by Glenda Larke
Impatiently, Fox picked up the map and walked out of Ardhi’s view. “Why is it so slumbering dark in here?” he growled. “Pull the bell, man, and get a servant to light the candles! This fobbing rain—”
Ardhi opened the door a fraction more to enlarge the crack. Fox had moved over to the window and was now staring out through the rain-streaked glass. “What the blistering pox—?” His face changed, twisting in rage. “That’s a witchery rain! What is that Va-pickled hag up to now? Alert the guard!”
Ardhi hurtled into the room. As he tore across the carpet, he flung the kris at Fox, but lunged for the other man to stop him raising the alarm. The fellow was reaching out to the handle of the double doors on the main corridor when Ardhi crashed into the back of his knees. Taken completely unaware, he didn’t even have time to break his fall. His head cracked against the unopened door. Ardhi reached for his second dagger and stabbed him without checking to see if it was necessary.
Rolling to his feet in a half crouch, dagger dripping blood in his hand, he turned to face Fox. The sorcerer was still standing at the window, looking down at the kris sticking out of his chest. The table was between them.
He should be dead.
The kris had surely entered his heart up to the crosspiece of the haft. The sorcerer was as pale as buttermilk, yet he still stood. He raised his head to look at Ardhi, his expression one of black rage, tinged with disbelief. He tried to grip the hilt of the kris, but it burned him when he touched it and he snatched his hand back. Then, with a chilling lack of fear, he pulled off the chain around his neck with its Va-faith symbol of oakleaf and water, topped by his own addition, a leaping fox.
Ardhi attempted to step towards him, but couldn’t. He felt as if he was buffeted by a gale so strong that forward movement was impossible. It wasn’t wind, though; it was waves of sorcerous power, rushing at him, snatching his breath. It was all he could do to clutch the hilt of his other dagger, to refuse to let it be swept away by the wash of vile potency.
Coercion?
He didn’t think so. This was just raw power. Power sucked from the innocence of children, power purloined from sorcerous sons – the man was keeping his own injured heart alive using the lives he had stolen.
Winding the chain around the hilt of the kris, Fox yanked it out of his chest without touching it with his fingers, and it flew back to Ardhi’s free hand. The sorcerer smiled. “I don’t know who you are, or what that dagger is, but it will take more than that to kill me.”
Ardhi wiped Fox’s blood away on the flank of his trousers and looked down at the kris. The feather flecks in the blade had blackened.
Seri protect us…
36
In the Fox’s Den
Saker raced across the terrace to the Pontifect’s entrance to the palace building, Gerelda at his shoulder, Sorrel and Perie just behind. A Grey Lancer guard stood on either side of the open doorway, each armed with a pike. Faced with people waving swords running towards them, they both stepped away from the door into the open, gripping their weapons in an attacking stance.
A sword was not much use against a pike, so Saker skidded to a halt, Gerelda at his side. They both had their wheel-lock pistols primed, and at this range it would have been easy enough to kill both men – but reloading would have to wait until they were inside out of the rain, and would take about a minute. A minute they might not have once they entered the building.
“Leave this to me,” said a voice at Saker’s shoulder. He turned to see Barden, his wrinkled face crinkling into a smile that displayed several missing teeth. He stepped forward jauntily, still leaning on his staff.
Saker went to grab his arm, but Fritillary shook her head at him.
The guards exchanged a puzzled glance. “Well, well, what have we here?” the younger man asked. “An old codger who wants to play?” He lowered his pike, intending to poke him in the stomach with the spearhead. “Are you sure you got legitimate business with the Pontifect, Grandpa?”
“More certain than I am that you ever went to school,” Barden replied, and swung his staff. It whirled out of his hand and smashed into the shaft of the pike so hard that the weapon clattered to the marble tiles. The guard scrabbled to pick it up, but bent over he presented a perfect target. The staff cracked the defenceless man over the head. Sorrel winced. Barden chuckled.
Gerelda looked impressed. “Now why can’t I have a walking stick like that?”
“Maybe when you’re long enough in the tooth?” Saker suggested.
The other guard stared, disbelieving, but not for long. He levelled his weapon, roared his anger and charged at Barden. Once again the staff was there first, slamming down on the pole behind the metal reinforcing of the spearhead. The shaft broke in two. The guard, enraged, tucked what was left under his arm and ran at the old man as if the shattered end was a battering ram. But the staff hadn’t finished yet. It tripped the guard up. Barden hobbled forward, grabbed it and brought the end down hard on the back of the man’s skull.
Fritillary nodded her appreciation. “Nicely done, Barden. You always were the perfect secretary.”
“One is never too old to learn a new skill.” He pulled a face at the bloody mess on the head of the staff and tried to wipe it clean on the guard’s coat.
Saker peered through the door. “Get a feather piece ready, Sorrel.”
She removed the stopper from her bambu pendant and took one out.
“Perie, let’s go,” he said. “Gerelda, you guard the door. Do your best to keep everyone out.”
Sorrel waited for Saker to enter the building first, followed by Perie who calmly stepped over the two bodies to join him. Barden, leaning on his staff again, was next. She hung back momentarily, staring at the lancers. They looked to be dead. “I’ll never get used to this.”
“You’re not supposed to,” Fritillary replied. “Acknowledging the tragedy of death is what makes us human.” She hoisted her ragged skirts up to keep them out of the blood and strode forward, unarmed and straight-backed. “Come on, my dear. You’ve seen worse than this before.”
The passage opened up before them, doors on either side. Perie ignored the first few, then stopped short and pointed. “That one,” he whispered. “He’s in there.”
Saker nodded. “The son?” he asked in a whisper.
“Not here. Downstairs.”
“Go kill him.” He pointed back to where Gerelda waited.
Perie nodded and returned the way they’d come.
Sorrel came forward. She was to be first in the door, a glamoured version of Harrier Fox, Valerian’s father. As Barden was the only one who remembered the man well, he’d helped Sorrel perfect the likeness, right down to his favoured facial expression. They hoped the shock of his sudden appearance might buy them a few precious moments before Valerian saw through the glamour to the woman beneath.
There was still no sign of Ardhi. “Shouldn’t we wait?” she asked, hiding her despair.
Saker checked his pistol. “No. Have faith. He won’t let us down.”
Sorrel put her hand to the doorknob, turned and pushed. The door caught and did not fully open. When she peeked inside, she could see it was blocked by a dead body sprawled on the floor. Not Fox, she knew that immediately.
Saker came to her aid, putting his shoulder to the door. The body slid across the carpet, smearing a pool of blood and allowing them both to step into the room, Fritillary and Barden on their heels.
Fox and Ardhi faced one another, Ardhi strangely stilled, his kris in his hand, wet with blood.
She stared straight at the sorcerer, maintaining her glamour. For that precious moment he was transfixed. Saker was given the time he needed to level his pistol and pull the trigger. The flash, the smoke, the deafening noise that left her ears ringing…
He should never have missed. They were so close. Saker was a good shot. And yet, Fox still stood, unmoving, untouched. Saker dropped the useless pistol and drew his sword.
It was then she felt it,
the black tarryness that made breathing difficult. With disbelieving eyes, she saw the ball from the pistol hovering in the air just a handspan from Fox’s chest before it fell to the floor in front of him.
She struggled to make sense of it. Saker hadn’t missed.
Not coercion.
A sorcerous barrier. No wonder assassins had failed.
“Kill each other!” Fox yelled at them.
She knew the order for what it was, and dismissed it.
“Don’t be so witless, Valerian,” Fritillary remarked. “Your sorcery does nothing to us. Today is the day of your death.”
She’s buying time for us, Sorrel thought, amazed at how calm the woman sounded, even as her face was draining of colour, and her breathing became increasingly laboured.
“Fritillary Reedling?” Fox asked, incredulous. He looked her up and down. “I thought you were long dead. In fact, you smell dead. Is that a burial shroud you’re wearing?”
“I have the strength of the Way of the Oak and the Way of the Flow behind me, remember? And I’ve come to claim back the Pontificate.”
“And you brought along that old fool secretary? What, will he write out my resignation?” He appeared genuinely amused, rather than worried. “Barden, use that staff of yours to kill her.”
Barden shook his head. “You can’t coerce me, you botch of nature.”
For the first time, Fox appeared disconcerted. He knew Barden had no Shenat blood, nor Way of Flow roots, and should then never have possessed a witchery. Yet the old man rejected his coercion with a smile. Saker and Sorrel used the moment to step forward to Ardhi’s side.
Saker’s identity registered with Fox then, his eyes widening as he took an involuntary step backwards. “Rampion?”
“That’s right.”
“No, it can’t be. Your face was scarred.”
“Shenat looks after its own.”
Nonsense words: anything to make Fox doubt his ascendancy.
As the others caught Fox’s attention one by one, Sorrel manoeuvred herself into position close to Fritillary and between Saker and Ardhi. She let her glamour fade and grabbed Saker’s free hand, enclosing the piece of the feather between his palm and her own. With her other hand, she gripped Ardhi’s bare upper arm. He showed her the kris, and she saw, to her horror, blackened streaks in the blade where once there had been fiery gold.
She struggled to breathe. The air felt thick and foul, and she choked on it. More than that, it was saturated with sounds, the cries of people struggling to live, the terrified protests of sorcerers knowing they were betrayed by the man who had sired them. At the fringes of her vision she saw a curling darkness, like the scorching edge of parchment before it flamed in a fire. This was what Perie called a tarry smutch, and it was full of the memory of dead voices, sucked up by Fox along with their lives. She tried to speak, but no words came. Ardhi turned to look at her, and she read both love and despair in his gaze. He’d refused to die under that onslaught of power, yet neither could he break free.
Fritillary reached out and placed a hand on the back of Sorrel’s neck, fingers tingling, her skin-to-skin touch soothing. Somewhere, far away, the woman’s voice taunted Fox. Sorrel poured all her strength into turning her head to look at Fritillary, less then an arm’s length away. Her witchery was glowing. It outshone Saker’s, although every now and then there were flashes of a nasty mustard colour staining it, like dirty smoke obscuring sunlight.
“Sorrel.” Saker, trying to say something. His hand tightened on hers, pressing the feather into her flesh. “Remember.”
Remember the plan. Remember the unity.
Feather, kris, Avian, oak, glamour, witchery, transformation.
“I don’t know what any of you think you are doing.” Fox, mocking them. “Your puny power cannot conquer mine. You’re an old woman, Fritillary, raddled before your time, while I have so many fresh young lives in me. And you, Rampion? Can you fight me? I stopped a pistol ball. Do you think your sword can reach me?”
Sorrel tried not to hear, not to think about his power. She reached out to Saker and to Ardhi, and began to build another glamour. But what was the point if the power of the kris was gone?
No, mustn’t think that.
“I don’t need a sword,” Saker said. She thought he was speaking between gritted teeth. “I have the power of the Way of the Oak flowing in my blood.”
Remember. The soft mistiness of the mountain top of a distant island, the cascading beauty of a Chenderawasi call, the perfume of the nutmeg flowers… Remember the glorious beauty of the Chenderawasi birds. The young Raja, the plumes, the talons, the spurs, the magnificence.
Piece by piece, she built her glamour. The most special, difficult one she’d ever attempted because it had to be perfect. It had to live. Beside her, Saker was gasping for breath as Fox made him the target of his flow of dark sorcery. The sorcerer didn’t notice what she was doing, not immediately. He had already dismissed her as someone with a harmless witchery. Come to think of it, he’d never even noticed her when she was Mathilda’s handmaiden. Had he even paid her attention except in the courtroom?
“Who are you?” Fox asked, switching his attention to Ardhi. “What’s an ignorant nut-skin like you doing here in the civilised world?”
“Killing you,” Ardhi said, speaking for the first time. “We put something on that blade.”
Sorrel felt a flutter then, an interruption in the outflow of sorcery smutch. She seized the chance to draw a breath of clean air into her lungs.
“Rubbish!” Fox snapped. “I would know. I would feel it…”
“You will. You do. Your sorcery wouldn’t recognise something from the Va-forsaken half of the world as a danger, would it?” Ardhi, bless him, aiming to confuse the vile man.
Another fluttering interruption in the smutch. Sorrel seized the moment to adjust the glamour she was building. The image of a Chenderawasi Avian.
The next words Ardhi uttered were spoken to Saker in Pashali and then repeated in his native tongue for her. “It’s working. I can feel it.”
Fritillary was transforming sorcery to Shenat-based power and feeding it to her, and from her to Ardhi and Saker. Sorrel felt Fritillary’s witchery glow spreading through the air; she felt the gentle but resolute power of it in her bones. It was what they’d hoped for on the basis of so little evidence: the day that Fritillary had transformed some of Fox’s sky smutch and made it her own.
Her joy was short-lived.
“It is killing her,” Saker whispered in her ear. “Be quick.”
Even as he said the words, Fritillary began to sink to her knees, her fingers skidding down Sorrel’s back.
“Ready,” said Sorrel, and for the first time ever she prepared to step away from her own glamour. “Now!”
Saker took hold of his witchery, and moved into the world of birds. This time he called not on any living species, but on the Avian essence, on their nature, their substance and the kernel of their existence. He reached through Sorrel to Ardhi and back again, channelling via the sakti they held in the feather, using Fritillary’s Shenat power, and Sorrel’s, and his own. He groped for the sakti in the blade of the kris, but failed to find it.
“The hilt,” Ardhi whispered in Pashali.
He remembered then: the handle of the kris was carved from the Raja’s bone. He had not thought to look at the hilt, and neither apparently had Fox when he’d quenched the blade. The power he wanted was still there, in the Raja’s bone, more sakti even than there would have been in the feathers forged into the blade.
The moment Sorrel said “Now!”, he reached out to the glamoured image, showing it the essence of a Chenderawasi Avian enshrined within the hilt of the kris and the piece of feather. When all the elements fused, the glamoured image of an Avian was imbued with temporary, magical life.
The air shimmered. Glitters of misty gold and flickers of colour coalesced into a vibrant, living, solid presence. There, in the room with them, was a Chenderawasi Avian m
ale in breeding plumage, as tall as a man, spreading its glorious tail and wings of iridescent colour, flexing its dewclaws and the cruel curve of its talons, unsheathing the spurs on its legs with the sharp sibilance of a weapon leaving its scabbard. It was real, the sakti of its essence fighting the sorcery in the air. Valerian Fox fell back against the wall in stark horror.
Saker, weakened, collapsed, dragging Sorrel with him. He glimpsed her face, white and shocked. Beyond her, he saw they had all been felled. Fritillary was lying on her side, only half-conscious. Barden was on his hands and knees, still clinging to his staff. Ardhi was kneeling, trying and failing to stand.
We won! We did it! Saker wanted to say the words aloud, but no sound came out of his mouth. He scrabbled for his sword. If he could put a blade through the man’s heart while he was vulnerable…
The Avian was standing on it, one great taloned and spurred foot clamping it to the floor.
Va, why was he so feeble? He had his hand on the hilt, but couldn’t budge it.
He could feel Valerian fighting back. The tar-brush touch of sorcery was still driving outwards from him, now focused on the Avian.
They had not won, not yet, and he didn’t know what more he had to offer to the battle.
The Avian struck Fox with his beak, opened up a gash on his cheek, ripped the skin along the bone of his jaw, but still the man did not fall. It clawed at his leg and dug its talons deep into Fox’s thigh until he screamed. Even then, the sorcery still poured out of him, attacking the sakti.
Va help us, he is so strong…
Already their construct was beginning to disintegrate. The colours of the feathers began to fade. Oak and Avian, sakti and Shenat…
Think, Saker.
The old Chenderawasi tales Ardhi had related: the Chenderawasi Avian who stabbed the Chenderawasi sorcerer with a Chenderawasi kris…
We have a kris but it is damaged. And our sorcerer is not a Chenderawasi islander.
Then he had it. It had to be a weapon of Shenat oak for the enemy of Shenat.
