by Roger Taylor
The disturbance was gone completely, and Pinnatte almost staggered as the use of his legs suddenly returned. ‘He’s doing something to me.’ He shouted this time. ‘I can’t move.’ He gave a brief stiff-jointed mime.
‘He’s nowhere near you.’ It was the guard.
Mistake, thought Pinnatte. Too loud and too soon.
The Kyrosdyn thought so too, judging by the angry look he gave his defender.
‘Something queer happened,’ came a supporting voice behind Pinnatte. ‘I felt it.’ It was followed by an unsteady chorus of agreement.
‘He’s lying,’ the Kyrosdyn cried.
The voice behind Pinnatte became an indignant figure at his side. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’
‘Kyroscreft!’
Coming from somewhere within the crowd, the word hissed through the air like an assassin’s arrow. Pinnatte started and cursed himself for a fool. It was the cry he should have made from the first. It was the cry that represented all that was deemed to be the Kyrosdyn’s true calling – the searching into the mysterious and dangerous powers that lay hidden in nature – forbidden powers – and for which their proclaimed craft of crystal-working was a mere facade. It was a word loaded with fear and hatred, and response to it was invariably unreasoned and primitive. In the past it had rung out loudly in rioting against the Kyrosdyn. Rioting that had resulted in many lives being lost but which, strangely, had left the Kyrosdyn, as innocent and injured parties, somehow further entrenched as a powerful force in the city’s shifting and complex government.
Without hesitation, the guard drew his sword and, slowly moving around his charge, swung it in a wide, horizontal arc. It was an action that forestalled any sudden assault on the Kyrosdyn, and the watching circle widened immediately. Though several men laid hands on knives and swords, none were drawn. All knew that the first one to step forward in anger was likely to die and, Kyroscreft or no, nothing had happened here that was worth that. There were one or two cries from bolder sparks, standing safely at the back of the crowd, but they were quickly silenced.
The crowd began to break up, its excited mood dissipated. Pinnatte sidled backwards with his immediate neighbours. He caught the Kyrosdyn’s eye and could not forebear a triumphant sneer. Unexpectedly, three long and furious strides brought the Kyrosdyn face to face with him, and a hand gripping the front of his jacket hoisted him up on to his toes. Pinnatte gaped, wide-eyed, taken aback by the speed of the man’s response, and too, by the strength in that delicate hand.
‘I meant you no offence, sir,’ the Kyrosdyn was saying, his voice pleasant and apologetic. It took Pinnatte a moment to realize that he was talking to the man by his side who had protested at being called a liar. ‘I was referring to this… wretch.’ He shook Pinnatte. ‘He’s a thief and not worthy of your protection.’
Pinnatte looked round at the crowd again, but it was already much smaller, and the traffic around the fountain was re-establishing itself. The Kyrosdyn’s guard was sheathing his sword – the danger had passed. Pinnatte thought desperately. Whatever else happened now, he must not allow himself to be taken to the Vaskyros.
‘I took nothing,’ he said plaintively to his now solitary ally, catching hold of his arm urgently. ‘You can search me.’
The man seemed anxious to be on his way, but the Kyrosdyn’s soft apology and Pinnatte’s appeal had placed him in the position of an arbiter. He looked from Pinnatte to the Kyrosdyn. ‘Will that satisfy you, sir?’ he said uncomfortably. ‘I can call for the Weartans if you wish.’ He pointed to a building some way down one of the streets that led into the square.
Pinnatte uttered a brief prayer of thanksgiving. It was highly unlikely that the Kyrosdyn would want anything to do with the Prefect’s guards – the men and women nominally responsible for enforcing the law and maintaining order on the streets. No one walked away from an encounter with them other than poorer.
The Kyrosdyn tightened his grip about Pinnatte’s jacket and his eyes narrowed savagely. Then, abruptly, he released him.
‘No,’ he replied, still polite. ‘I don’t think that will be necessary.’
Pinnatte wasted no time in thanking his inadvertent saviour, but turned to flee immediately. He had not taken one step however, when something struck his shins and sent him sprawling painfully on the cobbled road. It was no relief to him to note that this time it was not some strange power of the Kyrosdyn that had brought him down, but the guard’s foot. Before he could recover himself, that same foot placed itself deliberately over his ankle, and pressed. He cried out in pain and tried to pull his foot away, but the guard merely smiled and increased the pressure. Such of the crowd as remained kept their distance and watched warily. Passers-by stepped around them nervously.
Then the Kyrosdyn was bending over Pinnatte. The pressure on his foot eased, but still held him fast. ‘There will be another time, thief,’ the Kyrosdyn said. He crouched down, untied the purse that Pinnatte had tried to snatch earlier, and held it out for him to inspect.
The leatherwork alone was worth more than Pinnatte could expect to earn in many weeks of good thieving and, while he was no expert in the value of crystals, those he could see inlaid there represented wealth he had only ever dreamed of. He looked stonily at the purse, knowing that if he had been lucky enough to escape with it, he would probably not have been able to dispose of it. In fact, he would almost certainly have been at as great a risk from other, more successful thieves as from the searching Kyrosdyn. He could even have found himself having to deal with Barran’s men.
He pushed the thought away.
He noticed that the Kyrosdyn’s eyes were grey, as if all the colour had been drained from them.
‘You’ve caused me grievous offence, thief,’ the man was saying. ‘And thus the Brotherhood. And though circumstances have conspired to protect you at the moment, I’ll have your worthless soul before we’re through.’ He bared clenched teeth and, with a curiously delicate gesture, reached into the purse. When he withdrew it he was holding a clear crystal between his thumb and index finger. It glittered brightly – more brightly than it should have done in the hot and dust-filled light of the square, Pinnatte thought.
‘I’ll bind it in here. Hold it with bonds smaller and more powerful than you could believe.’ He held it to his ear. ‘I’ll listen to its futile struggling as it flitters about the latticed cages of its new home. Reflecting and refracting endlessly, bouncing to and fro, echoing and resonating. Doing our bidding. Trapped. For ever.’
The crystal was gone, suddenly encased in the Kyrosdyn’s hand. Pinnatte blinked. For a moment the square seemed to be much darker than it had been. Though the Kyrosdyn’s words made no sense, they had been terrifying and his mouth and throat were dry with fear. ‘I took nothing,’ he managed to say hoarsely. ‘You know that.’
The Kyrosdyn made no response but stood up and motioned the guard to release Pinnatte’s foot. Then he started, as if he had seen something unexpected. Doubt and certainty, both equally terrible, began to vie for mastery of his face as he stared at Pinnatte, and his head canted to one side as though he were listening to something far away. A shaking hand drew something hesitantly from inside his jacket. Pinnatte watched him fearfully.
Slowly – painfully, almost – the doubt faded into a tight-faced resolution, then, with an almost reckless swiftness, the Kyrosdyn took Pinnatte’s right hand and pressed his thumb lightly on the back of it. As he did so, his eyes glazed and then closed. For a timeless moment, Pinnatte felt as though he was somewhere, something, else – a brightness, without form or place, beginning or end.
Then, abruptly, he was in the square again, snatching back a hand that was no longer being held. He began scrambling away from the two men over the rough cobbles. The Kyrosdyn made no movement to pursue him, and kept a restraining hand on the arm of his guard.
‘Come to the Vaskyros when you are ready,’ he said, his tone strange, almost respectful, then he turned and walked slowly into the busy crowd.
Pinnatte watched him go, unable to accept for a moment that nothing else was going to happen. His confidence began to return.
Lunatic! he thought witheringly as he limped back up the steps of the fountain.
Sitting down, he leaned back against the wall, and began massaging his bruised foot.
As he did so, he noticed a small blemish on the back of his right hand.
Chapter 4
The Thlosgaral
‘It was in the time of the Final War, when the Great Lord sought to wrest His birthright from the usurper Estrith. So terrible was this War that from the depths of the ocean to the highest of the clouds, no haven was to be found, and no living thing escaped its bloody taint.
‘And the Great Lord built a mighty Citadel to the south of Estrith’s land so that His army might find rest and shelter there before they ventured forth, and so that His many aides could study and teach the ways of war.
‘But Estrith’s spies brought to him news of this place and he sent to it a great gathering of the cloud-lands, having deceived their peoples so that they denied the justice of the Great Lord’s cause.
‘From the east they came, in numbers the like of which there had never been before nor have been since, and all decked and dressed for battle. Black and terrible they were, darkening the Citadel and the land about it and bringing terror to His people.
‘And as they gathered there was a strange silence. Then, the army of the Lord, which stood outside the Citadel, heard the rushing of a wind and looked to see winged warriors, shadows within shadows, descending upon it, bearing missiles and fire. And great harm was done, for, being without true courage, it was the way of the cloud-land warriors to soar above the reach of arrow and spear.
‘For many days the army stood fast, yet it seemed that it must be destroyed utterly, and great was the anger of His soldiers that they should perish thus, unable to strike a blow in their own defence.
‘Then the Lord was with them, come suddenly and mysteriously from afar. He moved among His soldiers, brilliant, like a silver star in the false darkness that the cloud-lands had brought. And when He saw what had been wrought, such was His fury that He gathered His lieutenants about Him and, raising the Power that was His to command, struck at the darkest of the lowering cloud-lands. And so great was His Power that the cloud-land was rent in two, and the sky was filled with the cries of its dying people as their extremity gave them the vision to see now the truth of Estrith’s deception.
‘But there was no rejoicing from those in the Lord’s Citadel, for it was seen that the stricken cloud-land would fall upon them. Seeing their plight, and spent though He was, the Lord sent forth the last of His Power so that the cloud-land fell to the east of the Citadel.
‘Yet so awful was this fall that much of His army was destroyed, and not a building in the Citadel was not shaken to its foundations, many being tumbled into ruins.
‘And the land upon which the cloud-land fell, once beautiful and prosperous, was broken and crushed, and made barren for ever. And it was named by the Lord, Thlosgaral, from an ancient tongue.
‘And the Lord wept as He sought amongst the destruction for remnants of His army, for He was sorely weakened and the hurt was beyond even His mending and, some said, He saw portents of His ultimate defeat through Estrith’s treachery. Yet, such was the justice of His cause, that where His tears fell, the blasted land was sown with His wisdom, to be harvested in the times to come so that He might rise again…’
* * * *
Thus went one of the many tales of the creation of the Thlosgaral – a bleak and blasted scar of jagged and broken rockland cut deep into the land to the east of Arash-Felloren, between The Wyndering and the Wilde Ports. It ran north to south, and was the sole source of the crystals that were so important to the city and the Lowe Towns around it.
Many other tales existed about its origins. It had been made by one of the Great Lord’s Appointed, who had launched his given Power from his very hands to destroy Estrith’s mighty army. It had been caused by one of Estrith’s terrible lieutenants, in an attempt to tear apart the land itself and plunge it and the Lord’s army into the ocean. It was the funeral pyre for the Lord Himself after He had been so treacherously betrayed and slain in the ninth hour of the Last Battle.
Not that all such tales referred back to the time of the Final War. Some said that long before people had come to the land, in times beyond any remembering, a star, blazing and thundering, had fallen from the heavens to tear open the great rocky cleft. Still others said that it came from perturbations in the bowels of the world itself. And one strange telling declared that the Thlosgaral was a flaw which stemmed from the very beginning of the world, from the First Heat in which all things were formed, and that in it were to be found the keys to the Forbidden Ways that spanned between the worlds.
The scholars and learned men of Arash-Felloren speculated and argued along less esoteric lines, seeking more logical explanations. But while much was learned about the place, none could determine how it had come about. Still less could they determine how the crystals had been formed, or even account for their many strange properties.
Whatever its origin however, the Thlosgaral was there, and it was an anomaly. An eerie and dangerous place, permanently hot and utterly different from the lands that bordered it. Strangest of all, it was given to moving, like a slow and stately ocean, though to rhythms and tides that no one could ever measure.
‘Ever restless, His spirit seeks to break free…’
* * * *
Barran had come to the Thlosgaral quite inadvertently. At the time he was a mercenary and had been heading north following rumours of a great war pending there. Finding himself on the wrong side of the Thlosgaral he decided to cross it rather than retreat and move around it. But, like many before him, he misjudged the nature of the rocky desert and was taken unawares by one of its sudden, stinging dust storms. His horse had panicked and, while normally he might have regained control, a loose shoe brought it down, unseating him and knocking him unconscious. When he came round it was to find his horse bolted with most of his possessions, pain suffusing his entire body, and three ill-favoured individuals looking at him suspiciously.
His immediate fear was of robbery, but a discreet check on his purse and hidden weapons reassured him. One of the three men came forward, offering him a battered canteen. After a momentary hesitation, Barran took it. The water had a slightly metallic taste, but he drank it eagerly and thanked the man. He could see now that though the men were dirty and unkempt, they did not have that air about them that would mark them as robbers. They were probably labourers of some kind, he decided.
Levering himself into a sitting position he made to stand up, only to discover, as all the pains in his body suddenly focused in one place, that his ankle had been injured in the fall. The three men watched impassively as he slid back to the ground.
Some cautious probing and manipulating told him that there were probably no bones broken, but it was going to be almost impossible for him to walk on that foot for some time. He cursed his horse, the desert, and fate generally, but managed to keep his face impassive. Injured, and with his horse gone, he had little alternative now but to ask for help from these strangers, and a string of oaths might well be misunderstood.
‘I can’t walk,’ he said. ‘Can you help me to the nearest village?’
The three men looked at one another and held a brief, soft conversation.
‘Nearest town’s too far to reach today even for a good walker,’ one of them said. ‘And we can’t be wasting time going there anyway. Least of all carrying you. You should’ve been more careful. We’ll take you to our camp and tend you if you’ll give us two months’ of your labour.’
Barran gaped. He had had many bargains put to him in his time, but none quite as odd as this. Questions flooded into his mind. He picked one of them. ‘What do you do?’
There was a hint of surprise in the three surly faces. ‘Come from far away
, have you?’ the first speaker declared flatly. Barran nodded.
‘Crystal miners,’ the man said, answering the question without further comment.
Barran was no wiser. He reminded himself of his position. Lost and hurt and with little money and no food, this was no time for questions which might try the patience of his possible saviours. ‘I’ll work my way if there’s work I can do,’ he said.
‘There’s work.’
Despite the circumstances however, it was against Barran’s nature not to bargain.
‘But two months…’
There followed a brief bartering, at the end of which it was agreed that he would work for them for four weeks from the time when he could walk again.
As he hobbled along, his arms around the shoulders of two of the men, he congratulated himself. He had no intention of keeping any bargain, but he would have shelter and food until he was well enough to escape. And, apart from telling him that the leader of the group was called Aigren, the exchange had taught him something important – these people were fools. Later he learned that he had been very lucky not to be found by some of the wiser miners who worked the Thlosgaral – men who would have done as he would in their position – taken lost travellers as slaves.
His opinion of the men was reinforced when he reached what they referred to as their camp. It was a large, ramshackle wooden hut, leaning, so Barran thought, against a steep rock face. In front of it, three women were working with tall, double-handled pestles, and four children seemed to be playing in the dust that pervaded everything. All looked up as the men arrived but there was no greeting or display of affection, and Barran was given only a cursory glance as his presence was explained.
Whatever crystal mining was, there was a great deal of work involved and little or no money to be made at it, Barran decided, taking in the poverty of the scene and the weary appearance of even the children. Still, that was not his problem. He would adopt his normal practice when amongst strangers, of seeming stupid and remaining silent while he listened and watched and learned.
