“Mercenaries.” Ryshad’s sudden grin was white against his blue-painted face. “Never want to finish a job properly.”
“Regular troops,” Sorgrad countered with mock sorrow as he came up to join us. “No imagination beyond their orders.” He nodded at the chest. “Get that open, my girl. I’m not carrying it all the way back to Olret.”
“We don’t want him cutting himself in for a share.” ’Gren buckled his pack, which gave a satisfactory clank. “You know, we could rob the Tormalin Emperor with a shadow play like that.”
“Try it and you’ll have half the sworn men in Toremal after you,” Ryshad growled with half-feigned ferocity.
“You don’t think Planir might object, ’Gren?” mused Sorgrad. “Though he’s never short of coin. Maybe that’s how he fills his own coffers.”
I had the chest open and lifted the lid to reveal bundles of faded velvet. “Can we save the banter for a safe fireside?” But I was also feeling the elation that comes after taking an insane risk and getting away with it. “Ideally one with an inn wrapped round it.”
“Who gets first pick?” ’Gren reached for a close-wrapped lump but I slapped his hand away. “This isn’t loot, ’Gren, it’s people’s lives and don’t you forget it.” I locked gazes with him until I was sure he was heeding me and then stirred the velvet with a careful dagger point to reveal a handful of trinkets. Sorgrad squatted beside me and weighed them in one hand before handing them to his brother.
“I’m already carrying enough weight,” objected ’Gren.
“Then the loot’s what you dump,” Sorgrad said in a tone that brooked no argument. “You fail to bring someone back to themselves from that cavern and you’ll answer to me.”
“And Halice,” I added.
“And half the people of Kellarin.” Ryshad knelt beside me and took my dagger to move the smaller pieces aside, revealing a couple of swords and a handful of daggers.
“One each,” said ’Gren irrepressibly.
“I’d say it’s best to spread these around.” Ryshad suited his actions to his words, passing us each a weapon with antique moulding and tarnished decoration. Mine had a particularly fine amethyst for a pommel stone. “Do your best not to use them though. We don’t want unexpected visitors inside anyone’s head.” He tried to make light of it but the attempt fell miserably flat.
“As far as Guinalle could make out, it’s a sense of danger and strong emotions generally that penetrate the enchantment and stir the hidden mind.” Shiv’s face was intent, deep lines drawing down either side of his mouth. “The people were never meant to be hidden for so long. The enchantment’s worn horribly thin.”
From Ryshad’s expression, horrible was an apt description of the consequences of the incantations unravelling. He lifted one of the swords with visible reluctance.
“I’ll take that.” Shiv stuck the weapon through his belt, velvet wrapping and all.
“Do you know how to use that?” asked ’Gren with a touch of derision.
“No, but that’s the whole point,” Shiv retorted. “I won’t be tempted and risk rousing the sleeping mind within it. Who’s taking the other one?”
I saw Ryshad steeling himself to what he doubtless saw as his duty and forestalled him. “I will.”
“Are you sure?” He looked at me, concern darkening his brown eyes.
I wasn’t but this wasn’t the time to admit it. I avoided his gaze as I adjusted the awkward weapon, trying to make sure it was secure at the same time as not inadvertently stabbing myself in the leg. None of us needed that kind of delay.
“I’ll take it,” ’Gren offered. “I dealt with Eresken when he came knocking round the back of my mind.”
“You killed him, ’Gren,“ I pointed out. “The whole idea is to bring these people back to life. Anyway, how long do you think you could carry a weapon without using it?”
He nodded sagely. “You’re so good at hiding at the back and letting other people do your fighting.”
I grinned at him. “Quite right.” He chuckled with appreciation.
“Have you any notion how many people still sleep in Edisgesset?” Shiv frowned, as I shared out the rest of the little parcels, more valuable than ten times their weight in gold or diamonds.
“Thirty or so, wasn’t it, at last count?” I felt guilty that I couldn’t be more certain. I tucked mine inside the breast of my jerkin, the weight heavy beneath my breastbone, my stomach hollow with the responsibility I now carried.
“Thirty-seven,” said Ryshad with biting emphasis.
Sorgrad scowled. “Then we’re still missing some.”
“That’s assuming all these are true Kellarin artefacts,” I pointed out reluctantly.
“So the rest’s fair booty?” ’Gren was shaking out the remnants of cloth left in the base of the chest, just to make sure nothing was overlooked.
Shiv and Ryshad were looking back in the direction of Ilkehan’s keep.
“They look too busy to send anyone scouting for us,” said Ryshad. “Let’s have that hargeard down to put an end to Muredarch’s enchanters.”
Shiv pulled his belt tighter and settled the wrapped sword on his hip. “Sorgrad, you’re going to have to help me with this.”
“Very well.” Sorgrad’s voice was unemotional but I could see a gleam of eagerness in his blue eyes. Was this going to be entirely safe? I wondered.
“It’s this way.” Sorgrad cuffed his brother lightly round the head and ’Gren reluctantly abandoned his attempt to pry off the brass fittings of the chest.
More cautious than ermines in the wrong colour coat, we eased our way through thickets of berry bushes thick with leaf, pale pink bell-shaped flowers and squat green berries yet to ripen. I froze with disbelief as I heard a familiar sound from the other side of an upthrust of rock. That first light-hearted jingling was joined by another and then came the clip of small hooves.
I looked at Ryshad who looked at Sorgrad and, at his nod, came to my side. As I drew my dagger and we headed for the far side of the sprawling clump, ’Gren and Sorgrad went in the other direction. Shiv crouched down, catching his breath and keeping watch. I rounded the bushes to find a rocky cleft sheltering the thickest and oldest berry bushes we’d seen and a spring all but dry in the summer’s heat.
Being goats, the animals were stripping the berries from the bushes with single-minded determination before moving on to the leaves and any tender twigs they could reach. Being lads, the youths were waving a spray of fruit on the end of a stick to tempt a bold kid out along a weathered knife-edge of outcrop rock. Every time the little goat took another cautious step with small black hooves, the first tow-headed boy edged the berries a little further away. The second boy wanted his turn at the tease, reaching for the branch.
Behind me, Ryshad bent to whisper soundlessly in my ear. “My father always reckons one lad does the work of one lad, two do the work of half a lad and three gives you no lad at all.”
This pair were so intent on their nonsense, they wouldn’t have heard him shout that aloud. They didn’t even notice the goats pause in their chewing to stare in their peculiar, slot-eyed way.
Sorgrad and ’Gren appeared at the head of the defile, startling the boys who backed away. The kid sprang lightly down the crumbling rock to bolt the fallen berries with muffled bleats of triumph. One nanny licked a stray leaf from her tufted chin with slow deliberation as she watched me and Ryshad get behind the lads.
It was the work of a moment for me to grab one and Ryshad had the other. The lad froze before easing his head round to see what had snared him. After a sudden gasp, he all but stopped breathing, as entranced as a rabbit by a dancing weasel. I smiled but wondered how effective the disguise might be this close.
If my lad stood stiff as bone, Ryshad’s was spineless. He sagged at the knees, hunching over, hands covering his face as Sorgrad and ’Gren advanced with a measured pace. I felt my lad tremble to the very soles of his boots and tightened my grip. He snapped out of his terri
fied stillness. “Who are you? What do you want? We’re no one, nobody. Take the goats, just don’t hurt us.”
Sorgrad reached us and, still silent, laid a finger on the lad’s mouth to hush him. The other boy looked up from his half-crouch between Ryshad’s merciless hands, blue eyes wide with fear, blond hair tumbled all over his face. If we frightened him any more thoroughly he’d wet himself.
Sorgrad beckoned with one finger before turning to walk back the way he had come. Just as before ’Gren matched his step precisely.
I gave my lad a breath or so before smacking him smartly between the shoulder blades. He stepped forward before he could help himself and I followed close, urging another step with another blow.
The other lad’s legs were as useless as if he’d been hamstrung. Ryshad growled deep in his throat, grabbing the lad’s tousled hair and pulling back his head to stare deep into his eyes with cold menace. That sent the boy scrambling over the stony ground to cower beside his pal who was now forcing his reluctant feet onward without my intervention.
Ryshad looked a question at me and I shrugged. We followed at the same leaden pace that soon had my nerves twitching. Theatrics were all very well but what if a troop of Elietimm turned up to avenge Ilkehan while we were playing masquerades? On the other hand, we didn’t want this pair running off to raise the alarm. Shiv appeared at the head of the defile, standing with ’Gren and Sorgrad. I jerked my head at the three of them with silent insistence that we get on with whatever ostentatious destruction they had planned.
Sorgrad led the way over a shoulder of the land, and I got my first sight of Ilkehan’s hargeard. As a symbol of his might and of the reach of that power, it was daunting enough, even without ancestral bones and his inescapable Artifice to sanctify it for his people. We walked round the base of the great mound, flattened on top like an upturned bowl, so steeply sided there was no need for a ditch to deter the profane. A pale scar on the turf showed where countless feet had made this circuit before us. The boys stumbled; fear tripping both now, terrified whimpers escaping the weaker one.
I slowed to get my bearings. The keep was pretty much at my back, unseen over the shallow hills that formed a half-circle here to frame the hargeard. On the shore side, more hummocks and hillocks hid the dunes and sea. On the far side, turf reached out to an abrupt wall of unforgiving rock where the ground had fallen away like a broken piecrust. The grey stone cut into the land like a knife blade, shallow enough to step up nearest the hargeard but rising into the distance until it reached five and six times the height of a man. Ahead I saw a fan-shaped expanse of grass dotted with scrubby growth. A road marked with tall grey pillars marched down this long plain, a flange carved on the inner face of each one. They were imposing stones but raising them must have been a mere trifle compared to setting up the sarsens crowning the mound. I did my best not to gawp like some country bumpkin on her first visit to Toremal. A slack jaw wouldn’t befit a dread messenger from the Eldritch Kin.
Steps were cut into the side where the approach road met the mound. ’Gren, Shiv and Sorgrad stood on successive treads.
“Kneel,” said ’Gren, lowest and closest to us. The boys fell to their knees and at ’Gren’s gesture, Ryshad and I left them grovelling to go and flank him.
“All we require is that you bear witness.” Sorgrad’s words were sonorous with the archaic accents I’d heard from the Sheltya. “Life cannot thrive without death. Acknowledge this debt and those who have gone before will guard and guide you.” I saw the boys pale beneath the tan of their summer duties, eyes huge.
“But there is a balance to be observed. Ilkehan profaned it.” Sorgrad’s words were as implacable as the tread of the hangman to the gallows. “He returned ill for ill thrice and fivefold. He visited profligate death on the innocent and defiled the exile of the guilty with blood. He has died at our hands for these offences.”
The weaker lad huddled ever closer to his companion. The bolder one gazed at Sorgrad in horrified wonder.
“We will destroy Ilkehan’s power root and branch. Malice and greed desecrate this place and the dead will not suffer such taint. Bear witness,” Sorgrad repeated. “Whoever will rule this land must bring clean hands and raise a new sanctuary or suffer our wrath.”
He turned and walked slowly up the steps, Shiv at his shoulder. ’Gren and I followed with Ryshad.
“What now?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.
“Stand in the middle and keep still,” Shiv murmured.
Where Shernasekke had been happy with roughly hewn stones for their hargeard, Ilkehan’s were smooth and regular, evenly spaced and looked so precisely upright you could test them with a plumb line. The circle was as perfect as one drawn with Pered’s compasses. Each stone was twice as tall as Ryshad, maybe more, not squared at the top but cut at an angle, all the same, edges so sharp you might fear to cut yourself.
The stones were not the tallest monument to Ilkehan’s arrogance. An inner circle was made of wood. Great pines had been stripped of branches and bark, smoothed and then more prosaically steeped in pitch to stop them rotting. This dark, sterile thicket towered above our heads, forbidding, around the innermost sanctuary where four triangular stones waist high and concave on every face marked the corners of a paved square in the centre of the whole edifice.
“What would you say the breadth of this is, compared to Olret’s?” Ryshad looked around with a calculating eye. “There’s some constant measure used here, I’d bet on it.”
“Shall we worry about that later?” The five of us stood between the stones; Shiv at the centre, Ryshad behind him and Sorgrad in front. ’Gren and I at either side. I frowned. ”Where are those cursed goatherds?”
“They can’t have got far. They’ll see this regardless.” Shiv raised his hands and the hargeard responded to the elemental magic with a crashing clangour like a bell tower collapsing. I hastily clapped my hands to my ears. Eldritch dignity be cursed, I didn’t want to go home deafened. Unperturbed, Shiv wove his spell and hail hammered down on the stones. Only on the stones. The ice melted and steamed in the evening sun, dark stains trickling down the grey sides before the water paled to frost. Now chill, like the breath of winter, floated off the rocks like smoke. The smooth stones began to split, hairline cracks widening to ragged fissures, flakes and chips of rock falling away.
I saw Shiv concentrating on one particular stone. The great sarsen began to tremble until a blue-green knife of magelight clove it from top to bottom with a sound like the slam of Saedrin’s door. Which meant I missed whatever Shiv said to Sorgrad but the results spoke for themselves. Sorgrad rubbed his hands together to summon a ball of magefire and threw it at the wooden pillar on the off-hand side of the steps. The fire wrapped itself around the smooth black surface, bright tendrils spreading like some creeping plant, clinging to every crevice, flames blossoming on the dead wood. Crimson fire writhed, vivid beneath the smoke that billowed up. The ever-present breeze fanned the flames and the erstwhile tree became a column of golden fire and black smoke.
We could feel the all-consuming heat where we stood. I had no desire to end up toasted but bit my tongue on a plea that Sorgrad be careful. Distracting him would be even more dangerous. Then a veil of turquoise mist shimmered all around, cooling us. I mouthed silent gratitude to Shiv.
Sorgrad raised his hand and scarlet fire flowed from the burning timber to the next, flames tumbling down like water, soaking into the pitch. Natural flames took hold as the crimson magefire bowled across the ground, turf unscorched by its passage but the next wooden upright soon blazing.
“Where do you suppose Ilkehan got these trees?” I asked Ryshad.
“Dalasor,” he shrugged. “A shipyard maybe, raiding someone’s mast pond.”
With no more to do than either of us, ’Gren joined the conversation. “Me and ’Grad were wondering if Ilkehan had been stealing sentinel pines.”
“Interesting idea.” Ryshad had to raise his voice to make himself heard over the roa
r of flames.
“The trees that mark the drove routes?” What I know about Dalasor can be told in one of Ryshad’s mother’s jam verses. Grasslands endless enough to lose even the biggest herd of cattle in hold no attraction for me.
“They were planted by the Plains People.” Ryshad shrugged. “Ilkehan may have known some lore we’ve lost.”
I looked a little guiltily at Shiv. “Do you think Planir fetched any of those books away?”
The mage didn’t answer, still intent on the destruction of the hargeard. The steady crackle of burning wood raised a menacing threnody all around, the shattering of the great stones a savage counterpoint.
“They’ll hear this racket clear over in the keep!” I said with exaggerated loudness.
Shiv grinned. “They’ll see it as well.”
Flames were licking up high into the evening sky, scorching the smoke with red and orange hues. “I had no idea you could do this kind of magic,” I told him with unfeigned admiration.
“You never know what you can do until you try.” The wizard turned serious. “That’s half the trouble with Hadrumal these days. Libraries and learning are all very well but apprentices end up thinking if some authority doesn’t say they can do a given thing, that must mean they can’t. We need more mages like Otrick. Unless several sources stated categorically something was impossible and gave clear reasoning why, he reckoned it’s always worth a try.”
“That sounds like Otrick.” Agreeing strained my throat. The magefire was spreading ever faster, leaping over the rubble of the disintegrating stones. We’d soon be encircled. “How are we planning to leave?”
“Over there!” But ’Gren wasn’t answering me. He was pointing to a column of black-leathered men running down the approach road. They fanned out, hefting maces in practised hands.
“We wanted witnesses to see Ilkehan’s power go up in smoke, didn’t we?” Sorgrad weighed a new ball of magefire in one hand, picking out a target.
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