’d go.
Even now, when all the lords who mattered were here in Suzail and the fate of the realm on a carving platter in their midst.
Yes, he was going.
Why? Because, stlarn it, he was afraid.
Lady Glathra’s glare flashed before him, then Halonter’s baleful look, then the weight of the dark and evil will that had ridden his mind so often…
“I’m stlarned well fearful for good reason,” he snarled aloud, striding back to the table to stare down at what he’d accumulated.
Oh, he’d need a royal warrant to get the city gates opened, by night. Good thing his father had been of the generation who thought every noble House should bribe courtiers for a handful of the things, in case of future need.
The warrants were yonder, hidden in the drawer on the underside of the little Amnian table, with the-yes-poisoned daggers he’d probably also need.
Ah! He’d be lighting that lantern how, exactly? Flints and strikers, the ones that adorned their own tinderbox. After all, he’d have no servants to call on, out there in the forest.
The forest. Where in the forest?
He could hardly go to the Stormserpent hunting lodge. The moment Glathra’s wolves found him missing from home, that’s where they’d go looking.
No, it would have to be another lodge he knew, one where he’d be less likely to be found.
Which meant a place belonging to one of his admittedly few friends, his band of fellow traitors.
Windstag.
Given his wounds, the stain he’d brought on himself hunting the hand axe, and his vanity, Windstag wouldn’t be setting foot barefaced outside the gates of Staghaven House for days. Which meant he wouldn’t be using his lodge for some time, being as no other living Windstag had any stomach at all for hunting.
That’s where he’d go.
But not alone. Not in those wild reaches. Not when the king’s foresters might well treat him as badly as any desperate outlaw with a sharp knife.
He’d take three of his men, the best bodyguards left that he could trust.
As much as he could trust anyone, of course.
And wearing the wry and bitter grin that thought brought to his lips, Marlin hastened out of the room with his bundle, seeking saddlebags.
After all, he’d also be taking the four fastest horses.
“One spell too many,” El muttered as Storm wearily lay down atop him again and took hold of his chin-Rune’s smooth chin-in both hands to press and keep their foreheads together.
Their minds sank into each other in the familiar melting… and the healing began anew. Neither of them wanted to notice how dark and tired Storm’s mind was.
“Always the grand gesture,” she hissed, her breath holding a hint of cinammon. “The one last touch. The magic too far.”
“ ’Tis important, Stormy One,” he replied. “The right impression can save a dozen battles, or more. Cow thy enemies-”
“Yes, yes, I know.” She sighed. “Just cow them with fewer castings next time, hey?”
“I will, love,” he murmured. “Or ye’ll be the one staggering and falling, I know.”
Storm murmured something wordless and contented against him, her mind warming in a flare of pleasure.
El wondered very briefly what he’d said to cause that reaction… and then forgot it along with everything else, as the healing reached the stage where he always slid into oblivion.
Wonderful oblivion…