Dancer's Lament: Path to Ascendancy Book 1

by Ian C. Esslemont

  On the north bank of the Idryn a bedraggled, mud-slathered shape drew another limp form up the mud bank and fell to the ground, gasping. All was dark but for the fires burning in the Kanese camp to the south. Dorin wiped the cold slick clay from his face and lay exhausted, luxuriating in the sensation of just being alive. Sleep pulled at him but he knew that the deep sleep of the cold was a slow sure death and so he roused himself, lifted the unconscious Wu over his shoulder, and staggered inland searching for cover.

  In the ruins of a burned-out barn he started a meagre fire from leaf litter and sticks and huddled about it with the still unconscious Wu. The Dal Hon youth had taken quite a hit to the head from the bouncing of the cage, but at least his nosebleed had clotted over. He may wake up addled, as so many who take such strikes to the head did, but in his case how would one know?

  He tucked the lad’s ice-cold hands to his chest and patted his shoulder. Well done, you crazy lunatic. You really did save our arses – even if it was you who endangered them in the first place.

  Dorin sat back against the charred wall and kept watch through the dawn.

  The mage’s eyes popped open a good while after sunlight slanted down to warm him. The eyes roved about the ruins, red and bloodshot, and then the fellow grunted, satisfied, and croaked, ‘As I said. Quite safe.’

  Dorin would have laughed had he the energy. He motioned him up. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Not the river, I beg you.’

  ‘No, not the river. The north is open. I know a number of ways in.’

  Wu strained to rise, groaning and hissing. ‘Thank the gods.’

  Once inside the walls Dorin kept them to narrow back alleys, for they were alone, and much of the territory they had to pass through was held by either Urquart or Pung. Eventually they came limping back into Wu’s domain; or, more accurately, his lads’ and lasses’ domain, for in truth they did all the organizing and fighting. All was merely done in his name.

  When they came staggering down the chute of a tunnel a lass approached Dorin, motioning for his attention. Dorin allowed a gang of lads to take Wu from his hands.

  ‘There is someone here to see you,’ the girl said.

  ‘Who?’

  A shrug. ‘I’ll take you. This way.’

  She led him to a block of quiet, near-abandoned disputed streets that lay between Wu’s gang and Pung’s. This long into the siege few citizens ever left their quarters, which were barricaded and barred. It was now just a matter of waiting it out. You either managed to survive with what you had, or you didn’t, for there was no longer anything left to buy, barter, or steal.

  The girl led him to a cellar, one open and known to all parties. Here he was surprised to find Rheena – much skinnier, paler, and looking markedly older, but unquestionably Rheena. The girl started from her chair when he entered, gasping, ‘What happened?’ and he realized that he must present an even worse appearance.

  He tried to straighten his mud-streaked half-dried leathers. ‘I was out . . . scouting. What are you doing here? Pung would kill you if he knew.’

  She bit her lip, and pulled at her tangled red hair. ‘I’m sorry, Dorin. I’m very sorry. I tried to warn you. I had nothing to do with it. I kept my mouth shut, but Loor knew. He talked. He’s angry with you – he thinks you betrayed him. Please, don’t kill him. Please. He’s just a dumb kid. He doesn’t understand . . .’

  He took her cold hands in his. ‘What’s happened?’

  She would not raise her eyes. ‘I’m finished with Pung now,’ she whispered, fierce. ‘This isn’t what I joined for. She wasn’t even involved . . . I’m sorry . . .’

  Dorin let her hands fall. He backed away shaking his head, then he turned and ran.

  He did not remember his passage to the streets of the caravanserai staging area in the west Outer Round; it all passed in a blur. He refused to think of what might await him but the moment he entered the narrow alley next to Ullara’s family barn he knew, for there among the rubbish lay two dead birds.

  Proud predators both had been in life, a red falcon and a kestrel. They lay now broken and bloodied. Looking up he saw smears of blood at the ledge of the open gable far above. He climbed while refusing to allow himself to think at all – he held it all at bay, waiting until he reached the loft.

  Within it was as he dreaded: scattered feathers and broken bodies of every single roosting bird that Ullara had taken in. All had died fighting to defend her; all had been slashed or crushed. And amidst all the corpses, Ullara lying on her side, her legs and arms trussed. Gently, he untied the rope, releasing her blue hands and feet, and turned her on to her back. When she rolled over he flinched away, for her eyes had been gouged out.

  The next thing he knew he was vaguely aware that someone was saying sorry over and over again in a cracked broken voice while he held her pressed to his chest, rocking her. Her chemise was wet against his face. ‘I’m so sorry,’ that person was whispering, hoarse. ‘It is my fault. All my fault.’

  He kneaded her hands and feet, massaging the life back into them. She stirred with the pain of the blood returning. He found a rag and wrapped it about her head over the savaged holes that had once held her eyes.

  He sat with her head cradled on his lap through the night. He arranged her skirts, set her hands on her chest and sat looking down at her. He studied her for a very long time before blinking heavily and coming back to himself. Ever so slowly, he drew up the rope that had bound her and coiled it as he did so.

  A fine length of slim taut hemp. Pung’s thugs must have brought it with them.

  He had a use for it too.

  He had no idea how long he sat there with a hand on her forehead. The beginnings of a penance, perhaps. Dawn came and still he sat. Once, far above, came the heart-wrenching keening of a great bird, and he knew that her King of the Mountains still lived.

  With the warmth of the morning she stirred. Her hands rose to her eyes but he caught them and gently lowered them to her chest.

  She tried to speak – cleared her throat, and tried again, ‘They told me this was a warning.’

  He nodded, then flinched inwardly with the realization that she could not see it. That she would never see again. He swallowed to wet his raw throat. ‘I understand.’

  ‘They offered me a choice, you know,’ she said, her voice eerily flat. ‘Hands or eyes . . . but I fooled them. I chose my eyes.’

  A shudder took Dorin at her words. Something elemental and very dark seemed to move beneath them.

  ‘Listen, Ullara. I will take you with me. I can hide you. I know where—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool. I can hide you, truly I can. Keep you safe.’

  ‘No.’ She raised a hand to his face and gently brushed it down his features, caressing them. ‘Find him,’ she whispered through her sharp clenched teeth. ‘Find him and kill him.’

  Dorin shuddered again at the ferocity contained in this slim young form. She seemed to burn in his arms. No wonder the birds of prey came to her. They recognized the spirit of a sister.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I will.’

  She relaxed once more on to his lap. ‘Good.’ She pushed his hands away. ‘Go, then.’

  ‘Ullara! What of you?’

  ‘I will be fine. My father is below – too frightened to come up, no doubt. Do not worry. I will call him.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Go. Find him. He thought you and I could be frightened off but he made a mistake. He doesn’t understand what we are.’ She pushed herself from him and sat up. ‘Go. Do not return until he is dead.’

  Chastened by her fire, he took one of her bloodied hands and pressed it to his lips. ‘Yes. And . . . I’m sorry. I did not understand you either.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. Now it is too late. Now all that is left to us is vengeance and the hunt. So go.’

  He clambered to his feet. ‘Ullara . . . I—’

  ‘Go.’

  He lowered his head. ‘Yes. I will find him.’ Bend
ing down, he kissed her brow above the stained cloth then descended to the alleyway below.

  The moment he set foot on the littered cobbles movement snapped him around. Some sort of vagrant stirred beneath a dirty blanket and rose, coughing. As the figure straightened it wavered into the familiar elderly shape of Wu. The mage peered up at the gable then lowered his head and clasped his hands before his stomach. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured. ‘She was an innocent.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dorin nodded. ‘Yes, she was.’ He drew a long shuddering breath and released it feeling as if he were releasing everything with it – his every wish, every foolish grandiose ambition, and every childish dream. All his plans for any future. ‘It was my fault.’

  ‘Do not blame yourself.’

  ‘If I had moved against Pung as you wished this would not have happened.’

  ‘We cannot be certain.’

  Now he frowned, vaguely irritated. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I am worried about what you’re going to do.’

  ‘You know exactly what I am going to do.’

  ‘Ah, yes, well. Exactly my worry . . .’

  ‘I thought you wanted Pung dead.’

  ‘Of course. But not you. Please, Dorin, let’s not be hasty . . .’

  He thought of her slim frame – so tiny and frail – and shook his head. Blinding. A terrible, awful, cruel maiming. How could anyone do such a thing to an innocent soul? ‘Things have changed.’ Dorin died in that loft.

  ‘Ah, I see. As you say. But let us take a moment to consider—’

  ‘No. No more planning or considering. Look what my delaying has cost. I am finished with it. I’m going now.’ He faced the Dal Hon mage directly. ‘Are you with me or not?’

  ‘Of course I am with you, as always. But please, for the love of the gods – wait for nightfall at the least, I beg of you.’

  Dorin brushed past to the alley mouth. ‘Dusk, then,’ he allowed, grudgingly. Something among the litter caught his eye and he picked it up. A bird’s leg and clawed foot, torn or severed from its owner. Blood still limned the black curved talons. He studied the grisly object for a time then slipped it down his shirt.

  ‘Let us prepare,’ said Wu, and his short walking stick appeared in his hand.

  In the loft above, Ullara felt about the floor before her, patting the messed straw, feeling her way to the gable window. Reaching the wall, she pulled herself erect and felt at the window ledge. She raised her face to the warm morning breeze. ‘Come,’ she whispered to the breeze.

  After a time the brazen call of a bird tore the sky and broad wings buffeted the air. A tall heavy shape perched upon the roof opposite.

  Ullara raised her hands to the cloth at her eyes and unwound it. Once it fell away she studied her hands as if marvelling at them, then turned her attention to the roofscape of the city beyond.

  ‘Go, my hunter,’ she urged the wind.

  * * *

  ‘It is not as bad as it could have been,’ Ho was saying to Shalmanat while he, Mara and Silk faced their mistress in her sanctum. ‘We have them contained within the Outer Round. The river gates are sabotaged, and the arches broken. They have no way in but to take the walls or the gates, just as before.’

  But Shalmanat would not look up. She sat slumped upon her camp stool, a shawl draped over her shoulders. ‘The populace will have lost faith in me,’ she whispered, staring at the floor.

  Ho cast Silk a meaningful glare. Silk cleared his throat and knelt next to her. ‘Not at all, m’lady. The populace holds firm. The Inner Round walls are defended. Holding one section does not give them the city entire.’

  ‘I will not yield the south.’

  ‘Of course not. There is no need.’

  ‘Nor will I accept Dal Hon’s offer,’ she said.

  Silk raised his head to look at Ho who grimaced, taking a heavy breath. ‘They will come if we accept their authority.’

  ‘I will not escape one tiger by putting my head into the jaws of another,’ she snarled, pulling her shawl tight. ‘And speaking of that,’ she snapped, glaring at Ho, ‘what is your excuse for Ryllandaras?’

  Ho clasped his meaty hands behind his back, nodding. ‘Think, Shalmanat. It is really for the best. This Kanese incursion is only temporary. It will pass. But he remains the eternal enemy. With him out of the way our trade will burgeon. We will be able to rebuild even stronger. And it is also a mercy; someone, eventually, would have killed him.’

  The Protectress’s gaze slid away, unfocused. ‘I promised him I would keep the plains open . . .’

  ‘And you did – for a time. But Tali and Purge are expanding in the west. They have made no such promises.’

  ‘And Tali has made an offer of alliance,’ Mara added. ‘If we accept their aid.’

  Shalmanat snorted. ‘How it still rankles with them! They would like to finally march their Iron Legions through my streets!’

  ‘They are too far off anyway,’ Mara said. ‘We must finish this ourselves.’

  The Protectress raised her eyes and Silk was shocked to see them bloodshot, sunken, red-rimmed, and shining with a feverish light. ‘Yes. Finish it. I hoped it wouldn’t come to it – but it may. It may have to.’

  Silk eyed her warily, troubled by her tone. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Warn me of any preparations for an attack,’ she told Ho. ‘Any massing of their numbers.’

  Ho bowed. ‘As you order.’

  ‘And this attack in their camp?’

  Ho waved the topic aside. ‘The beasts appeared among them, rampaged, then disappeared once more. I dare say they did more damage to the Kanese than we have.’

  ‘What are they anyway?’ Silk asked Ho.

  ‘Daemons summoned by a minor talent who could not control them.’

  Shalmanat, Silk noted, tightened her lips against saying anything.

  ‘We are done, then?’ Mara asked. ‘We must get back to the walls.’

  The Protectress waved them off with a weak gesture.

  Silk lingered, hoping to talk, but she kept urging them out and so he relented and backed away after Ho and Mara. The guards pulled shut the door. Silk hurried to catch Ho.

  ‘What did she mean, finish it?’ he asked.

  The heavyset mage was lumbering through the palace halls with his sideways swinging walk. ‘You know her only as the ruler of the city, but she is powerful in her own right.’

  ‘She is afraid of that power.’

  Ho nodded his dour agreement. ‘As she should be. What troubles me is this unusual cold.’

  ‘This winter? It has been a rare one, I understand. But they suffer just as much as we do.’

  The sour mage grunted his half-agreement. Silk’s thoughts turned to his own worries. He thought he understood Shalmanat now. She must see herself being driven into a corner. Forced to take up her worst nightmare – her powers. And these he knew as Liosan. Elder Light. The wellspring, he now knew, behind Thyr and Telas – neither of which drove him or Smokey unhinged with dread. It was more powerful, yes, but in the end it was just another Warren, was it not?

  * * *

  They gathered in a narrow tunnel recently dug out beneath Pung’s quarters. Wu’s urchin diggers bristled with weapons but their youth made Dorin uneasy, though in truth they were but a few years younger than he. Lowering his voice, he murmured to Wu, ‘Only bring them up if they’re needed.’

  The mage nodded in his distracted, half-attending manner. Irritated by this, Dorin moved to the fore. ‘I’ll go first.’ He took a small shovel from the hands of a girl and cut into the wall they faced. She winced in agony at his hacking.

  ‘Careful,’ she implored.

  Dorin grunted his assent and slowed. Light shone through, dim, but enough for their starved vision. A portion of the dirt wall fell away revealing a root cellar. He stepped in and around old barrels and crates. The air stank of rot and damp. A short ladder led to a trapdoor.

  He listened at the slats of the door, heard nothing. He pressed against
it until it rose a fraction and stilled, listening once more. He heard nothing – no footsteps, no breathing, no creak of leather or wood. He raised the door further until he could see up an empty hall then entered and crouched, knives ready. Wu poked his head through the trapdoor. Dorin beckoned him upward.

  The absolute quiet sent Dorin’s instincts blazing with dread. This was all wrong. It felt like a trap yet there was no one about. The house seemed deserted. How could it be a trap with no one here?

  He motioned for Wu to pause then advanced to the main floor’s centre and stood, listening. Again, he heard nothing – the house was indeed abandoned. Then it reached him. Distant, audible only because of the building’s emptiness: someone walking far above, perhaps even on the roof.

  Someone alone, pacing the roof. Waiting. Waiting for . . . him.

  He straightened then, sheathing his knives in his new baldrics. He returned to Wu. ‘Find your box, or whatever the damned thing is, if it’s still here. I’ll be above. I have an . . . appointment.’

  The Dal Hon’s gaze climbed to the ceiling. ‘I see. You have my aid, of course.’

  ‘No. This is personal. Don’t interfere.’

  Wu gave a slight lift of his brows. ‘If you insist.’

  He waved him off. ‘Go and search.’ He went to the stairs. Another trapdoor opened on to the roof. Dorin knew it well. It was flat, the footing reliable. He straightened, drawing his best fighting knives.

  Far across the breadth of the roof a dark shape straightened as well. It approached, resolved into a tall young man, cloaked, wearing a well-trimmed goatee. The fellow inclined his head in greeting. ‘So, another student of Faruj, yes?’

  ‘Where is Pung?’

  The fellow’s hands emerged holding similar fighting blades. He gestured widely. ‘His location is immaterial to ones such as us, don’t you think?’

  ‘He’s the only one I want.’

  The fellow frowned an exaggerated disappointment. ‘Really? You do not sound like a student of Faruj. Are you yet another poseur? I have found . . . well, killed so many. We cannot have people running about claiming to be our equals, can we?’ He gave an apologetic shrug. ‘It is bad for our rates.’

  ‘Where did he bring you in from?’