“Another innocent. Look! Oh look!”
Tabitha managed to turn, at last. A bare-chested man clothed only in patterned orange trousers and a pale red helmet was pulling a struggling dove from a net. His helmet had two large eyeholes and a slit for his nose. His tanned body was slick with sweat.
“What is he doing?” Tabitha asked. “Why has he caught the bird?”
“Oh my songbirds, my little ones! They carry my voice, in their own way, they sing, they sing! Oh don’t die here, songbird, don’t die, not here, not here!”
The bare-chested man pinned the struggling dove to the step with one splayed hand. With the other hand, he reached for his belt. The dove kicked and flapped frantically.
“They want me to call to one of the others!” Ethea cried. “To grant him life here, but I cannot, he does not belong here, he belongs where I belong. He belongs beyond the stars! We should exist through all time, everywhere. I cannot do what they demand. I cannot. No, no, no.”
The man held the dove in one of the downward-sloping channels, which Tabitha noticed was stained in many places with something like oil. A dark puddle had built up on the edge of the inscribed grey slab upon which they stood at the bottom of the amphitheatre. A horrible realisation swept through her. The bird was to be a sacrifice.
“No!” she cried out. “No!”
The man didn’t hear her . She had no power in this strange place of smoke and pressure. The clash and clamour rose to a crescendo, the man punched a wicked spike down.
Ethea screamed. It was a terrible, forlorn sound, as if the beautiful crystal chimes in her voice had been shattered. The world exploded around Tabitha. She felt as if she had been stabbed in her heart.
The pressure was gone. The heat faded. There was silence, or near silence. Only the sound of crying continued, on and on, a quiet sobbing. Tabitha was still and numb. She didn’t know where she was for a moment.
She looked down to where her hand lay upon someone’s chest.
The soldier ... the soldier in her healing hall in Levin. He had died.
Her knees buckled. She fell forward and slipped to the floor.
5. THIEVES IN THE NIGHT
“When you are paid by a thief,
it is always with someone else’s money.”—Zarost
The sun passed behind the clouds on the western horizon and for a moment the light became pearly. The spire of Fynn’s Tooth glistened like a crystal, the forests grew still and the peaks seemed to stand higher, black ridges forming the rim of a crown held up to the sky. The breeze was soft upon the grasses, a mere whisper through the trees. A hare tested the air with its nose and watched without comprehension as three pieces of wool drifted by to be caught in the lower branches of a silken tree. The breeze searched deeper into the forest, where a few shy deer turned in surprise yet saw nothing. Three leaves dropped from a strangle-oak, twisting lazily as they fell. Then the air began to purple as the day cooled and the night came softly upon Eyri. One by one, the stars glittered into place, defining the astronomer’s map of the ages. The constellation of The Angel waited; The Hunter chased The Serpent in an eternal dance. An owl hooted in anticipation; once, twice, then once more, and in the village of Llury, the prince followed the Shadowcaster.
Bevn looked for Gabrielle and noticed her ducking out of an open doorway farther up the street. She tucked something into her shoulder bag. She looked his way then beckoned sharply to him before stalking away without waiting to see if he would follow.
Bevn knew she was right—they should leave Llury before they were noticed, but he would not be ordered around by her, no matter how she could sway her hips when she walked.
One day I’ll have enough gold to buy you.
Gold was her weakness; he had watched her as she had almost begged for it from Black Saladon. His father had uncountable riches and he would inherit it all when he was made king, and she would come to him, begging to serve him. When he’d reached Ametheus, he’d get powers. He would make her do all kinds of things. She would have to undress before him, yes, and she wouldn’t be able to refuse, because she’d want the gold. Bevn grinned, raised his hood, and followed her before she was lost to the darkness.
Bevn slowed as he passed the light of the last inn. There’d be food in there, and warmth, and…something else, a choice, a possibility that nagged at him, but it was too vague and shadowy, too unformed to matter. Nonetheless, he felt he’d lost something when he turned and entered the darkness beyond. He caught up to Gabrielle, where she waited for him at a fork in the trail.
“Tiresome brat! I don’t want to wait for you again.” Gabrielle’s eyes flashed darkly in the moonlight.
Good, he had got under her skin. “But you have to wait for me,” he said. “You are my escort. The wizard said I shouldn’t come to any harm.” He imagined he could feel the heat of Gabrielle’s anger as he neared her. Bevn grinned. “You want to impress him, don’t you?”
Gabrielle turned swiftly away.
Oh, he was going to have fun with her. She wasn’t as important as she thought.
She strode off on the forest trail. Bevn decided to keep his witty comments to himself for a while. He needed her abilities as a Shadowcaster to find the path in the dark. They both wanted to find the pass Wizard Saladon had told them about as soon as possible. Swords might block them at any moment, but outside Eyri—well, nobody knew how to get outside, except Bevn and Gabrielle. He didn’t even know what was out there, but Black Saladon had said he’d meet them. Once they were outside, he could go to see the great Sorcerer Ametheus. Then the Swords wouldn’t matter at all.
Gabrielle was far ahead already. He trotted to catch her, following her vague outline as he scrambled over roots, across banks of springy moss and between the looming trees that blocked out even the wan starlight. Minute by minute she pulled ahead of him.
“Hey!” he called out to her. “Hey, wait!”
She didn’t hear him.
Tart! She’s trying to make me scared again, that’s what she’s doing. I won’t be scared, I can be alone in a forest like this, there’s only wolves and bears and foxes out, and holes to fall into, and snakes, and…he stopped suddenly. What if she can summon Morgloths, like Arkell?
He ran through the next clearing, but the trees drew closer, oaks with tangled boughs, roots like grasping hands.
“Gabrielle?”
A gust of wind swirled through the leaves.
“Gabrielle!”
A tree creaked.
He forced himself to walk on. He would show her. It became darker and darker. Not even his months in the gloomy depths of Ravenscroft helped him anymore. He couldn’t see. He had lost Gabrielle. He was lost, himself. He thought he saw her off to the right, and he scampered after her as fast as he dared, but when his groping hands reached for her he found the rough bark of an old tree stump. The forest crept closer, pressing against him from all sides. Creatures swelled out of the ground but faded when he looked at them. Another tree creaked. Something ran light-footed over a carpet of leaves.
He promised himself he would be calm. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead.
She must have headed for the high ground. He tried to walk slowly, but he was soon running again. An owl hooted in the dark. He crashed over a rotten log. The vegetation beyond it gripped his legs. Vicious little thorns bit into his skin as he tried to pull free. He was trapped. Anything that came at him from out of the darkness would find easy prey in the brambles. He thought of wicked little eyes watching him from the darkness.
“Hey!” His voice sounded small in his ears. Shadows shifted through the cold air, coming closer, coming fast. “Gabrielle! Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me here! Come back!”
“I’m here,” she answered coolly, so close he jumped at the sound. She was leaning against the tree beside him as if she had been there all the time.
“You’re not playing fair. You led me into these briars on purpose!” He refused to let her know how relieved he was to se
e her.
“Let me explain something to you,” she answered. “I’m with you because of the gold and because Black Saladon asked me to escort you. I’m not here to play nursemaid to a spoilt little boy. The Penitent’s Pass is no place for games. I’ve never heard of anyone succeeding in escaping from Eyri, or at least if they did, they never returned. You are not even a man. If I am to lead us through it, then you must obey me, without any arguments. Do we understand each other?”
“I am a man! You’ll see!”
“Do. We. Understand?”
Bevn glowered at her. The trollop! She had forgotten that he was the reason Black Saladon had come to Ravenscroft in the first place. “What do you know of the pass, anyway?”
She just looked at him. “I’m waiting.”
He really didn’t want her to leave him, not here, not in the forest. He’d pretend to obey her, just for the night. Maybe for the following day.
“I promise to follow you.” He looked somewhere into the leaves.
She stretched like a cat then extended her hand to help him from the brambles.
“Good, then we might have a chance when we reach the Penitent’s Pass,” Gabrielle said. She stalked easily away through the dark, and Bevn followed at her heels.
“Why are you so scared of the pass?”
“We had a pass behind Ravenscroft. There was something that the Master liked to do before awarding rank to anyone, his private little joke: he would send us to retrieve a rock from the head of the pass as a test. Nobody could do it. Nobody ever did it. Something within the pass repelled every attempt. Those who tried were crushed with bitter cold. Some tried too hard and they died. Others cheated, but he always knew. Cabal! He used to tell us it was the bond of our Darkstones that prevented our passage, and that we should always remember how we had learnt our limit against him, that we could never escape his grasp. We believed many things, while he lived.”
“That was the shield of Eyri, in the Gap?”
“What do you know of it?”
“Only what everyone royal knows. It encloses all of Eyri. It’s funny…I never before wondered what was outside Eyri. I suppose I never thought about it.”
“I expect we’ll find the shield on this Penitent’s Pass then.”
“What’s it like, when you get close?”
Gabrielle was silent for so long Bevn thought that she wasn’t going to answer. She picked her way over a fallen tree, led Bevn onward along a small game trail.
“Expect a lot of pain,” she said at last.
He couldn’t be sure in the gloom, but for a moment she had almost appeared to smile.
_____
They walked and walked for what seemed like all night, but at last Gabrielle called a halt. They were high in the forest and the wind sighed constantly through the trees. Clouds whipped above the swaying boughs and obscured the stars.
Bevn’s feet ached, his face and hands were scratched and he had a pounding headache from trying to see in the darkness. He wished Black Saladon had never allowed Gabrielle to accompany him on his quest.
He sank to the ground. “About bloody time,” he muttered, just loud enough for her to hear.
Gabrielle didn’t react. She produced a flattened object from her pocket, tore it roughly in half and passed him his share.
“What’s this?” It smelled of meat and spices, but it looked like a wet turd caught in pastry. Cold liquid oozed over his fingers.
“Supper. Eat up. It’ll be the last good food we’ll find for a while, I’ll bet.”
“Where does this come from?” But he knew. He had seen her ducking out of a doorway in Llury.
“Never pass up an opportunity to steal something,” Gabrielle replied. She licked her fingers, and munched her pie, watching him all the while. Bevn clutched his knapsack tighter. The crown of Eyri! She knew about it. He vowed to keep it closer than his underwear.
When Gabrielle wrapped herself in her cloak and settled at last in a leaf-filled hollow, Bevn sat watching her from beneath his cowl. Maybe he should just leave her and go it alone. Maybe she was too dangerous to trust on the strength of promised gold alone.
The dark night crept closer through the trees. Bevn shivered. No, he would be better off with Gabrielle near. She had knives belted to her hip, and she knew how to use them. He would rather have those knives between him and the dangers than at his back. He shifted as close to her as he dared.
The ground was hard. The points of the stolen crown within his makeshift pillow were harder still.
Did his father sleep without his crown?
His father had always kept it near, even at night. He’d told Bevn once that the crown bound his thoughts together like glue, that it gave him the strength to rule and that the ancient patterns of magic in the Kingsrim helped the Eyrian people to believe in their king. Bevn remembered sitting on his lap, watching the way his father had looked at the crown, turning it over and over in his hands. He remembered the smell of rum on his father’s breath and the ticklish prod of his beard in his ear. His father had said that power came at a price, that when a king retired and passed his crown on to his son, the strength he had enjoyed during his rule deserted his mind, ‘like a chair pulled out from under your bum when you need it most’. Every old king in their royal family had gone as mad as the moon after giving the crown up at the customary age of sixty. After his father had taken over from his grandfather, Ol’king Mellar had become a gibbering idiot within a year, and by the time he died he did not even know his own name. He had died not knowing he had ever been a king.
Bevn’s father had slapped his hand on the table then, and Bevn had jumped from his knee in fright. There was a strange look in his father’s eye. “You’ll be very old before I hand this on,” his father had growled. “You took my queen’s life with your coming, and I’ll not have you taking mine. I’ve given you everything else, but I’ll keep my wits, yes, I’ll not be turned mad.”
Later, his father had laughed and tossed his son in the air, and told Bevn not to worry about a thing he’d said, that it was just his silly father thinking idle thoughts. Well, father, I remember that story, even though you thought I was too young to understand what you’d said. You told me it would be yours forever when you put this crown back on your head.
6. KING OF THE CASTLE
“The greater the castle, the longer its shadow.”—Zarost
Kirjath Arkell burned with cold anger as he swept through the halls of the palace; the King’s palace in Stormhaven, the royal house of wealth and waste. Every detail of the opulence made him clench himself tighter, every lavish carpet, rare tapestry and painted urn made him shake. Here the King had lived in luxury, while Kirjath had struggled in poverty. Here the King had bathed in gilded bathtubs, while Kirjath had ground his hands to the bone in the lowest and most dust-choked shafts of the mines at Respite, during his fatherless youth. Why should the King have such a fine life and decree that Kirjath Arkell should endure such misery? Mellar had done nothing but fall from the womb of a royal broodmare. There was nothing special about him. He had too much wealth for one man, yet he hadn’t shared it, not with Kirjath Arkell. All Kirjath had received thanks to this king was his own father’s boots.
He suddenly wanted to hit someone, anyone, but the passage was empty except for a row of mocking statues which stood beneath a single lamp—busts of the past rulers of Eyri—all the Mellars in a line. One whole curséd family, an unbroken monopoly of privilege.
For a moment he considered finding a sledgehammer.
He knew he shouldn’t be looking for Mellar, not in his current state. When he saw the man, his anger would become rage. He should find another place to haunt. The man would be too strong—he should be looking for a weak and troubled courtier to use as a potential host, not the king, but his hatred ran too deep, his anger too old. Anger. Maybe that was why he had survived still. His anger kept him from slipping away. He did not want to let go. He was not yet done with the living. There was unfinished
business, a debt was unpaid.
Father swings upon a rope,
Face has gone as white as soap,
Father swings upon a rope,
in the village square!
They had sung it over and over, the brats in Rhyme, even the ones who’d pretended to be friends before. They’d spat upon him where he’d stood, while his tears were running.
“’ere we go, lad, ’e won’t be needing ’is boots no more,” said the gallowsman.
The brats had howled and hooted and begun their special little jeer again.
Billyboy and Norma Lin, Robson and Wolley, each of them with wide eyes, their faces framed in blood… But that justice had only come later, much later. In the end, only one debt had not been settled. So quick was he to judge, that young king, so despising of a man he’d never met. Kirjath knew the little girls were liars. Kirjath knew Father wouldn’t have done those things to them, but nobody would listen to a poor boy. He knew they were liars, they couldn’t be right. He knew.
So what if Father had liked little girls? They were still alive; his father wasn’t.
Oh how he had wanted that young king dead, how he had cursed his name. King Mellar the Fourteenth.
Kirjath rounded a corner in the palace. Ahead, two dozing guards stood on either side of a heavy-looking gold-wrought door. That was it! Kirjath surged forward, and spread his presence out. The guards stared off into the middle distance, gripping their pikes. He slid under the door like a wisp of smoke. If only he could have done this before, as a Shadowcaster! Mellar would have blown red bubbles in his sleep!
He lost nothing of himself, sliding over the wood. He slid under a second door and just like that, he was inside.
He drew himself up. The room looked cosy, but he couldn’t feel the warmth. The walls were washed with a deep red and a fire glowed in a low hearth, beyond a grand rumpled bed, where two figures lay on the shaggy carpet—a fat woman on her side, with her back to Kirjath. Her blonde curls spilled over her shoulders, her figure plain beneath the pale nightdress. The man had copper-coloured hair, and he rested on the woman’s stomach, his hairy arm thrown lazily over her rump. The woman idled her fingers through the man’s hair. Kirjath had to get closer. He passed over their heads, his ethereal body not even casting a shadow on the gloomy roof.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 6
