The Heir To The North

by Steven Poore

  Now she looked out and realised her small company had grown. Behind the boys, and the men who had followed her across the Square, there was a wall of bodies. Twenty at least, perhaps more, Cassia thought in surprise. Surprise? No – this is what I wanted!

  The boys at her feet cheered and begged for more, just as they had in the alleys by Malessar’s dhar.

  “A girl?” she heard one man’s voice question. “And a Northern girl at that?”

  Cassia felt her cheeks colour.

  “But better than Dromic ever told it,” his neighbour said, sounding amused. He tossed a coin down into her hat.

  Another clinked in after it. And then a third. Cassia leaned on her staff and exhaled heavily.

  It was a start, she thought. Thank Ceresel, it was a start.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The warlock reappeared in his dhar one morning as though he had never been away. Cassia stumbled over him as she carried the morning’s tray of minted tea to the table in the centre of the garden. He was kneeling at the side of the raised flower bed, his attention focused upon one of the plants.

  “I had hoped this specimen would thrive in this environment,” he said, without looking up at her. He cupped one of the blooms in his hand, tilting it back and forth with a surprising tenderness. “It has taken, but still it struggles. A troublesome transplantation.”

  Cassia felt awkward all of a sudden. It was clear the warlock was referring to her, as much as to the flower. She could not tell if he meant her to answer.

  “You still sleep in the cupboard beneath the stairs.”

  She nodded, realising that he still had not looked up. “Yes, sir.”

  “You would fare better upstairs.”

  She hesitated before replying. “I think that would be a troublesome transplantation, sir.”

  Malessar’s shoulders stiffened, and then he relaxed. “As you will, Cassia. As you will.”

  Cassia took the tray to the table and set out the small glass cups. She forced herself to concentrate on pouring the tea, aware of the warlock moving through the garden behind her. As ever, he brought a massive weight to the atmosphere of the house. Even the near-constant chatter from the kitchen had diminished.

  I don’t know who – or what – he expects me to be. I am not Pelicos, no matter what he thinks.

  Her skill with the sword was improving all the time, and Malessar had been right to suggest the Galliarcan style would suit her, but in her heart she knew she was not a born swordswoman. There was a burden of expectation that she could not shift, and she was reluctant to face up to it.

  Is it my fault? Have I misled him? Or myself?

  Usually either Leili or Narjess joined her for the meal, but today neither were present. Instead Malessar sat down opposite her, picking at his food with the slow grace of a stork, apparently unaware of how he discomfited Cassia. His robes were worn and stained by travel. It was as though he had walked into the city directly from the scrubland that stretched south towards the mountains.

  What could be out there to catch a warlock’s interest? She itched to ask, but diverted herself instead with another flatbread, even though she was already full.

  “You appear to have made yourself at home everywhere in the city but here,” Malessar said, tilting his cup at her to emphasise the point. “Fahrian Square, the rest of the mede, they even talk of the Northern Rabbit in the lower circles of the Court.”

  For one moment Cassia was too shocked to speak. “But I haven’t even been to the Court!” she managed at last.

  “Indeed,” the warlock said. “A fine achievement. It seems my first instincts were correct.”

  He sounded proud of that. Proud of her, or of himself? It was a strange idea to have to consider. Almost as strange, if not more so, as the idea she might be talked of in the circles of Galliarca’s court. But wasn’t that what she wanted, after all? The glory her father could never achieve? And if she had help to achieve it – well, there was nothing wrong with that. Again, it was more than her father would ever have. He had spent so much of his life grasping for anything that glittered, greedy yet unambitious, but never once had he been offered any help.

  She almost felt sorry for him in that moment.

  But what of Malessar? What does he gain from my rise? Why would that please him?

  You help us to recall what humanity is, he had told her.

  Could it be as simple as that? The fell villain of the Northern sagas, the warlock who destroyed Caenthell with a curse so forceful even the gods cried out, the master of a thousand foul and secret plots – he did this for no other reason than that he wanted to? She was not a small, easily manipulated piece in one of his grand and evil schemes? Baum would tell her otherwise, Cassia was certain. His centuries of experience, spent constructing Caenthell’s revenge on Pyraete’s behalf, were worth so much more than Cassia’s meagre handful of years.

  But Baum was not here.

  She looked around at the walls of the dhar. A world turned inward. Private and reflective. Not obvious aspects of a power-crazed warlock.

  Malessar had turned his attention back to the meal. Cassia watched him for a moment, hesitating over the question she desperately wanted to ask. She chose the more obvious question instead.

  “Instincts for what, sir?”

  “For potential, of course. The North has ever been a land of unfulfilled potential. And of wasted potential,” he added darkly.

  “So what would you have me do in the Court?”

  Now he looked up at her, apparently surprised. “Do? What would I have you do? Cassia, why do you think I would have you do anything, other than tell your tales?”

  There was nothing for it. She took a deep breath. “Because of who you are?”

  The warlock was silent. He took a small, ivory-handled knife to carve an apple into slices, each movement quite deliberate. Cassia wanted to flee onto the streets, her heart felt like it was pulling her physically across the length of the garden. But she could not make herself move. Instead she gripped the edge of the table so hard her knuckles were white beneath her tanned skin. It wasn’t magic that kept her in her seat, she knew. It was fear.

  “My reputation goes before me. Always.” Malessar shrugged. It was a small action, but it held far more emotion than any great outburst would have done. “No matter how I might live, or where, or whether I go by a different name. Always there is something – or someone – to remind me of my mistakes. And it hurts twice as much to hear it from a girl of the North. Of the North and . . .”

  He shook his head. “It does not matter. I would wish that your tales were wrong. In so many respects they are wrong, but not in the most important aspects. But this is my house, Cassia, not the apartments of a minister deep inside a palace or high in the main tower of a castle. I am nothing to Galliarca’s princes, nothing and nobody. I have no interest in how they rule their state, as long as they do not interfere in my work or my life. If there is any work to be done at the Court, then the Court can do it itself.”

  “I only thought . . .” Cassia began, but the cold steel of Malessar’s stare froze her words in mid-sentence.

  “You thought I have some degree of influence in Galliarca’s court,” Malessar said. “That I am the power behind the throne, just as I was in Stromondor, or Hellea, or Kalakhadze during the Golden Rule.”

  Or in Kebria, she thought, remembering Arca’s story. But this was not the time to say such things.

  “And I was all of those things.” His voice was as hard and bitter as Baum’s had been when the veteran described the aftermath of Caenthell’s demise. “All of those, and more besides. And so I have become an embodiment of evil – of treachery, avarice, dark, inhuman gods and destruction. The fall of Stromondor was my fault; that the Golden Rule was twisted into perversion and depravity was also my fault. Shall I list them all for you, Cassia? All the stories you will have heard, and the ones you may not already know? Wouldn’t you like to know what I have done in the cause of peace? W
hat I have sacrificed?”

  She could barely manage to shake her head. It was a reflexive action far more than an intellectual response.

  “Your audiences would not want to hear such things from my perspective, I think. No, they have their villain. All for the one thing I wish I had never done. The one thing I can never take back, no matter how much I do in penance.”

  “Caenthell,” Cassia breathed. “You cursed the North.”

  The words, even spoken so quietly, seemed to fill the courtyard and echo beneath the columns that surrounded the garden. The air felt cooler, as though the wind blew from the North, ignoring all the walls that stood in its way.

  “Exactly so,” Malessar said. “And everything I have done since has been an attempt to redress the balance. Without the presence of the High King, watching from the mountains, there has been nothing to check the advance of the barbarians, high beyond what you call the North. Nothing to stop the slow spread of Hellean civilisation across the shores of the Middle Sea. Nothing to keep Hellea from invading these shores and laying siege to Stromondor or Kebria. Stromondor weathered that storm, but it was too weak to hold off the Hordes that came after, and I could not defend the city by myself. By the time I marshalled the necessary help, it was far too late. All I could do was to assist in burying the dead. Even when I have intervened personally in Hellean affairs, I have failed to stem the flow of history. My efforts to limit their progress, to foster a fear of the lands beyond their own and make them into a more insular people, only backfired and caused an even greater streak of imperialism instead. How can I hope to engineer a solution to that problem? By tinkering with Galliarca as well, to cause ever greater wars in every land known to man? By giving such advanced knowledge and magic to the Hordes that they could easily drive the inhabitants of every land into the sea?

  “Or should I bring myself into the open once more and rule the world for myself? Fill the bodies of the ruling families with fire, scatter their ashes to the winds, tear down their citadels and appoint pale puppets to dance at the ends of my strings? Well, Cassia? What should I do?”

  “I’m sorry,” Cassia said.

  “Not half so much as I am.” Malessar ground out the words.

  “But you could lift the curse.” The idea was a sudden revelation. Of course – if Malessar was the greatest sorcerer in the world, then surely he could reverse what he had done. If she could persuade him to do that, then Baum need not try to defeat him! “You could bring Caenthell back. Couldn’t you, sir?”

  He stared at her, and though the rest of his expression remained opaque there was anger in his eyes. Anger . . . and something else . . .

  “Bring it back?” he repeated. “Bring it back? Revoke a curse laid in the name of a god? A curse laid with all the power Pyraete had given to me?” He shook his head, and his mouth twisted abruptly into a smile. “Oh, Cassia, if it was as simple as that I would have done it centuries ago and let them all rest in peace.”

  In all of Baum’s stories recounting of the history of Malessar’s evil works, there had never been anything to suggest the warlock would be so repentant. That he actually wanted to revoke his own curse. Cassia cupped her hands protectively around her tea. All this time – all these years – and Baum never knew. Oh sweet gods!

  “But they are all dead and gone, and I am nothing more than a demon – a god-touched warlock. Everything I have ever done to try to protect the North from its predators . . . and most likely nobody even remembers my name, let alone what I have done.”

  It was Cassia’s turn to disagree. “No, sir. They still talk about you. About . . . Caenthell.” Her mind worked furiously to keep her from disclosing too much. She knew she could not mention Baum or Meredith directly, but she could still try to persuade Malessar to lift his curse. It might not be as difficult as it appeared, if Malessar truly regretted his actions. “Some people – I’ve heard that some people long for the North to rise again. Surely you’d know a way to help them?”

  Malessar looked away. “There is no way to lift that curse, Cassia. And even if there were, it would not be safe to do so.”

  Cassia knew she was pushing her luck with more questions, but she had come this far, and not to have the answers would be an affront to her natural curiosity. “Why, sir? Surely it would be a better thing?”

  “I have had ample time to reflect on my mistakes,” Malessar said, “and I have learned far more about this sort of magic than I ever knew when I had the temerity to believe I could challenge the world. Curse wards are terrible things, Cassia, and not to be placed lightly. Over time the magic will warp and infect the thing that is warded. The wards themselves become not so much a prison as a containment. Do you understand the distinction?”

  “I . . . I don’t know . . .”

  A small gesture dismissed her ignorance. “I have applied tests to small creatures, and to the cages that housed them. With even the slightest of curses, the creature inside the cage sickened quickly and visibly. And, in the second week of confinement, it became infected by the wards themselves. After a season, it was no longer safe to continue the experiments. The beasts had to be destroyed and burned before they could test themselves against the restraints of their cages.”

  He stared at her until it appeared he was satisfied that she understood. “That was after one season, Cassia, and with a single small creature. I cursed an entire kingdom – over eight hundred years ago. What do you think might be harboured behind those wards now?”

  She struggled to imagine anything on the scale he was suggesting. The closest she could come to it was the short time she had spent in the forgotten and long-faded land of Lyriss, where the land itself seemed to repel her feet. There was nothing in any of the stories she knew, not even from the Age of Talons, that she could use as a comparison. But surely it could not be as terrible as Malessar suggested?

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  “Neither do I,” Malessar said. “And the world should never have to find out. I hope – I believe – that Caenthell’s caged spirits will devour themselves over time, before the wards fail at last, for nothing endures forever. But that is not certain.”

  Cassia envisioned the figure of Pyraete, carved upon her stone charm, rising up between the mountains. Perhaps the spirits of the North would surge forth in such a way if the curse was lifted. She could not decide if that was a good thing. Baum would doubtless have said that it was – it was what he had fought towards for hundreds of years, after all – and Meredith would have nodded his wordless affirmation, but Cassia was no longer so sure.

  Something had happened to the wonderful tale she had wanted to witness; the great heroic tale of an evil warlock brought down by the rightful Heir to the North. Meredith was still her prince, but . . . it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t wonderful now. It wasn’t quite so heroic.

  It was real.

  The revelation was sour and frightening, and she ducked her head to drink her tea before it cooled completely. It helped her avoid Malessar’s mountain-stone stare. She was convinced he would see right through her if she looked up at him, that all her duplicity would be laid bare before him. The warlock would fly into a rage again. He would tear Baum’s plot to pieces, and scatter her own body and soul to the winds so absolutely that the gods themselves would never find her.

  This wasn’t what I wanted, was it?

  It took her another silent moment to realise that her own agenda had been naive and selfish. She’d tried to use Baum’s quest to drag herself away from the North, away from the interminable drudgery of Norrow’s life on the road, the endless cycle of wheedling, anger and abuse. And who could blame her for that, if the only other option had been allowing herself to be sold into the hands of the Almouls? She had allied herself to Baum because he had given her a way out.

  But what if he was wrong?

  Malessar had, ironically, performed the same service for her in Hellea, and given her an avenue of escape. A way forward. He had brought her to Ga
lliarca as her patron, and she had never felt more alive. But he was also the man who destroyed the North, the man who had abandoned Stromondor just before the city’s walls were finally breached. And I owe him as much as I owe Baum.

  I cursed an entire kingdom. There was no pride behind those words, only pain. Centuries of self-loathing.

  I can’t do this. He deserves to know.

  When she looked up at last, drawing in the breath to begin her apology and explanation, it was to find Malessar already gone, his meal half-finished. The door to his apartment was closed.

  The momentum propelling her thoughts vanished like smoke. In the kitchen, Leili began to sing under her breath, the low tones of an old Galliarcan rhyme serving as an odd counterpoint to the quiet of the garden.

  Her hands trembling, Cassia gathered the plates and cups. They rattled on the tray as she carried it back to the kitchen. Then she returned to her small room, the cool air prickling her skin as she collected her staff and the thin sword of Pelicos. The sun illuminated the top of the western wall of the dhar if there was no passing cloud the day would soon become very uncomfortable.

  It already is uncomfortable. It can hardly get worse.

  She started up the winding steps to the rooftop. Meredith had taught her one way to calm herself and clear her mind. Now, if it took her all morning, it was time to see how well it worked.

  q

  She blinked in the light of the lantern, pulling the blanket up around her as she sat up on the pallet. “Who . . . ?”

  The lantern moved aside, up to the shelf high on the wall, illuminating Malessar’s deeply furrowed features. The warlock looked even more distracted than usual, as though he heard voices. He wore a high-collared thick coat, with another bundled under one arm.

  “I cannot rest,” he announced. “Our earlier conversation has given me cause for concern. You have focused my thoughts on something I have tried to keep from my mind these past few hundred years. And your news that there is growing momentum for the removal of the curse wards . . .”