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  Night of The Eye

  ( Defenders of magic - 1 )

  Mary Kirchoff

  Mary Kirchoff

  Night of The Eye

  Chapter One

  Two men were stoning a witch in the village square of Thonvil. The first rocks dropped the beggar woman to her knees. Her bony hands waved wildly in a pathetic attempt to fend off the missiles. Another rock hit the ground in front of her, splashing mud and dirty water into her face.

  Guerrand DiThon, brother of the local lord, watched in horror. The woman was no witch. An eyesore in the village, perhaps. Demented, certainly, even possessed, but Guerrand thought her condition more likely the result of harsh street life, or even a diet of tainted flour or fermented grain mash, too common on the bleak, unyielding southern coast of Northern Ergoth. But a witch she was not. No one knew better the signs of a mage than one who secretly wielded magic himself.

  A crowd had gathered. Guerrand knew nearly all of those present since the village was small and family lines stretched back to well before the Cataclysm. The nobleman felt he had to do something to stop the shameful persecution.

  "Evard, Wint, drop those stones." He put a knobby hand to the thick shoulder of the bully nearest him. "Malvia has done no wrong, certainly nothing to warrant this treatment."

  Evard started at the touch. Scowling, the paunchy, red-faced man craned his thick neck around to examine the interloper. Seeing the tall, lanky younger brother of Lord DiThon, Evard's eyebrows raised, and he turned around to face Guerrand. The man's fingers relaxed around the rock in his hand, but he didn't let it drop. Instead, he juggled it lightly in his rough palm. A surly smile raised his fleshy cheeks. "Would your brother approve of you releasing a witch?"

  Guerrand sighed inwardly. He, above all, knew Cormac's obsessive hatred for magic. "I'm sure he wouldn't, but I'm also sure he wouldn't let one of his subjects be tormented for no good reason. Even Lord DiThon could see this woman is no witch." He jerked his head toward the cow-eyed, ragged woman. "Would you live as a beggar if you could grant yourself wealth?"

  The rock fell still in Evard's hands. Wint dropped his own rocks and tugged on the other man's sleeve. "Let 'er be, Ev," he muttered, stepping away, his face averted. Evard cast one last glance between the beggar woman and Guerrand, almost in puzzlement that the young noble should stop their sport. With a slight shrug, the middle-aged rummy, who looked twice his actual age, let the rock tumble from his coarse fingers to the dust. Evard and Wint drifted down the narrow, winding road to the pale, cobblestone structure that served as Thonvil's inn. With the excitement gone, the rest of the crowd began to disperse.

  Guerrand's thoughts were not on any of them as he stepped forward to help the woman to her feet. Her wounds were not severe, mostly bruises to her arms, though her left cheek bore a nasty gash that Guerrand knew would mark her for the rest of her days.

  Malvia's gnarled old hands clutched the ones that helped her to her feet. Her dull eyes regarded the young noble with reverence that made him uneasy. "You saved me," she breathed through rotted teeth.

  Turning his dark head from the smell, Guerrand brushed her hands away gently. "I think not, Malvia. Those two had simply drunk too much and were looking for some cruel sport. They wouldn't have seriously harmed you." Secretly, Guerrand doubted his own words.

  The woman tugged out the pockets of her tattered skirt. "Would that I had anything to give you in exchange for my life," she said, as if he hadn't spoken.

  At that Guerrand reached into his own fine silk pouch, which hung at his waist, and withdrew two steel pieces. He pressed them into her dirty palm and folded her thin fingers back over the cool metal. "This should help you to live more comfortably, so that no one will have cause to call you a witch again."

  Guerrand passed his hand across her face as he mumbled a soft incantation beneath his breath. The mud and caked dirt there fell away. The woman's cheeks and forehead were brown and weathered, but clean.

  "After you've purchased some clothing, make your way to the castle kitchen and tell Gildee that I sent you. She'll give you a hot meal and perhaps might even find work for you." As an afterthought he reluctantly added, "Uh, Malvia, it would be better for both of us if you didn't speak to anyone of this incident, or what we've just discussed."

  The beggar woman gave him a nearly toothless smile. "You have a kind heart, sir, kinder by far than your brother's. Everyone in the village thinks so."

  Guerrand was fully aware of the villagers' contempt for his brother. Cormac offered largesse with one hand while emptying their pockets by taxation with the other. There was discontent among the merchants and the peasants, but they were kept far too poor to do more than grumble to themselves.

  Guerrand chuckled softly at the intended compliment. "You'd be wise not to repeat that at the castle, either," he said to Malvia. "Now, good luck to you."

  Bobbing her head, the woman hobbled down the street toward the heart of the village, where the buildings were clustered together. A number were timbered and plastered structures owned by some of Thonvil's wealthier merchants and craftsmen. Out here on the edge of town the thatched, wattle-and-daub houses were farther apart, each surrounded by a vegetable garden and small livestock pen.

  Guerrand started to follow behind Malvia, to complete the errands he'd been about when he'd happened upon the stoning, but a voice from behind stopped him short.

  "If she had been a witch, would you still have let her go?" asked the strong, commanding voice.

  The young man's heart seized up in his chest. Just as he'd feared, his defense of the woman had drawn notice. Without turning, Guerrand responded: "I am sympathetic to weaklings who are preyed upon by bullies, that's all." That said, Guerrand began walking down the street to end the discussion.

  But the speaker followed behind him. "Do you possess any magical skill yourself?"

  Guerrand whirled around angrily. Standing there was a man of indeterminate age, dressed for the cool day in a heavy brown cloak, the red fabric of a robe beneath it brushing his boot tops. A thick cowl was bunched up around his neck and ears, and a floppy hood concealed much of his face. Guerrand could see a nicely trimmed goatee and a sharp nose, but no other details. "I don't know who you are, and I don't care. And I am definitely not going to answer your impertinent question."

  The man's eyebrows raised. "Your defensiveness is answer enough, in this part of the world."

  Guerrand forced an unconcerned shrug and turned away. "Think what you will, stranger."

  Again, the man's words followed him. "Your anger at me is misdirected, young Master DiThon. We're on the same side in regard to magic."

  Guerrand scowled darkly. "I'm not on any side. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've errands to run." As Guerrand DiThon stormed down the narrow street, he could feel the man's overly observant eyes on him. The entire incident in the square, from first stone to this disconcerting conversation, made him wish he'd left his errands in the village to another day.

  Guerrand took the long way home, through the heath along the Strait of Ergoth. It was springtime, in the month of Chislmont; the heather for which the landscape was named was starting to bloom, dotting the otherwise scrubby seaside with pinkish-purple flowers. He didn't notice that the stiff, woody stems scratched at his calves.

  The young man felt a kinship with this bleak land. He loved the sound of pounding surf. He liked how the heath met the sea at the horizon and formed a gentle line, unbroken by trees or hills, like one precise stroke of an artist's brush. Today, with the heather blooming and the sky typically cloudy, the line to the south was the color of new heliotrope.

  Guerrand often wondered if someone like him stood across the gray water looking north, contemplating where earth
met sky. In all his nearly twenty years he'd never left the island of Northern Ergoth, had ventured little farther than Hillfort, not even ten leagues to the east. Once Guerrand had hoped to study in Gwynned, the capital to the north, but Cormac had forbidden it.

  The memory of that age-old argument slowed Guerrand's steps. He settled himself on a boulder worn flat by centuries of slapping seawater. Guerrand was in no hurry to return to Castle DiThon. He felt no kinship with those cold stone walls. He looked to the east, to the promontory on which the centuries-old fortress rested.

  The castle rose up between blue sea and green earth like a lone, wicked mountain of stone, as if the first DiThon meant to correct a mistake of nature. It seemed to Guerrand that there was no place he could go where the stone structure didn't dominate the view. It drew the eye as a flame draws moths. But, unlike a flame, the castle was cold and bleak even in the brightest sunshine.

  Guerrand had never liked it, not even before his father, Rejik, died. Guerrand had been but nine years of age then. He scarcely remembered him, a distant bear of a man. Or perhaps it was that he confused the memories of Rejik with Cormac, who so resembled their father.

  Nineteen full years Guerrand's senior, Lord Cormac of Castle DiThon had always seemed more a father than a brother to Guerrand, anyway. Their family tree had tangled limbs, which was not unusual, considering that childbirth and rampant disease took many so early in life. Cormac's mother, Rejik's first wife, had died of Baliforian influenza at thirty, with young Cormac just eight years of age. In the bleak isolation of Northern Ergoth, ten years passed before Rejik defied convention and married Zena, a local lass less than half his age and just two years older than his son Cormac.

  Rejik's second family arrived seven months later with the birth of Guerrand. As soon as physically possible came a third son, Quinn. And then, at three and fifty, Rejik received the news of the birth of his first daughter and the death of his second wife in childbirth. Guerrand, Quinn, and Kirah's young mother had seen the seasons change only twenty-eight times. Rejik survived two heartbroken years without her.

  And so it was that cold and distant, critical and demanding Cormac inherited his father's holdings in the summer of his twenty-eighth year. Having married at twenty and already the father of two, Cormac was not happy about taking on his father's young second family as well.

  Unfortunately, Cormac had not inherited their father's business acumen. Thousands of hectares had been passed down from generation to generation. Even ten years before, the DiThon lands had stretched beyond where the eye could see, to within less than two leagues of the Berwick family's manor house at Hillfort. Guerrand remembered his father boasting that if he stood on the easternmost edge of DiThon lands, he could watch the uppity merchant Berwick sputter in anger and jealousy at his dining table.

  It was not a boast Cormac could make. In fact, Rejik's eldest son was the one sputtering in jealousy now. Cormac had been forced to sell off parcels of land to pay the debts he claimed could be laid at the feet of both Rejik and the fickle gods. One of those parcels was the land their father had so coveted, the hilly coastlands and fertile grasslands that bordered Hillfort. The purchaser had been the merchant himself, Anton Berwick.

  But Cormac had a plan to get that land back. In fact, his usual sour mood had been considerably lighter of late in anticipation of its return. Cormac had arranged a political marriage between Berwick's daughter and Quinn DiThon, Guerrand's younger, adventurous brother. The merchant was desperate for his daughter to marry a title, and Cormac wanted money. Cormac had negotiated as dowry the land he'd once sold. That the land would be in Quinn's name, not Cormac's, was a minor detail to the lord.

  Still looking at the world across the Strait of Ergoth, Guerrand thought of his younger brother somewhere out there, a cavalier questing for experience. He hadn't seen Quinn in nearly two years. Only ten months apart in age, as children they'd been confused as twins until Quinn had begun to follow with a passion the vocation Cormac had chosen for both of them. Quinn is likely so muscular and bronzed after two years on the road that we scarcely resemble each other anymore, Guerrand chuckled to himself. He missed him sorely, missed the cheerful optimism Quinn's presence inspired at Castle DiThon. Everyone liked the charming Quinn-even Cormac, who seemed as willing to forget that Quinn was only half blue-blooded as he was possessed to remember it of Guerrand. Guerrand looked forward to Quinn's return at month's end for the marriage.

  "Rand! There you are at last!" a young girl's high-pitched voice called above the pounding of the surf. The sound startled Guerrand, despite the fact that he recognized the voice. His head jerked up, and his dark eyes fell on his youngest sibling, twelve-year-old Kirah. A smile creased his face. She was one of only two people he allowed to use the nickname he preferred.

  Poor, motherless Kirah. He'd heard it whispered in the dark and drafty corners of the castle by well-meaning servants. Blond and blue-eyed, as fair as the boys were dark, she was the only one of them to look like Rejik's second wife. Guerrand secretly wondered if the resemblance hadn't deepened the despair Rejik had felt, rather than offering comfort. Kirah was a living reminder that Rejik's second marriage was to a woman beneath his station, a pale-skinned, common "newcomer." Her family had settled in Northern Ergoth just after the Cataclysm, some three hundred years before. But prejudice ran high, especially among the nobility. Those who were not of the old, darker-skinned stock that had lived in Ergoth proper, before the Cataclysm split the region into two islands, were considered newcomers.

  While Rejik had loved the fair-haired Zena, he never seemed able to hug the baby daughter for whom he'd longed. Seven-year-old Guerrand and six-year-old Quinn, who looked tanned enough to pass as blue-bloods, had supplied the affection to young Kirah. Cormac, with two pure-blooded children of his own by the time of Kirah's birth, suffered from his own prejudice regarding his half siblings.

  "What are you staring at?" Kirah demanded now, filthy hands on her boyish hips. She pushed her stringy blond hair back from her face impatiently.

  "You," he said, smiling in obvious delight. "You're a mess."

  Kirah and I should not even get along, thought Guerrand. It was not in looks alone that they were different. Guerrand was cautious; Kirah was adventure itself. He was neat and organized; she looked like a walking whirlwind, everything about her askew. He was silent and contemplative; she was opinionated and outspoken.

  "I'm always a mess," she said brightly. "But if anyone is to blame today, it's you. I've been running hither and yon looking for you. I followed your trail."

  Guerrand chuckled. "I wasn't aware I'd left one."

  Kirah playfully poked him in the chest. "For me, you did. You know you can't hide from me, Rand. I know your haunts. Besides, I asked Zagarus."

  "I'll have to speak with that traitorous sea gull!" Guerrand laughed. "I wasn't trying to hide; I just wasn't in a hurry to get home. Why did you follow me, anyway?"

  "Cormac wants to see you. He sent several servants out to find you. I thought I should warn you that he's lost much of the good mood we've all benefited from since he sold Quinn to that buck-toothed biddy from Hillfort."

  "However did you get so cynical, child?" He ruffled her hair. "Cormac didn't sell him-he wrote to Quinn, who agreed to the marriage."

  "That's because he hasn't seen her since she got her second teeth. I'm telling you, if Quinn could see her tusks-" the young girl flapped a hand before her mouth to demonstrate, "-he'd stay in Solace, or Solamnia, or wherever she isn't!"

  Guerrand stifled a smile. "You're very uncharitable, Kirah. Surely they're not that big. Besides, Ingrid Berwick sounds pleasant enough to me."

  "Pleasant enough for a sister-in-law, you mean. Lucky for you, Cormac and Rietta deemed you unworthy of the Bucker Princess."

  "She's not a princess."

  Kirah shrugged. "She acts like one."

  Guerrand sighed. "What does Cormac want?"

  "Oh, yes." She sniffed. "I was getting to that. He wants to tal
k to you about how long you're taking with your training as a knight."

  "Again?"

  "Did you think he would just forget you've spent ten years as a squire?"

  Guerrand sighed once more and tossed a small stone into the surf. "I was hoping with all the excitement of Quinn's return and wedding that Cormac might have other things on his mind."

  "He'll never be happy about your interest in magic, and he'll never allow you to become a real mage," Kirah said softly, her tone uncharacteristically serious.

  Guerrand scowled. "He doesn't even know I still want to be one. Only you do, Kirah." He looked at her intently, almost pleadingly. "It must stay that way."

  Kirah nodded her blond head decisively. "We should do it, Rand. We should just run away so that you can become a mage."

  Guerrand rubbed his face. "Kirah, you think too fast. You hope too hard."

  His sister crossed her arms. "What's going to change then, to end this stalemate of yours and Cormac's? Are you hoping he'll drop dead and you'll inherit everything?"

  "No!" Guerrand said too vehemently. "No, of course not," he added more softly. "Besides, I wouldn't get anything, nor would you. Castle DiThon would go to Bram now. He's a good kid, despite his parentage. He deserves it." His voice was distant, his thoughts far beyond the DiThon family lands.

  Guerrand ran his hands through his hair in agitation. "Honestly, I don't know what I'm hoping will happen, Kirah. There aren't many options for the second son of a noble family whose fortune is on the decline. I only know what I don't want, and that's to become a warrior."

  "Well, you'd better think of something, because Cormac intends to grill you the instant you return home."

  "Why now?"

  "Why not now?" she asked. "The arrangements with Berwick are complete. If he can get you through your training and out on crusade like Quinn, he'll have one less mouth to feed around here."