The Fall of the Dagger (The Forsaken Lands)

by Glenda Larke

  As his gaze swept the scene, Saker readied the crossbow by touch. He had practised with the weapon for months on board ship, and Juster’s ire if a bolt hit the ship’s woodwork encouraged good marksmanship.

  No one was looking his way. He shot the bolt and the man slumped sideways, dying silently without fuss. Saker crouched for a moment, looking for any immediate danger. Nothing.

  Most of the men who’d survived the initial explosion had fled or were still fleeing. When he realised why, his puzzlement changed to horror. The overturned wagon was burning fiercely. Further away there was a crater where the earlier detonation had taken place, but there were several more kegs, still unopened, some of them surrounded by flames, staves already charring. If one keg exploded, the flash and concussion would set fire to the others.

  He was far enough away to have a possibility of surviving. Sorrel, if she was still alive, was certainly doomed. He sped across the intervening scrub as he’d never run before. As he raced, he dropped the crossbow and fumbled at the bambu segment he wore on a leather thong around his neck. By the time he reached Sorrel, he’d unstoppered it and grasped the remaining feather segment inside.

  With a clarity born of terror, he knew he had no chance of carrying her away in time. Instead, he flung himself over her body, curling his fingers around the feather fragment with one hand and grasping the dagger blade in the other. He thought of being cold and wet and safe. He whispered in her ear, “Live, Sorrel, live.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the beginnings of the explosion burgeon in a cloud of yellow and red and gold and orange and a roar of sound. Instinctively, his hand tightened round the kris. He didn’t feel the pain because right then sound and light blurred and melted into one, and it felt as if the air itself was bruising and crushing him.

  So this is what it is like to die.

  It didn’t happen. He was still there. Cold, not burned. Freezing. Shivering. Still lying on top of Sorrel. He could feel the rise and fall of her breathing, but otherwise she wasn’t stirring. His hand, slick with blood – his blood – was still wrapped around the kris blade. His palm was cut. When he opened his other hand, all that remained of the feather was a heap of gold-coloured dust that sifted through his fingers.

  He tried to rise, but couldn’t lift himself more than a couple of inches. He turned his head to look sideways. What he saw mystified him. He was looking at… glass? Flawed glass three or four inches thick! No, wait, that made no sense. He touched it with a finger. Va be poxed, it was ice, not glass.

  Turning his head still further, and wriggling sideways slightly so he could look over his shoulder, he saw it above him… more ice. He was cocooned in the stuff. He thought back to the moment before the explosion: he had asked to be cold and wet and safe.

  One thing about witcheries and sakti, he decided: they could be far too literal.

  A minute later, one of the sailors from Golden Petrel was battering at the ice with a rock to break their prison open.

  She was wrapped in fog.

  “I’ve done all I can.” Grig Cranald’s voice. Muffled, as if it came from a long way away. “We need Surgeon Barklee, or better still a witchery healer.”

  “It will be hours before we get to Twite, even if this wind holds.” That was Lord Juster Dornbeck. No mistaking his beautifully articulated drawl.

  “She is strong.” That was Ardhi. Good, he was still alive. And so was she. Sorrel felt a surge of gratitude.

  She opened her eyes, and saw him standing there, the brown of his skin muddy and blotched as if he was ill. He was holding her hand. She couldn’t make sense of anything because there was a hole in her memory. The last thing she recalled was gripping the kris and running. No, trying to run, and being unable to do more than crawl. The essence of a nightmare. Before that? A man, a dagger. He’d cut into her side; she remembered blood and pain. Yes, there it was again. Stabbing along her ribs.

  Yet surely she was on board ship now, and wasn’t this the captain’s cabin? Someone was dribbling sugar water into her mouth. She swallowed to avoid choking.

  “Don’t move.” Mate Grig Cranald’s voice. “You have a wound deep in your left side and you’ve lost a lot of blood. That’s why you feel so weak. I’ve stitched it up, but it’s important that it doesn’t start bleeding again, so you mustn’t move.”

  She wanted to agree with that, but the words would not come. She closed her eyes and drifted away.

  When she awoke again, it was dark outside. The familiar sounds of a ship on the move were comforting. The ropes sang, the masts creaked, the hull whispered – a hundred different sounds she’d come to recognise over the months. And in her nostrils, the saltiness of seawater, the tang of wet rope – and the smell of the fragrant oil that Ardhi used on his hands to stop them being chafed by salt-soaked wet ropes.

  She smiled. The aroma reminded her of so much that was good in the world. “Ardhi,” she said without opening her eyes.

  “I’m here. Don’t move too much.”

  More water dribbled, and she drank greedily this time. She cracked her lids apart. “I feel so tired.”

  “I want you to drink more.” He pushed a straw between her lips and she sucked up something sweet. She drank as much as she could, then pushed it away. “How did I get back here?”

  He smiled at someone standing to her side. “Saker.”

  She turned her head slightly to see him. “Dear friend.” She smiled weakly. “Should have listened to your nagging.”

  “Probably. But your messing with gunpowder did the trick in the end. The explosion and the resultant fire killed almost everyone in that particular encampment, and it distracted the other lancers elsewhere. They thought they were being attacked by a huge force of men bombarding them with cannon. Many dropped their weapons and ran away. We dealt with the rest and our casualties were low. The besiegers have vanished and I gather that the local farmers are exacting revenge for the months of pillage of their farms by dispatching the deserters. You are the hero of the battle.”

  She laughed, winced and decided not to do that again. Va, but she was weak.

  “There’s one… not so good thing,” he added. “I used another piece of feather. We had six between us, and now we’ve used three. Yet we haven’t come close to Fox – and we have Piper and her twin to think of too. Perhaps we need a feather piece for each of them.”

  To kill or to cure. If they could.

  He rubbed a hand over his head. “I don’t know why the Rani couldn’t have told us more about how they could be used.”

  “I don’t think she knew herself how they would work in the Va-cherished Hemisphere,” said Ardhi. “How could she? She wasn’t familiar even with your witcheries, let alone the origins of your sorcerers.”

  “Then maybe she should have given us something more powerful.”

  Ardhi quirked an eyebrow. “Like a whole regalia plume—?”

  Saker sighed. “Yes, I know. That would have been madness. She did her best, and she risked much to trust us.”

  “You haven’t said how you used the feather to save me, Saker,” Sorrel said. “My last memory was terror that the gunpowder was going to explode and I was going to die.”

  He handed her the water with a warning look. Hastily she started to drink.

  “When I reached you, the kegs were already on the verge of exploding. I had no time to carry you out of the way. All I could think to do was to hold the feather tight, grip the dagger, and think of anything that could save us both.”

  “Like what?”

  “I thought of being safe and cold and wet and protected. There was no time to be more specific.”

  “Sweet cankers, Saker! Just tell me what happened!”

  “I’m not sure you are going to believe it.”

  “I’ve been to a land where birds rule and can talk inside your head, I’ve seen age-old shrines disappear – and you think I will have trouble believing what you’re about to tell me?”

  “There was a s
tream a few paces away, remember? The water came out of it, surrounded us, and turned into ice.” When she stared at him, startled, he said, “I told you it was hard to believe.”

  “Ice?”

  “A wall of ice, a hand-span thick. Part of it was smashed by flying debris, and the heat of the explosion melted some, but enough was left to keep us safe.”

  Ardhi added, “A connection between the sakti of my islands and the Way of the Flow in yours. A combination that saved you.”

  “Thank you,” she said to Saker. “You risked your life for me.”

  He smiled at her. “Just returning a favour.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “We need to find a healer for you, so we’re sailing to Twite. We don’t want that wound of yours turning septic. We’ll be there tomorrow morning. After that, we are going to the main Twite shrine. If I am right, we will have a message there from Fritillary Reedling.”

  The Twite healer forbade Sorrel from leaving her bed for at least a day, so when Lord Juster, Prince Ryce, Saker and Ardhi set off from Golden Petrel’s berth to walk to Twite’s main shrine-oak, they left her behind.

  Prince Ryce grumbled all the way, much to Saker’s irritation, saying he didn’t understand how anyone could communicate with an invisible keeper at an invisible shrine. “This is a waste of time,” he muttered as they strode through the streets of the port. “I want to ensure the safety of my wife and son. I ought to be confronting my father!”

  “Deposing a king is not a step to be taken lightly,” Juster said.

  Ryce looked at him in surprise. “Do you really think there’s a question about who is more important to me? King Edwayn betrayed not only his own family, but also his country. As far as I am concerned my father is but the shell of a king. He needs to be deprived of his throne.” He caught the look Saker gave Ardhi, and added, “Master Witan, not a word, please.”

  “No, Your Highness,” he said dutifully.

  As he’d expected, the place where the oak had been was now a mess of prickles wreathed in mist. Lord Juster looked over at Saker. “I suppose this is where you do your stuff with the eagle.”

  At least the bird was not hungry this time, so it didn’t fight him as he cajoled it down to the ground. When he tied his letter to its leg, it did however stab at him with its beak, drawing blood. He calmed it with a soothing sound in the back of his throat, and sent it on its way.

  “What did you write?” Ardhi asked as the bird took off.

  “Just that we are here, and asking if they have a message for us from Pontifect Fritillary. Oh, and I said the siege of Gromwell had been lifted and that His Highness is with us.”

  “And how long will we have to wait for a reply?” Ryce asked.

  Saker shrugged.

  “That look,” Ryce said, “bordered on disrespect, witan!”

  “It was supposed to,” he replied cheerfully. “I figure that we all can treat you as a bosom comrade for at least three years on the basis of lifting the siege.”

  “Absolutely,” Juster agreed. “Possibly even four. In fact, I expect to have my next foray into privateering funded out of the royal treasury.”

  “You fobbing bastards. As penance for your disrespectful perfidy, I can make you all walk barefoot dressed in sackcloth from here to land’s end at Gilly Point!”

  “That wouldn’t worry me too much,” Ardhi replied, looking down at his unshod feet. “I’ve already walked barefoot from Lowmeer to Ardrone once.”

  “He’s not joking,” Saker said. “He did.”

  “Then maybe your penance would be to wear shoes?” Ryce suggested.

  Juster laughed. “He’s got you there, Ardhi.”

  Ryce looked at Ardhi, interested. “You’re a sailor and yet you walked? Why?”

  “A long story,” Ardhi said.

  “Some day I hope to hear it.” He sobered, and added, “I may never be able to repay you all for what you’ve done. I won’t forget the risks you have taken, nor your loyalty. I have no idea what I will be able to offer you, any of you, but I will tell you this: if you help unite me with Princess Bealina and my son, you can name your price.”

  “Oh, in that case, I am sure we will oblige,” Lord Juster said, “although did I not once warn you about making too many promises to your ne’er-do-well friends?”

  “Who said any of you were my friends?” he countered, arching an eyebrow. “A nulled witan, a reckless privateer, a trickster handmaiden – who mysteriously now has a name other than Celandine Marten, which no one has explained – and a shoeless Va-forsaken islander? You jest, Juster. Whatever could a disinherited and discredited penniless prince, with only a cannon-battered ruin to his name, possibly have in common with such a passel of reprobates?”

  Juster studied his nails thoughtfully. “A love of perilous adventure? An absurd hankering to cross swords with a sorcerer? Believe me, even the handmaiden doesn’t seem averse to tackling doomed ventures—”

  They never heard the remainder of what he was going to say, because just then the world around them began to change.

  The untidy tangle of vegetation shivered, as if in a breeze, then dissipated, like a painted scene melting in the rain. The eagle rose up into the sky, calling in alarm, circling higher and higher until it was just a dot in the sky.

  And there, where the furze and holly and brambles had been, the oak tree shrine began to appear, first just as an indeterminate vagueness, and then in living detail. A solid oak, hundreds of years old, clad in the young leaves of late spring when they should surely have begun to turn, surrounded by outbuildings, vegetable gardens, people and livestock – a whole complex that had more in common with a monastery than a shrine. People with witcheries had been living here in hiding, just as they had in Hornbeam.

  Waiting at the entrance to the shrine was Fritillary Reedling.

  She looks so much older, Saker thought in shock. Her hair was completely white.

  “Well,” said Juster, sounding pleased, “it seems your note must have said exactly the right things, Saker.”

  26

  An Assembly of Heroes

  Afterwards, when he had to describe the scene to Sorrel, Saker remembered the confusion of that moment. They all had questions to ask, and answers to give, and explanations to make. There were also secrets to keep.

  Saker’s greatest confusion, though, came from the Pontifect’s appearance. She had aged badly. Apart from the change in her hair, her face was lined and her once beautiful hands were covered in liver spots and wrinkles.

  Gall ’n’ acorns, it’s what – only three years since I saw her last, and she looks at least fifteen years older!

  For her benefit, he sketched a bare outline of what had happened since he’d last seen her, but serious conversation was postponed until the shrine keeper, an elderly, dark-skinned man proud of the Pashali blood mixed in with his Shenat ancestry, led them into his private section of the shrine. Living roots had been twisted in their growth to form seats, but there were only four, which meant that someone had to sit on the beaten soil. Ryce, Fritillary and Juster all took a seat as their right. Saker and Ardhi grinned at one another and said nothing. Saker, knowing that Chenderawasi folk regarded chairs as something designed for discomfort and used for formal occasions when brevity was to be encouraged, let Ardhi sit on the ground.

  The shrine keeper served elderberry wine in wooden cups. As he was withdrawing to leave them alone for their discussion, he caught Saker’s eye, deeply distressed.

  Change, Saker thought. Everything was changing, and even those keepers who had dealt with several hundred years of history found the present challenges unprecedented. Oak shrines, supposed to be places of peace and comfort, had been caught up in violence and war. Some had even been destroyed.

  After the shrine keeper had left, Lord Juster took a sip of the wine and spluttered. For a moment Saker thought he was going to spit it out, but his good manners prevailed and he swallowed it with a pained expression, muttering s
omething that sounded like “Hog’s piddle.”

  Ryce looked at him quizzically.“Really?”

  “Some other time, gentlemen!” Fritillary snapped. “We have much to do. Keep your stories relevant and as succinct as possible. Details can wait.”

  When no one volunteered to go first, she began, detailing what Gerelda Brantheld had been doing with Peregrine Clary – whom Saker had never heard of – to kill some of the sorcerer sons of Valerian Fox. Saker didn’t know whether to be appalled or impressed. The idea that Gerelda had been embroiled in so many murders, however justified, grieved him for her sake. Sweet Va, how life had changed in the Va-cherished Hemisphere! Va-cherished? That had become a laughable epithet for their land.

  Fritillary then moved on to tell the full story of Sir Herelt Deremer and the Dire Sweepers, and how Deremer had discovered the truth about the Horned Death – thanks to Saker’s preliminary discoveries. “The Sweepers, aided by Lowmian guards, have eliminated Fox sorcerers from Lowmeer. Deremer believes the only ones left are those in Ardrone, East Denva, Valance and Vavala, which is excellent news.”

  Saker kept silent on the question which bothered him most about Deremer: why had the man tried so hard to kill him at that small village in the south of Lowmeer?

  Of everything that was said that morning, it was the story she had to tell about how the shrines had been hidden, and why, that interested him most.

  “We had no way of fighting Valerian Fox in the beginning,” she explained. “His sorcerer sons were everywhere.”

  “Fobbing grubbery, he must have been jumping in the bed of every Fox female on every Fox estate for years, from the Principalities down to our southern shores, to have had so many sons,” Juster muttered with a tinge of reluctant admiration. “Surely half of his offspring were girls?”

  “I wonder if he used sorcery to ensure otherwise. Not important now. Coercion made it easy for him to raise an army; Fox money armed them. His problem was more how to take men who’d never held a sword or a bow in their lives and turn them into soldiers.”

  “Which is why he’s relied mostly on lances, pikes, crossbows, staves,” Prince Ryce said. “Easier to train them to use those things than to make a longbow archer or a swordsman.”