The Outcast

by Louise Cooper

  For a moment there was silence, as Keridil and Sashka each held their cup out to the other, and both drank from the other’s chalice. It was a signal for the assembled guests to follow suit, and every man and woman raised their drinking vessels.

  ‘Keridil and Sashka!’ The toast was taken up, rippling through the hall in a swell of sound and interspersed with a few cheers from younger and bolder Initiates. Sashka’s beautiful face smiled beneficence on the crowd, and the musicians in the high gallery began to play again now that the small ceremony was over, while servants hurried forward to begin serving food to the guests.

  The feast was to be an informal affair. Since his father’s death Keridil had, by slow and careful degrees, begun to make changes in much of the Circle’s more esoteric practice. Remembering from his own childhood and adolescence the stultifying boredom of ceremonial banquets - endless speeches, hours spent stiff and uncomfortable on a hard bench, protocol demanding that he speak only to his nearest neighbours - he felt the use of too much ceremonial unnecessary, and was determined, as gently as possible, to persuade even the older Adepts to his way of thinking. Tonight’s celebration was the ideal opportunity - it was very much his personal festivity, had no direct link with Circle ritual, and he would offend no one by dispensing with the more familiar formal traditions. And so, as the guests began to eat, they also began to move and mingle around the hall, and the swell of conversation and laughter almost drowned out the subtle background of music. A steady stream of people made their way to the high table to offer congratulations to Keridil and Sashka, and among their number was Sister Erminet, who approached with a small group of Sisters who had arrived from West High Land that morning. Faramor the hawk-master’s experiment had proved successful, and as a result Kael Amion, the elderly Senior at the West High Land cot, had sent a deputation of the women in her charge to the Castle to bring her personal good wishes.

  Sashka disguised her amusement behind an artificial yawn as the Sisters approached. Erminet was smiling, but her eyes betrayed her, and Sashka believed she detected jealousy in their disdainful coldness. She forced down a desire to laugh. If all went well, Sister Erminet would have cause to regret her attitude before too long …

  ‘High Initiate.’ Erminet clasped Keridil’s hand. ‘A very gratifying occasion. On behalf of Lady Kael Amion and the Sisters of West High Land, may we offer warmest congratulations.’

  Sashka gave Keridil a faintly pitying glance as she realised he was taken in by Erminet’s unctuous manner.

  He thanked the old woman with great courtesy, and then Erminet turned to the girl at his side.

  ‘My dear Sashka. This is a wonderful day for us all at the Cot - the Lady is very proud of you.’

  Sashka smiled sweetly. ‘Thank you, Sister; I’m very gratified by such praise.’ Her voice oozed modesty, and Erminet nodded and made to move on. But before she had taken a step, Sashka added, as though the thought had just occurred to her, ‘Oh - Sister Erminet … I don’t wish to raise an unhappy subject, but … ‘ Her eyelashes flickered, though her gaze was steady, ‘I gather that you are now in charge of both the prisoners held here at the Castle.’

  Keridil frowned, surprised, but if Erminet was disconcerted she didn’t show it. ‘Yes,’ she said evenly, ‘I am.’

  Sashka smiled again. ‘It’s just that … I’d so much appreciate your assurance that all’s well and there’s no danger of any trouble.’ She reached out and took Keridil’s hand. ‘I’m sure the High Initiate will think me foolish, but I’d enjoy tonight so much more without the fear that something might go amiss.’

  Erminet hesitated. She knew full well that Sashka had no fear of Tarod, Cyllan or any other living creature, but couldn’t imagine what her motive for such an uncharacteristic question might be. Keridil, however, came unwittingly to her aid.

  ‘My love, there’s no need for any doubt,’ he said, smiling fondly at Sashka. ‘I understand your feelings in the circumstances, but I can give you my assurance, there’s not the smallest chance of any threat to our happiness.’ He looked up at the old woman. ‘Isn’t that so, Sister Erminet?’

  Erminet inclined her head. ‘Indeed, High Initiate.’

  She glanced at the auburn-haired girl. ‘I looked in on the girl Cyllan not half an hour ago, and the Adept - the former Adept, I should say - a little earlier. Both are secure - in fact, the girl was sleeping when I left her. You have my assurance of that.’

  Sashka smiled. ‘Thank you, Sister. Your assurance is all we could ask.’

  When Erminet and the other Sisters had moved on, Keridil said in Sashka’s ear, ‘It’s not like you to be nervous, love. Why are you so troubled?’

  She gave a little shrug. ‘Ohh … perhaps I’m superstitious, Keridil. Forgive me - I’ll be well enough now.’

  ‘Sister Erminet’s more than capable.’

  ‘I know.’ Sashka smiled sweetly at him in the way she knew could disarm him without a word spoken. ‘Oh, I know.’

  Cyllan heard the strains of dance music as she ran on silent feet through the maze of passages that permeated the Castle like a warren. In trying to avoid the main hall she had misjudged her own knowledge of the corridors, and had taken two wrong turnings before finally emerging uncomfortably close to the double doors that stood between her and the banquet.

  Slipping into an alcove that masked her with its shadows, she stopped to catch her breath and get her bearings. Thus far, luck had been with her - she had encountered no one in the courtyard, and the one woman servant who had hurried past her as she crossed the entrance hall had paused only to bob a curtsey to the cloaked and hooded figure whom she had clearly taken for a late-arriving guest. But luck, Cyllan knew from bitter experience, had a habit of running out when least expected. If she was to fulfil her task, she must tread with the greatest of caution.

  She had already made up her mind to steal the stone from the High Initiate’s rooms before she made her way to the cellars where Tarod was imprisoned. In honesty, she had to admit that she would only feel safe when the jewel was in his hands; and while she might be no more than an anonymous figure to anyone she chanced to meet, he was known to the entire populus of the Castle and would be recognised immediately should he be seen.

  The music, muffled beyond the heavy hall doors, was a light, lilting dance tune, underpinned by a murmur of many voices. The celebrations were at their height, and Cyllan dared waste no more time. Peering cautiously in both directions and seeing the corridor empty, she left her hiding place and hurried away in what she hoped was the direction of the High Initiate’s apartments.

  Her instincts proved true this time - and the outer door was unlocked. She suffered an agonising moment as she pushed the door fractionally open, half expecting to be challenged from within - but the suite of rooms was unlit and empty.

  A box, locked in his cupboard, Sister Erminet had said … Cyllan moved cautiously across the floor, skirting the massive table that dominated the room, and found the ornately carved cabinet a little to one side of the fireplace. The handle refused to give when she turned it, and swearing under her breath she began to search for something that would force the lock. Her search was hampered by the darkness, but she had nothing with which to make a light even had she dared to. Groping across the table she knocked over an inkstand which fell with a crash, splattering its contents across table top and floor. Cyllan froze, sweat breaking out on her skin, but the noise brought no one to investigate, and after a minute or so she resumed her hunt.

  The table-top yielded nothing of any use, and it was only when she turned her attention to the drawer set beneath it that she found the knife. It was a wicked blade, glinting like wet slate in the dimness as she drew it from its sheath, but it would suffice well enough. There was no time for finesse, and she gouged out the lock of the cupboard in three fierce movements, wrenching the door back and feeling inside for her quarry.

  A glass bottle, a sheaf of papers … and the box.

  Cyllan drew it out and put it on the
floor, crouching over it as she prised at the lid with her blade. Like the cupboard it was locked, but it was made of soft pewter, lead lined, and gave at her second attempt. She lifted the lid … and stared with a chilling fascination at what confronted her.

  The Chaos stone lay alone in the box, and it glowed with an inner light of its own; a cold, dim radiance that spilled on to Cyllan’s hands and turned them ghostly grey. For a moment she baulked at the idea of touching it - but then she gathered her courage, reached into the box, and her fingers closed around the gem. An unnerving sense of elation filled her as she felt its hard contours against her palm; her arm tingled and, just for a brief instant, she felt a heady sense of power, as though some unnameable force had flooded her mind from the stone’s depths. She took a grip on herself - she was by no means triumphant yet, and jubilation must wait - and hastily shut the box, putting it back in the cupboard and closing the ruined door as best she could. With the stone in her left hand she picked up the knife once more. She’d keep it, at least until both she and Tarod were safe …

  Finding her way to the door, she bumped noisily against a chair, but again the noise was insufficient to raise an alarm. She waited until her heart stopped racing, then eased the door open …

  The passage awaited her, seeming brilliant after the dark room. Cyllan stepped out -

  And a figure moved across her path.

  Cyllan’s eyes widened in horror. She tried to dodge back into the High Initiate’s apartments, but it was too late - he had seen her, stopped, recognised her as the hood fell back to betray her distinctive pale hair - and she found herself transfixed by the stunned stare of Drachea Rannak.

  Wo …’ Cyllan croaked the word, her voice unrecognisable even to herself. ‘No … Yandros, no!’

  Drachea too had sworn aloud, and his hand went immediately to the short sword he had lately taken to carrying. He had slipped away from the banquet, bored and, he had to admit to himself, more than a little jealous of the High Initiate, and had been pacing moodily along the corridor at the very moment when, by sheer chance, Cyllan had emerged with her prize. Now he faced her, and as the initial shock which had frozen them both faded Cyllan saw realisation and alarm dawning in his eyes.

  ‘Gods!’ The sword rattled from its scabbard. ‘You bitch, how did you - oh, no!’ He brought the blade up in a wild, slashing movement as Cyllan made a desperate dive for freedom, and she reeled back against the wall to save herself from its shearing arc.

  ‘Oh, no!’ Drachea said again, harshly. ‘Not this time, you demon - not this time!’ And over his shoulder he yelled, ‘Help! Servants, here - quickly!’

  The Chaos stone pulsed suddenly hot in Cyllan’s hand, and a storm of bitter ferocity surged into life within her. Drachea had thwarted her once; he had brought about Tarod’s downfall - but not again! Never, never again! Like a vision seen in the instant of a bolt of lightning her mind pictured Yandros’s proud, sardonic face, and his eyes seemed to reflect the colourless radiance of the gem -

  Drachea started as her left hand came up, and a sudden glare of light sprang from between her fingers.

  On the verge of shouting the alarm again the words stuck and died in his throat, and when he tried to draw breath his lungs seemed to fill with ice. He swayed, staggered - Cyllan took a pace forward, brandishing the stone like a weapon, and her face illuminated by the gem’s glare was mad, insensate. Drachea tried again to yell out; his voice broke in a cracking scream, and as the sound of it echoed through the passage Cyllan sprang at him, the knife in her right hand flashing up in a deadly stroke that took Drachea in the stomach and sheared through to his breastbone. His scream choked off into a bubbling howl of pain and he doubled over, spinning around and almost falling on his own sword. Seeing him down, Cyllan’s senses gave way to an explosion of rage and she hurled herself on him a second time, the knife-blade hurtling down and biting deep into his shoulder. She was beyond all reason, driven by something she could neither comprehend nor control; something that awoke an insane, unhuman craving to kill, destroy, avenge -

  A shriek that was neither her voice nor Drachea’s cut through the madness in her head, and she jumped back as though jerked by a rope. Two servants, a man and a woman, had come running in answer to Drachea’s bellowed summons, and had rounded the corner to be confronted by the sight of what seemed to be a white-faced demon, face and hands spattered with blood, hacking with a gore-soaked knife at the struggling Drachea. The woman fainted dead away and the man stared at Cyllan, jaw gaping, gathered his breath to yell at the top of his voice -

  Sanity came back with a violent jolt. Drachea lay between Cyllan’s feet, dead or dying. The Chaos stone was ice-cold in her left hand, the knife slick and slippery in her right; her clothes a mess of new crimson stains…

  Cyllan’s stomach heaved, and, galvanised by nothing more than animal instinct, she turned and ran. The corridor veered crazily before her, and at her back, diminishing yet thundering like drums in her head, she heard the servant’s high-pitched, frantic voice yelling a desperate alarm.

  Chapter 15

  The music from the gallery was loud enough to mask any commotion from beyond the heavy doors of the dining-hall, and from slow and formal set pieces the players had now progressed to lighter but more vigorous dance music. A few couples had taken the floor already, and the dancing would increase as the night wore on, continuing until the small hours when hot mulled wine and biscuits would be served before the revelry ended.

  At first, Keridil didn’t notice the two men who entered the hall and began to push their way urgently through the throng towards him. He was making conversation with Sashka’s father, while at the same time privately reflecting on the success of the evening - and only when Sashka touched his arm and said, in an odd voice, ‘Keridil … ‘ did he look up and see them approaching.

  The looks on their faces were enough to tell him something was wrong, and as they reached him he rose to his feet. Curious onlookers strained to hear the brief, whispered conversation, but even Sashka was none the wiser when Keridil hurriedly proffered his apologies and strode out of the hall with the two men at his heels.

  The servant who had raised the alarm was sitting with his back against the corridor wall, face hidden in his hands and shaking as though he had the palsy. A steward crouched beside him, speaking in low, urgent tones, while another man, grey-faced, was attempting to cover a body with his cloak and hide it from view. There was blood on the floor, on the wall, and spreading through the cloak in a dark, ugly stain.

  ‘Wait.’ Keridil spoke to the man as he was about to cover the corpse’s face. The servant drew back, and the High Initiate stared down at the victim.

  He didn’t need Grevard to tell him that Drachea was dead. The young man’s eyes were half open and sightless, and blood still trickled from his mouth, though by the looks of it, Keridil reflected grimly, there must be little enough in his body left to be shed. Whoever had killed him must have attacked him as though possessed …

  Feeling sick, he signed to the servant to cover the body once more, and turned to face the steward.

  ‘Does anyone know who did this?’ His voice was low and dangerous.

  The steward got to his feet. ‘Pirasyn here witnessed the whole thing, sir, and I think he recognised the killer.

  But it’s hard to get any sense out of him.’

  Keridil nodded and squatted on his haunches in front of the distressed man. ‘Pirasyn. It’s Keridil Toln. Listen to me - you must help us, if you can. Try to remember who it was you saw attacking the Heir Margrave.’

  The man looked up and swallowed, and Keridil tried to smile reassuringly. ‘He’ll be apprehended, never fear.

  But we’ll hunt him down all the quicker if you can identify him to me now.’

  Pirasyn swallowed again, then shook his head. ‘Not him … ‘

  ‘Not whom?’ Keridil was puzzled.

  ‘Him.’ the man repeated. ‘Not him. Her. The girl-the one who aided the demon. White hair.
Yellow eyes.

  And that face … ‘ He covered his eyes again and started to sob.

  A liquid sensation clutched at Keridil’s stomach and slowly he straightened up. Cyllan? It wasn’t possible - she was safely locked up! He’d had Sister Erminet’s own assurance not an hour since … But impossible or no, he also had Pirasyn’s testimony … and a terrible intuition to add weight to it.

  He swung round to the two men who had summoned him. ‘Get up to the room where, that girl’s kept - check that she’s still there. And hurry!’

  They left at a run, and as their footfalls diminished Sashka appeared from the direction of the main hall.

  ‘Keridil? What’s to do?’

  He went to her, catching her by the shoulders and halting her before she could see the carnage. ‘Love, you shouldn’t have followed me.’

  She gazed levelly back. ‘When you’re pulled from my side by some obvious crisis, do you expect me to sit and meekly await your return? I want to be of help - please, tell me what’s amiss.’

  Keridil sighed. ‘I didn’t want to expose you to this, but … Drachea Rannak has been murdered.’

  Her lovely eyes widened in shock. ‘Murdered? Here, outside your own apartments?’

  The words brought him up short; it hadn’t occurred to him that there might be more than coincidence involved in the location, but now he began to wonder. And if Pirasyn had spoken the truth, there was one obvious motive …

  He took a torch down from its bracket on the wall and opened the door to his rooms - then Sashka heard a soft oath escape his lips. She ran after him as he disappeared inside, and found him staring at the detritus which Cyllan had left. Spilled ink, scattered papers -

  ‘Keridil, look!’ she said harshly. The cupboard door-the lock’s been smashed!’

  Keridil saw it, and ran across the room. He snatched the pewter box from its shelf, and even before he opened it the broken lid told him what he would find.