by Tim Stead
It was almost perfect. There were no trees for miles, so it would be hard to make ladders to scale the walls. The forts couldn’t be tunnelled. They presented an appearance of weakness, an illusion that they could be picked off one by one, but in reality they drew the enemy to attack what might be thought of as the outer defences, the ends of the walls. The defenders could fall back again and again. The enemy must assault seven different fortifications to end the siege. Food was the problem. At least there would be no shortage of water.
“You could hold this for years if you had enough food,” he said.
He was pleased. Yet the thought still nagged at him. They had given up their major tactical advantage, and he wanted it back. How could he get cavalry out in sufficient numbers to launch an assault on the enemy?
In his minds eye he saw the moment of victory. Sometimes he was like this. He could see the conditions, the dispositions of troops and events that were necessary, but not the way to achieve that victory. Now he saw the Seth Yarra army, low on rations, huddled in tents that were only a poor defence against the cold, miserable, bored, thinking of home. He saw his cavalry springing forward, keen and eager, sweeping the despondent foe aside.
But how?
The Seth Yarra would see to their own misery, he was sure. They would underestimate the winter. They would lack the essentials and pay for that lack. But Skal did not underestimate them. The Seth Yarra soldiers were committed and brave. They would watch and wait, and when the time came they would fight. He needed surprise.
Now all he had was time. There was a week of freedom before they arrived, or so their intelligence suggested. After that there would be the long months of autumn as winter slowly set her teeth in all of them, and then the bitter winds, the moor white with snow, and little to burn out there for camp fires.
Time was his ally in this, but it was not decisive. Time and winter would set the scene for his victory, but he needed more. He needed a hammer blow.
Eight - Pascha
There was no night in Pelion’s mind, and no rain, and he had very little use for clouds. Pascha was beginning to find it tedious. She was as fond of sunshine as the next person, though her pale skin had once made her otherwise, but as a Benetheon god her white skin no longer burned and the sun had long been a welcome friend. But even the best of friends can outstay their welcome, and Pascha was growing resentful of the sun. She longed for rain, for the pearly skies of an Afaeli autumn, and for night.
She longed for a storm, for evening light full of crickets and waxing stars, for the rushing of intemperate winds, for skies torn with thunder and lightning, and she missed the sea. Most of all she missed the sea.
She could not leave of her own will. In every sense that mattered she was Pelion’s prisoner in this dull, paradisiacal cage.
Her lessons progressed. Sometimes her teacher seemed pleased, sometimes frustrated. Pelion was the same man he had always been, and she suspected that his moods had more to do with the state of his own mind that with her progress in the magic arts.
Yet she had learned so much.
First she had learned that power – Amal, Pelion called it – was unlimited. Pelion denied this. He said that just because Amal was practically inexhaustible didn’t mean it was theoretically so. The weakness, the limiting factor, was the human body. A single grain of sand held more Amal than the greatest mage could sustain in a day. A small pebble held enough Amal to blast half of Avilian into oblivion in a moment.
Pascha learned how to draw on Amal without destroying herself. Being of the Benetheon was an advantage in this. Her body was more robust than that of a mortal man. It was something Pelion had done to them all. It was what he had done to himself, what all the great mages had done. His body, her body, was more tolerant of the impossible fires from which all magic sprang.
Amal could be drawn on many levels, from many places. The crudest source was the strength of her own body, and this was called Amal Istan. But she saw little point in this. When she drew Amal from within it tired her quickly, and there was little that she could do that was not simpler to do with hands and feet. Other life was a source, too. She could draw Amal from sparrows, and now that she could touch all things she could garner it from wolves and men and trees. She could summon the strength of a hundred men, a forest of oaks, an acre of grass. She was surprised by the abundance that surrounded her. Pelion called this Amal Hanas.
The purest source was matter itself. Pelion showed her how to feed on anything, even the air. With this knowledge her power was, despite Pelion’s denial, unlimited. This, Pelion told her, was Amal Alar.
But knowing how to draw Amal and using it were two quite different skills. Any fool, Pelion assured her, could give himself the strength of a hundred men, or even a million, but to try to lift a mountain would simply drive your own body into the ground. It was all a question of balance and subtlety.
Pelion taught her about levers and fulcrums, friction and inertia. It was all necessary to even the crudest application of the power she now enjoyed, and despite her lack of interest she mastered it quickly.
Then he began to teach her the secrets of the world.
“Everything has its own desires,” he said. “Everything wants to be what it is, and nothing else. There is no word for it in Avilian. In Magic we call it Ain. So a man wants to be a man, and not just any man, but the exact man that he is.”
“I’ve known a few that don’t,” Pascha said.
“You speak lightly of heavy matters,” Pelion admonished. “I speak of a desire that is not of the will, but of the body. Each tiny part of a man knows the whole, and knowing this it is easy to repair. The stump of a severed arm knows the hand that it has lost, the diseased heart knows the healthy one that it wishes to be. It is all there, written in the body if you know how to see it.”
“So how does a man become a wolf?”
“A man does not, but a thing that is part wolf and part man has both desires within it. If Narak favours his desire to be a man, then he appears as a man, if a wolf then he drops on all fours and howls, but the real Narak is the one that is both.”
“His aspect,” Pascha said. “I understand.”
Pelion made a tutting noise. “You do not,” he assured her. “But perhaps you begin to grasp the first fruit of a bountiful tree.”
They were sitting in Pelion’s white pavilion again, before a table set with yet another incomparable feast. As if to illustrate his point he picked a berry from a large bowl and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Do you have no bacon?” Pascha asked.
“Bacon? An unworthy food,” Pelion said.
“Perhaps, but I’ve grown used to it.”
The mage gestured and a plate of hot bacon appeared, nestled next to a tray of short, twisted loaves. Pascha smiled. She helped herself.
“So how does air become bacon?” Pelion asked.
“I’m sure that it does not desire to be,” Pascha said around a mouthful.
“That is true, but how do you think it happens?”
“Well, the air is not alive, so I suppose it has no desires at all, so I suppose further that it is your will that shapes it, but how you do it I cannot say. You have not told me.”
“Nobody told me, you know,” Pelion said. “I had to work it out for myself.”
Pascha was not as awed by his claim as she was sure that he intended her to be. She was getting to know him well, and she had spotted a weakness for admiration. Pelion wanted to be looked up to. Perhaps his time as a god had developed the weakness, or perhaps it was this lonely self exile. Times had been different when Pelion had made his discoveries. Magic was an open currency in the world. He had merely found the top step of a staircase having walked up the others. In Pascha’s time the staircase had been demolished, and only the first few steps remained.
“Different times,” was all she said.
“They were that,” Pelion agreed. “You will not try?”
Pascha sighed. “Well, it’s cl
ear that you can place the desire to be a wolf, or a sparrow, into the body of a man or woman. You did that to us. Yet the air is not living, so it cannot have the same desire – the same kind of desire. Yet I have seen physical matter change in the natural world. Wood becomes ash, iron rusts, copper acquires a green hue. These changes represent a different path, a desire for materials to return to…” Pascha struggled with the idea for a moment. “…to where they came from, to some resting state whence they no longer desire to change.”
“Very good,” Pelion said. “A good first step.”
“I’m right?” She was surprised. She had just been thinking aloud.
“Right is too strong a word. Your foot is on the path, perhaps. The first of many steps. What you describe is called Ulas, the desire of matter to return to rest.”
So it went on, day after day, week after week. But in truth Pascha could not tell the passage of days without night and weeks were lost in the endlessness of sunshine and cooling breezes. Boredom had quite defeated her sense of time.
She continued to learn, and when Pelion allowed her to control things she found that she could control them. It was about the balance between will and desire, her will and the desire of the object to do or be what it wanted to do or be. There were ways to make things behave contrary to their nature, just as men might make iron out of ore, but these ways used more Amal and were more difficult.
Pascha wondered at the oddity of her situation. She was, Pelion had told her, in the old mage’s mind. If that were true, then nothing that she did or failed to do was real. She had no idea if Pelion was making things happen or preventing them. To a degree that might also be true in the real world, but here there was no way to know.
Or was there?
If Pelion was mired in his own little paradise then any change that she could make here would be real. If she could cause night to fall, clouds to darken the sky, winds to blow, or even a shower of rain, then she would have made a real change. But she didn’t know how to go about it. It was not as if she would actually be causing any of those events, because nothing here was real. It would just be a question of will, she guessed, but she had no lever here to which she might apply her will.
She would have to find one. Then they would see.
Nine – Havil, Sithmaree
Havil was training. He trained on his own. He had a hall within the castle set aside for the purpose, and it was decorated with cutting posts, hanging rings, spare blades, lances, shields, and all the usual paraphernalia of training. It was one of the few pleasurable things that he did now that he was back in Tor Silas. He was busy working on a post wrapped in sacking with both blades, trying to repeat some of the moves he had seen Narak use, with mixed success. He wasn’t really quick enough.
He stood for a moment, trying to see the intent rather than each movement of the swords. It was hard to reduce anything that Narak did. The Wolf’s style was efficient, even if it did make full use of his speed and strength.
He tried something different, leaving the sword in his left hand to guard the body while he delivered two blows with the right, making them cutting blows, drawn back across the sacking post so that they came free naturally, and could be swung into the next without hesitation.
It worked better than he hoped.
But then cuts like that would barely get through leather armour, never mind chain mail or steel plate. How much better to be able to do as Narak did and apply the full force of the blow, knowing that it would be enough to cleave through whatever was in the way.
He had to rethink this. It was no use imitating the Wolf; he had to try to capture the spirit of the way he fought. Yet it was impossible. Havil hacked mightily at the post, severing it with three strokes, right, left, right. He tucked the blades into the scabbards on his back, and they mocked him, too, because he’d adopted the trick after seeing Narak do it with some ease, but he’d cut his own back, twice, before he’d surrendered and had the mouths of the scabbards widened.
He felt warm, but not tired. He sat for a moment and drank from a water flask.
There was a banging on the door. It irritated Havil for a moment, because he had left instructions that he was not to be disturbed, but the irritation faded to be replaced by curiosity. If his guards were banging on the door it meant that something positively demanded his attention.
He went to the door and opened it.
“Lord Prince,” the man outside backed away a step at Havil’s sudden presence.
“What is it?” he asked. There was another man in the hallway, and by his garb and the dust on it he was a gate guard. The man looked flustered.
“There’s someone at the gate, Lord Prince,” the man said. Havil looked at the gate guard.
“Who?” he asked.
“A woman… I think,” the gate guard said.” But she’s like Wolf Narak… I think.”
Havil thought the man looked scared. “I’ll come,” he said. He went back inside the training hall and quickly wiped his face and put his jacket back on. He had no idea who it could be at the gate. A lot of his men had seen Passerina, and she would be recognised, so it must be someone else. A Benetheon god? He supposed it was possible, but after Beloff’s death at the battle on the Finchbeak Road he’d seen none but Narak, Passerina and Jidian. If another had sided with them in the war against Seth Yarra he would have heard of it by now, surely?
So he was curious, and his curiosity grew as he followed the guard down to the gatehouse. When they arrived he could see that there were a lot more people crowded into the area before the gate than he would ever have expected. He pushed through them, and they parted, seeing who he was.
When he reached the gatehouse he saw her.
She was a tall woman, in every way except one she was the opposite of Passerina. She was dark haired, olive skinned, broad shouldered, buxom, and dressed all in black. A whip hung from her belt on the right side, and she glared at the guards as though they were disrespectful servants. What she shared with Passerina was presence. She dominated the guardhouse merely by standing in it. She saw Havil approaching, and the glare switched to him.
“I told them to fetch someone of consequence,” she said. “Are you?”
“I am Prince Havil, my lady” he replied. “And you have the advantage of me. How may we serve you?”
She recognised the name. He could see that in her face, and a little of the aggression went out of her stance. Havil could not help himself, he thought her magnificent. She was the sort of woman who would grace… no, bless any gathering with her presence.
“I am Sithmaree,” she said.
Havil took a moment to place the name. He knew it, of course. Like all high born men and women of Terras he had been taught the names and creatures of each and every member of the Benetheon. Sithmaree. The Snake. One of those who stayed apart from men. One of those who had taken no part in the Great War. Indeed, he did not believe that she had ever had dealings with mortal men, not from the beginning.
“Deus,” Havil said. He bowed respectfully, from the waist. “We are honoured that you choose to visit us.” She smiled. It was a wonderful smile. It was then that Havil noticed the leather strap across her chest, and the tubular leather document case that she carried. “Narak has asked you to question our prisoner,” he added.
Her smile vanished for a moment, and he thought he had said the wrong thing, but she saw his eyes on the document case and a shadow of the smile returned. She nodded.
“He has volunteered to translate them,” she said. It was half a question.
“Aye, second thoughts it seems, Deus,” Havil said. “Would you like some refreshment, or shall we see the prisoner at once?” He could see that she liked being asked, liked being deferred to. In a way she was quite transparent, and again very unlike Passerina, or Narak, both of whom kept their feelings from their faces with consummate skill.
“A glass of wine, perhaps,” she said. The guards had relaxed now. Their lord was in charge and seemed to have the m
atter in hand. Like dogs they accepted what their master did. The crowd, however, a body of servants and guards, had not faded away. A look from Havil sent the captain of the gate guard after them, shooing them back to their duties with gruff words, leaving the bailey behind the gate feeling suddenly empty.
Havil led Sithmaree into the castle, up a staircase to a formal receiving chamber. He called for wine. It came quickly and he poured two glasses. The snake draped herself on a chair, turned sideways, one arm along the backrest. She looked at Havil with a curiosity that seemed equal to his own.
He handed her the glass and she sipped it.
“Narak talks about you a lot,” she said. “I think he likes you.”
“I’m flattered if he does, Deus.” Havil found that he didn’t have anything to say to her. He knew nothing about her apart from her name, her creature, and the fact that she had come here at Narak’s request to question the prisoner about the papers. There wasn’t much of a conversation in that. He could have asked a mortal woman about herself, but the Benetheon were notoriously private. He sipped his drink.
