by Ian Irvine
There was a haunted look in her eyes. He looked out the north window but the mountain was just a tall, pointed shadow. Beyond it, far out to sea, lightning turned the insides of a towering thunderstorm milky. He sat on the bed, overcome by exhaustion and hopelessness.
Dilly went to the door but stopped, her hand on the knob. “What will you do now?”
“Try to find out what happened to Karan. I don’t even know if she’s alive. Though, realistically—”
“You mustn’t give up hope,” said Dilly.
The past day had battered him down; he couldn’t think, couldn’t plan. “If she is alive, she’ll be heading for Sith with our allies.”
“Sith is a month’s ride from here, if you had a horse. Or several weeks sailing.”
“By the time I got there the war might be over. And then there’s Sulien, somewhere in Shazabba with the awful Whelm …”
“You might wait weeks for a ship going that far south. And it’ll cost a fortune.”
Llian’s pockets were empty; Snoat’s guards had taken everything when they had searched him last night. He groaned.
“If you need fresh air,” said Dilly, “there’s a roof platform up the stairs to the right. In olden times they kept watch there for the return of the fishing fleet. Hungry times if it came late—or never came back,” she said with a little shiver. “Good night.”
A chill crept into Llian’s bones and he threw off his clothes and climbed into bed.
A distant rumbling roused him and he saw that the storm had moved closer. He slept again, only to be woken by a brilliant flare of lightning and an almighty crash of thunder. The storm was approaching Demondifang, which he now saw to be a fang of yellow rock rearing up for a couple of thousand feet out of forest.
His grim thoughts turned back to Karan. How could she have survived that mad attack on the magiz? The lightning flashed, the thunder boomed—she’s dead, dead, dead!
His eyes stung, but he had to face the unbearable truth—dead or alive, there was nothing he could do for her. All the more reason to take Sulien back from the Whelm, who would beat her, crush her spirit and turn her into a little Whelm like their own miserable children. But how, in that frozen wilderness, was he supposed to find her when he had no coin and no way to get any?
The lightning was now so frequent and the thunder so loud that there was no hope of sleep. He dressed and went up the stairs, then climbed a short wooden ladder through a circular hole in the floor of the lookout platform. It was only a couple of yards square, with a low wooden rail around it on all sides, and the wind was strong enough to shake the timbers.
To his surprise, Ifoli stood at the rail, looking north at the mountain. “I’ve never seen a storm as fierce as this. And it’s heading right for our mountain.”
The storm crept closer until it was directly above the peak and lightning struck at the highest point, over and over. The wind strengthened and it started to rain.
He was about to go down when something occurred to him. “You were Nadiril’s spy for more than a year.”
She did not reply.
“You would have needed a safe way to contact him.”
“Mmn,” she said.
“In the olden days, Nadiril used to make quaint little devices for talking to people from afar. If you’ve still got one, can you find out if there’s any news of Karan?”
After a long hesitation she said, “I’ll try, though they don’t work well over such long distances.”
He turned back to the mountain. “What’s up there?”
“I don’t know; I’ve never climbed Demondifang. But young couples still do if the weather is good; it’s considered lucky.”
It did not look lucky now; it looked as though the storm was trying to hammer the tip of the peak to pieces.
13
I’LL DISPOSE OF THE SURPLUS
The Merdrun warrior who had been beating Wilm for the past ten minutes struck him a final savage blow in the belly that sent jags of pain in all directions, then let him go. Wilm crumpled to the ground, writhing. There was no part of him that did not hurt. But it would soon be over. Gergrig was coming down the slope, raising his sword as if to split Wilm’s head in two.
Someone called from further around the hill, out of sight. Wilm did not hear what was said, but Gergrig stopped and lowered the blade.
“Garlugg’s right,” he said quietly to the man beside him. “The magiz mentioned this youth. He’s close to some of their most important people; he may be more use to us alive.” He kicked Wilm in the head, almost reflectively. “Besides, we need all the strong young slaves we can get. Bring him.”
“Get up!” snapped the warrior. He was as muscular as a weightlifter; there were even knots of muscle along his jawline.
Wilm lurched to his feet, trying not to cry out, for he ached all over. He raised his hands to his face, which felt hot and bloated. His fingers came back bloody. His nose was dripping blood, both lips were split, and his left eye was so swollen that he could not see out of it.
His hands were bound behind his back and he was driven at sword point down the hill. He was staggering by the time he got to the bottom, and felt like throwing up, but fought to hold it in—the Merdrun gloried in killing and, if they saw the slightest weakness, might cut him down. He had to survive. The invasion must not succeed.
After an exhausting march across undulating green countryside he was shoved through the guarded gates of a large walled estate. To the left there were orchards and vegetable gardens. On the right stood a cream-coloured manor, even larger and grander than Snoat’s villa of Pem-Y-Rum, into which Wilm and Dajaes had tunnelled less than a month ago to rescue Llian. And where Dajaes had been murdered by Unick.
Wilm choked at the memories. But he had made Unick pay; the summon stone had consumed the brute and he would never hurt anyone again.
Wilm put the past aside. For the moment only one thing mattered: he had to survive, learn as many of the enemy’s secrets as he could, then escape and help to defeat them.
He was driven past the colonnaded front of the house, across a terrace which stood a yard higher than the lawn and was paved with polished slabs of the same cream-coloured stone. Ribbons of blood ran down the broad steps, and dozens of bodies, all dark-skinned and with black hair, strewed the paving, the steps and the lawn.
Some of the dead wore brightly coloured silks—sleeveless shirts or blouses and knee-length pantaloons. Wilm assumed them to be the family who’d owned the estate, slaughtered as they tried to escape. Others, servants, wore simple white garments. A group of men, apparently slain as they ran to the defence of the owners, were only clad in loincloths, farm labourers perhaps.
They rounded a corner and ahead milled a throng of dark-skinned folk, mostly men though with a few women. All looked young and strong, though many bore the marks of savage beatings. Their hands were tied and they were watched by Merdrun guards.
“Form lines of ten,” grated a red-handed guard. “No talking.”
They formed into lines. Anyone who was too slow, or did not line up precisely behind the person in front, was beaten.
“You all right?” the man next to Wilm said quietly. “Take it easy.”
He was a big handsome young fellow, and the sympathy in his eyes was evident. Wilm gave an almost imperceptible nod.
“In line, you!” snarled the red-handed guard, smacking Wilm over the head with the flat of his sword. The blow made his ears ring.
The handsome young man said, “He’s going as fast as he can.”
The guard swung his curved blade in a horizontal arc faster than Wilm’s eye could follow and beheaded the kindly man before he could blink. Blood went everywhere.
Wilm froze, staring down at the body and the severed head, which had come to rest with those soft eyes looking blankly into his.
“No … talking!” grated the guard.
Wilm could not have spoken even if he had wanted to; his breath had congealed in his throat in horro
r. More guards appeared and tied each line together.
“Don’t move,” said the killer. “Look straight ahead. Don’t speak.”
The tropical sun pounded on Wilm’s aching head. He was drenched in sweat in his winter clothes but his mouth was dry as paper. He had drunk nothing since leaving the freezing little hut last night with Aviel, heading down to Carcharon and the summon stone. Dizziness overcame him and he swayed, but the dark woman next to him elbowed him in the ribs. Horror stabbed through Wilm—if he’d fallen it would have cost him his head.
An officer appeared, a burly fellow whose right eye socket was empty. The top of his flat bald head was a mass of lumpy red scars, as if he had been scalped. He was accompanied by a muscular woman with a close-cropped skull. The Merdrun glyph was tattooed on her broad forehead in blue, and a different glyph on her right cheek in black. She carried a rolled map in one hand and a roll of buff leather in the other.
She looked down at the beheaded man without interest, then gestured to the end of the colonnade, five yards away. She unrolled the map on the paving stones and they studied it for several minutes, the officer pointing out hills, rivers and bridges and other features of interest. Wilm watched from the corners of his eyes.
“Here?” The woman prodded the map with a stubby finger.
“Vulnerable here and here,” said the officer, leaning over the map.
“What about here?”
“Poor water supply.”
“Here?”
After a minute’s consideration he said, “Not ideal, but we can make it work. It doesn’t have to last.” He lowered his voice until Wilm had to strain his ears to hear. “We’ve got to work fast, before the enemy—”
She let out a hiss and he broke off, then added, “How long to draw up the plans?”
The woman, whom Wilm assumed to be an architect or builder, glanced at the cloudless sky. “I’ll have them sketched by noon, enough to make a start.”
The officer nodded. “How long will the fortress take to build?”
“Depends on how many slave masons we can find.”
“What about our own masons?”
“We’ve only got fourteen.”
He scowled. “Why so few?”
“We lost more than half in the assault on the ring fortress on Cinnabar.”
“Then our fourteen must supervise the slave masons. How many slaves do you need?”
The architect did a series of calculations on the side of the map and added the numbers, her thick lips moving. “If we tear down the town nearby and reuse the stone, we can get by with four thousand.”
“We have five thousand—”
“We don’t have the masons to direct that many slaves.”
“Then I’ll dispose of the surplus. No point feeding the swine if we don’t need them.”
The back of Wilm’s neck throbbed as if a sword was swinging at it. If they were killing surplus slaves he would be one of the first.
The architect shook her head. “Working flat out, we’ll lose dozens of slaves a day. We’ll need at least a thousand in reserve.”
“How long will it take?”
“It’ll be defendable after … twenty days.”
The officer grunted. “It’d better be.”
He walked off. The architect carried a table out of the manor onto the colonnade and stood at it, working on her drawings. The sun pounded down on Wilm’s unprotected head and it took all the self-control he could muster to stay upright.
A group of slaves appeared, heaving barrels on hand carts, and half a dozen wooden troughs that, judging by the smell and the crusted stains, had been taken from a pigsty.
Two of the troughs were filled with water, the others with a foul-smelling swill that might have come from the same sty. The slaves were led forward in their lines, one line to each trough, and each slave allowed a minute for drinking and two for eating before being kicked out of the way. Clearly the Merdrun considered their captives to be little more than beasts.
Wilm, who had grown up in the poorest family in Casyme, was so hungry that he was salivating—and disgusted with himself for doing so. He had no father and had lived with his mother in the meanest of huts, but she had been a proud woman. The hut had been scrubbed until it shone, and his clothes, though made of the cheapest homespun, had been beautifully sewn and were always scrupulously clean. He was proud too. How could he bear to eat swill from a pig’s trough?
No, he thought. The only way we can beat the Merdrun is if every one of us, in big ways or small, does whatever it takes. If he had to eat swill he would do it, but not like a pig. And with every mouthful he would screw his determination a little higher.
While his line of slaves waited their turn, he looked along the colonnade at the murdered owners and their servants, then down at the fly-covered corpse beside him, a kindly young man cut down solely to teach the other slaves obedience. The Merdrun had to be stopped before they destroyed the world the way they had ruined this pretty place. But what could he, an untrained youth, do?
After Dajaes’ murder, Wilm had taught himself the basics of sword fighting, using a pamphlet Llian had written out for him, and as an antidote to his grief he had practised with such iron determination that he had subsequently bested Snoat’s master assassin, Jundelix Rasper. After that, Wilm had set out to rescue Aviel from Unick, and had done so.
With dogged determination and a little bit of luck an untrained youth could do a lot. Wilm was going to play his part in bringing the Merdrun down … though first he had to survive.
The guards drove Wilm’s line of slaves to the troughs. He drank his fill of the foul brown water then knelt before the stinking feeding trough. The muck smelled disgusting, but it was food and he needed it. He choked down as much as he could in his two minutes, then stood up.
He would bend his knee to the Merdrun and do whatever they required of him, but all the while he would be studying their defences, their arts of war, their strengths and weaknesses, and the way they managed their slaves, and he would prepare himself in every possible way for the moment a chance came. He would never give in.
Wilm was going to study himself just as diligently. He would analyse his strengths and work out how to foster them, assess his weaknesses and how to eradicate or hide them. He would make himself into a warrior as determined as any Merdrun. No, more determined, for he was fighting for the world he loved.
And when a chance did come, he would strike.
14
I’M AFRAID OF BEING CORRUPTED
Kill him! Kill him! Kill him!
Gergrig’s order kept echoing through Aviel’s mind. It was like being stabbed in the same place again and again; she could not rid herself of the memory. “Wilm, Wilm?” she whispered, as if the endless repetition of his name could keep him alive …
But how could he be alive? Hours had passed since the gate, captured by Malien and Nadiril and dragged to Alcifer, had been diverted. When it reopened Aviel had been tossed out onto the bloody deck of Snoat’s flagship, into the middle of a ghastly battle; she’d had to scramble over red-ruined bodies to reach a cluster of water barrels. Cowering there, shivering, she had seen more horrors in five minutes than in her previous life, and every death had reminded her that Wilm was a prisoner of the vicious Merdrun. What if they strung him up like that poor, pathetic captain, Pender?
Aviel groaned.
Now the flagship was racing north for Vilikshathûr, and she lay huddled under a smelly blanket in the tiny cabin that Tallia, seeing her distress, had made over to her. It was no bigger than a cupboard, with a narrow bunk that her small frame barely fitted into. The cramped cabin was mouldy and dank, but it suited Aviel; it felt like a protecting cocoon.
Wilm’s black sword stood in the corner in its gleaming copper sheath. She did not like swords but it was all she had left of him now. She reached out to it, then stopped. What would he think of her, huddled here in filth and apathy?
Aviel could not bear to be unclean; it r
eminded her of her drunken father, her six slatternly half-sisters and the filthy ruin, once a grand old house, they lived in back in Casyme. She undressed, scrubbed off the blood and grime with a rag and water from a jug clamped to the cabin wall, and dressed in clean, crumpled garments from her little pack.
She got out the deadly scent potion grimoire she had borrowed from Shand while he was away. She had planned to give it back and humbly beg his forgiveness, but Shand had fled, accused of being a traitor. Had the world gone mad?
Someone rapped at the door. Aviel shoved the grimoire under the blanket, her heart pounding, but did not answer. She did not like meeting new people. She just wanted to be back in her little perfumery workshop, alone with her grief and her misery. The repetitive tasks of scent making—harvesting herbs and flowers, distilling, purifying and cleaning, cleaning, cleaning—were comforting, and she missed them desperately.
The door opened and a thin, long-faced young woman stood there, carrying a basket. Her hair, cut short, was pale. Aviel could not remember her name.
“Lilis,” said the young woman. “I’m Nadiril’s assistant at the Great Library. I thought you might be hungry.”
Go away! Leave me alone.
Lilis held out the basket and Aviel smelled hot soup. She salivated; she’d been on starvation rations for weeks.
“Thank you,” she said hoarsely.
The basket contained a huge mug whose silver cap was engraved with a single rosebud, a slab of hard, dense cake full of nuts and seeds, a salt shaker and a spoon. She lifted the cap. The mug was full of a thick, meaty soup. She smelled pepper, yellow peas, and parsnip.
“Would you like some?” she said politely to Lilis.
“No, thanks.”
Then clear out.
Lilis settled herself on the end of the bed as if she planned a long visit. Aviel sighed, but the odour of the soup was irresistible. She ate most of it and a small piece of the cake, then leaned back and closed her eyes.
Kill him! Kill him! Kill him! She choked.
