Plain Kate

“I did this!” His voice was high and half singing. “I drew the rain and the sleep across the whole country. I am a witch and I curse this city.” He threw his arms open. Blood was running from both wrists. “Lov: I show you horrors! Sister: Come to me!”

And from the green cloud, something came.

It was the monster he had shown her, the rusalka with a shadow, a thing made of wings and howling. It struck into the crowd.

Kate grabbed Taggle off her shoulder, folded herself up around him, and covered her head as the crowd exploded into panic and screaming. Toward the gate, away from it, in all directions, people pushed and staggered and ran. The blows of their rushing feet rained across her back and sides. Again she felt the monster’s wing beats thundering overhead.

Then, sudden as they’d come, the wings folded and were gone; Kate felt them go. An eerie, moaning silence fell. It was so still that for a moment Kate could hear the sparse, cold drops of rain tocking into the mud around her. She lifted her head cautiously. The cat squirmed out from under her. Drina, turban gone andone eye swelling, crept back to her side.

The two girls were on the edge of a circle of—

They had been bodies. But they were crumbling, falling apart like rot-riddled wood. It was hard to tell even how many: a dozen? They made a ring of blackish mush, an open space between them and the gate. On the other side of it, Linay was still standing on the shattered wagon, panting and folded with effort, an ugly grin on his pallid face.

Kate was just getting to her feet when the great gate of Lov screeched open. The portcullis came up a few feet and the pikemen ducked under, slashing at the air to hold back the crowd. With them came another man in the city’s colors, with a gray-shot beard and a broad red sash and a huge hat: a grand man, who looked, just then, sick with fear. “Witch!” he shouted up to Linay. “Why do you disturb the peace of Lov?”

Lina barked a disbelieving laugh.“The peace of Lov?!”

Half the crowd shouted back at him, and Linay whirled around and silenced them with a look, his eyes flashing like pearls. He turned back to the gray-faced, gray-bearded man, who said,“What’s your business?”

“Death is my business,” said Linay. “I’m a witch, after all. Take me off to be burned, please.” He hopped neatly down—the pikemen winced—and held his hands out for lashing. The crowd roared and pushed forward again. Kate and Drina were shoved as if by a tidal wave, into the open spacewhere the rusalka had struck. Kate staggered and fell—Taggle flew from her shoulder—she had a moment’s horror about the stuff she was fallinginto—and she found herself in familiar arms.

“Linay!” she gasped. The mob was all around them.

The magician grasped her arms and hauled her up, and for an instant they were face-to-face, forearms clasped, like warriors.“Flee this city,” he whispered as one of the pikemen pulled him toward the gate and the others tried to keep the crowd from killing him. Stones and mud came flying. Linay snuck Kate a smile. It was boyish, terrified, and amazed. The pikemen jerked him away.

“Linay!” Kate shouted after him.

And again, she saw his frightened eyes snatch at her, like a drowning man. She threw out a hand—

But it was too late. His smile hardened, and he was gone.

“Katerina!” Taggle and Drina were fighting their way sideways toward her as the crowd started to push again to enter the imagined safety of the city. The gate was still half raised. Linay wouldn’t stoop to go under it; the guards couldn’t bend him. The portcullis—it was a huge thing of iron-backed oak—screeched upward while behind it more guards lowered and braced their pikes.

Then, somewhere in the field of tents and desperate people, lightning struck. The noise of it shook the ground; its passage opened the air and cold rain poured down. The crowd screamed like one animal and surged against the gates. The girls were shoved along as if at the front of a wave. Kate hit her head on the gate and then was under it. Taggle leapt from Drina’s arms and dove between the pikemen. “This way!” he shouted. They went at a staggering run, following the cat as he darted out the other end of the gate tunnel and turned sharply down a tiny alleyway.

The crowd roared on; the people of the abandoned country poured through the gates, unstoppable as a river. Kate and Drina followed Taggle. They scrambled up a water barrel and onto the roof of a shed, and from there onto a higher roof. They knocked loose slates that went skittering down the steep pitch and fell into the rushing crowd. Faces turned up toward them. The two girls lay back panting, out of sight, while Taggle peered over the gutter edge like a gargoyle.

They huddled there a long time, until the crowd thinned and only the dead were left in the gate square below.

“Well,” drawled Taggle. “Now how do we stop him?”

SEVENTEEN THE STONE CITY