by Tim Stead
“General?”
Cain turned to see Captain Henn approaching, a frown on his young face.
“What is it, captain?”
“Sir, as much as I would like to go with you in my heart, my head says I must obey the Wolf. I must get through the pass as soon as I can.”
“Well, then, so you must,” Cain tried to be reassuring. “You’ve done your duty by me, and that’s not to be questioned, captain. You must do as the Wolf commands.”
Henn nodded, but still looked concerned. “It will be civil war if you fight them, sir,” he said.
“Justice,” Cain said. “Simple justice. A man can’t stand by and let something like this go, captain. Their deeds smell of treachery, and they must be measured for it.”
Henn nodded, but he didn’t look happy. It made Cain angry, because in his heart he knew that Henn was right. He loved Sheyani. She was his reason for living, but if he did not do his duty then the wall might not be built, or built fast enough. Seth Yarra might break through the pass and all the kingdoms of the east might fall.
Let them fall, he thought. I would see them all gone for one more day with her.
“I shall be about my duty then, sir,” Henn said. He saluted and turned away, walking slowly towards the assembled ranks of his men. Cain felt that he had let the boy down in some way, but he really had no choice.
He went to his mount and swung up into the saddle. Over the winter he had become expert in managing most things with just one hand. It was almost as though he didn’t miss it any more. He rode with a slightly longer rein now, so that he could loop it around his right forearm. Everything was possible if you adapted.
There was a commotion on the road. He saw the tidy ranks of his men scatter, moving quickly out of the way of something. Almost at once he saw what it was. Narak. The Wolf was here. Narak strode through the ranks directly towards him and stopped before his horse.
“Colonel Arbak,” he said. “I am glad to catch you before your camp is broken.”
“We are about to ride,” Cain replied.
Narak looked him in the eye, a gaze he could not meet. “I want to speak with you first, colonel.” His voice was hard and flat.
“My business is urgent, Deus,” Cain replied.
“Will you get down off that horse or must I pull you down?” Narak demanded.
Cain had no choice. He thought for a moment about trying to ride away, but as soon as the thought formed he dismissed it for the idiocy it was. You could not run from the Wolf, and even if you could the regiment would not follow. He dismounted.
“It is Sheyani, Deus. Carillon holds her at High Stone…”
“I know. I have spoken to her,” Narak said.
“You have spoken…? How? Is she well? Is she safe?”
“She is well, but still in peril. You must not go to High Stone, however. A thousand men wait for you, and behind them the castle is fully garrisoned, and ready to fight. Even the whole regiment would fail to take it, and you are needed elsewhere.”
“I must try,” Cain said.
“No. You will go to the White Road with all speed. Sheyani walks with the wolf. I will do what needs to be done. Could you do more? Besides, I need Carillon’s men to fight Seth Yarra.”
Cain could not find the words he wanted to say. He burned to avenge the wrong done to his betrothed, to redress the near disaster of the Seth Yarra ambush. His blood was up. But he knew that it could not be so. A man did not simply deny Narak, and he was the Wolf’s creature, made by his money and patronage. Even more compelling was the knowledge that Narak was right. Carillon’s men were needed. The Wolf could do more than he could.
“I do not want vengeance, Deus,” he said. “I want Sheyani safe.”
“I swear to you that I will not risk her life, Cain,” Narak put his hand on the colonel’s shoulder. “I have lost too many friends of late.”
Cain nodded. “Then I will go to the pass, Deus. I will build the wall.”
“Good. Now tell me, what occurred on the road to Bergan Rise? Were you attacked?”
Cain was surprised that the Wolf did not know. He seemed to know everything else.
“We were ambushed by Seth Yarra, Deus,” Cain said.
“Seth Yarra? You are certain?”
“Cleansers. If not for Captain Henn’s timely arrival they would have killed us all.” He told the story as quickly as he could from the first message to the ambush, from the unequal combat to the rescue by Henn’s foresters. Narak listened with an impassive face to all of it. He did not interrupt once.
“You have a genius for survival, Cain,” he said when the tale was concluded. “When your sword fails you your mind does not, and your luck is surely a gift from the gods. Now go. Do your duty at the wall, and in a few days I will bring Sheyani to you. I will make it my first duty to see her safely back with the Seventh Friend.”
Narak shook his hand, a public gesture of equality and friendship that would more than repair the impression that their brief confrontation might have made of the soldiers. Then he turned and strode once more towards the forest, but before he reached the trees he was gone, and a large, grey wolf trotted silently into the undergrowth, not even sparing a backward glance.
Cain signalled the groom to bring his horse again. So it would be the pass after all, but his heart was elsewhere.
36. Terresh Escapes
As soon as she stepped out into the bailey Pascha knew that her idea of stealth was a poor one. A glance showed her fourteen Seth Yarra guards, stationed in pairs at the gate, the doors, and even at the well. She was seen at once, and the king’s body that she inhabited would be no sort of disguise if they saw it up close, Seth Yarra uniform or not.
One of the guards called out to her in a language that she did not understand. She tried to bluff, raising an arm in what she thought was a universal gesture of greeting, but the guard called out something different, a question by its inflection, and two of them began to approach her.
It was the oddest sensation, but to Pascha it felt that she was half in the Sirash and half in the world. Perhaps it was the danger, the rush in her blood, but she could perceive each of them as a warm glow, a living presence that she could sense without even looking at them. This was something else that was new.
In a moment the Telan soldiers would see her danger and burst out of the door behind her. An unequal battle would ensue, and most, if not all of them, would be killed. In the confusion she might escape and she might not. She didn’t want that to happen. She focussed on the presence of the men walking towards her, willing them to go away, driving at them with her will.
She heard a cry, a clatter, and looked up. Both men had fallen to the ground and she stared at them, caught in a moment of complete bafflement. Both men were dead. She could no longer sense them. Their lives were simply gone.
Now she was in trouble. The twelve remaining guards were moving, some drawing blades, others fitting arrows to bows. If she didn’t act now the king would be dead in a few moments and she would be hurled back into the Sirash, forced to tell Hestia that her husband was dead, that Pascha had failed.
She lashed out. Power flowed out from her. It felt like a whip, like a beam of light from a door pushed ajar in the night. It felt like nothing she could describe. Whatever it was, it was certainly death to the Seth Yarra guards. She saw them fall, each and every one of them dead in an instant, swords and bows falling from suddenly lifeless hands. One arrow flew wildly over her head. There was not even a moment between life and death.
More surprising still, she felt her own power increase. She knew immediately that she had taken their lives, quite literally. She had fed on them like some nightmare creature in a child’s tale. She was stunned. What had she become? Even Narak could not do this. She stood among the dead for a moment, struggling with fear and surprise, and then she ran to the gate, not glancing back at the dead guards. She stopped at the gate, feeling the king’s breath come raggedly into his chest. She looked up an
d down the street. It was empty.
She turned back. Hestia was still in the castle. If she ran away with the king to some imagined safe place they might blame her for the deaths. They might kill Hestia when they found the bodies. That wouldn’t do.
She strode across the bailey once more, walked through a gate and down a passage to a smaller courtyard, turned right and ascended a flight of stairs. Once on the right level she knew the way to Hestia’s chambers. She moved quickly. There was no way to know how long the slaughter in the bailey would go undiscovered. At some time men would come to relieve those she had killed. Her plan now was to take Hestia and the king at the same time, spirit them both away before the alarm was raised.
There were two more Seth Yarra guards at the end of the corridor where Hestia was imprisoned. They were positioned just around the corner where they could not be seen from her doorway. There would be others.
She considered abandoning the king and using one of the guards to kill the other. It seemed better somehow than just sucking the life out of them, but that would mean that Terresh was briefly be subject only to his own free will again, and after he’d stabbed her in the back once she wasn’t going to risk it again.
She killed them both, and they clattered to the floor like an accident in a kitchen. It was too easy. Killing like that didn’t feel like killing at all.
There were two Telan guards outside the queen’s door. They looked alert and uneasy, and she could not blame them for that. At first they only saw the Seth Yarra clothes, and she could see their hands resting on their swords. They stepped out to face him. Then they saw the king’s face.
They both knelt, dropped to their knees and bowed their heads.
“Lord King,” one of them said. “You are alive.”
“It looks that way,” Pascha replied. “Now open the door. We will be leaving.”
They hurried to obey, and in a moment she stepped into the room. Hestia was sitting in a chair, fretting. She could see it in the position of the queen’s body as the door opened. She looked at the king, frozen for a moment, sitting sideways on the edge of the seat, one hand clutching the arm, the other to her mouth, then recognition dawned and she leaped to her feet. She rushed towards Pascha for three steps and then stopped.
“Terresh?”
“No,” Pascha said. “This was the only way I could get him here.”
“Release him,” she said.
“No. I do not trust him. It is safer like this.”
“How do I know he is alive?”
“Is your servant alive?” Hestia glanced across the room and Pascha followed her gaze. The servant Derdan stood by the table. He seemed nervous, but none the worse for his earlier possession. The queen nodded. “Very well,” she said. “How will we get past the guards?”
“They are all dead,” Pascha said, and rather enjoyed the surprise and shock on Hestia’s face. “We must leave now, before they are discovered.”
Derdan immediately began to pick things up and put them in a bag, but Hestia stopped him. “There is no time, Derdan,” she said.
They stepped out into the corridor and Pascha saw Hestia glance in the direction of the hidden guards, the ones she had slain.
“My father,” Hestia said. “We must warn him, or he will be taken and killed.”
“Can you send a messenger without it being noted?” Pascha asked.
“Yes,” she said. “If you tell the truth there is nobody to note it.”
“Then send one, quickly, but do not have him meet us. It will only add to our danger.”
“My father would not betray me,” Hestia snapped.
“Anyone would, given the correct application of hot irons,” Pascha said. Hestia paled a little at her words, and she wondered at how like any other person the queen seemed. She should not have been surprised. Narak was always telling her that very few of those that we call evil see themselves that way. Most of them have hearts and hopes, fears and torments. An enemy is usually someone with whom you have not made an accommodation.
Hestia whispered her message to one of her guards and he nodded and ran ahead of them, pausing at the corner where the bodies were. He glanced back at them, then was gone.
“Now we must hurry,” Pascha said. So they bustled down the corridor, Pascha leading the way followed by Hestia and her remaining guard, and Derdan bringing up the rear. They all glanced at the guards in the corridor, Pascha saw, perhaps wondering why there was no blood.
They descended stairs, passed through the small courtyard and down the corridor into the bailey. Here the scene was somewhat changed. Twenty ragamuffin Telans, the ones she had freed from their cells, were occupying the bailey. They had taken weapons from the dead Seth Yarra and were clearly in the midst of a debate about what they should do. When they saw their king and queen the discussion dissolved. Some of the knelt, others waved their swords and cheered.
Ill disciplined to the last, Pascha thought. They will get us all killed.
Hestia silenced them with a gesture, which was impressive. They came to heel like boisterous hounds, quiet and attentive. The woman had real power.
“Soldiers of Telas,” she said, her voice quiet and calm. “We have been betrayed by our allies. They have turned on us, but now they will discover that we are not dogs to be whipped into obedience. They will taste Telan steel. We go now, the King and I, to raise an army, to unite our forces and sweep the land clean of these white livered, grey faced men. But first we must leave the city with stealth, for they greatly outnumber us here. If you would come with us, then come, but do so knowing that Seth Yarra are our enemies, and we are reconciled with the Benetheon, and with our brother kingdoms of Terras to push the invaders from our soil.”
Pascha was surprised. Hestia was already making good on her promise. The men saluted, but there was no cheer. They had taken the message on board. Stealth. They moved quickly and quietly out into the deserted street.
Now the empty city seemed a blessing. They were all but free. Only a few streets separated them from any one of several gates, and Pascha knew that not all of them were guarded. So, it became apparent, did Hestia.
37. A Door
Somebody, one of her tutors probably, had once told Sheyani that fear could be boring, even dull. She had not believed it. Now she found it to be true. She sat in her bare cell with only a lamp for company and watched the flame. It was many hours since she had spoken to Narak in his dream, and she had lost track of time. She had slept for a while. It was hard to think of sleeping here, but the knowledge that Cain was still alive and safe gave her great comfort.
She knew that at any moment they could come through the door to kill her, and a part of her listened for a step on the stone beyond, for voices that might mean the end. Yet that part of her grew smaller with each passing hour. If they had not killed her after five hours, why would they kill her after six? If not after nine, then why after ten?
They were waiting for something, she decided. She guessed that they were waiting for news of Cain’s death. They did not know about the Wolf. The ring would be her trump card. When they came she would show the ring, ask if they wanted to face Narak’s justice, and hope that they would go away again and think better of their deed.
But she had not been idle.
Sheyani was a Halith first. It was her chosen path, but she was also a dream adept, a lord of the path of Belan Terak, and also a Gorisian adept, a lesser water mage. She knew that magic was limited, that men and women were limited, she could not know everything, but for a while she had bitterly regretted not following her father’s advice when he told her that she should study the path of Abadanon, the waymaker.
Baradan had always allowed her to make her own choices, but he had told her that Abadanon was the minor path of kings. It was a pun of sorts, she supposed. Abadanon was the maker of paths and doorways, of roads that defied distance. If she had possessed the skill she could have made a door in the wall of her cell and stepped through it to Waterhill, or the
bar of the Seventh Friend, or the road where Cain’s soldiers waited.
Kings sometimes needed to be somewhere else quite urgently, her father had said. He had expected her to rule after he was gone, and she had expected it, too; expected it too much. She had been unprepared for Hammerdan’s deceit.
There was nothing she could have done, of course, once the trick had been worked. Her father had been forced to face Hammerdan with a sword. Those were the rules. Father had been provoked to challenge, Hammerdan had chosen mundane weapons, as was his right, though it had never been done before. The weapons named, Baradan had seen his doom and called Sheyani to him.
Run, he had said. You must run. He will kill you.
She had refused. She had wept. She had insisted that they would find a way. Yet all the time she had known in her heart that he was right. The choice was to run or die with her father. It was a difficult choice, even so. In the end she ran for him. She ran because knowing that she was still alive would make it easier for him to die.
