by Anthony Ryan
“Goats! Yes!” Alum straightened, reaching for one of the spears he had chosen from the tower armoury. “You have given me these fine weapons. It would be insulting not to furnish meat by way of thanks.” He turned his horse to the north, then paused. “If you do not emerge from this dread place within two days,” he told Vaelin in a grave voice, “be assured I will rescue you.”
With that he spurred his mount into motion and galloped away, Vaelin noting how he kept his gaze firmly averted from Nehrin’s Point.
Vaelin approached the gate at a canter and reined in to dismount. “Master Rentes,” he greeted the burly, staff-bearing Cumbraelin who came forward to take charge of his horse.
“Good day, my lord. Shall I send word to convene the Council?”
“That won’t be necessary. I assume Mistress Cara is at the school?”
“That she is, my lord. Be another hour before she lets the little ’uns loose, though.”
“I’ll wait.” Vaelin nodded his thanks and proceeded inside. Walking the broad streets to the schoolhouse, he was reminded of why he always liked coming here; the people were always scrupulous in avoiding his company. Some offered a muted greeting or a bow before hurrying on their way, but most just averted their gaze and busied themselves with various chores. The Queen’s Word protects them, he thought. But still they fear me, even though I was once one of them. It occurred to him that the loss of his gift was why they feared him, perhaps suspecting such misfortune might be contagious.
Most of the inhabitants came from all corners of the Realm, and a sizeable minority from yet more distant shores. Each had their own tale of persecution at the hands of their own people and therefore valued the security offered by this refuge. Aside from the long-standing risks posed by the ever-suspicious non-Gifted, the years since the war had brought the added threat of the Blood Reavers. The knowledge that drinking the blood of the Gifted would prolong human life had been suppressed under the Queen’s Word. Nevertheless, this hadn’t prevented it becoming widely known amongst the upper echelons of society throughout the Greater Realm. A select few criminal gangs had made themselves rich by abducting Gifted in order to drain their blood and sell it to a select clientele. Any caught doing so were subject to immediate execution but the potential profits were sufficient to overcome the fears of many an outlaw. The wall around Nehrin’s Point was not for show, nor was it a manifestation of paranoia.
So far, there had only been one serious attempt at abduction in the Reaches. A teenage boy and girl had ventured beyond the walls for a midnight tryst only to be captured by an opportunist band of cutthroats. Vaelin had handled the matter with swift and merciless efficiency, hunting down the band with the aid of the tower’s hounds. He ordered those not killed in the brief skirmish paraded through the streets of North Tower before executing them in the square, the hangman having been ordered to make sure the spectacle lasted as long as possible. However, Vaelin was not so naive to think the threat had disappeared, and a garrison of twenty North Guard were on permanent station at Nehrin’s Point.
Since Nortah’s tenure as teacher, the original schoolhouse he constructed had been given over as a nursery for the youngest children. Classes for the older students were now held in a large two-storey building constructed from the red sandstone common to the Reaches. Both buildings sat close to the longhouse where Nortah and Sella had made their home. It sat empty now, the windows boarded up and a chain on the door. Vaelin cast a critical eye over the roof, finding numerous tiles missing, and grimacing as he pondered the likely state of the interior. He had been a frequent visitor here in the years before Sella’s illness. Even then Nortah’s increasing appreciation for the bottle had become apparent, his evening conversation full of morose musings on the war that gradually descended into slurred and potentially treasonous commentaries on the nature of their queen. Sella, ever a patient soul, had forborne it all with a stoic good humour and Nortah, despite greeting most mornings with a befuddled and aching head, had attended to his teaching duties with a determined diligence. The building of the new schoolhouse had been his idea, paid for with a grant of monies from the Tower Lord. For a time his drinking diminished as he oversaw the construction, but it had only been partially complete when Sella fell ill.
Promise me, she had said when Vaelin sat by her bedside for the last time. Her face was tense with pain as she made the signs, hands still gloved even then. He is your brother, she told him, seeing the reluctance he hadn’t managed to keep from his face. Promise me. You will not let him destroy himself.
“My lord?”
Vaelin blinked, finding Cara standing a few feet away. She wore a plain gown and shawl of dark fabric, hair bound up although a few wayward coils twisted in the stiff sea breeze. Vaelin was struck by the contrast she made to the often frightened but determinedly brave girl who had followed him across the ice. As one of the more celebrated Gifted in the Realm, she enjoyed a position of considerable respect at the Point, not to say authority despite the fact that she continually refused to serve on the Town Council. In contrast to her fellow townsfolk, she always greeted Vaelin with an open smile of genuine welcome, but not today. Instead, her expression mixed forced solicitude with guarded expectation.
“Cara,” he said. “I’ve told you before, there’s no need for formality when we’re alone.”
She glanced over her shoulder at the gaggle of children emerging from the schoolhouse. Most were hurrying home amidst a chatter of horseplay and laughter, but a few lingered to stare in blank curiosity at the Tower Lord conversing with their teacher. “Off with you lot!” Cara called to them with an impatient flick of her wrist. “Don’t stand and gawp when your parents are waiting with food on the table.”
From the way they fled in the face of her strident tones Vaelin divined that Cara’s style of teaching was something of a contrast to Nortah’s. His brother had always enjoyed an effortless ability to capture the attention and respect of his pupils. Cara, it seemed, felt the need of a more commanding approach.
“You have something for me, I believe,” Cara said, turning back to him and extending her hand.
“I do.” Vaelin took the scroll from his pocket and handed it to her. “Word flies quickly, it seems.”
“And gossip flies quickest of all, especially when one’s husband takes up with a slattern.”
Vaelin concealed a wince at the hard edge of bitterness in her tone, watching her unfurl the scroll and give a satisfied nod upon surveying the contents.
“So, I find myself a spinster by order of the Tower Lord,” she said with forced humour.
“I was assured you would have no objection. If that’s not the case . . .”
“Oh no.” She rolled the scroll into a tight cylinder and consigned it to the inside of her shawl. “I certainly have no objection. You pressed him into the North Guard. I’ll wager he hated that. The prospect of war was almost as likely to make him take to his heels as the prospect of chores. Still, can’t say I relish the memory of it much either.” She turned, inclining her head at the schoolhouse. “Come, I’ve got stew on the boil. Won’t have it said the Tower Lord went away from my door with an empty belly.”
“I’ll eat with you,” he said. “And gladly. But I have other business first.” He directed his gaze to the stretch of beach beyond Nortah’s abandoned house. He could make out the dark huddle of a hut amidst the dunes, although there was no sign of smoke from the chimney. “Is he . . . ?”
“Still there, don’t worry,” Cara assured him, exasperation in her voice. “I keep telling him to move in with me, but he won’t. Says he likes the quiet.” She started back to the schoolhouse, speaking over her shoulder. “See if you can get him to come and eat with us, will you?”
* * *
◆ ◆ ◆
He found Erlin hunched over a book on his porch, apparently deaf to the scrape of Vaelin’s boots on the sand. He sat at a small desk with a
book in one hand whilst his other held a pen, poised with predatory expectation over a sheaf of parchment.
“A lustrous mane of golden hair!” Vaelin heard him exclaim in a mutter rich in judgemental satisfaction, his pen scratching ink on the parchment. “Lakril’s hair was brown, you fool.”
“Aspect Dendrish got it wrong again, I take it?” Vaelin enquired.
“The fifth error I’ve found.” Erlin reclined in his seat, rubbing at his eyes. “If he wasn’t dead I’d be minded to write him a very lengthy and sternly worded letter.”
“I doubt he’d have read it. He was never fond of criticism.”
Erlin slowly lowered his hand from his eyes, which had taken on a glint of cautious curiosity. “Wasn’t expecting you for a few weeks. Got another language to learn?”
“I’m not here for language lessons.” Vaelin moved to lift the book from the table, reading the title on the spine: Madness and Royalty—The Reign of the King Lakril by Dendrish Hendrahl, Master of the Third Order. “This time it’s your favourite subject,” he said. “History.”
“Your library is nearly as rich as mine,” Erlin pointed out.
“Not with regards to the Far West. For that, I need you.”
“And what’s in the Far West that concerns you so?”
Someone I loved . . . “The Stahlhast,” Vaelin said, setting the book down. “And the Jade Princess.”
Erlin stroked his increasingly fulsome beard. When he had first taken up residence on this beach, it had been black shot through with grey; now it was grey shot through with ever-diminishing threads of black. There was also a stoop to his shoulders that hadn’t been there a year ago, and he was given to groaning and rubbing his back whenever he got to his feet. Vaelin did his best not to stare as Erlin rose from the table, teeth bared in a grimace, but witnessing the rapid onset of age in one who had been ageless stirred a deep well of guilt. He lost his gift at my behest, Vaelin reminded himself, his self-reproach unalloyed by the knowledge that there had been no choice. Trapping the Ally in a physical body required a vessel possessed of sufficient power to lure him from the Beyond, but the price had been high. A man who had walked the earth for more years than he could remember now knew death to be but decades away, if not sooner. For all that, he remained a surprisingly cheerful soul and content in his labours.
“Faith,” Erlin breathed. He spent a few seconds massaging the base of his spine before moving to the shed. “I’ll make tea. This isn’t a short tale.”
The hut’s interior was even more filled with scrolls than at Vaelin’s first visit here years before, though in a much less orderly state. They lay piled in each corner amidst the stacks of books, which Erlin preferred. “Never could get on with Harlick’s penmanship” was his excuse for the disregard he displayed towards the hut’s previous occupant. Vaelin suspected it had more to do with a basic dislike of the author, an attitude with which he had some sympathy.
“You were supposed to check his work,” he pointed out, taking a seat at the table whilst Erlin poured the tea. “He writes me letters enquiring as to your progress every few months. Apparently, the shelves of the Grand Library yearn for these tomes.”
“They can yearn a bit longer,” Erlin replied. “Not my fault Harlick chose the most boring twaddle to transcribe, is it?”
He pushed a steaming cup across the table and sat down, sipping his own beverage, brows creased in thought. “It’s been quite a long time since I heard mention of the Stahlhast,” he said. “Can’t say they’ve made a huge mark on Far Western history.”
“I believe that may be about to change.” Vaelin went on to describe the events of the previous few days. He left out nothing, reasoning that of the two of them, Erlin possessed by far the greater number of secrets.
“General Gian.” Erlin’s bushy eyebrows rose in surprise. “Him I have heard of. Must’ve been near twenty years ago, but he had a fine reputation even then. As I recall, he made his name defeating the Black Banner Fleet during the wars with the Northern Pirate Alliance, a feat that had eluded a dozen predecessors. Not a man to scare easily.”
“The Stahlhast scared him enough to make him sail across the Arathean in search of novel weapons. What are they?”
“A people best avoided, by all accounts. One of the horse tribes that range across the Iron Steppe, though their customs are unique and they’re said to differ from the other horse-folk in appearance and language. I can’t attest to this myself, since I never clapped eyes on one. But I did hear many a tale of their rituals and they sound far from pleasant.”
“Rituals? So they’re god worshippers?”
“After a fashion. It’s said they worship something they call the ‘Unseen,’ whatever that is. There are various clans, called Skeld, each competing for dominance with the other, but they all owe obeisance to their priests.” He paused for a moment of contemplation as he sipped more tea. “And General Gian indicated they now pose a threat to the northern border of the Venerable Kingdom?”
“With his dying breath.”
“The one thing all sources agree on about the Stahlhast is their martial prowess. I remember one Far Western cavalry officer calling them the finest horse-borne warriors in the world.”
“Better even than the Eorhil?”
“Hard to believe, I know. But, skilled as they are, the Eorhil have no armour and make little use of steel. The Stahlhast are renowned for the quality of their armour and their blades. Some sources refer to them as the Steel Horde. If someone has managed to unify them, the kingdoms of the Merchant Kings could well be in for a very difficult time.”
“Gian seemed to think his kingdom faced utter destruction, and that the Stahlhast wouldn’t stop there.” Vaelin paused before adding, “The Messenger said something similar before he died.”
A shadow passed across Erlin’s face and he set down his teacup, lowering an unfocused gaze to the tabletop. Mention of the Messenger led inevitably to thoughts of the Ally, thoughts Vaelin knew Erlin did everything in his power to suppress.
“I’m sorry but I have to ask,” Vaelin said. “The Ally. He spoke of something before we made him touch the black stone. Something vast and hungry, he said. Do you know what he meant?”
Erlin stayed silent for a long time, so long in fact that the steam rising from his teacup had thinned to nothing before he spoke again. “No, but I do remember his fear of it. Much of his emotions had been worn away over the many centuries of his existence, leaving only his desire for it all to end, and his terror of what he had seen the second time he touched the black stone. The memory is vague, just a swirling mist of sensation, none of it pleasant. In truth, I don’t think he knew what he was seeing, but he did understand what it meant, what it wanted.”
“What did it want?”
Erlin shrugged and reached for his cup, giving a sour grimace at the cooled contents. “Everything. It wants everything, and even then it won’t be sated.” He rose and went to the stove at the far end of the hut, lifting the kettle onto the hob. “You also made mention of the Jade Princess,” he said, evidently keen to change the subject.
“There was a woman,” Vaelin said. “You never met her, but we were . . . very good friends . . .”
“Sister Sherin,” Erlin interrupted. “Your lost love, sent far away so that she might be spared your fate at the end of the Alpiran war. The story is fairly well known.”
“It is?”
“Of course.” Erlin chuckled and shook his head. “There are very few aspects of your life that aren’t. The price you pay for becoming a legend, I suppose.”
“In any case,” Vaelin said. “Sherin was . . . is a healer. The Messenger intimated she had cause to minister to the Jade Princess, and placed herself in grave danger as a result.”
“Then you can safely dismiss his words. The Jade Princess is even older than I am. She doesn’t get sick.”
Vaeli
n arched an eyebrow at Erlin’s mostly grey beard. “Things change, even for the Gifted.”
“You don’t understand. She is . . . different. When I say she’s older than me I don’t mean by a few decades, or even a few centuries. She had such stories.” A distance crept into Erlin’s gaze, his lips forming a faint smile of remembrance. “Of a time before the cities rose, of great beasts lost to the vagaries of time and climate. Of wars and kingdoms and empires, the names of which no one save her can now recall. Next to the Jade Princess, I am but an infant. If Sherin went to her, it wasn’t as a healer.”
“Then why?”
“The people of the Far West have always sought out her counsel, believing her to possess wisdom and insight far beyond the most sage of scholars. For this reason she has long secluded herself in various refuges, moving on when they inevitably crumble under the weight of time. The High Temple is merely the most recent. It lies deep in the northern mountains of the Venerable Kingdom and is not an easy place to get to. I should know, I travelled there twice. But, however arduous, there are those who continue to come in search of her wisdom. Perhaps Sherin did too.”
He paused, eyeing Vaelin carefully. “I can see what you’re thinking, my friend,” he said. “And I urge you: don’t.”
Vaelin’s thoughts returned to Kerran’s dining room and Lohren’s vision. Last night I dreamt of a wolf. “I’m not sure I have a choice,” he said. “If she’s in danger . . .”
“How do you know she would even welcome your help?” Erlin cut in. “After what you did?”
Playing his fingers through her hair, placing her in Ahm Lin’s arms, watching the ship take her away . . . Betrayal is always the worst sin. “I don’t,” Vaelin said. “But welcome it or not, I can’t just linger here, not now. Also, the way the Messenger spoke of the Stahlhast, he made it clear there is a greater threat here than merely the rampaging of an obscure horse tribe, a threat Queen Lyrna may need to be warned against.”
