Shadow of the Lion hoa-1 Read online

  She had been the key Montagnard information-drop in Venice, but she had also been loose-tongued and incredibly reckless. Never less so, Bespi had realized later, than when she'd personally insulted Duke Filippo Visconti by spurning his advances. That knowledge had been the thing, more than any other, which had finally crystallized Bespi's growing disillusionment with the Milanese. He had uncaringly killed a woman for being--so he'd been told--a danger to the cause. The knowledge that he'd actually killed her for no more reason than the duke's personal disgruntlement, when it finally came to him, had been . . . unbearable. He'd realized then that he'd been as gullible as the woman he'd murdered.

  She didn't look too gullible now--

  "Bespi," a voice said . . . seemingly inside his head. "I see you--"

  He blocked his ears, but it did no good. The ghostly voice cut right through him; the almond eyes did the same. She was stark-naked, her well-formed ivory flesh floating in a cloud of smoke and fog and midnight-black hair, obliquely slanted black eyes cold as the grave--she aroused no desire with her weird nudity; he'd never wanted a woman less.

  Bespi. You carry my curse. Do you wish to be free of it?

  A low moan came from his throat.

  My curse shall follow you wherever you go. Her eyes grew until they filled his entire field of vision, black and like looking into hell. He felt ghostly hands running down his arms, leaving chill trails behind them. When you sleep, I shall be there--waiting. When you wake, I shall follow; in all your comings, in all your goings, I shall be one step behind you, making you careless, making you nervous, until one day you will make a mistake--then my fingers will close about your throat--

  "Wait!" he yelled. Panic snatched at him now. Dread he had never felt in dealing with the living, or the soon-to-be-dead, closed around his heart and squeezed it like an invisible hand reaching through his chest-wall. He panted. Whimpered . . . "I'll do anything you want!"

  The eyes receded and again she floated before him in her cloud of smoke and hair and magic. Then guard my sons.

  That caught him off guard. "Huh?" he replied stupidly, unable to fathom the puzzle.

  My sons live, Harrow. Bespi who was. Guard them. Guard them well. Keep them from harm. Keep the Montagnards from their throats. Only then my curse will leave you.

  "I don't--I mean I don't even know what they look like. How . . . how do I find them!"

  There--she pointed and something began forming out of the smoke and the dark beside her. The foggy image of an adolescent--sixteen, seventeen, maybe. A dead ringer for Lorendana. That is Marco.

  Bespi/Harrow gasped as he recognized the boy. The one who had killed Gianni! The boy with the great reasons! Harrow could now understand why he had been witness to the sight.

  And there--

  Beside the first, a boy about two years younger; Carlo Sforza as a kid.

  That is Benito. Guard them, Harrow. Your life on it, or you will carry my curse forever.

  He had barely sworn to it, when she faded away and his grasp on consciousness went with her.

  * * *

  Luciano was well pleased with himself. That had been one of the better vision-quests he'd sent Harrow on. The former assassin hadn't fought him, he had responded beautifully to all the suggestions. He hoped the sending of Marco's brother was right. He'd only seen the boy once, but somehow it had seemed a good touch. These were just small magics, true. But he did not dare to try greater magic than this. Not without calling the sort of attention that he didn't want onto himself.

  Harrow came around gradually. He wasn't a particularly pretty sight, with half his head scarred and the rest of him splotchy with burned skin. He coughed a good deal too: a gift from the smoke and the water he'd breathed in. But he was functional; indeed, he'd healed better and faster than Luciano had thought likely. The new vessel of the Goddess sat up slowly, uncurling from his nest of reeds and rags and old blankets. He blinked at the sun, and then at Luciano, his dilated eyes not focusing properly.

  "Well?" asked Luciano.

  "I got--a thing--I got to do," the man said through stiff lips, eyes still hazed with the drug.

  "The Goddess gave you a task, huh?"

  "But I don't--I don't--I got to take care of a couple of children--" His pupils were still dilated, but there was a certain despair in his voice. Luciano kept his satisfaction shuttered behind his own stony expression as he crouched down next to Harrow in the reeds.

  "So?"

  "But--how the hell am I going find her children?"

  "What children? Whose children?"

  "Valdosta. Marco and Benito Valdosta." If Harrow was confused about why the Goddess would be concerned over the welfare of Lorendana's two children, he wasn't showing it. But then Harrow had never been strong on logic. "How the hell am I going to find them?"

  Luciano spread his arms wide with his hands palm-upwards and looked to the sky, taking on dignity and power as he deepened his voice. This was the part he played the best-- He knew, thanks to another very minor piece of magic, that the former Montagnard assassin now saw him haloed in a haze of dim white light. Every time he took that particular pose, Harrow would see him glowing with the power of the Goddess. "Praise be the Goddess. Blessed are the vessels of her will. Her ways are beyond all mortal understanding."

  He lowered his eyes to meet Harrow's. "She has you in Her plan, Harrow; She's had you there from the start of the world. She weaves the threads of destiny on her loom! Marco Valdosta is right here, Harrow; in the swamp. He's hiding out, an' he's scared. He damn-well needs protecting; he's a good child and this here is a bad place. But he's nervous and he's touchy; he won't let nobody near him, except them as he knows, like me and Sophia. You want to watch over him, fine. That's the Goddess's will. But if you show yourself, he'll run, I can promise that. If he even guesses you're there, he'll run. You want to keep him from running further and right into more trouble, you stay right out of sight."

  As Harrow nodded understanding, Luciano rose and stepped off the islet into the knee-deep murky water of the swamp. Harrow followed, showing no more discomfort than Luciano.

  "Come on, then--I'll show you where to keep watch on him without him knowing you're there."

  * * *

  Marco's hands ached with the cold as he worked without really thinking about what he was doing. He was trying to hold his mind in a kind of numb limbo, as numb as the rest of him was getting. He was doing his best to avoid thinking, to just exist. The cold and the damp were making his nose run and the slap of water and the hushing of wind in the reeds and the little sounds he was making were punctuated by his sniffles.

  His raft and hideout had been where he'd left them--and as he'd expected--they'd been stripped. The hidey was still in surprisingly good shape, all things considered. Marco was grateful. He hadn't had much other good luck lately.

  Even with the water level in the swamp at high water, it had been cruel, hard work to pole the raft out of his old territory and into Gianni's.

  Gianni had ruled one of the best territories in the marsh. There was an unobstructed view of the city across the water and a nice stock of food plants as well as two really good fishing holes and a couple of solid islets. Marco's arms and back were screaming with pain before he got his home to its new location and, if he hadn't been working, he'd have been three-quarters frozen. As it was he was soaked to the skin and glad of the change of dry clothes in his pack. He had moored the raft up against the islet. With the camouflaging hideout over it, it would look like an extension of the island.

  The sun was a dim, gray disk above the horizon when he'd gotten set up properly. Despite the cold, he'd been sweating with exertion; even his feet were almost warm. He'd been up since before dawn and by now it seemed as if it should be nearly nightfall, not barely morning.

  From the islet he gathered rushes and sedge to weatherproof the hideout against the winter rains and winds. Then it was nothing but drudge-work. Crouch over the framework and interlace the vegetation into it. Gras
s, then sedge, then reeds, then grass again until it was an untidy but relatively windproof mound. With only his hands moving, evening coming on and the wind chilling him, he'd lost all the heat he'd gained by the time he was ready to thread new tall reeds into the top of the bushy hammock to renew its disguise. It was well towards full darkness when he'd finished to his satisfaction.

  He was exhausted and cold all the way through, still soaked to the skin and more than ready for the sleep he'd lost last night. But he hadn't forgotten his old lessons. He made more trips to the center of the islet for old dry grasses, stuffing the cavity beneath the hideout with them. He crawled under the basketlike hideout and stripped, putting his soggy clothing between the "mattress" of dry grasses and his bottom blanket, to dry while he slept. Then he curled up into his grass-and-blanket nest to shiver himself to almost-warmth, then sleep the sleep of the utterly exhausted. It was a far cry from the cozy bed he'd left in Aldanto's apartment. If he hadn't been so cold and tired, he might have cried himself to sleep.

  * * *

  As he returned to his own islet, wading through the reeds, Luciano did not notice the sudden swirl in the nearby deep water, as if a large fish had been attacked by a larger and was making a desperate escape. Nor did he notice the undine, a short time later, slowly raising her head above water and studying him as he made his way back to the camp he shared with Sophia.

  A small streak of blood dripped from the undine's sharp-toothed mouth. The mouth gaped wide, expressing satisfaction. Then the undine slid beneath the surface of the water and was gone.

  Chapter 35 ==========

  When the shaman's human form had returned sufficiently to enable him to speak, the grand duke leaned forward from his throne and touched the shoulder of the man squatting before him. Then, brought the fingers to his heavy lips and tasted the water which soaked the shaman's fur cloak. The taste was that of the stinking waters of the Jesolo marshes; that, and some blood.

  "Well?"

  The grand duke's shaman shook his head. The gesture was not one of uncertainty; it was one of fear. The man's lips were trembling.

  "It is dangerous, lord. The Strega is not powerful, but he knows a great deal. Even now. And so long as he remains in the Jesolo, he has protectors." The shaman winced, rubbing his shoulder. As always, the shape-change had healed the wound, but the pain lingered. The undine's teeth had been sharp and jagged.

  "The priest? Did you find him? I need to know where he goes when he leaves his quarters."

  The shaman hesitated; tried to control his trembling lips. This question was far more dangerous than any undine. "I sensed him, lord, yes. Impossible not to, anywhere in Venice. Even in the marshes, I could sense him. Though not strongly. His presence is very strong anywhere in the vicinity of the Ghetto."

  The shaman paused, hoping that answer would satisfy his master. He kept his eyes lowered, his shoulders hunched under the heavy cloak. At all costs, he wished to avoid the grand duke's gaze. Jagiellon's eyes were . . . frightening.

  "Do not annoy me, slave. Or I will send you back into the forests of Karelen with your shape-changing powers severely stunted. Difficult to be a shaman without a hide. I will eat your skin."

  The shaman was frozen, for a moment. The grand duke's threat was not an idle one; not in the least. The shaman had seen his master eat a retainer's skin thrice before. The first time, the skin had belonged to the shaman's predecessor. The grand duke had required the shaman to taste the meal first, before Jagiellon devoured the remainder, on the off chance that a fanatic might have poisoned his own skin before displeasing the ruler of Lithuania with his incompetence.

  "It is dangerous, lord," whined the shaman. "For you as much as me. The priest is much less knowledgeable than the Strega, but--he is very strong. Very strong!" The shaman rubbed his temples with both hands; brackish water soaked through the fingers. "It hurt my head just being near him."

  A massive hand seized the shaman's shaggy hair and jerked his head up. "Look at me."

  Despite his terror, the shaman dared not disobey. For all that he desperately desired to close his eyes, he met the grand duke's stare.

  The moment lasted for . . . the shaman knew not how long. It seemed endless. But, eventually, the grand duke relinquished his iron grip and allowed the shaman's head to sag forward.

  "I will tolerate your cowardice. For the moment. There is some truth to what you say. The priest is, indeed, very strong."

  The grand duke's huge hands tightened on the armrests of his throne. He swiveled his massive head and stared at the window facing to the south. As was true of all the windows in Jagiellon's private chambers, this one was covered with heavy drapes. The drapes, dark red against the dark brown wooden walls, gave the room an almost funereal atmosphere.

  "I have already punished those who did not prevent his mission to Venice," said the grand duke, so softly it almost seemed as if he were speaking to himself. "Intolerable incompetence. The man himself asked leave to go to the Holy Land; and the Grand Metropolitan is a weakling. It should have been easy to arrange."

  The shaman relaxed a bit. As was always true with Jagiellon's underlings, the news of another's punishment came as a great relief. The grand duke needed punishment in his diet as much as food, and he ate both in prodigious quantities. Still, he was not exactly a glutton. One or two Lithuanian agents in Rome dead--most likely by poison or knife; possibly by magic--meant less chance of a shaman's skin being fried in Vilna.

  The shaman even made so bold as to speak. "For all his strength, lord, the priest is groping in the dark. Best to leave him there, until it is too late. Whereas, if you strike at him . . . and the thing is mishandled or goes awry . . ."

  Ensconced in his heavy robes of office, the body of the grand duke filled the chair to overflowing. When the body shifted, as it did now, the sturdy piece of furniture creaked alarmingly.

  With as much alarm, if not more, the shaman studied that shifting form surreptitiously, from under lowered eyelids. Suggesting that the grand duke might be contemplating error, as the shaman was now doing, was risky.

  The shaman was relieved to see that the shifting seemed more a matter of a heavy body adjusting its weight than of one gathering itself for the attack. The grand duke's obesity, as the shaman had many occasions to recall, was deceptive. Beneath the rolls of fat lay slabs of muscle whose power went beyond the human. And while Jagiellon was now a great sorcerer in his own right, the ruler of Lithuania was partial to more physical means of expressing his displeasure. As a prince, before the fat which came upon his body after the change, Jagiellon had been a famous warrior.

  "Um." Jagiellon said no more than that, for a few minutes. Throughout that time, the shaman squatted silently, unmoving, his eyes hidden under the lowered brow and the great mane of shaggy hair. Trying to make himself as inconspicuous as possible.

  "You may be right," mused the grand duke, eventually. "It is certainly true that when I let the Woden escape, the results were . . . unfortunate. I had thought the Lion's slumber to be a heavier thing."

  The shaman dared to speak again. "That was the strength of the priest at work, Lord. He is dangerous."

  "Yes." Again, silence. "Impervious to seduction also, it seems. I had hopes for that tool, but she is proving less useful than desired."

  There was a slight edge to the last words. From long experience, the shaman knew that a death sentence had just been passed. He felt a small regret. The tool in question was as beautiful as she was evasive. Thus far, unlike the other female in Venice, she had managed to retain her own soul. But the shaman knew it would have been only a matter of time before Jagiellon broke her to his will. After which, as was his way, he would allow his chief underlings to enjoy the woman.

  But the regret was small, and fleeting. There would be other beautiful women. Being in service to Jagiellon was as rewarding as it was perilous.

  Still . . .

  "She may be of use yet, Lord," murmured the shaman. "If she has failed in that task,
she has succeeded in many others."

  Again, the great body shifted; and, again, the shaman grew tense. But, again, it was simply an obese ruler's discomfort.

  "True. We will see. In the meanwhile, I have decided you are correct. We will continue the murders, but keep the Woden on a tight leash. And make no attempt, for the moment, to remove either the mage or the priest. Time is on my side, after all. Venice grows more ragged by the day. So long as the priest remains ignorant and the mage remains too terrified to act . . . good enough."

  The grand duke planted his hands on the arm rests of the chair and heaved his great, gross body erect. "Leave now."

  The shaman bobbed his head, rose, and scuttled from the room. He left behind him a trail of foul-smelling water, in addition to the pool which had collected before the grand duke's throne where he had squatted. But the shaman was not concerned about that. Jagiellon was not fastidious. Not in the least.