Callas shook his head. “They would have kept the treaty anyway. They knew what your family could do—you would commit random acts of wizardry that would explode their innards.”
The prince smiled. “Mayhap. But the Spanish Karelia are a powerful lot, not easy to discount. The treaty serves all, keeps all passions at a simmer. Now, enough talk, old man. I wish to see Brecia. I will walk with you or I will kill you and go by myself. You may decide.”
Suddenly the prince had that sensation again—someone, something, just to his side, perhaps a bit behind him, just beyond what he could touch and hear and see. He turned quickly, but there was nothing, no one there. Had something happened whilst he was asleep? He controlled the strange feelings, furious with himself for allowing them to overwhelm him for even a moment.
“I will take you, prince, but I don’t wish to. We will see what Brecia decides to do with you.”
The prince’s eyebrow shot up. “What she will do with me? Come now, Callas. You’re here to take me to her. Or did you intend to try to kill me whilst I slept?”
The old man shook his head back and forth. No, Callas was more likely to wave his priest’s stick at some poor ass and turn him into a roach or a dung beetle. He looked like all his brethren, thin, hollow-chested, wrapped in a dirty white wool robe tied with a frayed rope that was as old as he was. His sandals were held to his bony feet with thin strips of leather. For as long as the prince could remember, Callas had worn these same clothes, or ones just as dirty. He wondered if when a priest departed the mortal plane, he left his robe for a younger priest. Mayhap this robe was as old as the forest itself.
He said, “You look like those damned hermits who spin out their lives in caves beneath desert cliffs in the Bulgar.”
“What is this Bulgar?” Callas said, staring at him. “I know of no place called Bulgar.”
“You are so provincial, Callas. The Bulgar is a hard, brutal land from whence come many of the greatest wizards of the world.”
“There are hermits in this place? In caves? Why have I never heard of this?”
The prince laughed. “You cannot travel like I can. Forget the Bulgar. Enough. I wish to go now into the forest. I wish to see Brecia.”
“She will kill you, prince.”
“Let the witch try,” the prince said, rubbing his hands together. He felt a burst of pleasure at the thought of actually seeing her face when she beheld him, seeing her seething rage that would surely bubble and boil. He said, “Just smell you, Callas. You are filthier than usual.” The prince stepped forward.
Callas raised his hand. In it he held his priest stick, his kesha, at least two feet long, its length signifying to all who knew of such things that he was one of the most learned of the priest seers, having spent more than seventy years of his life in study. It was carved deeply with the symbols of life. Its tip glowed black.
The prince waved at the kesha. “Where did you get that thing?”
“My dead mentor,” Callas said. “An ancient priest who became a ghost four or five years ago. It’s mine now, and it will remain mine until I give it to a student upon my own passing, and only the gods know when that will be.”
“In fifty years? A hundred?”
Callas just smiled. “You know the worth, the power of the kesha.”
The prince nodded. The black tip of the kesha had always seemed to the prince to be like a small candle that simply never went out. It illuminated the darkest night, lighted the deepest passages through the oak forest. He’d heard stories of the kesha all his life, knew it had come down from the ancient beings who had built the vast stone circle at the very dawn of time. Now, in the present, wizards used these mighty stones—fifty-six of them standing in a rough circle like huge, silent sentinels—to go beyond to another place where sights and sounds intermingled and light became lighter still, and all was whole and safe, and there were answers there, perhaps answers to questions no one yet knew to ask. If the prince closed his eyes, he could see the circle of stones, hear the wind blowing through them, hear the low, rhythmic chants of the priests, placating ancient beings they didn’t really understand but knew to be potent.
“What is this game you play with me, prince? You know the power of the kesha, you know that if it touches you, your heart will shrivel in your chest and you will gasp for breath and then you will fall bloodless to the ground.”
The prince threw back his head and laughed. “You touch me with that and I will send you to live on an ice floe in the northern seas.” The prince crossed his arms over his chest and looked intimidating. He remembered that he had a knife fastened to his wrist, hidden by his long woolen sleeve. The wool was soft against his skin.
Callas didn’t move either himself or his kesha. He said, “You are wearing new woolens. They are far too white. You stand out like a streak of ligh
tning in a black sky.”
The prince shrugged. “The wool is soft and clean, something you should consider.”
“You don’t look quite right,” Callas said. “There is something that is different about you, prince—”
In a flash, the prince pulled the knife out of his sleeve, a move so practiced it was merely a blur.
Callas jerked back. He swallowed hard, his eyes on the slender knife.
The prince said, “You’ve always been afraid of me, and that is very wise of you. I can see you more clearly now. The night darkness has thinned a bit.” He paused, then shook his head. “It is a strange time we live in.” The thick blackness was receding. Now directly overhead was a sickle of moon. The inverted black cup of the gods was full of stars, shining so fiercely that the prince could see the small scar from a long ago cut on his right ankle.
Callas said, “Aye, you’re right about that.”
“At least the darkness isn’t what it was. Now, Callas—”