glazed eyes.
“You cannot make him heal any faster,” the school’s medic responded.
“I did this to him. I’ll pay my price for it.”
“I don’t need another nurse.”
“Then give her the time off while I am here.”
The medic frowned. “She isn’t employed. They are the female cadets I’ve had visiting him every minute since he came in.”
Morghiad very nearly chuckled in spite of his disgust. “They won’t visit again when they see each other.”
“Like that, is it? I did wonder.”
He sighed. “Alright. Come back first thing tomorrow morning. You can help me feed him.”
He did return on the following morning, and each day after that. For two months he waited upon Linfar’s every, blasted, stinking need. He fed the man, dressed him, bathed him and performed all the duties that no lord should ever have to perform. It was a good thing his father never bore witness to it; the shame would have been intolerable.
His prediction about the women had proven surprisingly accurate. Artemi had already been there, looking at Morghiad with unbridled suspicion and curiosity at what he was doing, when three of Linfar’s belles had breezed into the room. At first they had pointedly ignored one another’s presence, then one had asked why another had cared and the entire truth of it was revealed. Heline had even approached Morghiad afterward, and congratulated him upon his savage level of violence. And Artemi...
She was a problem he had not completely solved, but when Linfar began to form recognisable words and sentences, she was gracious enough to insult Morghiad again. He had very
nearly smiled at the sound of it. “Arrogant, clod-headed spawn of a sheep’s testicle!” she had called him. It was a good sign, and it meant she was well on the way to battling with him as before.
him in all different directions, confusing him, irritating him. They told him nothing of their intentions, which was not very fair play, in his opinion. Bloody stupid lights. Silar sat up. He was fairly sure that he was drunk, but it did not feel as immoral as the sort of drunkenness he had known in the normal world. It felt lighter, friendlier and more... godly.
It seemed to him that being drunk in Achellon ought to be one of the best experiences a man could know, but the evidence told him otherwise. “Nowhere near as good as taking a woman to your bed,” he
grunted to himself.
Silar pushed himself to his feet. The glowing ground wobbled a little, but he was able to stand with some credibility. Bloody Crux! Surely this place could have come up with an ale that did not make a man lose his balance. He waited. No more ale appeared before him. Burn this world! Did it have any rules? How was a man supposed to work out how to navigate a place and survive in it, if it offered no bloody rule book?
He started walking forward again. What had been different about the pitcher of ale and the thought that
had preceded it? He had been thirsty at the time. Bodily need? He thought about truly needing a woman to sleep with, but nothing appeared. Silar decided to blame some of that on the ale. Perhaps it was not so different from the beer he knew from the Darkworld.
He had to organise his thoughts better than this. Silar sat down again and pondered. He still recalled Morghiad’s description of his search for Artemi in this place. His old friend had spoken of buildings that appeared from nowhere and paths that led from nothing. There had been a table, he
said, that had tried to answer a question for him.
Questions and answers.
Now, Silar had to admit that it was more than likely he lacked the same affinity that Morghiad would have with this place, what with his Achellon-born wife, chaos-filled head and silly powers to blow things up when he had a wielder about him. But Silar had a skill of his own. He was very good at asking the right questions and then generating the answers in his mind.
What if the answers would not appear here if he already had them
inside his head? He thought of Talia again. Where was she? Dead, his mind answered back. No. That was not right!
But of course, he was asking the wrong question.
How could hefind Talia?
He could see something through the trees ahead of him. Grinning broadly, Silar sprang to his feet and ran toward it. He arrived at a small pedestal, of a size that just reached his waist. Upon its surface were two small figurines. He had to squat to get a closer look at them. They were crudely made, but quite recognisable. One was
a woman in breeches with long, goldenred hair; the other was a man with black hair and black clothing. They were holding hands. “How sweet,” he said with a grunt.
So, the answer to his question was these two. Just perfect! They just would not leave him alone, would they?! He ground his teeth together. How in the bloodiest of blazes were they going to get him to Talia? He looked up, and noticed something else glittering from between the trees ahead. His next answer.
Silar ran to it, and was this time presented with a blackened, burned
globe atop another blasted pedestal. He picked it up, and cursed as he realised what it represented. Something to do with destroying the world. No. Talia was not going to come back through the bloody destruction of the world. She could hardly live if everyone else was burned and dead! Silar threw the globe onto the floor in frustration.
Think, Silar.
Some answers were in his head; the ones he needed were not. But which ones? And how to pick and choose what to see? He noticed a new object sitting amongst the trees, and went to investigate it.
A soft breeze blew through the dustbowl on the outskirts of Sunidara’s second city, worked its way around the watch towers and weaved into the yards of Fate’s Warriors. Once there, it leapt to the rattling windows and hissed against their gaps, forging a thousand paths through to the hot rooms within. At the end of one of those paths was
an arm, and it belonged to Renward Calyrish, third son of Lord Yarrin Calyrish of Haeron.
The final lift made his arms feel as if they were afire, but completing the set was enormously satisfying. He was almost happy. Morghiad set down the weights with a sonorous thud and strode toward the group of buckets at the corner. He was sure there would be one with clean water somewhere amongst the pile. He identified a vessel that looked fit for purpose, poured the greater part of the liquid down his throat and the rest over his head. It tasted a little stale, but not too bad.
He’d had worse luck with the training room buckets in the past, usually as a result of one of Artemi’s little games. But she was not here now; she never took part in the group weight sessions, for some reason preferring to do her strength training alone. He was safe for the moment.
Morghiad set down the bucket, gathered his shirt and made his way into the practice yard outside. It was a blazingly hot day - the kind only ever seen in Sunidaran summers, where the sand shimmered and the air wavered as if unsure it could stand the heat. He was uncomfortably warm and
appallingly sweaty. The shower rooms called to him, but something caught the corner of his eye. A flash of gold. Not
now.
He turned to face her, and found her standing firmly before him with feet placed shoulder-width apart and hands upon hips. It was her gaming stance, he knew, and it meant trouble. How many months had he lamented the absence of her tricks? And she chose now, when he was half-dressed and barely sensible, to start the next one. He should have expected as much from her.
Morghiad painted his face with
as convincing a grin as he could muster. “Fevtari. A shame you weren’t training with us, yet again. You cannot hope to compete with the men if you continue like this.”
She gave him a brief appraisal, running her eyes up and down his frame before she emitted a large sniff. “I’d rather not drown in your copious quantities of sweat or suffocate from the stench of you. Besides, you’re not getting more muscular, you’re getting fatter.”
Morghiad permitted himself a brief glance at his own abdo
men. He was fairly sure that was not true. “Can
we get to the point?”
“Go and wash. When you are done you may present yourself at my room.”
“I may?”
“Yes.” Artemi turned and strode directly away from him. She was planning something especially nasty, he knew. Yet another twisted web to become entangled in. He watched her swaying hips for a moment, considering how they compared to others he had seen about Fate’s. It was only when she had completed her exit and was out of sight that he realised he had been fully staring for quite some time, and
that she had been intentionally provocative with her walk. And the breeches she wore, they surely were the most figure-hugging pair she had. It was a manipulative, black heart she owned. No doubt about that!
With a start he realised that he was still looking at an empty doorway, and rapidly set about making his way toward his own rooms. When he arrived there, he collected a towel from atop his bed and strode directly for the fire room to collect the water he needed. He halted at the door, however, taking in the scent of damp floorboards, soap and drains. Why was he so desperate to clean himself? Because she had instructed him to? Far better to let her endure his stink through whatever horrors she had planned for their next encounter. He smiled to himself, returned to his room to deposit his unused towel and sought out the most revolting shirt that lay in his pile of washing. Its smell was far from pleasant.
He thrust his head through the neck-hole and grimaced as his hands made their way to the ends of the sleeves. The clothing was on, but it gave him very little satisfaction without an audience to witness it. He made
haste down the stairs, out of his building and into the female accommodation. He had crept into these halls to lay so many traps over the years that he could have found his way to her room with his eyes closed and his feet bound together for hopping. And he was sure that he could smell something of her here; it was almost imperceptible, especially beyond his own stink, but he noticed it every time. There were other moments when he half expected to be able to close his eyes and point in her direction, even if she was miles away, but that was ridiculous. The thought had no basis or
reason behind it at all.
He took the stairs three-at-a-time and moved across the hallways with strides that devoured the ground. All of his steps were silent, of course, and all performed past closed doors and absent eyes. He only had to stop once, and that was to avoid being seen by a group of girls whose conversation was focused upon cakes. They seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing how best to slice one with a sword. The realisation came to him that he had not eaten for some time, but he ignored his now-disappointed stomach and found an alternative route to
Artemi’s corridor. It was ominously quiet there.
He did not knock before opening her door. After all, peasants’ doors were mere blades of grass before the feet of a lord. It amused him that the poor even tried to lay boundaries to areas of land or building they could not own.
When he stepped inside, he found her seated at the window, facing away from him. He closed the door, flimsy as it was, and waited for her to unleash whatever vitriol she had.
“Goodbye.”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re here now. You obeyed me as a good dog should. Thank you and goodbye.”
Morghiad felt a wave of confusion wash over him. “What is it you wanted?”
“You really do have very little intellect. I wanted you to come here. Now you have, you can leave.”
This was her latest ploy? It didn’t even require any thought or planning or finesse. He had hoped for so much more. This was not a fun game. “No.”
“Be a good dog and go when you’re told. There’s quite a penalty for being caught in the girls’ quarters. But you already know that.”
He had been found there once, quite some years ago. He couldn’t have been more than eleven when it happened, but he clearly recalled the subsequent and vicious lashing from the mistress of the house. The punishment would be altogether more humiliating and public now that he was a man. “Fine, but you’ll have to fight me if you want to report my presence.” At least a good battle would make his journey worthwhile; it had been quite some time since he had matched blades with Artemi Fevtari.
She swung her legs neatly from the window sill and sighed as she stood. “No swords in here. If you break anything, I’ll kill you.”
Morghiad was happy to meet her first request, but not the second. There were plenty of interesting objects in there, just waiting to be used as weapons. He reached for the closest, which was an aged-looking broom. Artemi’s reaction was immediate and furious. “That was my mother’s!”
A broom? He burst into laughter, and was almost knocked to the floor through lack of concentration. Both of Artemi’s booted feet thudded directly
into his abdomen, and he struggled to impede the momentum of her leap. He twisted her legs to the side while she was still in the air, succeeding in pushing her to the floor with the broom. It was ungraceful in the extreme, but he landed on top of her, and had enough time to position himself well to make skin contact. As always, her power roared into the blood of his veins and shook the membranes of his skull. It was horrific and beautiful, all at once.
Morghiad wrenched control of that power from her as fast as he was able, and used it to do something very
sensible. He wanted this game to last, and he wanted a suitable amount of time to play with her, so he set about building a partition. In less than a second he had also formed a sound barrier by forcing the form into place upon the room’s walls, floor and ceiling. It took just about every ounce of mental strength he possessed, and he knew a raging headache would soon be his price.
Artemi, now doubly infuriated, yelled and bucked and hissed. She threw him to the side with unexpected might, then moved with enough speed to kick away the broom and place a
boot upon his neck. The break of their connection felt like being dropped from a dangling rope into a very large, black chasm. It was sickening. He clenched his jaw against the sensation and tried to concentrate on their fight once more. Artemi’s foot pressed with more urgency onto his throat.
“You cannot deny I am the better fighter, Morghiad. I’ve always been better than you, and you are a very poor loser.”
She wasn’t any better than he was. Not in the slightest. He grabbed hold of her foot and twisted it as hard as he could. She gave out a yelp, but
not before trying to move with the rotation and stamping on his chest in the process. He was sure she had cracked one of his ribs. She thumped onto the floor next to him in an arched heap. He was in luck, however. From the way she was now grimacing and crouching awkwardly, he had caused some more serious damage to her ankle. It looked like an excellent opportunity for a risky attack.
He leapt forward and thrust her shoulders against the wall behind her, bracing her good leg on the floor with one of his own. Now all he needed to do was knock her unconscious and
declare victory. Undisguised loathing and contempt simmered in her eyes as he prepared to throw her to the other side of the room. This would be very satisfying. He grinned.
Without warning, her bad leg whipped upwards and its knee hit him squarely in the stomach. He was winded enough to release his grip from her arms, and it was then that she went wild with flailing fists and kicks and screams. Her nails gauged into his face several times, her feet drove into his hips, her teeth bit into his flesh and he found himself utterly unprepared for the ferocity of any of it. She did not
stop or relent or offer him any opportunity to return her blows, which was far from honourable. But then, what could he expect from a peasant with no schooling in manners or emotional control?
After some minutes of this, he found himself bloodied and on his back once more, with Artemi and her broom pinning him down. Dimly, he was aware that one of her bookshelves had toppled and spilled its contents across the room. There also appeared to be a ne
w dent in one of the walls.
“I told you I was better, spoiled lordling.” She wrinkled her nose. “Also, you stink.”
“You fight like a cornered, diseased rat.” Blazes, but it hurt his throat to speak. What had she done to it?
“Better to be a rat than lose to someone half your size.”
That comment irritated him more than he expected it to. It was ridiculous. She couldn’t have weighed more than a couple of sacks of flour and was far from matching his height. He could hardly be expected to accept this as his defeat! He felt a roar of anger grow within him, and with it came the return of strength to his
bruised body. Morghiad succeeded in throwing her off once more, but also snapped her precious broom in the process.
“Bastard!” What little calm Artemi had regained was soon lost. She crouched in the corner like a cat making ready to pounce; Morghiad’s blood dripped from her fingers. The air was thick between them. There was a whisper of hesitation, and then they set at each other with renewed fury. Artemi threw her attacks at him with no less force or vitriol than she had before, and Morghiad returned each one in kind. A chest of drawers was
The Fireblade Array: 4-Book Bundle Page 167
