“As you like.”
“Good. Well, follow me.” So saying, the courtier crammed his hat back onto his head and led off at a brisk pace. The witch hunters followed him from the marbled magnificence of the antechamber into a smaller, granite blocked corridor, and then into a maze of passages with flaking plaster on the walls.
From time to time, the courtier would glance back over his shoulder, as if anxious that his charges would make a break for it. When they finally reached their destination, he almost sagged with relief.
“Here we are,” he said, pointing to an oak barred door at the end of the passageway. “Go and wait in the courtyard outside. The clerk will be along in a moment.”
“Not waiting with us, then?” Fargo asked as the official sidled back up the corridor.
“Can’t,” he called back over his shoulder. “Too busy.”
Vaught and Fargo looked at each other.
“I have a funny feeling about this,” the older man said.
Vaught shrugged and pushed the oak door open.
“So do I, but what can we do? We are guests.”
Squaring his shoulders, Vaught led his men out into the courtyard beyond. It was a cobbled square, no more than twenty feet to a side, and the walls were steep enough to cast the whole yard in deep shade.
Peik was the last of the witch hunters to step into the cold shadows, and no sooner had he done so than there was a shriek of falling metal followed by the clang of iron on stone.
The eight men drew their swords in a single fluid movement and leapt together so that they were standing back to back. Vaught saw that an iron portcullis had fallen behind them, barring the door and cutting off their escape.
“Stay in formation,” he told the circle of men, and then went cautiously over to check the portcullis. The metal slats of its construction were as thick as a man’s arm, and although they were brown with rust, bright scratches revealed the strength of the steel beneath.
“I told you I had a funny feeling,” Fargo muttered as Vaught gazed up at the little rectangle of sky that lay above them. The walls were sheer, the granite blocks fitting together so tightly that the edges might have been carved from a single piece of stone. Although, maybe if they could work a dagger’s point into the cracks, they could…
“Captain Vaught.”
The voice rang out against the narrow stone walls. Vaught looked up to see a head and shoulders silhouetted against the sky.
“Is that Captain Vaught?” the shape asked again.
“Yes, who is that?”
“Menshka, we met at the gates and now, unfortunately, we meet again. I am to arrest you and your men and escort you to a safe location.”
“Safe?” Vaught repeated, squinting up at Menshka. The dark silhouette could have belonged to anybody. It was so black against the silver sky that it could have been cut out of cloth.
“That’s right,” Menshka agreed, “safe. Don’t worry, we wouldn’t harm an envoy of Altdorf’s king.”
“Prince regent.”
“Whatever.”
Vaught exchanged a glance with the nearest of his men. Then he looked back up.
“In that case, come and arrest us,” he said, sheathing his sword. Reluctantly, his men did the same.
“First of all, you need to throw your weapons through the gate,” Menshka told him. “Not that I don’t trust you, captain, but I have my orders.”
Vaught shook his head. “We are forbidden to give our weapons to anybody outside of our order.”
There was movement from above, and the twang of a bowstring. The arrow whistled down to strike a spark from the stone a couple of feet above Vaught’s head.
“You don’t have a choice,” Menshka shouted down.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t harm us.”
“Not unless I have to.”
Vaught scowled, and turned to Fargo. He shrugged.
“We don’t have much choice, do we?”
Nor did they. With a curse, Vaught removed his weapons from their sheaths and pushed them through the bars in the gate. His men followed suit, their blades clinking into a lethal pile of razored steel. When they had finished, figures emerged from the corridor beyond, a linen basket between them. With a chink of metal, they emptied its contents onto the floor, and then turned to the abandoned weapons.
“You,” Fargo told one of them as they started to bundle up the swords, “be careful with that blade. It is worth more than your family combined.”
The man looked up with a sneer, and would have spoken, had Menshka not cut him off.
“Do as the gentlemen say,” he barked down from his perch. “Treat their weapons with respect.”
The men obeyed, laying the weapons into the basket gently.
When they had finished, they turned back, gathered the manacles from the floor, and passed them through the portcullis.
Vaught looked at the manacles with disgust.
“Sorry,” Menshka called down from above. “Tsaritsa’s orders.”
“I’ve heard so much about Praagian hospitality over the years,” Fargo said, shaking his head as he closed the manacle around his wrist, “but I had no idea that it was all true.”
Vaught weighed the chains in his hand, and cast a last look around the pit in which they had been trapped. There was no way out, no way at all. Inwardly cursing the treachery of the northerners, he clipped the manacles closed on his own wrists. Then, straightening his back, he turned to address his men.
“Don’t worry,” he told them. “Our captivity will not last long. The righteousness of our duty is stronger than any steel, and all things are possible through Sigmar’s grace.”
The screech of the raised portcullis punctuated his sentiments, and a moment later the eight of them were led away.
Neither the bite of the wind nor the jarring of the carriage beneath him intruded on Kerr’s concentration. His gaze remained fixed on the pebble that he held in one cold hand, and although his eyes dripped with tears, they remained unmoving.
The horses clopped on, following the road to the north. They had left the last few shivering trees far behind them. Now, there was nothing to see but grasslands, scattered villages and the occasional flock of sheep.
At least, nothing to physically see.
As Kerr was beginning to understand, the world was composed of a lot more than the physical.
Even as the thought occurred, he let it drift away. Neither accepting nor rejecting the idea, he kept his focus on the stone in his hand: its shape, its weight, and the texture of its surface against the skin of his palm.
Another man might have given up long since. Another man might, but not Kerr. The starving years he had spent on the streets of Altdorf had hardened him, forging his patience from hunger and danger, just as a smith uses fire to forge steel.
As a boy, he had spent entire days waiting, still as stone, for the one moment when a baker might take his eyes from his wares. He had clambered amongst the terrifying decay of Altdorf’s steepled roofs, his attention immersed in the slip and the slide of the ancient slates. And in the winter, when other vagabonds had stayed huddled in their bolt holes, he had danced barefoot through the iced streets, forcing himself to steal and beg his way through the lethal season.
It had been a hard training, a good training, a training better than any for sale in Altdorf’s academies. It might even have been coincidental.
“Kerr,” Titus bellowed from the inside of the carriage.
Kerr let the sound roll over him and through him. When it had gone, it left barely a ripple behind.
“Answer me, boy.”
This time there was a furious knocking on the underside of the carriage’s roof. The horses whinnied uncertainly and glanced back to their driver. Reassured by his perfect stillness, they turned back to the journey ahead.
“Do you hear me?” Titus roared.
When there was still no response, the carriage heaved to one side, and the wizard’s head and shoulders bu
lged out through the window. He glared up at Kerr, who remained indifferent. The wizard drew in a deep breath and roared with laughter.
“Well done!” he said. “I thought I might have tricked you. The exercise is over.”
Kerr stretched, blinked the tears from his eyes and returned the stone to his pouch.
“I’m getting better at it,” he said, looking down to the fat face that beamed up at him from below.
“How do you mean?” Titus asked, and then cursed as a pothole in the road jolted him. “Damn this for a way to talk. I’m a wizard, not a contortionist. Stop the carriage and you can tell me what you mean while we eat something.”
Kerr pulled up the horses, and lashed the reins to the running board. As the carriage rolled beneath Titus’ shifting weight, he stood up and scanned the horizon. The world seemed empty of everything apart from grass and the shadows of the racing clouds above. Praag, their destination, was still hidden beyond the curve of the world, the road they followed the only sign that it existed.
“Come along,” Titus called, rubbing his hands. “Set out lunch and we can talk about your progression.”
With a last look to the north, Kerr jumped down and retrieved the hamper that contained their food. Titus strolled around as he clambered back onto the carriage to retrieve the small table and sturdy chair that had been strapped to the roof.
He set out the furniture and food, and then called Titus over to eat.
“Ah good,” the fat man said, sitting down at his dining table. “Ham.”
Kerr sat on the running board of the carriage and waited for him to speak.
“So,” Titus said, when he had eaten the leg down to the bone. “Why do you think you are getting better at the exercise?”
“Because I can keep my attention on the pebble for longer periods, and I can keep my eyes focused for longer too. Except…”
“Except what?” Titus tossed the bone to Kerr and unwrapped an apple pie.
“Sometimes my eyes go a bit funny.”
“Funny?” the sorcerer asked, and took a huge mouthful of pastry.
“The stone seems to glow, and I can see wisps of colour tracing through the air.”
Titus, chewing away, looked at him thoughtfully.
“I suppose it’s just that my eyes aren’t used to the work,” Kerr said, “but don’t worry, boss. I’m sure they’ll get stronger.”
The sorcerer continued to stare at Kerr. The expression on his chubby face was not one to inspire confidence. It made him look like a farmer wondering whether his prize lamb was fat enough to slaughter, but when he swallowed, and spoke, his voice was as friendly as ever.
“Those colours you see,” he said, “can only be seen with those who have the strongest eyes. It is good that you are one of them. If not, there would have been no point in continuing with your apprenticeship.”
“So they’re real?” Kerr asked. “How can you be sure that they aren’t just tricks of the light? You know, like the stars you see when you hit your head.”
Titus grinned.
“Tricks of the light!” he scoffed, wolfing down the rest of the pie. “If you’d told me that you could see sparks of the Hysh, then I would have known you had the ability right from the start. Mind you, I knew anyway. I could always recognise talent.”
“What’s Hysh?” Kerr asked.
Busying himself with a loaf of bread and a roll of cheese, Titus considered his answer.
“Let’s not worry about that for now,” he said. “First, I want you to repeat this word.”
“What word?”
Titus said a word.
Kerr repeated it, letting the syllables roll off his tongue.
“Not quite,” Titus told him. “The ‘Z’ should be softer and the ‘U’ longer. Try again. Yes, that’s it, and again?”
Kerr pronounced the word as if he’d known it all of his life.
“Excellent.” The sorcerer celebrated with a mouthful of cheese. “Now, click your fingers. That’s it, perfect.”
“Now what?” Kerr asked, wondering if his master had gone mad, or possibly madder.
“Now I’m going to rest my eyes, and you are going to practise staring at the stone again. Only this time, if you see any red wisps of colour, think about them instead of the stone. Then click your fingers and say…”
Titus waited expectantly.
“That word?” Kerr suggested.
“Perfect.” The sorcerer nodded. “Wake me if there’s any trouble.” With that, he leant back in his chair, ruffled his cloak around his neck, and fell asleep.
His apprentice watched the slumbering figure of his master for a moment. He considered how the sight of a well-dressed man sitting on an easy chair and sleeping off his lunch was such a normal sight in the city, but out here, in the endless wilderness of grass and sky, he thought that it was one of the most bizarre things he had ever seen.
Then, conscientious as ever, he took the stone from its pouch and started to exercise.
* * *
This time the colours came more quickly. After barely half an hour, hints of them started to drift through his field of vision, each wisp a different hue. He waited until he saw a drift of perfect red. It described a lazy spiral in the air above the remains of Braha’s lunch, and could almost have been smoke if the wind hadn’t been blowing right through it.
Ignoring a twitch of apprehension, Kerr transferred his attention from the hard shape of the stone to the hazy impression of colour. He thought about the way it moved, the perfect weightlessness of it, and the brightness of its colour.
Then, with perfect timing, he clicked his fingers and spoke the word.
It was a moment he would never forget.
As soon as he had spoken, the coil of red started to change. It glowed with a new energy, and as the shape grew heavier, so the colour altered. The perfect red flickered into orange, and then into yellow. It bubbled with a liquid intensity, forming and reforming in a constantly moving stew of colour.
Kerr watched the strange beauty of his creation as it unfolded. It had grown bright enough to warm the slumbering form of Titus with its light, and to cast a faint shadow behind him. Although Kerr knew that he should wake his master, he remained transfixed, struggling with the feeling that he had seen something like this before.
The realisation of what it was hit him a second before the ball of fire touched the polished wood of the table.
There was a whoosh of flame as the wood ignited. The plates were sent spinning through the air, and the sizzle of burnt pork joined the acrid stink of burnt wood. There was also a terrible scream as Titus, who had been woken by the sheet of flame, tumbled away across the grass.
Kerr rushed over to help him, but the sorcerer shooed him away. Despite the smouldering of his beard and the scorch marks that singed his robes, he seemed quite happy to have awoken in a furnace.
“Was that you?” he asked, slapping at the smouldering cloth of his cloak.
“I think so,” Kerr admitted, looking back towards the table. There wasn’t much of it left. The fire had devoured it in a single moment, leaving nothing behind but for a charred skeleton of timber.
“Who would have thought it?” Titus asked nobody in particular. He looked from the table to Kerr and back again. “It took me years to learn how… Well, never mind. It must be because we are so far to the north.”
“What’s due to us being so far to the north?” Kerr asked, but Titus just shook his head.
“One step at a time,” he decided. “Anyway, I think that it is time to continue. You quite spoiled my nap.”
Kerr looked thoughtfully at the ruins of the furniture, and then shrugged and went to soothe the straining horses. At least he wouldn’t have to keep lugging that damned table around.
“Oh, and Kerr,” Titus paused before climbing back on board the carriage. “I think we’ll leave that part of the training from now on. Do this instead.”
With a wheeze of effort, the sorcerer leant into the ca
rriage, rummaged about amongst his carpetbags, and retrieved a ball of wool with two needles stuck through it. He tossed it to Kerr, who snatched it out of the air.
“What’s this for, boss?” he asked, weighing the wool in his hands.
“Knitting,” the sorcerer said as he lumbered back into his seat.
“But I can’t knit.”
“Then it’s time you learned.” Titus shifted into a more comfortable position and slammed the carriage door behind him.
“Wake me when it’s dinner time,” he mumbled and, pulling his hat down over his eyes began to drift off to sleep.
“That I will,” Kerr replied and, running a calming hand over the nearest horses muzzle, he climbed back onto the driver’s seat and steered the carriage cautiously around the scorched remains of his first spell.
A hundred miles due north, and caution was the last thing on Grendel’s mind. He had been dreaming again. At least, he assumed that the visions had been dreams.
As he leapt screaming from his bed, such semantics were the least of his concerns. Fighting a rolling wave of nausea, he had staggered across to the curtains and tore them open to reveal the city below. The brightness of the setting sun stung his eyes, and he blinked away the tears that had already been there.
Clinging to the heavy drapes, his beard tangled with sweat, Grendel stared unseeingly out towards the northern horizon. Then he giggled.
Today, for the fifth day in a row, he had been struck with a lightning bolt of inspiration, a thunderclap of pure genius: a gift from the gods.
Well, he thought, a gift from one god in particular.
Pushing the sodden mop of his hair back from his pallid forehead, he turned away from the light of the window and lurched towards his desk. It was a massive slab of oak, perhaps twenty feet long, and its surface was covered with the paraphernalia of his art.
Phials of powders stood in a dozen mismatched racks. Bottles and flasks jostled together, their contents every colour of the rainbow. Herbs were everywhere, whether in bundles or in stone jars. Amongst this innocent detritus there lay other, less savoury ingredients. Teeth and rolls of strangely repellent leather were scattered about, as were the decapitated heads of at least three different races. The halfling looked particularly put out, the cured leather of his face puckered into a perpetual scowl.
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