by Steven Poore
She recited some of Gelis’s long history to Meredith as they made their way carefully down the hillside toward the valley floor. Telling these tales gave her some practice now she had claimed the role of storyteller, even if Meredith was the least responsive audience she had ever come across, and it helped pass the time far better than the monotonous silence Baum seemed to prefer. But her own tale, the one she had crafted of the Lyrissan dragons, she still kept to herself, uncertain it would stand up to scrutiny.
Baum rode further ahead, his hood pulled over his head and his shoulders hunched, making it clear he did not want to be disturbed while deep in thought.
True to his words, there was little sign of human life before they reached the road, such as it was. Where the March had been paved along some of its long course, this trade route was little more than a wide series of ruts carved into the ground by the passage of thousands of wheels over many years. They guided their mounts along the side of the track, where the ground was firmer and less rutted, passing occasional signs of burned-out campfires.
“These fires are recent,” Meredith observed, as they passed the third of the afternoon. “Less than three days old. We may catch their wagons tomorrow.”
Cassia frowned. “How do you know they went in this direction? Surely you can’t tell that from their leavings. They could have been heading the other way.”
“You doubt my skills?”
“Alright then,” Cassia said. “A wager on it. If we don’t catch them by tomorrow evening, then you cook the evening’s meal.”
Baum coughed and turned in his saddle. “Are you trying to kill us all, girl?”
Meredith ignored him, and a smile spread slowly across his face. “And your forfeit?”
Perhaps she should have thought this through before opening her mouth. “I’ll stand the night’s watch,” she said at last. It was the only thing she could think of.
“You really are trying to kill us,” Baum grunted, shaking his head.
Meredith extended his hand and Cassia took it, half expecting to be pulled from her saddle by his strength. Though his grip was firm it was not overpowering or hurtful, and he released her hand after only a few heartbeats. Still, the contact with his smooth, cold skin was enough to disconcert her.
“Done,” Meredith said plainly.
“You had best get some rest tonight,” Baum told her. “You will need your strength tomorrow night.”
She tried to project a confidence that she did not feel. “Perhaps I should cook a double helping when we stop, in case we find Meredith has the talent to burn water to a crisp.”
The old man’s shoulders shook as he tried to contain his laughter, and she felt a smile tug her own lips. It was strange, she realised, to be able to laugh at a conversation on the road. To have fun. It was something she had never been able to do with her father: Norrow’s humour was spiteful and selfish, never to be shared with other people, only ever used, like his stories, as a tool to wound and degrade whoever he directed it at.
This was different. This felt more natural, and paradoxically she felt less comfortable with it. That will change, she told herself. It will change with time. This is what people should be like all of the time.
Meredith frowned down at her as he considered her riposte. “It is possible to burn water?”
Now laughter bubbled up into her throat and she could not hold it in. The puzzled expression on his face was just too much.
Karistea echoed to the sound of laughter for perhaps the first time in decades.
q
“Your stance is wrong. Again. Move your weight onto your back foot.”
“I am.” Cassia’s arms and her ribs throbbed with dull pain, and she feared, irrationally, she knew, that she had broken bones in the last round of frantic defending.
Meredith stepped back, his staff held one-handed, loose at his side. Hard experience had taught her this meant nothing. He could lash out with that staff at will, without warning, and so swiftly the blow would land before she had even begun to move away. The skin of her thighs felt raw, and she knew she was losing her concentration.
“What’s the point of this?” she moaned, half to herself.
He shrugged with one shoulder. “It was your request.”
“But I wanted to learn how to use a sword!”
“Would that have gone any better than this?”
For a moment she thought he had made a barbed comment against her clear lack of skill, and she was about to throw her own staff to the ground and stalk away with the tattered remnants of her dignity intact, when she made herself think about it properly. Putting a sword in her hands would have been a disaster.
She exhaled slowly and tightened her grip on the staff. She had asked for this, after all. And Meredith had agreed to teach her. To complain now would be churlish at the very least. She drew herself upright and made sure her weight did actually rest on her back foot.
“Remember the arc of the sun,” Meredith said. “And its reflection in the water.”
Cassia nodded, but she had already learned to listen less to what Meredith told her and pay more attention to how – and where – he moved. She lowered her staff into a different position, covering her stomach, thinking that might draw him into an attack. This trick had usually worked against Hetch and his friends when they play-acted old battles as children.
Meredith’s arm whipped out, and she barely brought her staff back up in time to deflect it, her hands trembling with the impact. Where next – my legs? She stepped aside, pulled the staff down and across her flank, and felt it jar violently as Meredith’s next swing bounced off it.
A step back to the left, and then forwards, the staff poised to strike against his shoulders – and Meredith’s third attack knocked it from her hands completely. She flung herself away, hoping to roll back towards the staff once she had wrong-footed him, but the Heir to the North stood between her and her weapon now, and the knowing smile on his face told her he considered the bout finished.
“I must be getting better – you didn’t hit me.” A moral victory of a kind, she thought.
Meredith shook his head. “You lost your staff,” he pointed out. “You must never let go of your weapon if you hope to win a fight.”
“I didn’t have a choice. You knocked it—”
“Your grip was too tight. Loosen it.” He shrugged and stepped aside to allow her to retrieve the staff. “But you are improving. A little.”
She sighed as she rubbed mud from the length of the staff. It was fair, all told. She had already learned a few things from him, even in the short time they had spent practising. If she returned to Keskor now and faced Hetch down, she was sure she could beat him eight or nine times out of ten. With more practice, she might remove that element of uncertainty. That would be something to revel in. The image of Hetch, bruised and broken-nosed, crying in the dirt of the market square, was satisfyingly easy to conjure up.
He would not dare treat her as chattel then.
Meredith’s silent return shook her from her reverie. He loomed at her side as though he expected something from her, and finding him in such close proximity, without the staves measuring the space between them, was unsettling.
Did he ask something of me? She was guiltily aware she had been lost in her own dreams of vengeance. A whole legion could have marched by and she would not have noticed.
“The snares,” Meredith said.
She blinked. “But I haven’t set them yet . . . I mean, I’ll set them now . . .”
“No. I said that I will set them, if you wish.”
Cassia stared at him for a moment, trying to work out if he was mocking her, but there was no spark of humour in his eyes. “Alright,” she said slowly. “But I’d better come with you. There’s a skill to finding the right places.”
She felt even more off-balance than before as she went to fetch the snares from her pack.
q
Karistea was not as deserted as Baum had led her to believe. They encount
ered several caravans that were travelling in the opposite direction, away from Hellea, laden with goods for trade in the far Western countries. The wagons were high-sided and covered against the poor weather, and Cassia envied the traders their shelter. She’d had to stand the night watch as forfeit for her wager, and Baum was concerned the following morning that she might be feverish. That soon passed, although the tea he forced her to drink was foul and made her retch, and she still shivered every time the wind gusted from the north. The only time she felt truly warm was when she lit the fire every evening.
There were smallholdings too, set back from the road, fending off the weather and the outside world from behind raised earthworks and shabby wooden palisades. Families of herders clustered together for the meagre protection that such companionship provided. There were flocks of sheep and goats on the hillsides, although Cassia rarely saw any of the herdsmen. They were a reclusive breed, who disappeared from view as soon as they were spotted, and they were suspicious of strangers. She’d thumped on the gates of one smallholding for what must have been a full hour before a narrowed eye finally appeared at a knot in the wood, the old woman answering her questions in reluctant, monosyllabic grunts. Could they offer space for the night? No. Any food to be bought? No. Was there another farm nearby? No.
“Not a welcoming people,” Baum remarked later, watching another herdsman steer his flock away across a broad valley to avoid their small party. “I wonder if they are as suspicious of each other.”
“It would be hard to find out,” Cassia said.
He nodded. “I suppose it would. Mind you, I suppose they must get close to one another from time to time.”
He pointed towards the eastern end of the valley, where the road swung away southwards to round a long, sprawling hill. “A good place to make camp, up on the hill. We will stop there tonight and say farewell to Karistea. Tomorrow we come to the edges of Hellea itself.”
“I will be glad to leave this country,” Meredith said. “There is nothing here to admire.”
Cassia nodded her agreement. If anything, Karistea only served to remind her of her father and home, neither of which she wanted to think about any more.
On their way up the slope, Baum waved a hand at the copse that fringed the hilltop and extended back into a dark and twisted wood. “There should be plenty of firewood for us tonight,” he said. “Cassia—”
She sighed, already knowing what would come next. “Firewood. And traps.”
The same routine, every night. Just as it had been under her father’s rule. No matter that she was free of Norrow’s unpredictable temper, or that she had fallen in with a quest to right an ancient wrong – to avenge a whole country, no less – somebody still had to brew tea, skin rabbits and groom the horses. The chores didn’t vanish simply because she was out to change the world.
Making history had lost its veneer of glittering excitement as quickly as did reciting it to the same audiences night after night. If the heroes of ages past had ever realised how tiring, how boring, how wet and tedious their journeys would be, they would never have set out.
Baum called her over before she left the campsite to gather the wood. “Stay away from the road tonight, Cassia,” he said. “Keep to this hillside. There are some places I remember from many years ago . . .” He trailed off with a frown, looking around as though he did not recognise his surroundings. “Not far from here, I’m sure of it . . . Meredith, go with the girl.”
Cassia was about to protest that she was old enough to not need an escort, but Baum had already turned away, unhitching the packs from his saddle.
She smiled across at Meredith. “Do you want to try setting the snares again? You didn’t do too badly last night. Then maybe you can try it on your own tomorrow.”
“Only if you wish to go hungry,” the Heir to the North said, with a straight face.
q
“What’s that?”
Meredith shaded his eyes against the setting sun, staring down at the building. “It could be a shrine. Or a temple.”
She frowned, all thoughts of foraging forgotten. “Why would anyone build a temple all the way out here? There’s nobody for miles around. And it looks too big to be just a shrine.”
Meredith shrugged and turned away, but Cassia’s curiosity had bested her again. “Let’s go and have a look,” she suggested. “It’s not far.”
“It is best left alone. The day is ending.”
Cassia ignored him and started down the hillside, the half-full sling of firewood rattling against her shoulder. “Come on, we’ll only be a few minutes. We could even shelter there tonight if it rains.”
The building sat a short distance from the road. As she came closer she saw tracks leading from the old road to the building’s portico, the ground worn bare by the passage of other travellers over many years, proving the place had not been entirely abandoned. The roof was intact, another good omen, though some of the slates had slipped. This place had not been stripped or plundered, like many ancient shrines she had seen in the North.
She crossed through the long shadows cast by the building and made for the portico, revising her opinions as she trudged across the weed-carpeted grasses. It was a shrine, she decided. A temple would require a priest, and a priest would need at the very least a goat, or a small pen of chickens, or a patch of land planted with vegetables. Dorias in Lyriss had nothing and relied on the donations of the townsfolk, but there was no town here, and nothing to support an incumbent priest.
So . . . a shrine. But of such size! She rounded the corner of the building and paused for breath. There were seven steps up to the portico, massive blocks of stone that showed little weathering. She unshipped her load and left it on the first step.
She reached the portico and looked about. Five pillars stretched up to the overhanging roof – a peculiar number, she thought; surely every shrine had either four or six pillars at the front. The school in Keskor had touched on this once, while she listened from atop the wall. Her interest had waned when the tutor turned his lecture into a demonstration of mathematical principles. Now, she wondered briefly if she might have missed something, but she was distracted by the small heaps of charred rubbish in the corners of the portico, where the stone floor was blackened. The remains of cookfires, indicating that travellers had stayed here recently.
Someone may still be here. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea. She eyed the nearest doorway into the shrine nervously. The sun was fast disappearing below the horizon, and it lit very little beyond the darkened opening.
She padded to the doorway and paused again, drawing up the courage to peer inside, her imagination furnishing the interior with fearsome skeletal warriors and great beasts that hungered for human flesh. There were letters scratched into the wall by the door; someone had left a message here. She traced the letters with one finger and sounded the words under her breath.
This is not a restful place.
Her flesh prickled and she shivered in the dying rays of the sun. Definitely not a good idea.
But if this was a shrine, surely it was sacred to a god. Given the size of the place, and the way it was maintained, it must belong to one of the more mighty gods. Cassia could come to no harm by merely looking.
She took a deep breath and slipped into the dark before her instincts could fight back.
She stood with her back against the wall for a minute, allowing her eyes to adjust to the gloom. There were no windows at all, and the only illumination came from the two open doorways and a few shafts of daylight lancing down from between the missing roof tiles.
Two lines of pillars stretched to the far end of the building, creating vaults on either side of the shrine. Statues, life-sized or a little larger, stood in ranks upon low stone plinths, as though awaiting inspection. More figures, visible only as shapes against the darkness, lined the back wall. The air was still and heavy. The breeze didn’t seem to touch the inside of the shrine, despite the lack of doors in the frames.
> Cassia took a few steps away from the wall, advancing slowly down the left colonnade. Dried leaves, swept in by the wind to lie dead in the unearthly atmosphere, crunched to dust underfoot. She brushed through wisps of spiderwebs, their delicate threads tingling against her bare arms. She watched the stone figures carefully as she moved. They might well be statues, but she had the unnerving feeling they were aware of her presence.
Don’t be so daft, girl, they’re made of stone.
There were more of them, she realised. Each alcove, behind the pillars, contained a pair of the sharply-carved figures. She squinted into the gloom at the nearest pair, straining to make out their details. They were not gods, she was certain now. Whoever had created them had sculpted them with the full amour of a Hellean legionary, complete with the helmet and shield that she recognised from the Factor’s troops.
Stone soldiers . . . do I know this tale? What are they guarding? And why are there so many of them?
Perhaps there were inscriptions on the bases of the plinths. Cassia was about to crouch next to the nearest plinth, one hand extended to touch the stone, when she heard the quiet scuffing on leather on stone from behind her, in the depths of the shrine.
She froze, breath caught in her throat, not daring to look behind her. The sound did not come again, but that was no reassurance. Her outstretched hand dropped to her belt, and she tugged her knife free before rolling to one side away from the pillar, scrambling back into the darkness of the colonnade.
It struck her that entering the shrine alone, with no light, and with no idea who else might be inside, was one of the stupidest things she had ever done. She had no idea if Meredith had even followed her down the hillside. There could be anybody at all hiding in the gloom. Her heart thumped, and she clutched her free hand to her chest, afraid it might give her away.
She tried to moisten her lips but her mouth was unnaturally dry. She crept forward, away from the colonnade. There were too many places around her for somebody to hide themselves.
Cassia hastened into the middle of the chamber, aiming for the circle of stone soldiers. From there it would only be a short, desperate run back to the doorways. Glancing up, she realised the light, already poor, was fading fast.
