your Tobin comes to join the Companions. Just like you and I were, eh? But there was a twin, too, I believe?’
Yes, thought Arkoniel, the King’s spies had been thorough, after all.
Nari bent down and lifted another tiny bundle from behind the bed. Keeping her back to the Princess, she brought it around to the King. ‘A poor little girl child, my king. Never drew breath.’
Erius and the others examined the dead child just as closely, moving its flaccid limbs about, verifying the gender and feeling its chest and neck for signs of life. Watching from the corner of his eye, Arkoniel saw the King cast quick, questioning look at his wizard.
‘They know something. They’re seeking something,’ Arkoniel thought dizzily. Niryn’s question about dreams suddenly took on a dire resonance. Had the man had a vision of his own, a vision of this child? If so, then Lhel’s magic did its work again, for the older wizard replied with a quick shake of his head. Whatever they were looking for, they hadn’t found it here. Arkoniel glanced away before any expression of relief could betray him.
The King handed the body back to Nari and clasped Rhius by the shoulders. ‘It’s a hard thing, losing a child. Sakor knows I still grieve for my lost ones and their dear mother. It’s cold comfort for you, I know, but it’s best this way, before you’d both become attached.’
‘As you say,’ Rhius replied softly.
Giving Rhius a last brotherly thump on the shoulder, Erius went to the bed and kissed his sister gently on the forehead.
The sight made the blood pound in Arkoniel’s head as he thought of the swordsmen in the hall below. This usurper, this killer of girls and women, might love his little sister enough to spare her life, but as the Lightbearer had shown, that forbearance did not extend to her children. He kept his gaze fixed on the floor as the King and his councillors swept out, imagining how differently this little drama would have played out if Erius had found a living girl child here.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Arkoniel’s knees turned to water and he sank into a chair.
But the ordeal was not yet over. Ariani opened her eyes and saw the dead child Nari held. Pulling herself up against the bolsters, she held out her arms for it. ‘Thank the Light! I knew I heard a second cry, but I had the most awful dream …’
The nurse exchanged a look with Rhius and Ariani’s smile faltered. ‘What is it? Give me my child.’
‘It was stillborn, my love,’ Rhius said. ‘Let it be. Look, here’s our fine son.’
‘No, I heard it cry!’ Ariani insisted.
Rhius brought little Tobin to her, but she ignored him, staring instead at the child the nurse held. ‘Give him to me, woman! I command it!’
There was no dissuading her. Ignoring the soft cry of the living child, she took the dead one in her arms and her face went whiter still.
Arkoniel knew in that instant that Lhel’s magic could not deceive the child’s mother the way that it had the others. Twisting his mind to sight through her eyes, he caught a glimpse of the strips of skin Lhel had cut from each child’s breast and sewn with spider-fine stitches into the wound left on its twin, just over the heart. With this exchange of flesh, the transformation had been sealed. The girl child would retain the semblance of male form for as long as Iya deemed necessary, just as her dead brother had taken her form to deceive the King.
‘What have you done?’ Ariani gasped, staring up at Rhius.
‘Later, my love, when you’re rested. Give that one back to Nari and take your son. See how strong he is? And he has your blue eyes …’
‘Son? That is no son!’ Ariani cut him off with a venomous glare. No amount of reasoning prevailed. When Rhius tried to take the dead child from her, she lurched from the bed and fled to the far corner of the room, clutching the tiny corpse against her stained nightdress.
‘This is too much!’ Arkoniel whispered. Going to the frantic woman, he knelt before her.
She looked up at him in surprise. ‘Arkoniel? Look, I have a son. Isn’t he pretty?’
Arkoniel tried to smile. ‘Yes, your highness, he’s – he’s perfect.’ He touched her brow gently, clouding her mind and sending her once more into a deep sleep. ‘Forgive me.’
He reached for the little body, then froze in fear.
The dead child’s eyes were open. Blue as a kitten’s one moment, the irises went black as Arkoniel watched and fixed accusingly on him. An unnatural chill radiated from the little body, slowly spreading to envelop the wizard.
This was the cost of that first breath. The spirit of the murdered child had been drawn into its body just long enough to take hold and become a ghost, or worse.
‘By the Four, what’s happening?’ Rhius rasped, leaning over him.
‘There’s nothing to fear,’ Arkoniel said quickly, though in truth this tiny unnatural creature struck fear to the core of his heart.
Nari knelt beside him and whispered, ‘The witch said to take it away quickly. She said you must put it in the ground under a large tree. There’s great chestnut in the rear courtyard by the summer kitchen. The roots will hold the demon down. Hurry! The longer it stays here, the stronger it will grow!’
It took every bit of courage Arkoniel possessed to touch the dead child. Taking it from Ariani’s arms, he covered its face with a corner of the wrappings and hurried out. Nari was right; the waves of icy coldness pouring from the lifeless body grew stronger by the moment. It made his joints ache as he bore it downstairs and out through the back passage of the house.
The moon watched like an accusing eye as Arkoniel placed his cursed burden at the foot of the chestnut tree and mouthed, forgive me once more. But he expected no forgiveness for this night’s work and wept as he wove his spell. His tears fell on the little bundle as he bent to watch it sink down into the earth’s cold embrace between the gnarled roots.
The faint wail of an infant came to him on the cold night air and he shuddered, not knowing if it came from the living child or the dead one.
For all their power, these Orëska wizards are very stupid. And arrogant, Lhel thought as Iya urged her down a back stair and away from the cursed house.
The witch spat thrice to the left, hoping to cut the bad luck that had bound them together all these weeks. A real storm crow, this wizard. Why hadn’t she seen it sooner?
Lhel had scarely had time to finish the last stitch on the living child before the elder wizard was urging her away. ‘I’m not finished! The spirit –’
‘The King is downstairs!’ Iya hissed, as if this should mean something to her. ‘If he finds you here, we’ll all be spirits. I will force you if I must.’
What choice did she have? So Lhel had followed the wizard away, thinking, Be it on your head, then.
But the further they got from that house, the more it weighed on her heart. To treat the dead so brutally was a dangerous affront to the Mother, and to Lhel’s craft. This wizard woman had no honour, to abandon a child’s spirit like that. Arkoniel might have been made to listen, but Lhel had long since realized that he had no voice in the matter. Their god had spoken to Iya and Iya would listen to no other.
Lhel spat again, just for good measure.
Lhel had dreamed the coming of the two wizards for a full month before they’d appeared in her village: a man boy and a woman who carried a strange burden in a bag. Every divination she’d done as she awaited their arrival indicated that it was the Mother’s will. Lhel must give them whatever aid they asked. When Iya and Arkoniel did finally arrive, they claimed