The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  “Wheat and potatoes,” he called down. Jerac nodded and Bisalt jumped down again. The wagon rolled past. The Duke had never taxed the essentials. Even lumber passed free. Jerac had been grateful for that when he’d been Alos and a carpenter.

  The second wagon held barrels. Wine. Bisalt jumped up again and spoke with the drover. There was a guard on this wagon, a man with a bow and a sword.

  “Seven casks,” Bisalt called down. “Borne Holm Red.”

  Jerac looked at the list. Seven casks. That was twenty gallons a cask, and so a hundred and forty gallons. It didn’t matter what kind of red. “Seven florins,” he said. The drover had the money ready, and paid it out, one coin at a time, into Bisalt’s hand. Bisalt jumped down again and showed the coins to Jerac, who wrote an entry in the day book: wine – seven casks – seven florins. Bisalt put the coins in the strong box.

  That was it. That was the job. It was easy, even boring. In winter there were only a few wagons coming through the river gate, and by the time the sun was properly up and lighting the road, the road was empty. The strong box and the ledger went back into the guard house, and the men relaxed, Bisalt still looking down the road to see what might be coming.

  * * * *

  Shortly before noon a horse came down the road at pace. It was just one horse and one man. Dust trailed behind it, blowing away towards the sea. Jerac was upstairs again. It was his job to tot up the duties for the shift and hand over the ledger in good order to his relief, and he was nearly done. In a moment or two the major would arrive for the afternoon shift and he would be free to make his way back to the Seventh Friend. Since he’d been on gate duty he’d moved down into the town again. It was only for a week, but he thought it worthwhile.

  Bisalt called up the stairs.

  “Man and horse approaching. Looks in a hurry, sir.”

  Jerac glanced out of the window and saw them. The man looked tired, hunched over his mount’s neck, and he could see that the horse was well lathered, even at this distance. He closed the book and went down to the gate. He stood with Bisalt and watched the man approach.

  “He’ll kill that horse, riding like that,” Bisalt said. He was disapproving, almost angry. Jerac understood. A horse was a valuable thing, but he reserved his own judgement until he better knew the cause.

  “Maybe he has a reason,” he replied.

  “Well, let’s discover it then,” Bisalt said, stepping forwards. The other men stepped out with him, barring the gate with their spears. The horse turned and skidded, snorting to a stop a couple of yards before them.

  “Murder,” the rider said. “Murder on the road!”

  “Step down then,” Jerac said. “Tell us your tale.” He wondered, though. If there was murder on the king’s highway it would like as not be bandits, and there had been no tales of bandits this far south for more than three years. What could have driven them to such dangerous ground?

  One of Jerac’s men took care of the horse, found a blanket and stabled it while the horseman, who calmed down quickly now that he was with armed city men, told his tale.

  His name was Bolis, Hecmar Bolis of Shalewood, and he had been travelling south to volunteer, of all things, to serve with the Seventh Friend. He had been on foot, and making his way alone. Fifteen miles north of the city, up on the plateau, he had come to the edge of Gathering Wood, the green carpet that clothed the top of the scarp and the slopes close to the road. This was where the people of the city were permitted to hunt, most of the noble game having been exterminated long ago. It was mostly rabbits and dwarf deer they shot and trapped.

  At the edge of the wood Bolis had spied two wagons on the road, stopped in the morning sun, and men on them, and so he had approached. From here his account became vague and alarming. The men on the two wagons were dead – four of them altogether – and shot with arrows. There was another wagon, a little way beyond, that had gone off the road and smashed against a tree. Two men in this wagon were dead also, and also shot to death. Bolis had taken a horse, and in fear for his life had ridden as hard as he could for Bas Erinor.

  It was a peculiar story, and in some ways made little sense to Jerac.

  “The thieves left a horse for you?” he asked.

  Bolis shook his head. “No, captain,” he said. “The horse was loose in the woods, the shaft on the last wagon had broken when it hit the tree, I guess, and the horse ran off. The other horses were dead.”

  “Dead? How dead?”

  “Shot with arrow, like the men,” Bolis said. “A lot of arrows.”

  That was insane. A horse, even a waggoner’s nag, was worth a handful of silver coins. No bandit would throw away such bounty.

  “Could you tell what the cargo was?” he asked.

  “Aye, captain, I could. It was all there. Sacks and barrels, oil and grain I thought, though I didn’t stop long to see.”

  “It was all there? All?” If the cargo had not been pilfered then they were odd bandits indeed, and oil was a valuable load. It fetched a guinea a barrel in the King’s Loyal Market.

  “All there, captain, as though they had been frightened and run off.”

  Three wagons, six men and five horses, all taken and then abandoned. Taken swiftly, too, by Bolis’s account. What could have frightened such bold and ruthless thieves?

  “Did you see any sign of them, or of any others?”

  “No, captain.”

  “Anything else you saw?”

  Bolis seemed to think for a moment, the nodded. “One thing most strange,” he said. “The men was tied, the men on the wagons, I mean. They was tied to the uprights by their legs so they couldn’t jump or get off the wagons.”

  Jerac heard the stamp of a man coming to attention outside the guardhouse. It was still a few minutes shy of midday, but that would be the major arriving.

  “Wait here,” he said. He went outside and delivered his own salute. The major was alone, first to arrive for the afternoon watch.

  “Books ready, lieutenant?” he asked. “Monies bagged?”

  “All ready, sir,” he confirmed. “But we’ve had an incident.”

  “An incident?”

  “A report of murder on the road,” Jerac said.

  “Well, you’ll write a report and submit it in the usual way, lieutenant,” the major said. “It happens from time to time.”

  “It’s an odd one, sir,” Jerac said. He didn’t want to let this go. It troubled him. He could not think of a circumstance that would have fathered the events Bolis had reported. What he wanted was to go and see for himself.

  “In the report,” the major said.

  Jerac nodded. Acting lieutenants did what they were told by majors. He went back inside and found the other book, the incident book, and sat down with Bolis again.

  “Now,” he said, dipping his pen into the ink. “We’ll start from the beginning.”

  Thirty Two – Pascha

  The blade was perfect. It was slender, long, light as a feather, but it was not yet the blade. She played with the shape, allowing it to belly out a little as it approached the point, but she thought that ugly. It made the sword look weak and badly made. She changed it back, making it straight and even along its entire length until the narrowing at the tip.

  She curved the blade. Narak’s blades were curved, just slightly, and she imitated their form, a curve like a resting bow, retaining just the memory of its strung self. She liked the look. It seemed to beg her to use it. The shape cried out to cut the air, flesh, bone, anything.

  The handle was still formless, a cloud of expectation. She gave it form, stretched it so that it might accept two hands, bound it with silver strands like rope so that it might be good to grip. She discarded the idea of a finger guard. A simple disk separated the handle from the blade, just enough to stop another blade from sliding onto her fingers.

  She reached out and held it. It was too light. Even a mage blade needed weight, and so it grew heavier in her hands until it felt strong, potent. She changed the s
hape of the grip so that it grew into her touch, fitting her hands perfectly.

  “Good.” Pelion was watching, but not instructing any more. She had mastered this simple act of creation, and this was a practical exercise, a demonstration of her skill.

  She allowed her imagination free reign, and colour ran up the steel. But it was not steel, she reminded herself. On Narak’s sword it would have been steel, but this was mage iron, the imagined, indestructible blade that was an expression of her power. As long as she lived it would remain inviolate. As long as she had the strength it would cut anything. When called it would be the embodiment of her will.

  The bade took on the appearance of a flame, red and gold, shining with its own light, and within the flame there were lines etched on the metal, a depiction of sparrows and leaves.

  “Sparrows?” Pelion asked. “Quaint, but hardly terrifying.”

  Pascha abandoned the construct. It faded. She still held it somewhere in her mind and could call it forth at will, but for now her attention switched to Pelion.

  “Must you make so many pointless remarks?” she asked.

  “I’m sorry if I disturbed you, but really – sparrows?”

  “Men can learn to fear anything, or to love the same. You know it as well as I,” she said. A symbol was a symbol, and she was still fond of sparrows. She thought of them as her special tribe, her loyal ones.

  “As you wish.”

  Pelion was a fine teacher, if you could ignore his tendency to divert on the slightest provocation into tales that showed him in a flattering light. She was learning fast. There was more to learn than she could ever have imagined: subtleties within nuances, tied up with ambiguity. Every new peak she reached turned out to be the beginning of another ascent, and yet she knew that she was already formidable. She could sweep aside all the so-called mages of Durandar in a moment, crush all the kings and armies on the six kingdoms, and blast Seth Yarra from the face of Terras. Even Narak could not have stood against her now.

  Only one thing could match her.

  “Will you not tell me of dragons?” she asked.

  “I will, but it will be the last thing that you learn,” Pelion said. This was one of the two chains that he bound her with. She knew nothing of dragons and Pelion had spent a thousand years learning their weaknesses. She needed that, or she would simply be a thing that existed on dragon sufferance. It had been a surprise, a shock to learn that they still existed.

  “Well then,” she said. “I will rest and meditate on what you have taught me.”

  She turned and walked away, slowly, calmly, allowing her feet to brush the lush green grass. The grass rebuked her. It was Pelion’s creation, as were the trees, the stream, the bridge, the sky. He had also made the Bren, a complex and dangerous race. She had made a sword. She was once more at the foot of a steep ascent.

  Pascha sighed and sat down in the shade of a palm tree. Every day she spent here it seemed more like a prison, and yet every day she learned more. She wanted to be away. She wanted to be out in the world, wielding the power she now possessed. Yet she knew that once she departed this place she could never return, and never learn another secret other than by the efforts of her own mind, by trial and error. She wanted to squeeze every last drop of knowledge from this particular bitter fruit.

  She let her frustration go, closed her eyes, and breathed in and out, listening to her body. This was how she had learned to relax. She turned away from anger, and from everything, making the darkness behind her eyes her only world.

  How, then, might one create life?

  Pelion had done it. Cobran and the seven had done it. It could therefore be done, and nobody had told them, instructed them.

  What was life? Life was will, and existence, and continuing – whether by procreation, like the Bren, or persistence, like the dragons. Life was a spark. Sparrows were alive, and they were no more than a candle flame of life, yet they flew and mated and laid eggs and died.

  All life had an origin. But no, there was no origin for men. Men had always existed, hadn’t they? She found she could not be certain of it. All she could say was that if they had an origin it was lost in time. How far back would you have to go, she wondered, before there were no men, no sparrows, no wolves? Perhaps there was a time when there had been no world, no sun, nothing at all. The thought of it was overwhelming. Yet if everything had an origin, then there was a time before everything, before anything. It was an interesting line of enquiry, but ultimately fruitless. She would learn nothing from it.

  Had Pelion solved this mystery? Did he understand the origin of all things? She dismissed the idea. Pelion did not strike her as a man who had unwound the mysteries of existence.

  So what, then?

  The simple answer was to take something that was, and make it into something else. This was not the creation of life, but it would be a way to imitate creation. So the Bren could have come from, say, ants. It was a spur of the moment thought, but when she thought about it there were certain qualities the Bren possessed that suggested ants. They lived beneath the ground, they bred specialist creatures, and ants had soldiers and peasants. Could there be a Bren queen, she wondered?

  Even this insight, the creation of one thing from another, only took her one step down the road. There was so much more to learn, so much that she needed to know.

  There was a sound, a jarring sound, a tearing screech like nothing she had ever known. It seemed that the ground shook, and suddenly there was a smell of wood smoke, and strangely a smell of Afaeli sausage. She turned, and the air before her seemed to glaze, like a mirror. But instead of herself, the mirror’s surface showed two people, and she knew them at once.

  “Sheyani? Cain?” She was surprised. She was beyond surprise. She only had a moment to dwell on the fact that Cain seemed the least surprised of the three. Sheyani was open mouthed, but after a moment of confusion dropped to her knees.

  “Eran,” she said. “We only sought to know your name.”

  Eran? It was a title, an ancient title. She knew it, but could not place it in memory. It was reason that gave her the meaning. It was what the Farheim called their lords. This was not something that she knew, not with any certainty, but it made sense. It was the sort of knowledge that the Duranders would have preserved. This spell, also, this magic that brought them to her, she did not doubt that it was some ancient rite. The Duranders hoarded magic like gold, even when they had no use for it.

  Her next thought was that Pelion would know, and that he would not be pleased. He was keeping her here, deliberately isolated, and here were two people from the outside world, the real world.

  “Can you carry a message for me?” she asked.

  “Of course, Eran,” Sheyani said. Cain just nodded.

  But what message? And how? Narak was in the impossible north, she had no idea what she might say to Jidian or Sithmaree, and these two were shut off from the Sirash in any event.

  “I am with Pelion,” she said. “In time I will return. When I do the Sirash will end, the Benetheon will be undone. Do you understand?”

  Sheyani nodded, but Pascha could see that the words troubled her.

  “Take this knowledge to Wolfguard. Tell Caster. Ask him for the ring from my finger. He will understand. It is a calling ring. Use it to tell Narak what I have told you.”

  The mirror shook. Pascha turned to see Pelion only a few feet away, a staff raised over his head, his face red with anger and the staff glowing with power. He swept it down towards the image of Sheyani and Cain, but Pascha hadn’t finished yet. Her hand reached out and the flame coloured sword was in it. The staff and the sword met. Thunder rolled, sparks flew, but Pelion’s weapon was held.

  “Tell Narak that I will return,” she said. “Tell him not to do anything reckless. I will have the power. Now go.”

  Sheyani was clearly afraid. “We cannot,” she said. “You must send us back.”

  Typical. Typical Durander only having half of what was needed and doing it anyway.
She could not hold Pelion for ever.

  “I do not know how,” Pascha said.

  “You must say the words,” Sheyani cried. “The words are Hilas Shalembaram!”

  Gibberish, Pascha thought. A useless spell preserved two thousand years.

  “Hilas Shalembaram,” she said. The mirror vanished with a pop. She allowed Pelion’s staff to slip past her blade and strike the ground, and the blade vanished from her hand.

  “How dare you?” Pelion roared. “You have violated this place. You have violated my mind!”

  “Nonsense,” she said. “I did nothing.”

  “You brought Farheim here!”

  “They brought themselves, and you never said that I was forbidden visitors.” It was a victory, she knew. Pelion could have made his captive universe proof against intrusion, but he had clearly not thought it necessary. Sheyani would not be back. Pelion would ensure that it was impossible. “You thought the spell forgotten. You should have known better.”