Gently, she stroked one of the small, bifurcated leaves between finger and thumb. The upper surface was dark and shiny, the lower paler and covered with a fine fuzz. "I've never seen very young agathons before..."
She stopped, revelation striking home with a sudden force as the vague wrongness she had felt before revealed itself to her. Eyes wide and troubled, she turned to look at the old man.
"The children, Babrel. After sixteen years, why aren't there any children in Trevada?"
He met her gaze levelly. "Before I answer, Suviel, I want to know why you are keeping the company of such malice."
Black despair welled up in her on hearing his question but even as she contemplated telling him everything, she felt the presence of Nerek's watcher at her shoulder, felt the numbing tendrils of it touch the fringes of her mind.
"I cannot tell you," she said. "All I can do is ask you to trust me. I'm no danger to anyone at the moment, and certainly not to you."
"It is not myself I'm worried about." For a moment he said nothing. Then he seemed to make up his mind, crooked a beckoning finger at her and went over to the grey, weathered wall of the tavern. Following, she watched him bend down and rap out a series of knocks on a low wooden panel. A second later, a waist-high section of the wall moved in a little, then with a scraping sound slid to one side.
"It's only me," Babrel said. With some difficulty he kneeled beside the opening and gestured Suviel to do the same. "And I've brought a friend."
She sat next to him and saw beyond the dark gap the pale, ragclad forms of almost a dozen small children. None appeared older than perhaps nine or ten, and nearly all regarded her out of faces that were hard with hunger and mistrust. There was also a little girl, perhaps two or three years of age, that she found herself playing the smile-and-look-away-and-back game with as the others looked on silently.
"They started rounding up orphans and beggar urchins about a year ago," Babrel said softly. "When other children began to go missing the few families moved away, and now no children are born here. But by then the Acolytes were having more brought in by wagon. Some are kidnapped, others bought outright from starving refugees, but they are all taken further up in the city, beyond a high wall they built along the terraces above the Hagradio Stairs." He shook his head. "They demolished the Arch Library for building material."
Suviel felt a rising sense of dread. "What do they want with these children?"
"I don't know. When I ask these ones about it, they all close up tight, or almost all of them. From what one or two told me, it appears that the Acolytes are using the Grand Orbicle for their foul experiments, and that they lock children into strange iron caskets decorated inside and out with symbols and words, then conduct rites upon them." His voice wavered a little. "They won't say anything about what happens after that."
A few of the children within the wall shrank back as if trying not to hear, and Suviel regarded them with an appalled pity. She had read of the savagely cruel rituals carried out by followers of the Wellsource down the ages, but this was new to her. She wished she could gather these wounded innocents close and somehow take their hurt away, but she remained where she was and breathed in deeply to keep herself steady. "How did the children escape?" she said.
"They were kept in the store vaults beneath the Grand Orbicle, in an area cleared of all those props and costumes. One of the children either found a fissure in the wall or widened a crack, squeezed through it and found a narrow passage." He shrugged. "The Oshang Dakhal was supposedly the site of a Skyhorse temple in ancient times - perhaps it dates from then. Perhaps it is just a fault in the rock.
"About a score of them had got into the passage when there was a rockfall. Some were crushed, while the rest followed the route till they emerged halfway up the sheer face of the Oshang Dakhal with the night all about them." He smiled at one of the younger children and Suviel saw tears glint in his eyes. "Can you imagine being just eight or nine years old, trying to edge your way along a ledge that is narrower than your foot? Somehow they traversed the crag to a wide fissure which they climbed. I found them in one of the carved galleries near here yesterday morning, exhausted and starving. If it had not been for one lad called Rovi I don't think they would have all survived - apparently he helped and encouraged them all the way." He leaned forward to speak to a thin dark-haired girl. "Ils, would you ask Rovi to come out?"
Nervously, the girl glanced at the others and back. "He..he's not here."
Babrel was suddenly anxious. "So where is he?"
"He went to meet his brother."
"Rovi never said that one of the boys was his - "
Ils shook her head impatiently. "Gawn wasn't with us when you came. He went to find a way out, but he's come back for us and spoke to Rovi with the long voice."
Suviel listened with growing unease. Was this 'long voice' the same as the mage order's mindspeech, and if so what did that imply about the Acolytes' vile abuse of these children?
"We'll have to get the children away from here," Babrel said. "For all we know, Rovi is already in the hands of the guards and telling them where we are..."
Suviel...
She held up a hand to silence him. "Wait - "
...Suviel, we have visitors. Come quickly, and bring the old man...
She stood, helped Babrel to his feet and said, "My companion needs us back in the taproom."
He frowned, but nodded and once the wooden panel was back in place they hurried back indoors.
Suviel heard voices muttering as they retraced their steps along the servant corridor, and as she entered the taproom from the side of the old stairway she noticed that there was more light than before. Then the entire room came into view and she slowed to a halt.
Nerek was standing with her back against the long bare counter, with a feral smile on her face and a fiery nimbus wreathing her right hand. Before her stood two small boys, neither seemingly older than nine or ten, yet both faced her with an air of eerie calm.
"Ah Suviel - so glad you could join us," Nerek said. "I was just explaining to our visitors how inevitable their fates are. They think they are rebelling - "
"You are the enemy's instrument," said one of the boys. "Not us."
As he spoke, Suviel stared at him in surprise and growing dread. For there were two voices, his own and another muted, hoarse whisper which she heard in her thoughts rather than with her ears.
"You know so little," Nerek replied. "Your shadows are my masters' shadows, your words, your every breath is from their mouths." Both her hands were ablaze now. "I can see what shares your souls."
"Gawn," Babrel said quickly. "You must go, you and Rovi..."
"Too late, old man," said Nerek, clasping her burning hands before her. "Their time has come."
"No!"
Babrel tried to rush past Suviel but she grabbed him round the waist and held him back. "Don't be a fool, Babrel. She'll - "
Hot amber fire blossomed from between Nerek's hands and streaked towards the boys. The one called Gawn made a small gesture and in the next moment the sorcerous fire split into a dozen threads which slowed and spread outwards, falling to the floor and hissing away to nothing. Nerek just smiled a little wider and the fire in her hands went from angry golden-red to a furious white.
Then the boy Gawn took a step forward, one hand outstretched and pointing at her, and in that ghastly double voice said: "We also see what is hidden - we can see your soul."
His face took on a look of malefic glee which made Suviel shudder, and with his extended index finger scribed a circle in the air before him. And suddenly a black disc was hanging there, its surface shining and reflective. Nerek gasped and staggered back against the bar, its scarred wood smoking and charring where she held on for support as she stared in undisguised horror at what the black circle was showing her. Then with a shriek she swung away from it and fell to her knees, whimpering like a whipped dog, slowly slumping down onto the floor.
As Suviel rushed across the ro
om towards her, Gawn swept his hand through the black mirror and it dissolved into tenuous grey wisps. The other boy, Rovi, said something to him and he nodded. Suviel took little notice and knelt beside the delirious Nerek, wondering why she felt this concern as she tried to tug the woman into a sitting position. Then let out a muted cry of shock and recoiled when she saw Nerek's face.
One side was Nerek's, but on the other the flesh and even the bones beneath seemed to be in a state of flux as another set of features came and went. And Suviel remembered all too clearly those terrifying moments by that chasm in the Honjir mountains when Byrnak had taken a young man from his company and turned him into this woman. This half-glimpsed face she could see was masculine, but what did that say about Nerek? Was she truly nothing more than a fragile mask? - was that what she saw in that black circle?
There was a sudden flare of heat at her shoulder, and a needling pain which came and went. Looking round she saw the boy Gawn, his small hands grappling and twisting an amorphous fiery shape, the watcher which Nerek had set over her. In mid-struggle, the thing lashed out with a blazing tendril and opened up a deep gash in Gawn's cheek. He never flinched, instead thrust a hand into the heart of the formless creation and tore it into embers and shadowy shreds. The wound on his face gave forth no blood and as Suviel watched it closed up and vanished.
Nerek curled up with her face in her hands, rocking back and forth, making childlike sobbing sounds. Gawn glanced at her for a cold moment, then turned to Babrel who still stood by the old staircase, staring in wide-eyed fear.
"The Acolytes will be here soon," he said. "You must take the others and find somewhere safe for them."
Babrel looked at the other boy. "And you and Rovi?"
"They will be looking for us, so we shall lead them elsewhere." He swung his gaze upon Suviel, and gestured at Nerek. "They will know of her now, and they will find her in time. If you go with the old man you might evade them."
She regarded the helpless woman by her side, and felt pity. "I can't leave her like this," she said. "I have to help her somehow."
"Then get her away from here, away from the other children. Now."
Suviel sighed. Despite the frustration and anger which were crowding her thoughts, she knew he was right. Steeling herself, she stood over Nerek and gently coaxed her up onto her feet. The face seemed more like she had been, but shadowy ripples still came and went and her eyes were red with tears and unseeing with fear.
"May the Mother watch over you," Babrel said in a hoarse voice.
Suviel just nodded, and with an arm round Nerek's waist guided her past the heavy sailcloth curtain and out into the darkening city.
Chapter Twenty-Two
King Alobrin — What are we to do? How can we survive this ghastly lingering night?
Grand-Steward — If you do not use the darkness, Lord, the darkness will use you.
—Gundal, The Circle Of Night, Act 1, i, 18.
The northern reaches of Gronanvel, the Great Valley, were shrouded in rain, a steady, fine rain which soaked every garment, matted the hair and beaded the face. For the two hundred and fifty men riding northwest along the shores of Lake Unglin, it was a discomfort to which most had become wearily accustomed.
For Archmage Bardow, however, it remained a source of teeth-gritting irritation. For three days, all the way from Krusivel to the hidden camp near Vanyon's Ford, then northwest along Gronanvel, the weather had been unrelentingly cold and wet. Now, riding with wet leather reins held in half-numb hands, and with sodden clothes clinging to chest, arms and legs, he longed for his warm, dry chambers back in Krusivel, and the comforting smells of paper and candles and spell ingredients...
He sighed, and shook his head. What a poor excuse for an Archmage you have become, he thought sourly. Absorbed in your own trivial woes while others are preparing to fight and bleed and die. How pitiable and selfish. Surely Argatil would have been far more resolute and self-possessed when he rode with the Emperor to Arengia.
Then the column slowed as the path narrowed to a defile between dense, unbroken forest and an outcrop of jagged rock which jutted into Lake Unglin. Bardow looked up at the crags and the treetops and the grey, grey sky and tasted the rain which trickled down his face to his lips.
It was clean and faintly sweet. He smiled, remembering Archmage Argatil's fondness for rich food, fine wine and conversation - perhaps that fateful journey north had been less dour than he imagined. After all, the Emperor was accompanied by the finest and bravest warriors of his realm, Mazaret included, as well as the Archmage and the Fathertree itself: Triumph must have seemed assured. It was only when they were in sight of the Arengia Plateau that news had come of the crushing defeat of the Northern Army at Pillar Moor. Korregan might have prayed for a victory by his Western Army, but he never lived to hear of its destruction at Wolf's Gate Pass.
We, on the other hand, are rushing towards a battle we are sure of winning, but only because the enemy has not yet put forth their greatest strength.
Sejeend was the destination. While these two hundred and fifty knights rode along Gronanvel towards the Roharkan capital, Mazaret and Kodel were approaching from the south with a mixed force of irregulars from Oumetra and some three hundred Hunters Children. Oumetra had been left in the hands of a local rebel leader and his men, reinforced by a large band of fierce, bearded warriors newly arrived from the Ogucharn Isles...
It was something of a desperate gamble. The scattering of uprisings sparked by the Oumetra revolt had been savagely suppressed, despite help from sympathisers and clandestine agents, and only in eastern Kejana and parts of Cabringa was the rebellion making headway. So Mazaret and Kodel decided to abandon the original plan of trying to hold everything south of the Great Valley and instead consolidate in the lands east of a line joining Oumetra and Sejeend. Thus Sejeend had to be taken, and held.
Bardow uttered a quiet chuckle, drawing uncertain glances from those riding nearby, but he kept his thoughts to himself and rode on.
As the unnerving narrowness of the defile widened, a slender, hooded rider came up past Bardow to trot beside his gifted pupil Guldamar, a tall, brown-haired man who rode ahead in the vanguard. A small hand bearing a blue ring pushed back the hood, revealing one of Medwin's best students, a young female mage called Terzis. She was a short, lithe woman with clear-eyed, beautiful features which seldom displayed anything resembling a smile. Close-cropped sandy hair served to emphasise her sombre demeanour. After losing her parents in the convulsions of the invasion, she had spent several years in a grim orphanage in Adnagaur before Medwin himself discovered her abilities during a visit to the port.
Contemplating them, Bardow's mood grew dark. For all that Guldamar and Terzis were two of the most talented apprentices that they had, Bardow knew that he was taking a terrible risk in pitting them against Mogaun shamen. But the demands of the plan of attack were unavoidable and admitted few or no alternatives.
Not long after leaving the defile, the column of knights passed a sheltered glade where the commander, one Rul Yarram, called a halt.
"It will be a brief respite," Yarram said to his senior officers. "We are less than an hour's ride from Sejeend, so quarter-rations for both men and mounts. That's all." He was a short wiry man in his fifties possessed of a certain nervous energy and a dominating persona. When he glanced over at Bardow, the archmage sighed and replied with a nod then watched a satisfied Yarram dismount and gather his lieutenants about him.
Bardow swung himself gingerly down to the ground, grimacing with the accumulated aches of three days on horseback. As he kneaded muscles in his lower back, he heard the slow hoof thuds of a rider drawing near.
"Master, you should let Terzis or myself mindspeak with Medwin. Surely we can ill afford any weakening of your abilities."
Bardow smiled. "Ah, Guldamar," he said without looking round. "In some ways you are a credit to my teachings, but in others you still have progress to make." Finished with his exercises, he regarded his stud
ent. Guldamar was a handsome young man, his long, dark-brown hair braided back in several tails after the fashion of Dalbari mountainmen. Looking concerned, he dismounted and stood beside his horse with the reins in his hand, mouth opening to speak. Bardow forestalled him.
"When you get to my age, you'll realise that self-sacrifice is not always a good thing. I mindspoke with Medwin and Mazaret when we reached Vanyon's Ford because it was too far for you, and I'm doing so now because I want you bright and alert when we arrive at the walls of Sejeend."
Bardow paused a moment, noticing a plain blue ring on one of Guldamar's fingers, then he went on.
"Now, find Terzis and go over the elements of the Cadence thought-canto and its variants - make sure they're fresh in your mind. And with any luck you will live to be my age."
Looking chastened, Guldamar bowed his head then led his mount away. Bardow watched him leave, then shook his head, wondering whether the rings signified friendship or something deeper. Then he hitched his horse in the shelter of a nearby eyeleaf tree and tipped a little feed on the ground before striding over to where Rul Yarram was patiently waiting.
The thought-canto of Inner Speech was similar to Spiritwing, though not as demanding, and after only a few moments he was speaking with Medwin, eldest of the three mages accompanying Mazaret. Once the Lord Commander learned of Yarram's whereabouts, his response was concise - We shall attack Sejeend's southern battlements within the hour. You must proceed without delay.
After that, the men were given a few minutes to finish whatever they were eating before being ordered back into their saddles. Back on the lakeside trail, now churning into mud beneath scores of hooves, Bardow paused off to the side for a final backward look.
Across Lake Unglin, lush flatlands, tilled fields and pastures stretched back less than a mile from the lake shore then rose abruptly into the upthrusting immensity of the Rukang Mountains. A great cataract spilled from a centuries-worn notch in a cliff-face directly opposite, grey-white falls which hazed the air, crashing torrents throwing up clouds of vapour from a boulder-strewn pool at the foot of the cliffs. Here, at the eastern throat of Gronanvel, the Rukangs were at their steepest, their grimmest, most trackless and impassable. Bardow thought of the plains of Khatris which lay beyond, a country once known as the Land of Swords for all the battles fought there in olden times. Then, the Rukangs had been a vast bulwark against invasion from the south - now, it forced anyone coming from the north to choose between Vanyon's Ford and Sejeend.
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