“Whatever he did, he was once my friend. And there isn’t enough wood for what he wanted.” He stared up and up at the glazed red stones which were the colour of the blood on his gloved hands. “I wish I could burn it all.”
“All things burn,” said Ymareth, “if the fire be hot enough.” Aldric looked at Gemmel, who nodded, then at the dragon.
“True?”
“True. Only give the word.”
“He was my friend,” Aldric said again. “He deserves a worthy monument. One the Grand Warlord will remember.” He did as he had done once before, and looked straight into the dragon’s glowing eyes. “The word is given. Let us get clear, then do it.”
There was no one on the streets as they rode out, and none of those who stared from behind closed shutters made any move to stop them. Two drawn swords might not have discouraged the city militia, but the swirling corona of force which surrounded Gemmel’s spellstave was a worse threat. It trailed tendrils of blue fire in their wake and even though the flames burned nothing, they would have made even Dewan’s old regiment the Bodyguard Cavalry pause for second thoughts. And then there was the dragon, high overhead and out of sight, but very much in mind…
Egisburg watched them leave, but even after they had gone the city held its breath.
*
“I don’t care about your clothes,” Aldric said as he dismounted, “we’re all lying flat. All means all.” He was speaking to the Imperial women, for Chirel was again objecting to his high-handed treatment of Princess Marhala. With every minute away from Ymareth her complaints had grown sharper, and he was getting tired of them.
“Make your horses lie down too. Like this!” He twisted Lyard’s bridle in the proper fashion until the big Andarran stallion obediently sank down and rolled onto his side, black against the snow. “Do it. I’ll help.”
“You seem to know what you’re doing,” said Gemmel.
“If I did, Dewan might still be alive.” Aldric dredged up a bitter little smile. “But I know how to be careful, even if I’m sometimes not fast enough about it.” He lay full-length in the snow, upper body across Lyard’s neck and one hand over the animal’s exposed eye. The other hand reached out, met Kyrin’s and gripped it tight.
“Aldric, do you think even Ymareth—” She saw his face in the dimness and stopped.
“I don’t think,” he said. “I believe.”
Snow drifted down from the iron-grey clouds, and the world was full of cold and darkness.
Then light scored the sky, a column of fire so brilliant that the shadows it threw had edges sharp as knives. Despite a cloud of glowing flecks that blurred his vision Aldric could see the Red Tower as clear as day. It was more than a mile distant, a tiny spike of stone as red as blood, as red as murder, and it was shimmering. The crimson of its true colour shaded up through scarlet and incandescent orange to a flaring yellow and at the last a violet-tinged white which made him look away.
The air temperature also soared until the snow became rain, and warm rain at that. Then it stopped altogether as the clouds which gave it birth were seared out of existence by the plume of heat rising from the heart of Egisburg. In the sky above the city, stars appeared again.
Two feet and more of fallen snow began to melt, rivulets of water pouring out of it with the chuckling sound of a brimming stream in springtime. Aldric raised his head a fraction, squinting against the glare. Through a dancing haze he saw the Tower, two hundred feet of stone and iron and timber, squirming from base to ramparts like a tallow candle in a furnace. Even that brief glimpse felt like staring at the noon sun on midsummer’s day, and it was blazing brighter yet.
The earth bucked beneath his prone body in a sudden convulsion beside which Lyard’s terrified thrashing was like a lover’s caress, and Chirel screamed, but it was never completed. Just as she reached her highest pitch a noise from Egisburg rolled over them, breaking like a great dark wave of thunder peaked and crested with chain lightning. The air howled in their ears with the appalling echoes of that long rumble of destruction, and in its tingling aftermath they heard, high overhead, Ymareth the dragon’s awesome roar of triumph as its wings scythed across the starlit sky.
“Oh sweet and loving—!” Aldric didn’t know whose voice it was, his ears were ringing too much. “Look there! Dear Light of Heaven, look!”
A dome-topped unstable pillar of smoke and dust rose into the sky above Egisburg, criss-crossed with filaments where yet-burning debris was still falling from the main mass of the cloud. It looked monstrous, like a gigantic fungus rearing up to spread its rotting cap over the ruins of the Red Tower.
Except there were no ruins. The Red Tower was gone. There were a scatter of fires around Tower Square, but the rest of Egisburg seemed more or less intact. Ymareth’s destruction had been as precise as a surgeon’s cautery.
“You believed,” said Kyrin, still holding Aldric’s hand in a grip so tight it hurt.
“I’ve started believing in things we’ve never heard of, and I’m not sure I want to hear any more about them.” He looked towards Gemmel and shivered a little, then turned to help as the horses scrambled upright, snorting and stamping. “Princess, I’m taking you to Durforen. That was the arrangement. We’re expected at the monastery.”
Marhala an-Sherban gazed at him with those eyes whose expression he could never read. There was that stillness about her again, that calm with all the weight of a ruling dynasty behind it.
“Then best we go there at once, my lord Talvalin,” she said in clipped, accented Alban. “The way you honour fallen friends is too costly even for an Empire. War is coming. It won’t be the one Woydach Etzel is expecting, and we can spare no other… Monuments.”
CHAPTER TEN
They reached Durforen at noon on the fourth day from Egisburg. Hethra-hamath, deh Marhar. The eighth day of the tenth month. The eighth day of winter and the Hour of the Hawk. All was quiet beneath the silvery sunlight, without even a trace of wind to move air edged like a razor. There was only that chill, glittering stillness and, high up in the icy sky, what might have been a thread of smoke unravelling white across the pallid blue.
Aldric reined Lyard to a standstill and pushed back the hood of his riding-coat. His illicit rank-robe was over the top of it for warmth rather than anything else, black on black on black, for after work with brush and curry-comb the Andarran courser had a coat like polished jet, and beneath the long, loose coat Aldric was once more clad in his own sable battle armour. How it had survived intact he wasn’t entirely sure, but could probably thank the Drusalan fondness for over-punctilious regulations.
Three days from Egisburg, and halfway through a fourth. Such a short time since… Since everything. Yet perhaps it was only right and proper for the journey to be short. The quicker he could give Princess Marhala over to the safe-keeping of whoever, in dead Bruda’s words, was expecting her, the quicker he could make an end of this last exercise in duty to Rynert the King.
It had fouled what passed for his Honour, despite those – and one in particular, a thought that made him glance upward – who still said otherwise. There was no question about what it had cost: a tentative companionship, an already uncertain loyalty, and far too many lives. Aldric swallowed past a sudden constriction in his throat. It was easy to maintain his indifference while others watched; within the privacy of his mind was another matter. Despite using the word – it evaded pointless explanation – Dewan ar Korentin had never been much of a friend, more a close stranger, and ceased being even that after what Kyrin had said about his scheming. But he had been a familiar face, and Light of Heaven witness there were few enough of those. Now there was one less.
Aldric would as soon have left the Drusalan Empire far behind him; formally shaken its dirt from his boot-soles, as the old tale said. But he had not, and he would not, for a while yet. There were other affairs, nothing to do with Alba’s king, which required his personal attention. As personal as anything confided by a father to a son in the past few
evenings.
They found lodgings at farms and steadings so isolated that gossip about their presence would travel slowly in this foul weather, and Gemmel had confided secrets that, though often halfway guessed already, shook Aldric to the soul. Sometimes only the gentle anchorage of Tehal Kyrin – he had refused to send her out of earshot – kept him anchored to sense and sanity. And there had been times when her nails sank deep into his arm while she too tried to come to terms with what was said.
What Gemmel told them had changed the way Aldric looked at the world. No, at his world, for there were others. Gemmel had said so. One of those others was Gemmel’s own. Those secrets had fathered, mothered and given birth to thoughts of time and distance beyond understanding. They made him shiver as he stared at the vastness of the sky. It wasn’t a shiver of fear, not quite. Part was the awareness that comes to eyes newly opened, appreciating for the first time the complexity of light and shape and colour.
Eyes that saw a world far smaller than it had been, but a Heaven far larger than a man could ever dream of…
*
Durforen monastery lay at the foot of the ridge. It was just a ruin, and not even an especially picturesque one though the coat of snow on its old grey stones gave a certain charm to tumbled walls. The rest was far less charming, for the old buildings were gaudy with the scarlet pennons and red armour of the soldiers encamped there. They were Imperial Household troops. Even at this distance, and squinting through a glare of sun on snow that made his eyes smart, Aldric could see the gold-embroidered patterns on banners never seen outside Kalitzim.
Except when the Emperor was in attendance.
“Quite a reception committee,” he said softly to Lyard, watching a sudden flurry of agitation spread through the camp after he was spotted on the skyline. Other figures joined his own, first Kyrin, then Marhala and Chirel close together, and finally Gemmel as rearguard with the Dragonwand held slantwise like a spear. The agitation increased, trumpets sounded, and within seconds a light cavalry patrol was galloping towards them amid a haze of churned fine snow.
The riders came over the crest of the ridge in open skirmish order that swung through a crescent to a closed circle with the intruders at its centre. And then everything stopped, for their prisoners merely watched the cavalry manoeuvre as if it was being performed for their amusement. That unconcern wasn’t the only thing out of place, and made the horsemen of the patrol turn to their officer in confusion. Whatever else they had been expecting, it was more than a bearded elder, three women – even if one was armed – and a young man with the insignia and all the arrogance of a cavalry hanalth, but entirely the wrong style of armour.
It was Aldric who broke the muttering, indecisive stalemate. Nudging Lyard forward, he snapped an Imperial salute towards the patrol kortagor that was creditable enough for the man to return it.
“I have news for whoever commands here,” he said. “Who is it?”
*
It was Goth.
Of course it was Goth. At the back of his mind Aldric had expected that, and betrayed not a flicker of emotion at sight of the Lord General and his beard. Instead he had given another salute, equally precise, and a bow of respect that wasn’t precise at all or even very respectful. Even now, after almost an hour of talking, there was no sign of whether Goth was glad to see him alive, or even if he was troubled by the news of Bruda’s murder. It was, as always, impossible to tell what might please or annoy a Drusalan general, just as it was notable that the three strangers were kept on horseback well away from the encampment and from anything sensitive they might see.
Ioen the Emperor, a fresh-faced youngster with flaming red hair, was somewhat easier to read. The presence of this armoured column so close to the borders of Woydach Etzel’s territory indicated he felt strongly about… What? Was it the Princess, or the policies affected by her capture? Either way he seemed pleased to see her free and unhurt, and it made him generous.
“My lords, my lady,” he said in stilted Alban, “for this gift, liberty to my much-loved aunt and dear father’s sister, gifts I offer you in turn of gold, land, riches.” Aldric watched as Goth leaned over to whisper something which was probably an appeal against excessive generosity. He grinned slightly and made sure Goth saw him do it.
“I’m not a poor man, General, nor particularly greedy. So don’t fear for the Imperial Treasury this time.” Goth straightened with a jerk, pretending he hadn’t said a word, and even coloured slightly though it was more likely a response to unfamiliar impudence than the embarrassment he probably didn’t know how to feel. “However, Majesty,” Aldric continued, “there are two things I would like settled. One concerns the Jevaiden holding of Seghar.”
The name provoked a deal of muttering between Ioen and Goth, enough that Aldric wondered what he might have started, and he was relieved to see the beginnings of a smile on the Emperor’s freckled face. An absolute monarch with a schoolboy’s face, he thought. What next?
“Concerns for Gueynor-Overlord, not the holding, yes?” There was an arch, complacent quality to the light, youthful voice that could easily become tiresome, but in the circumstances Aldric thought best to let it go.
“As your Majesty says.”
“Concerns for her safety, yes?”
Certain this was a speech prepared in advance and learned by rote, Aldric nodded silently. He had left Gueynor with only a middle-aged demon-queller as protector, and the keys to hidden money-chests which gave power over the long-unpaid garrison. But second thoughts had been suggesting that it might not have been enough. He had to know.
“Be at ease. She was confirmed Overlord this three months past, with all rights of rank and privilege. It pleases that your wish is quickly granted, yes?”
“Yes.” Aldric bit the word off short. It pleased Goth as well, if the width of his grin in that thicket of grey beard was anything to go by. So quickly granted indeed, and so cheaply. “But I did say two things,” he reminded them, and saw Goth’s grin snuffed out. “The second involves safe passage to any part of the Empire. Any, regardless of current political allegiance. I’m sure you can think of ways to ensure that, Lord General. Yes?”
“No!” Goth was shocked. “Never! Of course not…!”
Aldric wasn’t amused to see how, after his first vehement refusal, the general had to pause and think of reasons why not. To cover the workings of that tricky brain he began to bluster about foreigners, about their lack of rights and, more dangerously than he knew, about an Alban kailin’s duty to his king. Aldric didn’t hide a grimace of distaste at that.
Then his attention shifted beyond both General and Emperor, to where Princess Marhala sat side-saddle on a palfrey, red-roan like all the Imperial mounts. She had been gone a while, and now her simple white clothing was the rich crimson and gold more suited to one of her high lineage. Except for that quarter-hour away she had heard everything, watching, listening but saying and doing nothing.
Until now, when she leaned down to where Chirel stood by her horse’s head, tapped the woman on the arm with a slim, scarlet-enamelled scroll cylinder, and directed that it be taken straight to Aldric. He had been ignoring Goth and his excuses to follow the ladies’ little by-play, and now there was already a laugh simmering within his ribcage as Chirel reached up to hand him the scroll.
“That should meet your requirements.” Marhala’s voice wasn’t particularly loud yet it cut across all the other sounds, of Goth, of the horses, of the military camp two hundred yards away. The General and the Emperor jerked round in their saddles, not expecting to hear her speak at all. Then they exchanged glances and turned slowly back to Aldric.
He sat, cylinder in one hand, tapping it lazily on the gloved palm of the other as he met Goth’s stare with a bland, cool smile. Then, holding the General’s eyes with his own, he held out the little container to Gemmel.
“I only speak Drusalan, altrou-ain. I can’t read it yet. Could you do the honours?”
Gemmel opened it and shook o
ut not one but several scrolls, written in ornate characters with red-and-gold seal impressions at top and bottom. He scanned the topmost, and though he didn’t read the message aloud his indrawn whistle of amazement – a reaction which made Aldric look round with raised eyebrows – said more than enough. The sorcerer looked at his fosterling, and at that fosterling’s lady, and tapped the scrolls with one long finger.
“Citizenship,” he said, “within the Empire’s borders. Passes confirming we’re without political bias. And all authorised with Imperial family seals.” He let the scrolls snap shut and returned them to their cylinder with a care Aldric had only ever seen him give rare documents in his own library. “In summary, we can go anywhere and do anything that the law permits. Lady…” he bowed very low towards Marhala, “you have my – our – gratitude.”
“What point,” she said, “in having high-placed friends who aren’t of use?”
“You eavesdropped on what we needed.” Aldric was faintly accusing.
“I did not.” Marhala watched his eyebrows go up and smiled at him. “A Princess of the Drusalan Empire does not eavesdrop. Chirel eavesdropped for me, and I acted on it.”
“Uh.” Aldric heard Kyrin stifle a laugh. “Of course you did. Thank you for that, lady. And my thanks also to you, Majesty.” He paused, deliberately, for a count of three. “Oh yes, and Goth as well. Thanks to you all. For a great many things. Especially an education. And now… Now we must be going.”
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