The Raven Warrior Read Free Page A

spiral staircase down and down to some unguessable destination, unable to halt or go back because the walls and floor weren’t sufficiently bumpy to allow her to stop or crawl back.
    Panic struck as she reached a passage so narrow that she could no longer walk or, at last, even crawl. She screamed, and at her first scream, she debouched free of the shell, rolling across a carpet on the floor of Merlin’s stronghold.
    The place both awed and terrified her. It was part of the sea. A sea on some world she was sure the rest of mankind did not share.
    The room was luxurious. Soft rugs, jeweled with many colors, lay like pools of brightness on stone floors. Velvet-covered couches were scattered around haphazard flowers blooming in a dark shadowed mezzanine. The whole front wall of the room was glass, some kind of glass that overlooked the sea. And when the tide was in, as it was now, the blue and green waves crashed against the glass, towering over her as she lay on a soft, scarlet rug on the floor.
    The glass-not-glass allowed sound and air to pass through its permeable surface and the room was scoured by the sea wind. She screamed again as a gigantic wave towered over her and broke, foaming against the glass wall before her, and the wind tore at her hair.
    She scrambled toward the back of the room, where a gigantic double-walled Roman fireplace formed the back of the long sea-view room.
    “That’s it. Incinerate yourself,” he said contemptuously.
    She sat up, shivering. “You know I hate this place,” she whimpered.
    “Too bad,” he said. “But whatever you feel, stop squalling or I’ll have you gagged. Or maybe I’ll just have one of my servants cut out your tongue.”
    She knew he was capable of doing either one as easily as the other, so she was silent.
    He waved his hand and it seemed the glass between them and the raging sea grew denser. The noise of pounding waves lessened and the wind dropped. She realized it was near night in this place, as it was at Tintigal, and some of the brightness in the room was from the fire at the back, fanned by the wind.
    The glow faded and the room grew darker. Beyond the windows, the sea churned higher, the waves now breaking on the roof above the window wall. The trees were scattered around the room in pots, some in leaf, others laden with fruit, and some in flower. Peaches, plums, apricots, apples, and quince. They yielded to his power, dormant flowering, fruiting at his will.
    As she watched, he picked a pale white plum, dewy ripe, from one of the harvest trees. He reached down and put it in her mouth, where it dissolved, honey-sweet within, tart and biting at the skin.
    “Spit the pit into my hand,” he said.
    She held back, keeping the fissured seed in her mouth. But then he caught her hair in one hand and shook her. “Don’t you dare! I will tear out your tongue!”
    She spat the pit into his hand. He snapped his fingers, and two of his golems appeared. She knew this was going to be worse than anything she’d anticipated, maybe worse than anything that had ever gone before.
    The golems always frightened her. They were dead men still inhabiting their bodies. Unlike others he raised, they were not zombies suited only for simple tasks. They retained intelligence and volition, even though they were clearly corpses. Gutted, cooked to render away fat, then soaked, tanned the way a hide is tanned, then sewn back on withered muscle and cartilaginous bone. The faces were tight, dry masks, the eyes lifeless, hard, opaque, and pale, but with a dark ring where the pupil had once been and a spark of light at the center.
    “Your clothes,” he said, “or shall I have them strip you?”
    She shuddered. “No!” she whispered. “No!”
    She rose to her knees and was naked in a few seconds. She had been prepared for him, wearing nothing under her gown and shift.
    Merlin pointed at a dark stair leading down into another, larger room that she could see only dimly below. She hurried to