The Bloodstained God (Book 2)

by Tim Stead

  “Go back down,” he said to the caretaker. “You need have no part of this.”

  The man seemed almost reluctant to leave, curiosity perhaps, but after a hesitation he scuttled down the steps and was gone. Narak dropped the veil, assumed his aspect, and the darkness was no longer dark. He could see quite well.

  He walked up around the spiral and almost at once entered a room. It was the image of the one below, but here the fire was cold and the windows boarded with wood. Otherwise it was altogether a more welcoming place. It was furnished in a manner that reminded Narak of Bas Erinor. There was a finely carved desk pushed against the wall opposite the fire, a lamp suspended on a hook above, a large table sat squarely in the middle of the room, and a large armchair sat close to the fire at an angle with a delicately carved occasional table beside it. On the table was a bottle of spirit and a crystal glass.

  Narak went to the desk. He saw papers scattered across it and a tinder box. He lit the lamp and picked up a couple of pages. They were packed with dense writing in a script that he could not understand. He picked up other sheets, and saw that they were the same. Clever, he thought, to learn a foreign tongue and then use it for all your notes. These papers were useless to him.

  His eye was caught by a diagram, a picture, and he picked it up. It showed a figure standing without background. It was a man, he guessed, clothed in a single garment that hung from shoulder to ankle, like a priest’s robe. The face was no more than a sketch, and the detail was all in the object that the figure held. It was a staff, the main part of it being the height of the man, and the top a twisted representation of roots and blades, like knives protruding from an upturned tree stump.

  He shuffled the other pages on the desk and found more diagrams showing the same staff from different angles. It was obviously important.

  There were other diagrams as well. He found one that showed a human hand in various positions, each carefully annotated in the same unintelligible script.

  The script, he was certain, was Seth Yarra. If he had guessed correctly then he was looking at a fragment of a manual on how to usurp a god. He looked around the room, but there was nothing else that seemed to be of value, just the necessaries of a comfortable life. There was another door, however, and he found it unlocked. It opened onto another stair that led upwards. Narak did not hesitate, but went up. Like the other stair it was a spiral, and he was not surprised when it opened out onto the roof of the keep. It was filthy up here, spattered with bird droppings, eaten away with moss and lichen on the battlements. He could see no path where a man might have walked, and no reason a man would want to come to the roof.

  He went back down to the room. There was very little for him here. If he had hoped to catch Hesham he would have been disappointed, but Narak had not expected that. He attributed greater intelligence to his foe than to go back to his ancestral home knowing full well that Narak must surely be close behind him.

  He inhaled the scent of the room and there at once was the unmistakable tang of blood silver, faint but unmistakable. There was a human scent, too, but it was heavily submerged in scented oils; mint and lavender, animal musk and the scent of burned sugar. It was almost as though Hesham had expected him to come here at some point, and wanted to be sure that he could not take his scent. It made sense.

  There was a bag hung from the side of the desk, a tube of leather blocked and stitched with a leather plug at one end and a leather cap that could tie down at the other. He had seen such things used to carry maps. Narak gathered all the documents and rolled them tightly, slipping them into the bag. There were Seth Yarra prisoners scattered through Avilian and Berash, and perhaps he could persuade one of them to translate the notes.

  He walked back down to the dilapidated great hall, and found caretaker father and son deep in conversation.

  “It is time for you to leave,” he said to them. “Your work here is finished. After today there will be no house here.”

  They looked at him.

  “What are we to do then?” the older man asked.

  Narak shrugged. “It’s not my concern,” he said. “Find some other work. Go for a soldier. Whatever you do you must leave now. If there is anything of value you may take it with you.” He saw them exchange looks.

  “There are horses,” the older man said.

  “Yours.”

  “There is money that Lord Hesham left for provisions.”

  “Yours. Take anything but what lies in the rooms above. All that will be destroyed.”

  The light of avarice being lit in their eyes the two did not question him further. He was sure from their easy acquiescence that there was enough moveable property here to set them up pretty well. Narak went back up to the room and began to break it up, smashing the furniture and piling it in the middle of the floor. He pulled a tapestry off the wall and added that to the pile, finally pouring the bottle of spirit over it all and smashing the crystal glass in the hearth. There would be nothing left here for Hesham should he seek to return. Having done what he could he broke the lamp over the debris and watched as the lamp oil and the spirit quickly spread the flames. The floor was wooden, and would eventually burn and collapse, as would the roof above. All that would remain of this place would be scorched walls and ashes.

  He went downstairs and found the caretakers had gone. The bedrolls had been removed along with a good deal of the food. He looked outside, but could not see them, so he scattered the fire from the hearth, setting fire to anything that would burn. He took a burning brand outside and used it to set light to the rotten boxes. He pushed straw against the open gate and set fire to that, too.

  It was enough. Already a pall of smoke rose above the keep, and he could see tongues of flame through the windows. Glass shattered somewhere, and the crackling of flames grew steadily towards a roar.

  Narak left the burning gate open and walked towards the trees, the leather map tube in one hand. Well, if he had inconvenienced Hesham even a little it was the first time he had done so. Now he had to get back to the White Road, and hope that the Durander mages were there. It was time for that work to begin.

  42. Pascha Returns to Fal Verdan

  The weather held for three days. Blue skies and gentle breezes made it seem almost like spring, which Pascha supposed it truly was. Every time she used her power to look upon the Seth Yarra army it moved further north, though its pace was sedate, and she saw no signs of haste.

  She rode at the head of a column of three thousand men with Skal Hebberd at her side. He was quite recovered from the physical effects of his drinking, but still inclined to embarrassment when she mentioned it, which she did from time to time just to see him flush and look away. He was still a young man, and saw a single failing as something that coloured his honour. An older man would have learned to discard such things.

  But Pascha was troubled in her own mind. There were things that she had done in Telas Alt that she could neither discard nor forget. The way that she had killed the guards in the bailey, and the others in the corridor had shocked her. It was almost as though just wishing them dead had killed them. Although it has seemed natural at the time, now it seemed indecent, unfair, and the way that their life had flowed into her reminded her of the darkest tales of her distant childhood, tales of demons and sprites that fed upon the living, devouring their souls to leave mere lifeless husks behind them.

  Had she become a demon? Is that what Pelion had done to them all fifteen centuries ago? She fingered the hilt of her blood silver sword. She credited it, or blamed it for her sudden new powers. Some of them she was willing to accept. Being able to inhabit and use creatures other than sparrows was an extension, an enlarging of those gifts she already possessed, the common gifts of the Benetheon. It was the killing that scared her. At times she wondered if she needed Skal and his regiment at all. Perhaps she could just cross the wall and kill all the Seth Yarra soldiers there just by wishing it so. The thought terrified her. What if she looked in the wrong direction? What
if she turned her killing power on her allies by accident? She did not know how it worked or how far it could reach. After all, she had been in Wolfguard when she slew the Seth Yarra guards.

  Also she remembered Narak after Afael. He had killed a thousand and more, but he had done it face to face, blades against blades. Yet for all the honesty of his deeds he had still been troubled, tortured by the quantity of death that he had dispensed, fleeing Bas Erinor at the earliest decent opportunity and seeking solace in the forest. How much more then might she be troubled by this simple wishing and killing, and not knowing the numbers that might die. Already she felt twisted inside at the way they had simply fallen into death.

  “You are certain that you can trust the Telans?”

  Skal’s question, asked not for the first time, snapped her from her dismal reverie. She looked across at where he rode, determinedly adult, though he was little more than a child to her. Nearly twenty, and her a whisper over fifteen hundred years old. It was cruel to tease him when he had done so well.

  “We will be cautious,” she replied. “Hestia is nothing if not deceitful, but I believe that when I left her she was honest in her desire to turn against Seth Yarra. I just do not know what Terresh will do.”

  Skal nodded. He looked back over his shoulder at the column that currently made up the Second Regiment of the Seventh Friend. His men liked him, Pascha recalled. He had been competent at Henfray and recklessly brave at Fal Verdan. She had watched him fight his way back to the steps, and even picked off a couple of those that might have killed him from her position high above. He seemed to worship Cain Arbak, too, which was odd for a high born man, even a degraded one like Skal. She decided that she liked him, or at any rate she liked what he might become.

  “We will break for midday soon,” he said. “You’re certain we have plenty of time?”

  “Plenty indeed, unless you want to take on the entire Seth Yarra army. They are marching north and we must wait until they are well past the Green Road before we attempt our rebellion.”

  “Yes. All the same, I would rather be with Cain to face them.”

  She knew this. Many of Skal’s men felt the same way. Many of them had not been present at either Finchbeak road or Fal Verdan. They were raw and wanted their first taste of glory, and more than that they wanted to be part of the big battle, the one that would be remembered. They would not feel the same way after the battle, but she knew that Skal would. Despite his close call at Fal Verdan he was hungry for action and the chance at elevation it might bring. She could understand that.

  Yet Pascha knew Narak’s secret. The battle on the White Road would not be the great struggle that everyone expected.

  They stopped and chaos appeared to reign briefly before a stationary order emerged and the men gathered around small temporary messes and rations were distributed. It was impossible to stop a column of this size for less than an hour. It took that long to stop and start again. Pascha took advantage of the time to slip away from the soldiers and find a quiet spot in the forest where she would not be disturbed.

  The sword did not appear to matter so much now. Even with it sheathed at her side there were some elements of the Sirash that impinged upon her waking mind. She could feel all life moving about her, could see at will through the eyes of any creature she chose, but she kept the power close. No mind could stretch out and grasp the whole world, and there must be a point somewhere between the little space of awareness around her and the impossibility of everything where her mind would lose its grip, and she could not guess what would happen then. Most likely she would simply come back into herself, but that was not certain. She might just as easily be scattered irretrievably among the myriad creatures that she touched, and cease to be Pascha Lammeling.

  She reached out. It was easy now. She did not have to seek the Sirash because she was already part of it. She touched the minds of sparrows. She still favoured them because more than anything else in the world they were hers, and they worshipped her without question. She had set them to watch the enemy, to go from tree to tree, bush to bush, rooftop to rooftop along the line of their march, never losing sight of them. Now she touched them and saw the enemy. There were so many of them, these soldiers of Seth Yarra, marching along seven abreast down endless roads. She did not need to count them because she had counted them before, and there were fifty thousand.

  They did not stop for midday. She had watched them before, and on the march they ate from satchels carried on the right side when they grew hungry, drank from bottles on the left. Her sparrows had taken up their scraps and she knew it was dried meat, dried fruit of a kind and flavour that was unknown to her but quite pleasant on the tongue, or pleasant enough to sparrows at any rate. They had a hard unleavened bread as well, flavoured with spices.

  She watched them marching. Their order was quite rough. They ambled along and talked as they marched. She heard their voices as an unintelligible susurrus, like the murmuring of the sea, and she wished that she could understand them. She saw smiles, heard laughter, strident voices making points and other disagreeing. Every now and then an officer or sub officer would say a sharp word and conversation would die down, but only for a while.

  They seemed very human.

  She calculated their position. They had passed a town some ten miles back and she knew the place. It was called Felis Brock. It stood a few miles south and twenty miles west of pass at Fal Verdan. In two days they would have made twenty miles, perhaps thirty, and they would be well enough past for Hestia to rise against Seth Yarra at the pass.

  Pascha knew where Hestia had camped. She was three miles south of the pass on the Telan side, and she had a hundred and twenty men with her, and Terresh. Pascha had not spoken to her since Telas Alt, but she had watched her carefully, and the plan seemed to be taking shape. Messengers had been sent between the king’s camp and the two thousand Telans at the wall, and she had detected changes there. She hoped that the two thousand Seth Yarra camped beside them had not also noted those changes.

  She left the marching army and shifted her gaze to Hestia’s camp. It seemed a small place, a few tents scattered around in the forest. There was no clearing because camping beneath the trees scattered the smoke from the fires, which were anyway kept low. There were more men since the last time she had seen them, about two hundred, she guessed. It was a tiny force, but it might be enough to tip the balance against Seth Yarra even without Skal’s men. Best to be sure, though.

  She flitted through the trees on sparrow wings until she found Hestia’s tent. It was no larger than the others, but two guards stood by it and a pair of braziers marked it out, lending warmth to the handful of men who loitered outside; waiting for a royal audience, she guessed. She abandoned sparrow eyes and saw through the Sirash. There were six people in the tent. She found to her surprise that she was able to recognise Terresh and Hestia, and also her personal servant, Derdan. The others were just warm colours. She slipped behind Derdan’s eyes to see what passed.

  “…and if I am right we will all be destroyed.” It was a man’s voice, and Pascha saw that it was a Telan lord, and a young one at that. He had obviously just delivered an impassioned plea, for his face was flushed red, his eyes staring anxiously at Terresh and Hestia where they sat in crude wooden seats, imitating royal thrones.

  “You are loyal, Bertanian,” Terresh replied. “And I do not doubt the sincerity of your words, but you were not in Telas Alt. You did not see what the Seth Yarra did to my people.”

  “But, my king, to side with Berashis?”

  Terresh held up his hand to silence the man. “Will you explain to him, my queen?”

  Hestia smiled at her royal husband, but it was a wan smile. She looked tired.

  “Calle, you have always been a friend to us,” she addressed the young noble. “We value your council, but I must tell you that we are determined to side with the Benetheon in this. It is not Berash or Avilian that we will trust, but the Benetheon. They are more powerful than we h
ad supposed, and we have no doubt that if we stay true to Seth Yarra they will destroy us all when their need for us is gone.”

  “But you cannot trust them…”

  “Enough. It is decided,” the king had seen enough, heard enough it seemed. “I say that with the Benetheon we have some hope. With Seth Yarra we have none.”

  “More to the point, my lord,” Hestia interjected, “our people have hope with Narak and his clique. Even if he holds us guilty of some crime he will see the guilt as ours alone.”

  Pascha took control of Derdan, and it was easy and smooth. Nobody in the room noticed until she spoke.

  “Having trouble keeping them in line, Terresh?” she asked. The king turned around, annoyance on his face, ready to rebuke a servant, but Hestia stilled his voice with a raised hand.