by Steven Poore
“You committed yourself to that move far too early, and you left your flank wide open.” This time Meredith had not sprung forward to drive home his advantage. Instead he rested his weight on his back foot, and the ends of his staff moved in loose, hypnotic circles. So far both hits had come from her left, so she began to edge in that direction, hoping to tighten the angle against him.
“Good. You are thinking.”
It didn’t do her much good. Meredith came forward without apparently moving at all, and his staff cracked across her right thigh, catching her left arm again on the backswing as she spun in reaction. Cassia jabbed with the staff, sore and frustrated, but he was already beyond her reach. Her contests with Hetch belonged to a different world now, she realised. Like the rest of her old life in Keskor, they suddenly seemed very far away.
She feinted right, as though protecting her thigh, showing him the flank he had attacked most often. It was a trick that had always worked at least once in every fight. Meredith’s staff dipped and flashed out, taking the bait, and she spun on the spot and brought her own staff down hard across his bare back. Or she would have done, had he still been in the same place. Meredith must have anticipated her move, and now he stood ready exactly where she had left herself open. Over-extended, Cassia could not stop in time and she fell into his blow with a bitten-off curse, landing in a heap on the dewy ground.
Meredith extended a hand to help her back to her feet, but she ignored it and hauled herself up unsteadily, determined to keep some small remnant of her pride. “Don’t tell me. My flank was wide open again,” she said, wincing. She wondered whether travelling on foot for the rest of the morning might help work off the stiffness that was certain to gather in her muscles. There would be little or no comfort for her on horseback.
Meredith shrugged. “As I said, girl. You must learn from your mistakes.”
As much as she wanted to continue and prove to him – a damned prince, after all – that she had some skill in staves, there was still a lot to do before they could set off this morning. Cassia limped back to her bedroll and propped the staff against it before kneeling gingerly by the remains of the campfire. The ashes were cold, but the kettle wedged in their midst still held a little warmth. By the time she had shared the leftovers of the potage between three bowls Baum had risen, yawning, from his blankets and Meredith was absorbed in the rituals of his practice, silent as a wraith.
Baum nodded his thanks as Cassia passed him one of the bowls. “For a girl, you curse like an old soldier,” he noted.
She realised he must have heard the sparring. “The curses are my father’s.”
“So I imagine,” Baum said, with a chuckle. “Do you regret your request now?”
“A bit.” Cassia rubbed at her arm. “But I won’t give up, sir.”
“Good. Now then, do you remember what I told you last night?”
Cassia nodded and the warmth that exercise had brought to her dissipated quickly. “Yes, sir. But Malessar – .how will you find him, sir? Does he even still live?”
“Oh, he lives. Be sure of that. Men such as he do not die easily.” Baum paused and then shook his head. “Anyway, we are now well on the road to finding the damned warlock. Since the Fall of Stromondor he has avoided that city completely. I know this – I spent thirty years after the sack helping to rebuild the walls there, and I have returned several times since then. There has never been anything to signal his return. But he found new interests in Hellea, and in Kalakhadze, and I have pieced together much of his movements for the last two hundred years.”
Despite knowing that Baum was aided by the God of the North, Cassia could not yet accustom herself to the fact that the old soldier had lived through several centuries without visibly aging.
Baum smiled at her. “You may find that difficult to believe,” he said. “Sometimes I lose track of time myself. Malessar has moved regularly between Hellea and the southern lands, keeping to the shadows and the background, rarely revealing himself. If nothing else, I have at least managed to sully his reputation through hearsay and folk-tales. In the last half-century I have put most of my pieces in place. Now I plan to move down to Hellea itself and wait for him there. The Betrayer is a man of habit – he will come.”
“And then, sir?”
Baum’s expression turned predatory. “And then, dear girl, you will have the opportunity to record a confrontation fated by the gods themselves.”
q
But, in contrast to Baum’s aims, they did not rejoin the Emperor’s March. Instead he led the party out of the dell and further into the hills, with the sun at their backs. Sore and uncomfortable in the saddle, Cassia twisted frequently to survey the ground behind them, fearful of pursuit. The hillsides remained empty, however, with only a few stray sheep, grazing amongst the outcrops, witness to their passing.
Meredith, the Heir to the North, rode out on the right flank, where he had a good view back into the valley. His staff was stowed across his packs, and his sword strapped across his back. He looked every inch a warrior, surveying the land as though it all belonged to him. Which, Cassia reminded herself, it might well do once Malessar was defeated.
Baum seemed in a good mood, singing under his breath as he traced an old herders’ path through the narrowing vale. From time to time Cassia caught snatches of the words, hearing enough to understand it was addressed to a lover, as many old soldiers’ songs were. Norrow would sing them in barracks towns if he judged there was profit to be made by them, but he did not enjoy performing them – they were often maudlin affairs, testament to hearts heavy through absence and loss. Cassia understood the reason for his aversion, although it was never mentioned aloud. Her mother was a subject guaranteed to bring Norrow’s temper flaring into violence.
At last curiosity got the better of her, and she urged her horse forward to ride alongside him. “Sir, what is the song you keep singing? I recognise part of the tune, but not the words.”
He took a moment to reply. “An old song,” he said at last. “From my youth. It was popular in the taverns after Jedrell came to the throne. I thought I’d forgotten the melody, but it seems to have come back to me. The lyric, however . . . no, the correct words escape me. I wouldn’t wish to embarrass myself by singing the wrong words to a storyteller.”
“Would you tell me what the song is about?” She was unwilling to let the matter rest. This was her first chance to find out a little more about the man hidden under Baum’s ancient quest, as well as being an opportunity to learn a song that might not have been heard in these lands for centuries. “I might know it by a different name.”
“Unlikely,” Baum told her with a faint smile. “If I recall any of the verses I’ll be certain to recite them to you, though.”
They rode in silence for a while, and Baum did not sing again. Cassia began to regret asking him about it. Perhaps I should have just listened more keenly and learnt the song in secret, as my father does. Norrow was a magpie of sorts, stealing and adapting songs and stories whenever he heard them, never crediting anyone but himself with their success. He would always insist, even to the point of violence, that he had come by the stories on his own.
He would have hunted down Baum’s song more eagerly. If I wish to be a better storyteller than him, I must find my own sources and my own material. But the thought of angering Baum by pushing him to say more about a song he did not wish to share made her pause and her resolve crumbled again.
By the end of the third day they had left even the most remote sheepfolds behind and were deep in the Antiachas. Hills rose around them on all sides, dark stone escarpments jutting from the steep slopes to cast shadows over a path that had faded to little more than shallow grooves in the dirt. Thin, cold streams ran down gullies in the hillsides to join the headwaters of the river from which the Antiachas took its name. Baum called a halt here to refill their waterskins before quickening the pace, even though the horses were beginning to stumble in the gloom. A fierce bank of low cloud dom
inated the northern horizon. It would be an unpleasant night if they did not make camp soon.
She called forward, pointing out the approaching storm to Baum. He slowed to allow her to catch up.
“Shouldn’t we stop for the night before it gets much darker?” she asked again.
“No, girl. This is not a good place to rest. Surely you know the history of this land?”
She hesitated. She knew very little about the Antiachas, mostly because Norrow had never shown any interest in the area, preferring to focus on the tales of high glory and tragedy, the great heroes of ages past like Jathar Leon Learth, and the dragons that dominated the Age of Talons. But to admit her ignorance would undermine her claim to be a better storyteller than her father. Baum might even renege on the deal they had made, and where would she be then?
“Not so well as you do, sir,” she said, at length.
“Hah, flattery! Or, if not, then a subtle reminder of my advancing years.”
He waved her protest away with a laugh, casting a glance at the storm clouds. “Forgive my humour. I’ve become too accustomed to my own company. We will shelter from this storm, but not here. This path will flood before midnight, and the hillsides become treacherous and unstable in heavy rain. You could break your neck up there in this weather. Many have done so before now.”
She glanced nervously at an overhanging crag, half-expecting it to crack and fall upon them. “Then where will we go? There can’t be anybody living up here.”
“Not now,” Baum agreed. He heeled his horse about. “Apart from bandits and outlaws, of course. We must hurry though.”
“Bandits?” To her relief the horse responded to her urgency. She had no desire to be left behind.
Norrow had been lucky, to be gifted with a smooth tongue. In all the long miles they had travelled, the most they had ever lost to outlaws was a half-full purse and a mangy goat he had won in a bet and unaccountably decided to keep. They had been held up several times by scrawny, unkempt men desperate for food and coin, neither of which Norrow ever managed to possess in any quantity. Cassia was sure that on at least two occasions they had only been saved by their own poverty. Storytellers were poor marks, and Norrow was often poorer than most. He would attempt to buy his way free with a fireside tale, and often that would work. Cassia supposed even criminals, exiled from their homes, wanted pleasant company of an evening.
These situations, especially over the last few years, had become increasingly perilous for Cassia. She found it more and more difficult to disguise herself as Norrow’s boy apprentice, rather than his daughter, and at the back of her mind there was always the fear that her father would one day offer her up to outlaws in exchange for safe passage. His willingness to abandon her to Almoul’s possession back at Keskor stood as proof of his intent. Escaping that fate, only to fall victim to outlaws here in the Antiachas, was not something she wanted to think about.
Meredith was not too far ahead. She managed to make the horse keep pace with him, trying not to let her anxiety show. The Heir to the North seemed calm, though he too cast frequent glances at the looming crags. The weather was closing in fast and Cassia felt rain in the air, blowing against her back. When the storm broke they would all be soaked.
“Nobody should be abroad in this weather,” she muttered.
Meredith shrugged. “Perhaps not. But if nobody else is, maybe this is the right time to travel.”
She frowned at him. “That sounds . . . unlikely,” she said, unwilling to go as far as calling him insane out loud. “I’d rather not get soaked through and catch my death of cold out here.”
“Your skin is waterproof,” Meredith said. “You will not soak through.”
The clouds had darkened further, and the winds whipped around her skirts. She shivered, blinking away the first large drops of rain. “I hope you’re certain of that, my Lord Prince,” she said bitterly.
Baum called back. “Just a little farther. Rest easy girl. There will be no bandits creeping over our camp tonight.”
Oh, and I hope you’re just as certain of that, too, she thought miserably.
q
They passed over one last ridge, and Cassia found herself looking across the scattered remnants of an ancient fort, the foundations standing proud from a squared-off mound while stone blocks lay about the base, half-buried in the long grass. Her skin crawled as she realised Baum meant to camp here.
“One of the ancient forts from the age of Caenthell,” Baum called, his words almost torn away by the wind. “Once this was the northernmost border of Lyriss, back when it was still a kingdom of note.” He nudged his tired mount, its head bowed against the rising wind. “As good a place as any.”
Cassia followed reluctantly. She knew of Lyriss, at least. Some of her father’s tales were set in that vanished land. The Lyrissans had been peaceful scholars, caught between Caenthell and the stubborn city states of the south. They had fallen quickly, unused to the High King’s savagery on the battlefield, and their city had been dismantled and carried away as plunder, the ground salted and all trace of the Lyrissan people driven from history. The Lyrissans now lived only in myths and tales, as did the dragons that, legend had it, provided them with much of their wealth and wisdom.
Her imagination lent her a vision of a grand dragon perched on the wrecked wall, gazing balefully down at them, wings spread to launch into the air. Maybe if the Lyrissans had asked the dragons for help against the marauding armies of the North, their city might yet stand and thrive.
She wondered if Baum would take them past the site of the old city. She seemed to be collecting ancient ruins on this journey: first Gethista, now Lyriss. Soon she might call herself an expert on lost cities, she told herself with hollow humour.
Only one wall of the small fort still had enough integrity and height to serve as a windbreak. The rest were crumbled beyond repair. Meredith and Cassia rigged a lean-to against that wall with the few sheets Baum could give them from his packs, and they huddled inside while the storm broke, unable even to gather kindling for a fire, as everything that lay nearby was already soaked through. For all her fears, Cassia succumbed to sleep quickly, the storm blowing a familiar lullaby, one she knew from her long childhood of weary travel.
She awoke in discomfort to find that rain had gathered in an overflowing pool further along the wall, and was spilling downhill into their rough lean-to. Everything was cold and sodden, made worse by the sharp breeze that pushed the storm westwards.
“Not the best place to raise a shelter,” Baum grumbled. His cloak hung from him like grim chains. “But even I cannot influence the weather.”
With daylight came the first chance to look at the ruins without the spectres of history and myth casting shadows upon Cassia’s imagination. It appeared to have shrunk in the light, becoming a mere collection of tumble-down stone blocks. At the height of Lyriss’s fame, the building must have had at least one storey atop the ground floor. The Lyrissans stationed here would have collected tolls and taxes from travellers, and passed on urgent news via a rooftop beacon. They would have shared this lower floor with hens and sheep, as well as the fast horses for courier duties.
She stood at the edge of the walls and looked out into the valleys beyond, dull green and cloud-laden. Not a soul stirred anywhere she cared to turn.
“The hidden valleys,” Baum said, behind her. “That’s what they used to call this place.”
Cassia frowned. “But they aren’t hidden.”
“No, I suppose not. No grand sorcery to hide their pathways or to turn inquisitive travellers about and confuse them so they follow other roads. Yet hidden nonetheless. After the roads were torn up, it did not take long for people to forget Lyriss had ever existed. And while the lands to the south bowed and paid tribute to Caenthell for a while, and Lyriss was a muttered byword for what would happen to any man fool enough to oppose the High King, that changed too, after Malessar wreaked his evil upon the North.”
This was part of the story she
already knew. Norrow’s audiences revelled in the fall of the southern cities, and some of the most bloodthirsty stories were set against the long, convoluted wars that followed the destruction of Caenthell. Cities and tyrants jostled for primacy on the fertile plains around the Castaria, alliances shifting back and forth in a constant dance of mistrust and betrayal, some discussed, formalised and then violently disbanded in the period between two full moons. It was little wonder some of the more vulnerable cities had collapsed into history and never re-emerged, unable to survive such cut-throat politics. It was a surprise though, that Lyriss had not been able to call upon their ancient allies and protectors to help them.
“What about the dragons?” she asked.
Baum scratched his beard and said nothing for a long moment. Cassia thought he must not have heard her and was about to ask again, when he looked up at the hillsides that surrounded the ruined fort and breathed a tired sigh.
“Dragons,” he said quietly. “I’ll wager you know hundreds of tales from the Age of Talons.”
“Not so many. Dozens, perhaps. I would like to know more,” she added, in the hope Baum might relate some grand adventure that no storyteller alive would ever have heard.
“As do all men,” Baum said. “That is why they seek out dragons. In my experience, it is never wise to incur debt to a dragon.” He flashed a flat, thin smile, devoid of humour. “Often, the results can be far worse than merely incurring their wrath.”
He turned away sharply, and it was clear to Cassia that he would not take the subject any further. She wondered if it was wise to ask him about Lyriss’s connection to the great beasts while he was in such a closed-in mood.
She felt a presence close behind her and steeled herself not to jump: Meredith still had an irritating tendency to sneak up on her unexpectedly, and she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing he had unnerved her.
