by Tim Stead
“I am.”
“And I am Colonel Bantassin, commander of the guard here at White Rock.” The older woman held out her hand, and Felice took it, surprised by the recognition of equality that the gesture implied. She felt the strength in the hand.
The other guardsman turned from his children for a moment.
“Ima Caledon, I thank you for taking my children under your protection and seeing them through the marsh. I am in your debt.”
“Think nothing of it,” Felice said. “I needed them as much as they needed me. Without Tann we would not have had anything to eat.”
To her continuing surprise Pasha ran across the room to her and embraced her, reaching as high as she could the girls arms wound around her waist and gripped her fiercely. “Thank you,” she said.
“You were very brave,” she said to the girl.
Pasha stepped back to her father’s side and took his hand; looking up at him she said “she’s special”.
Felice wondered what she meant by it, but her attention was drawn back to the colonel, who indicated that she should sit.
“Is there anything that you want?” she asked. “Water? Food?”
“No. I’m fine. Why am I here?”
“It is a matter of law. To speak frankly we did not expect you to be found. The marshes around Stone Island are difficult to navigate, and very few that become lost in them are seen again. But to the point – we have a prisoner who claims you as a witness.”
“A witness to what?”
“His innocence.”
“You will have to explain, colonel.”
“Of course. You are familiar with the marking of bandits?”
“If it is the same as in the Scar, yes. A bandit, once caught is marked, usually with a hot iron. If he is caught again for the same crime, then the punishment is death.”
“It is the same. We have caught one such man, but we have not executed him because he claims that he was forced to join with the bandits and did all that he could to confound them, including helping you and the children.”
Felice recalled the day of the attack. There had been a man, a bandit, who had told them to flee and not attempted to prevent them from doing so. She did not know if she could recall his face. She had not looked at the face. He had been all threat and chain mail. She had looked more at his sword.
“There was such a man,” she said. “But I doubt that I would recognise him again.”
“I am surprised,” the colonel said. “I had expected it to be a tale which relied on your perishing in the marsh. There is at least some possibility in the story, then.”
“But I cannot confirm it.”
“There is another way. I assume that he was the only one present – the only one who saw you?”
“Yes. The others were too far away to see anything than another figure, but if they knew he had betrayed them they could have killed him, and made him tell what had passed between us.”
“It is unlikely. Such men do not believe they will be caught, and rarely think and plan for such a thing. Are you willing to see him?”
“Yes. If it is the same man, then all three of us are in his debt to some degree.”
The colonel took her out of the room and onto a stone staircase that wound downwards in tight spirals. They passed through a heavy door and suddenly they were in daylight. Felice blinked at the scene around her. They had entered a great courtyard, filled with people and horses. It looked as though some expedition was about to depart, and she barely had time to grasp the scene before they were through another door and walking down stairs again. Blazing torches set in the walls provided light, but it was a poor illumination.
They stopped at a heavy, iron bound door and the colonel spoke with someone on the other side. It opened slowly, and she was ushered through into a broad corridor where two guardsmen were stationed. They had chairs and a table, but no more than that. There were several doors set in each wall.
“Bring the prisoner out.” The colonel ordered.
The guards went to one of the doors and opened it. Words were spoken and a man stepped out into the torchlight. He looked thin, and wore a simple tunic and trousers over dull boots. Nothing about him triggered a memory in Felice. She remembered the armour, the short sword, the danger.
The man, however, seemed to recognise her, or at least gave every appearance of doing so.
“Karana,” he said. “I am very happy to see you. I thought that I was dead for certain.”
“It may still be the case,” the colonel said.
“I am sorry, but I do not remember your face,” Felice said.
“But you must!” the man said. “They will kill me if you do not.”
“Tell your story,” the colonel said. “Give as much detail as you can.”
The man looked puzzled for a moment, and then seemed to grasp the idea.
“It is a brief tale,” he said. “The group ambushed the train of wagons. Archers shot arrows and the last two wagons were abandoned by their drivers. I and others were set to check the last of the wagons, and there was evidence that passengers had been carried. We searched, and I was able to find them before the others. I set my torch in a bush by the road and backed away from it, coming towards them again only when the mist hid me. I came up on the right side, and got within ten yards of them. The Karana had her blade drawn, and I spoke to her.”
“So much is true as far as I can tell,” Felice said. “What did you say to me?”
“Thank you, Karana. I told you to flee, that it was not safe, that they would come back and search again. I said to go as far into the marsh as you dared, and hope that they would not follow.”
“It rings true, colonel. If this is not the same man, then he has stolen his memories. The voice is familiar, too.”
The bandit looked relieved. He smiled. “You have saved my life, Karana,” he said.
“We shall see,” the colonel said. “Lock him up again while we decide what to do with him.” The man protested, but his protests were half hearted. It seemed that he was happy enough to have proven his point and escaped death.
“What will you do with him?” Felice asked as they made their way back up to the courtyard.
“I am not sure. He was with the bandit group for several months, and in that time they did many evil deeds. We have been hunting them for all that time.”
“Were many killed? When they attacked us?”
“Just one. The man who drove your wagon. The others were lucky.”
A rough and unfriendly man. Barker. She remembered his name. She felt guilty for not liking him, now that he was dead. She tried to think of his good points, and realised that he had been very good at his job. It was something that she hadn’t thought about while they were travelling, but he was just the sort of man that her father would have hired; a competent, simple man who knew his work. That he had no time for his passengers and about the same for personal hygiene was not important in the scheme of things. He had not deserved to die, any more than her brother, but she guessed that nobody would be pursuing justice for Barker.
“What now,” she asked.
“Borbonil said you wanted to go to the testing in Woodside.”
“The testing?”
“Yes. Serhan is bent on training up a group of mages. I can’t think why. It can only cause trouble. He’s testing them to see who has ability.”
“Yes, I want to go to Woodside.”
“Well, I can lend you a horse and a guardsman to take you there, or you can wait two days and join a group of travellers heading down that way.”
“I’m not good with horses,” Felice replied.
“Then you’ll have to wait. The thing goes on for a couple of weeks yet, so there’s no hurry.”
“So people kept telling me.”
The colonel smiled and shook her head. “The impatience of youth,” she said. In spite of her blunt, soldierly manner, or perhaps because of it, Felice found that she liked the older woman. The colonel
had an air of command, but her voice and her face betrayed a gentler side. She cared. She cared about the children, about Felice, about everything.
Bantassin left her in the care of a junior officer who showed her to guest quarters, which were comfortable but basic. Her baggage, lost with the wagons in the attack, was lying next to the bed, and she fell on it with all the joy of greeting an old friend. Even the silver coins were still there, neatly rolled in paper and stored with other valued items in her small wooden box.
She unrolled her clothes and looked through them all. It was strange to see them now. They were like childhood friends grown distant. She still recognised them all, still loved them, but they had grown strange in the time that they had spent apart. It seemed that so much had happened in so few days. They spoke to her of sunny mornings in East Scar and the smell of baking bread. They awoke memories of her room, the morning walk to the warehouse, cold air and warm conversation, punctuated by laughter, and the book keeping system she had devised for her father’s accounts. It was all part of a happiness that surely could not be salvaged.
She dressed in a simple dress and left her room. She walked down to the courtyard and noted that the men and horses had all gone, departed on some important mission, no doubt. It must have been like that, busy and purposeful, when they had gone to hunt down the bandits, travelling south when she had been travelling north.
She asked questions of the people that she found still there, and they told her about the town, so she left by the great gate, and walked alone down the broad and deserted road that coiled around the great rock on which the fortress stood. Now that she could see the walls she was awed by their height, the threat of them. She could see the plains as she walked, the roads that fled in every direction from White Rock, the white capped mountains to the west, and the green carpet of the forest, interrupted by tilled land, small patches of order scattered through nature’s greater chaos.
It all vanished when she reached the base of the rock, the roads, the forest, the distant villages. From here there was just a tree line fifty yards away, and a blue summer sky.
She walked around the base, circling back the way she had come, and eventually she came to the town. She would not have graced it with so grand a title. The houses were scattered, new, and many of them were poorly built. The town square was dusty and largely abandoned, and the Kalla Tree was too young to provide any shelter or shade. This was a new place, still struggling to come to terms with its own existence.
Some of the buildings were well constructed, and chief among these was the tavern. It was one of the few two storey houses in the town. Its heavy timbers and gaily painted sign suggested a degree of permanence. The sign was a picture of a man on a bay horse dressed in green and black with a background of forests and a distant castle. It bore the name The Black Sword.
The sun was high by now, and she pushed through the door into the tavern in search of food and a glass of wine. The place was well lit, mostly by natural light that entered through a row of tall windows on the south side. There was a scattering of solid but simple tables, a bare stone floor, and a long bar down the west side. There were about a dozen people inside, but it still felt empty.
She asked about food and was told the choices, ordering a bowl of stew, bread and a glass of wine. The wine was from Blaye, the landlord told her, and quite fine. She selected a table and sat alone, sipping her wine and allowing herself to casually study the other customers. One or two of them caught her gaze and nodded in a friendly manner, others were deep in conversation or absorbed in the process of eating, but one man struck her as unusual.
He sat alone at a table on the far side of the room, almost a mirror image of her position. He was dressed plainly in working clothes, like a field hand, and sat before a plate of food and a jug of ale. To a casual glance he seemed no different from any man she might expect to see in such a place, but that his plate was empty and he did not reach for his ale, but sat as though paralysed, staring at the plate with an intense expression. It was as though he had seen some terrible thing in the gravy stains before him and could not tear his eyes from the horror. In like fashion she could not take her eyes from him, but stared.
After a while he raised his eyes from the plate and stared directly at her, and she could feel the horror in his gaze give way to resentment, perhaps even hatred, and she looked away. He rose, placed a coin carefully on the table and strode out of the door, not sparing her another glance.
Felice was troubled by what she had seen, though it meant nothing to her. She finished her meal, which was very good, and drank her wine.
“You’re new here, Ima”
She looked up to find the landlord standing before her. He was a clean shaven, tidy man and spoke with an educated voice. His eyes were kind, but there was something about them that spoke of a shrewd nature.
“Yes,” she said. “I am only here for a couple of days.”
He nodded. “Did you like the food? Was it good?”
“Very good,” she said.
“You will recommend this place to your friends in the castle?”
“If I had such friends I would do so,” she smiled.
The landlord shrugged. “Just my luck,” he said. “It is hard to make a living here without the castle trade.”
“The town will grow.”
“Perhaps, but I wish I had gone with my brother to Woodside. He was always the clever one, but I was always the better cook.”
“Your brother has a tavern in Woodside?”
“An inn. It is the largest and finest in the town. He told me that Woodside would be the centre of everything, but I thought I knew better. I should have listened.”
“I thought that Woodside was a village.”
“And so it was, but the population has tripled, and now that the great college has been built it will triple again.”
“Then I will give my regards to your brother. I may even stay at his inn.”
“You are going to Woodside? There will be no rooms, Ima, not at this time, but if you mention my name he may find you a bed. Just tell him that Haken sent you.”
“I am grateful,” she said. “I shall certainly recommend your food to whoever will listen.”
She left the tavern and walked back through the straggle of houses that made up the town. There was a shop of sorts close to the walls. She stopped and inspected the goods for sale, casting her expert eye over everything. She talked with the storekeeper for a while and bought a few small trinkets, more out of politeness than want. She left the store and made her way between two buildings to shorten her path back to the fortress where she was expected for the evening meal.
As she passed the end of one of the houses a figure leaped out and seized her from behind. A hand clamped across her mouth and another pressed a blade against her throat. Whoever it was seemed immensely strong, and though she struggled and kicked back at his legs he did not slacken his grip.
“Do not move,” he whispered. “Do not fight, or I will cut your throat.”
She stopped moving.
“Now I am going to take my hand from your mouth,” he said. “Do not try anything. Just tell me how you found me.”
After a deliberate pause, and a small but very obvious increase in the pressure of the knife on her throat, the hand was removed.
“I don’t know…” she began, but the hand clamped back.
“Just tell me, Ekloi, and maybe I will let you live.”
The hand lifted again.
“Who is Ekloi?” she managed before the hand clamped down.
He was silent for a while. Trying to make up his mind about something, she thought.
“I sense magic about you,” he said. “You must be Ekloi, for you are not Serhan.” She shook her head as well as she could, knowing that she was out of her depth, and in great danger. “No? Then what is the magic?” The hand lifted yet again.
“Knife,” she said. “The knife is magic.”
The blade left her t
hroat for a moment, and she felt Pathfinder lifted from its sheath, heard a disturbing chuckle from the man behind her.
“So tell me who you are, bearer of magic blades.”
“I am a trader,” she said when the hand allowed. “I am from East Scar, and the blade was a gift.”
The hand clamped down again, and yet again there was a pause as her attacker thought things through. She was suddenly pulled away from the wall and her back slammed into the opposite side of the alley. The knife was still near her throat, but now she could see the face of her attacker. She was not completely surprised that it was the man from the tavern, the one who had stared at her with such resentment. He studied her face for a moment, and then withdrew his blade.
“You tell the truth,” he said. Pathfinder was held out to her, hilt first, and she took it back. The man made no effort to leave, however, and stood before her, staring at her.
“Who is Ekloi, that you fear him so much?” she asked.
“They. They are Ekloi. They hunt me.”
“Why?”
“That I cannot tell you.”
“You must know why.”
“I know.”
There was something familiar in the way that the man spoke, but she could not place it. He seemed to have lost interest in her now that he had established that she was no threat, but Felice was curious.
“What are the Ekloi?” she asked.
“It is not your place to know. You must not ask questions.”
“But perhaps I can help you.” She regretted the words almost as soon as they were spoken. They came from a real desire to help this frightened, violent man, but she already had too much to cope with, and in two days she was leaving for Woodside.
“You?” He sounded scornful. “How can you help?”
“I don’t know,” she said. But perhaps she did. The knife, pathfinder, was made to find the way, but the way to what? What would happen if she asked it to find the Ekloi? Would it even know what an Ekloi was?
“Perhaps I can find the Ekloi,” she said.
The man looked at her as though she was mad. “Why?” he asked. “How?”
