"By the gods, why did you do that, Tayva?" she demanded as she reached desperately for wine to dull her pain. "We weren't nearly done with Uncle. And why did you let Tomaya expire so soon?"
"I didn't allow anything to happen!" Tayva exclaimed as she too rose and reached for wine. She was even more unsteady than her cousin, and she cursed the decision that left this room without any chairs. "I don't know what happened!"
More screams sounded throughout the house. Tayva reached down to Tomaya's cooling body and wrenched the knife from her dead hand. Loria squared her shoulders and gestured to the open door.
"We need to find out what is happening. Ebnezzer should still be in the west wing." The pair climbed a wooden stairway up into the rest of the house.
Ebnezzer had appeared as a refugee from some mysterious struggle in the south. He had been destitute and in dire need of a patron. Tayva had been delighted to provide him with the use of her own home. He became her tutor in the arts of sacrifice and control. Within a year the bored elite of the city had congealed around Tayva and Ebnezzer. Things were done in the night that soon had the city whispering, rites that turned most away except for a core of true devotees.
Tayva had inducted Loria into this dark world. The cousins gained power that freed them from any need to conform or obey the rules of society or their families.
Soon they dominated the group, and most of their compatriots in darkness had been sacrificed to feed their hunger for power. Loria ignored her branch of the family and moved in with her older cousin.
If a servant vanished, well, times were hard and uncertain. Surely things whispered in terror of night could not happen when considered in daylight. Tayva and Loria reveled in their abilities. Now they wanted answers about what curbed their power.
It was madness they saw as they moved to the west wing. Bodies of servants, formerly under control, sprawled over the floors, some in repose of death while others writhed in mindless agony. A young maid, a recent victim grasped within the past month, ran in circles in the center of the sitting room. At the sight of the cousins her orbit contracted, and she moved to the back of the room as if driven by the wind. Her impact with a cabinet smashed wood, and she fell, a broken bag of bones.
Loria was attacked by a page as they traversed the main hall. The young boy had run at her with his arms flapping, an ungainly bird returning to the falconer. His hands were boneless flippers swatting at Loria while she covered her face with her arms. The boy whistled with relief as Tayva plunged her knife several times into his side.
Ebnezzer was mumbling and rocking when they forced his inner sanctum. Books and apparatus were piled high on tables throughout the room, and a dissecting tray held a large rat still leaking blood. Ebnezzer had obviously been interrupted in the practice of his craft. The aura of darkness and energy that had pervaded this room was replaced by the sour stench of suffering and death. Both cousins felt disgust that one whose power had so impressed them should be brought so low.
"What happened, Ebnezzer?" Loria demanded as she grasped the head of the kneeling man. Her hands felt a spark of something, and she shook him harder. "Why did we lose power? Why are the servants free!"
"Don't know, don't know. Felt some great power, swept me away. Swept it all away!" Ebnezzer tore his head free and began to sob and wail.
Tayva circled the room, examining what her mentor had brought into the house. Anything that was valuable and easy to sell she fingered with a speculative air. "Ask him if the power will return," she urged her cousin. "Ask him what he can do."
Loria stooped beside him and spoke with more urgency as she realized that her victims were free and that Uncle Brucius had escaped with his mind nearly intact.
"Do you have anything left? Any spirit to call on? Will our powers ever reappear?" Each question caused Ebnezzer to shiver, and Loria felt hope slide away.
"What I knew is gone. I don't know when or if anything will return. I tasted a spirit before it was torn away. I've got it in my mouth, and it sings to me. It's singing now," he muttered and stared blankly at the floor.
Tayva looked to Loria, crouching with her hands on a madman, and clapped softly to gain her attention.
"What now?" Tayva asked.
Loria took only seconds to decide.
"We can't stay in the city. The family will have to give us up after what Uncle saw. I don't know if we'll ever get back what we lost. Ebnezzer is useless. Something is in him, but we might never extract it." Loria gestured to the contents of the room. "Find whatever is of value. Pack it up quickly. We must be on the road within the hour. I'll return to our rooms and get our valuables and some traveling clothes." Loria rose to her feet and trotted to their quarters.
Tayva was alone with the madman. She already knew what she would take, but she walked slowly over to the oblivious sorcerer and laid her hand as if in benediction on the brow of her former mentor.
The cousins fled the city into a sudden thaw. The roads were mud, and their spirits fell even as a few of their victims recovered and roused the city behind them. Tayva and Loria fled north with the head of Ebnezzer rotting in a leather bag at the bottom of their luggage.
Loria cursed quietly and continually as she knelt in the mire of the lake edge looking for tubers. The lake was clear and sandy bottomed for most of its bank, but into one pocket at the edge glacial action had pushed topsoil. Similar pockets of dirt were deposited all over the country, but most were barren and gullied by spring rains. Plants had grown in this hollow during the late summer and fall. Changed by events that shook the world twenty years before, it had adapted to the inundation of spring. The dense roots and tubers were hard as seasoned wood, and when water came, they protected themselves from rot with the excretion of slime and a network of thin frothy rootlets.
Standing barelegged in the cold water, Loria was digging tubers that felt like stones and smelled like wet manure.
Tayva was visible in the distance as Loria stood erect to throw the roots up on the shore. The older woman was returning with the basket she had hauled to the coal pit. The walk was over broken gullies, but it had the advantage of warming limbs that would be numb with cold from standing in the water. Loria was cold and miserable and hated Tayva with the feeble ferocity that the miserable have. Tayva stumbled and dragged the basket through the dirt, caking the filthy cane-work with more gobs of crumbly mud.
"Keep it out of the dirt, Tayva." Loria still had the energy to carp at her cousin. "I'm not going to help or wait for you if you muck that up."
Tayva's response was an obscene gesture that did more to show her lack of energy than her irritation with her cousin.
Loria stooped down and tried her best to wash her hands and legs clean. At best, she would get most of the muck off, but would soon replace it with dust from the path to the brewing site.
Tayva arrived and began filling the basket with the nodules. "I'm getting tired of doing this," she remarked and then hurled one root as hard as she could into the basket. The only result was a dull thud. Tayva knotted her fists and then opened them in exaggerated relaxation.
"We were both meant for better things, but what power we have is here," Loria responded. She kicked the basket in resignation and sighed as it flopped over into the wet soil. She bent over and swore again as her back protested. Tayva tried to rest by levering her arms against her legs, but found no comfort. She watched her cousin pawing at the ground like a tired, ineffectual animal.
Loria stood up and saw Tayva's look of faint disgust. She also noticed a figure coming along the lakeside trail.
The cousins straightened and tried to assume a veneer of amity. It was a poor showing, but the quality of their approaching audience alleviated the need for a fine performance.
Winton was his name. He was hunter of waterfowl, who tramped though the network of lakes and streams that crisscrossed the raw landscape. He had an eager expression on his coarse, full features as he recognized the cousins. Tayva was older, grayer, and filthy in her dress of poorly cured hide. Loria was the better-looking of the pair and well groomed for someone working in the water and the mud. Winton knew them only as the authors of a brew made from the stinking nodules they were gathering, a brew known for its savage potency and almost lethal hangovers. His eagerness faded as he hit the fetid air from the raw roots.
"Quite a smell, neighbor," he called. "Hard to imagine you make your ambrosia from that refuse." Winton kept his distance but tried to be as friendly as possible. He shifted on his feet, and the two small bolas strung through his belt clacked against each other.
The man hunted waterfowl for money. He was a dab hand with a sling, but his bolas were surer weapons in uncertain light. He cast them as the birds startled and then sold the ones he caught on the road the next day. The sling and stones at the back of his belt he used against rabbits and targets in trees. He was an old and eager customer for the cousins' brew.
"I wouldn't mind trading for a pot of comfort, " he said, clasping a hand to the brightly dyed bolas, the stones red, blue, and green. "Three birds or five rabbits, delivered to your door. "
Tayva drew a breath to bargain, but Loria preempted her. "I hope that you will accept a pot as a gift," she drawled and reached toward Winton with open hands. She tried to sound seductive, but her breathless delivery to one she considered a clod sounded silly to her cousin's ears. "Bring a brace of whatever you have to our hut tonight, and we'll celebrate together. "
Winton looked puzzled. "What holiday is this?" he asked. Living alone he often lost track of time.
"We are celebrating being alive," Loria replied. She tried for a sultry air but achieved only petulance. Tayva coughed to cover a mean-spirited sneer.
But Winton saw everything through a veil of loneliness, and any indication of interest was enough to set the hook.
"I will return tonight, my dear, " he said, as he turned and dramatically bounded a few steps before settling into his characteristic slouch. Loria motioned for silence until he was out of hearing. Tayva complied and then policed the area, gathering their rude tools.
"Cousin, you had better practice deception more often. You were painfully insincere," Tayva chided. She hoisted the basket and motioned with her chin that Loria was to set it on her back.
"He's coming, isn't he? He'll be panting when he shows up, too." Loria settled the straps to minimize the chance of blisters or welts.
"So what are we going to do with him?" asked Tayva.
"Aren't you feeling tired? We're going to kill him, of course." And with that, Loria started out to the hills with her cousin matter-of-factly falling in behind her.
"Kill him. Yes. But where and how to use the death?" Tayva inquired, but she stumbled and caught her balance with difficulty, then continued, "Destroy his mind and use him up here? Corrupt his spirit and send him out for revenge?"
The path was broader now and showed hard work on the part of someone. Rock steps had been built on a few of the steeper parts of the trail with bushes planted strategically to cover the improvements. The path dropped through a cut to screen walkers from observation.
The cousins arrived at the brewing pits, depressions backed to a hillside. Surrounded by brush, the place was distant from their hut but close to a seam of dirty brown coal that broke to the surface like a great whale. Tayva levered chunks and slabs into a basket. Then, with Loria at the other side, she walked it to the fire where rocks heaped in the coals served as heating stones.