by Anthony Ryan
“What else was there for me? Hunger and fear and a knife in an alley to leave me bleeding in a gutter.” Frentis gripped his shoulder. “Now I have brothers who would die in my defence, as I would die for them. Now I have a Faith.” His smile was fierce, unwavering, complete in its conviction. “What is Faith, brother?”
“The Faith is all. The Faith consumes us and frees us. The Faith shapes my life, in this world and in the Beyond.” As he spoke the words Vaelin was struck by the conviction in his own voice, the depth of his own belief. He had seen so much of the world now, so many gods, yet the words came from his lips with absolute conviction. I heard my mother’s voice…
CHAPTER SIX
The days following the departure of the Red Falcon quickly took on a tense monotony. Every morning Vaelin went to speak to Sister Gilma at the mansion gate. So far the only new case had been the daughter’s maid, a woman of middle years who wasn’t expected to last the week. The girl herself, aided by her youth, was suffering the symptoms with great fortitude but was unlikely to live out the month.
“And you, sister?” he asked every morning. “Are you well?”
She would smile her bright smile and give a small nod. He dreaded the day he climbed the path to the gate and found she wasn’t there to greet him.
Once word of the outbreak spread the mood in the city became palpably fearful, although reactions varied. Some, mainly the richer citizens, collected their valuables and close relatives together before proceeding immediately to the nearest gate, demanding to be allowed to leave and resorting to threats or bribes when refused. When the bribes failed some conspired to rush the gates at nightfall in company with armed bodyguards and servants. The Wolfrunners had easily repulsed the assault, clubbing them back with the staves Caenis had had the foresight to issue when the crisis arose. Luckily, there had been no deaths but the mood of the city’s elite remained resentful and often desperately fearful. Some had barricaded themselves in their houses, refusing all visitors and even loosing arrows or crossbow bolts at trespassers.
The less well-off were equally fearful but more stoic in facing their fear and so far there had been no riots. For the most part people went about their normal business, albeit spending as little time on the streets or in the company of neighbours as possible. All submitted to the regular inspections for signs of the sickness with a resigned trepidation. As yet there had been no cases in the city itself, though Sister Gilma seemed certain it was only a matter of time.
“The Red Hand always started in the port towns,” she said one morning. “Carried by ships from across the sea. No doubt that’s how it came here. Governor Aruan tells me the girl liked to go to the docks and watch the ships coming and going. If you find another case, it’ll most likely be a sailor.”
Fearful as the townspeople were, he found himself more worried by his own soldiers. The Wolfrunners’ discipline was holding well but the others were more restive. There had been several ugly brawls between Count Marven’s Nilsaelins and the Cumbraelin archers, producing some serious injuries on both sides and forcing him to flog the worst offenders. The only desertions had been from the Realm Guard, five of Lord Al Cordlin’s Blue Jays slipping over the wall with looted provisions in the hope of making it to Untesh. Vaelin had been tempted to let them perish in the desert but knew an example had to be made so sent Barkus after them with the scout troop. Two days later he returned with the bodies, Vaelin having instructed him to administer sentence on the spot to spare the spectacle of a public hanging. He had the corpses burned within sight of the main gate to ensure the guards on the wall got the message and spread it to their comrades: no-one was going anywhere.
In the afternoons he toured the walls and the gates, forcing conversation on the men despite their obvious discomfort. The Realm Guard were rigidly respectful but scared, the Nilsaelins sullen and the Cumbraelins clearly detested the very sight of the Darkblade, but he spent time with all of them, asking questions about their families and their lives before the war. The answers were the standard, clipped responses soldiers always gave to the ritual pleasantries of their commanders but he knew his distance from them was immaterial, they needed to see him and know he was unafraid.
One day he found Bren Antesh near the western gate, a hand shielding his eyes from the sun as he gazed up at a bird hovering overhead.
“Vulture?” Vaelin asked.
As was his custom the Cumbraelin leader gave no formal greeting, something Vaelin found irked him not at all. “Hawk,” he replied. “Of a type I haven’t seen before. Looks a little like the swift-wing from home.”
Of all the captains, Antesh had reacted with the greatest calm to the crisis, placating his men and assuring them they were in no danger. His word clearly held considerable sway as there had been no attempts at desertion by any of the archers.
“I wanted to thank you,” Vaelin said. “For the discipline of your men. They must trust you greatly.”
“They trust you too, brother. Almost as much as they hate you.”
Vaelin saw little reason to argue the point. He moved next to Antesh, resting against a battlement. “I have to say I was surprised the King was able to recruit so many men from your Fief.”
“When Sentes Mustor took the Fief Lord’s chair his first act was to abolish the law requiring daily practice with the longbow and the monthly stipend that came with it. Most of my men are farmers, the stipend helped supplement their income, without it many couldn’t feed their families. They may hate King Janus with a passion, but hatred doesn’t put food in the mouth of your children.”
“Do they really believe I’m this Darkblade from your Ten Books?”
“You slew Black Arrow, and the Trueblade.”
“Actually, Brother Barkus killed Hentes Mustor. And to this day I still don’t know if the man I killed in the Martishe was really Black Arrow.”
The Cumbraelin captain shrugged. “In any case, the Fourth Book relates how no godly man can kill the Darkblade. I have to say, brother, you do seem to fit the description quite well. As for the use of the Dark…Well, who can say?” Antesh’s face was cautious, as if expecting some sort of rebuke or threat.
Vaelin decided a change of subject was appropriate. “And you, sir. Did you enlist to feed your children?”
“I have no children. No wife either. Just my bow and the clothes I’m wearing.”
“What of the King’s gold? Surely, you have that too.”
Antesh seemed agitated, looking away, his eyes searching the sky once again for the hawk. “I…lost it.”
“As I understand it, every man was paid twenty golds up front. That’s a lot to lose.”
Antesh didn’t turn back. “Do you require something of me, brother?”
The blood-song gave a short murmur of unease, not the shrill warning of impending attack but a suggestion of deception. He hides something. “I’d like to hear more of Darkblade,” Vaelin said. “If you would care to tell me.”
“That would mean learning more of the Ten Books. Aren’t you afraid your soul will be sullied by such knowledge? Your Faith undone?”
The Cumbraelin’s words summoned Hentes Mustor from his memory, seeing again the guilt and the madness in the Usurper’s eyes. The blood-song’s murmur grew louder. Did he know him? Had he been one of his followers? “I doubt any knowledge could sully a man’s soul. And as I told your Trueblade, my Faith cannot be undone.”
“The First Book tells us to teach the truth of the World Father’s love to any who wish to hear it. Find me again and I’ll tell you more, if you wish.”
In the evenings he would make his way to Ahm Lin’s shop, where his wife would scowl murderously as she poured tea and the stonemason would coach him in the ways of the song.
“Amongst my people it’s called the Music of Heaven,” Ahm Lin explained one night. They were in the workshop, sipping tea from small porcelain bowls next to the statue of the wolf, which appeared more unnervingly real every time Vaelin visited. The mason’s wife wouldn’t allow Vaelin
into the house itself, where she invariably secluded herself after pouring the tea. He had once made the mistake of suggesting they pour it themselves, which had provoked such an outraged glare that he waited until Ahm Lin took a sip from his own cup for fear she had poisoned the beverage.
“Your people?” Vaelin asked. He had deduced that the mason hailed from the Far West but knew little of the place beyond the tales of sailors, fanciful stories of a vast land of endless fields and great cities, where the Merchant Kings held sway.
“I was born in the province of Chin-Sah under the benevolent rule of the great Merchant King Lol-Than, a man who knew well the value of those with unusual gifts. When mine became known to the village elders I was taken from my family at age ten and brought to the king’s court, to be tutored in the Music of Heaven. I remember I was terribly homesick but never tried to run away. It was the law that the treason of the son extends to the father and I didn’t wish him to suffer for my disobedience, though I longed to return to his shop and work the stone again. He was a mason too, you see.”
“There is no shame in the Dark in your homeland?”
“Hardly, it is seen as a blessing, a gift from Heaven. A family with a Gifted child gains great honour.” His expression clouded. “Or so it was said.”
“So you were taught the song? You know how to use it, you know where it comes from.”
Ahm Lin smiled sadly. “The song cannot be taught, brother, and it doesn’t come from anywhere. It is simply what you are. Your song is not another being living inside you. It is you.”
“The song of my blood,” he murmured, recalling the words of Nersus Sil Nin in the Martishe.
“I have heard it called that, a name that suits well enough.”
“So, if it cannot be taught, what could they teach you?”
“Control, brother. It is like any other song, to sing it well, it must be practised, honed, perfected. My tutor was an old woman called Shin-La, so old she had to be carried around the palace on a litter and couldn’t see more than a foot or two beyond her nose. But her song…” He shook his head in wonder at the memory. “Her song was like fire, burning so bright and loud you felt blinded and deafened by it all at once. The first time she sang to me I nearly fainted. She cackled and called me Rat, little Singing Rat, Ahm Lin in the language of my people.”
“She sounds a harsh teacher,” Vaelin observed, reminded of Master Sollis.
“Harsh, yes she was that, but she had much to teach me and little time left in which to do it. Our gift is extremely rare, brother, and in all her long life of service to the Merchant King and his father before him, she had never met another Singer. I was her replacement. Her lessons were harsh, painful. She needed no stick to strike me, her song could hurt me well enough. It started with the truth-telling, two men would be brought in, one having committed a crime of some sort. Each would claim innocence and she would ask me which was guilty. Every time I got it wrong, and it happened often at first, her song would lash me with its fire. ‘Truth is the heart of the song, Rat,’ she would say. ‘If you cannot hear truth, you cannot hear anything.’
“Once I had mastered the art of hearing truth, the lessons became more complex. A servant would be given a token, a precious jewel or ornament, and told to hide it somewhere within the palace. If I didn’t find it by nightfall, the servant could keep it, and I would be punished for its loss. Later, a large group of people would mill around one of the courtyards, talking at the top of their voices, with one of them carrying a dagger beneath his robes. I had only five minutes to find it before her song would stab me as the dagger would have stabbed our master. For, as she never failed to remind me, I owed all to him and to fail him would be my eternal shame.”
“The Merchant King made use of your song?”
“Indeed he did. Commerce is the life-blood of the Far West, those who trade well become great men, even kings of men, and successful commerce requires knowledge, especially knowledge others wish to keep hidden.”
“You were a spy?”
Ahm Lin shook his head. “Merely a witness to the affairs of greater and richer men. At first Lol-Than would have me sit in the corner of his throne room, playing with his children; if anyone asked, I was said to be his ward, orphan son of a distant cousin. Naturally, most assumed I was his bastard, an unimportant but nonetheless honoured position at court. As I played, men would come and go with varying degrees of ceremony and protracted effusions of respect or regret at besmirching the king’s palace with their unworthy presence. I noted that the richer the man’s clothes or the larger his entourage, the more he would proclaim his abject unworthiness, at which Lol-Than would assure them no insult had been suffered and offer his apologies for not providing a more ostentatious welcome. It could take an hour or more before the true reason for the visit became apparent, and it was almost always about money. Some wanted to borrow it, others were owed it, and all wanted more of it. And as they talked, I would listen. When they were gone, with an assurance the king would give them a swift answer and an apology for the appalling discourtesy of delaying response to their request, he would ask me what song the Music of Heaven had sung during the conversation.
“Being but a boy, I had little notion of the true import of these affairs, but my song didn’t need to know why a man lied or deceived, or hid hatred behind smiles and great respect. Lol-Than knew why, of course, and in knowing saw the road to either profit or loss, or occasionally the axe-man’s block.
“And so I lived my life at the Merchant King’s palace, learning from Shin-La, telling the truth of my song to Lol-Than. I had few friends, only those permitted me by the courtiers appointed my guardians. They were a dull lot mostly, happy but unquestioning children from the minor merchant families who had bought a place at court for their offspring. In time I came to realise my playmates were chosen for their dullness, their lack of guile or cunning. Friends with sharper minds would have sharpened my own thoughts, made me consider that this pleasant life of luxury and plenty was in reality nothing more than an ornate cage, and I a slave within it.
“There were rewards of course, as I grew to manhood and the lusts of youth took me. Girls if I wanted, boys if I wanted. Fine wine and all manner of bliss-giving potions if I asked, though never enough to dull the sound of my song. When I grew too old to play with Lol-Than’s children I became one of his scribes, there were always at least three at every meeting and no-one seemed to notice that my calligraphy was clumsy and often barely legible. Life in my cage was simple, untroubled by the trials of the world beyond the tall walls that surrounded me. Then Shin-La died.”
His gaze had become distant, lost in the memory, shrouded in sorrow. “It is not an easy thing for a Singer to hear another’s death song. It was so loud I wondered the whole world couldn’t hear it. A scream of such anger and regret, it sent me reeling into oblivion. Sometimes I think she was trying to take me with her, not out of spite, but duty. In hearing her final song, I understood that her devotion to Lol-Than was a lie, the greatest of lies since she managed to keep it from her song throughout all the years she had taught me. Her final song was the scream of a slave who had never escaped her master and didn’t wish to leave me there alone. And she showed me something, a vision, born of the song, a village, ruined, smoking, littered with corpses. My village.”
He shook his head, his voice laden with such sadness that Vaelin realised he was the first person to hear this story. “I was so blind,” Ahm Lin continued after a moment. “I failed to realise that the value in my gift lay in no-one’s knowing of its existence. No-one save Lol-Than and the old woman I would replace. I remembered all the people Shin-La had used in her lessons, all the suspected criminals and servants, there must have been hundreds over the years. I knew they could never be allowed to live with the knowledge of my gift. I had killed them merely by being in their presence.
“When I woke from the oblivion Shin-La had dragged me to, I found I had a new sensation burning in my soul.” He turned to Vael
in, an odd glint in his eye, like a man recalling his own madness. “Do you know hate, brother?”
Vaelin thought of his father’s disappearing into the morning mist, Princess Lyrna’s tears and his barely suppressed urge to break the King’s neck. “Our Catechism of Faith tells us hate is a burden on the soul. I have found much truth in that.”
“It weighs on a man’s soul true enough, but it can also set you free. Armed with my hate, I began to take note of the meetings Lol-Than had me attend, to write down what was said with meticulous care. I began to conceive of just how vast his dominions were, to learn of the thousand ships he owned and the thousand more in which he had an interest. I learned of the mines where gold, jewels and ore were hewn from the earth, of the vast fields in which lay his true wealth, the countless acres of wheat and rice that underwrote every transaction he made. And as I learned I searched, poring over my papers for some flaw in the great web of trade. Four more years passed and I learned and searched, barely distracted by the comforts of the court, left to my efforts by the guardians I now knew to be my gaolers, who saw no threat in my new-found studiousness, and all the time the truth of my song never wavered and I faithfully related to Lol-Than all it told me, every deceit and every secret, and his trust grew with every plot or fraud uncovered so that I became more than his truth-teller. In time I was as trustworthy a secretary as a man such as he could have, given more knowledge, more strands to the web, all the time searching, waiting, but finding nothing. The Merchant King knew his business too well, his web was perfect. Any lie I told him would be swiftly uncovered, and my death would follow swiftly after.
“There were times when I considered simply taking a dagger and sinking it into his heart, I had ample opportunity after all, but I was still young and though my hatred consumed me, I still lusted for life. I was a coward, a prisoner whose captivity was made worse by his knowledge of the vastness of his prison. Despair began to rot my heart. I fell to indulgence again, seeking escape in wine and drugs and flesh, an indulgence that would have seen me dead before long, had not the foreigners arrived.
