Or had there been? He couldn’t be sure. The wizard had said there weren’t any branches pointing north, and he hadn’t looked. Black Saladon was messing with his mind. Trees couldn’t move. Bevn gritted his teeth. They were both making fun of him, he was certain of it. He wanted to strike out at something. He almost kicked the roots of the tree, but stopped, uncertain. They were driving him mad! He slammed the pack onto his shoulders. Follow, follow, serve and follow. It was so wrong. He should reign. He should rule!
He pulled out his own dagger, a wicked little curved blade he’d stolen in Willower. It felt good in his hand; it made him dangerous. He walked over to the tree and stabbed his blade into the bark. He needed to hurt something, to relieve his anger.
He hacked at the tree until he had opened a hole in the bark. He wormed his dagger deeper into the trunk until a sticky pale fluid oozed from the wound. He turned the blade within the weeping flesh of the tree, and worked the cut sideways then down, sideways then down again until he had extended the damage into a rough-carved initial. ‘K’ for ‘King’. Then he topped-and-tailed it with two quick slashes, to make the B. He would carve that initial upon the faces of those who displeased him, and those who were loyal would be allowed to use the scarred subjects as slaves.
He set off again, watching the tree over his shoulder, but it did not react to his passage. He checked it from twenty paces on, even from the bottom of the slope, but only the two branches that reached after Black Saladon and Gabrielle remained pointing away to the far-distant mountains. It was as if the tree hadn’t noticed him at all. As if he didn’t count.
“I am the king of Eyri!” Bevn shouted at the tree. “And I shall bring my army through these lands, and I shall cut you down!” But the tree looked dead already. It shouldn’t have been able to change. Why did he care, anyway? It was just a stupid tree. And Saladon had lied. The tree hadn’t attacked or done anything. The wizard was just trying to make his life a misery.
He staggered onward, his legs burning against the awkward strain of the descent.
Some time later, they passed a cluster of rotten pink flowers in the forest, each one growing in a tangle of black briars, each a haven for sallow flies and the scent of decay. Bevn couldn’t shake the feeling that something was watching him from among the sickly blooms. He speeded up too much on the decline to escape, and the weight of his pack nudged him to ever-greater speed. He careened over roots and barely stayed upright through the trees until the slope eased, where he staggered on jellied legs until he’d crashed into the others.
His chest heaved, and he doubled over to rest on his knees. He didn’t care about being stronger than Gabrielle any more; he couldn’t go on.
“What was that smell back there?” he heard Gabrielle ask.
“Sapspiders,” answered Black Saladon. “Young Bevn did well to run past them, for I think we had disturbed a few, and they don’t like being disturbed.”
“They were spiders?” Bevn gasped then remembered. “I don’t believe it. They looked like flowers.”
“They may look like flowers to you and the flies, but those are their mouths, thrown wide. They’ll stay like that for hours, until dinner has collected in sufficient numbers.”
“And then?” Bevn asked.
“Then they close their mouths.”
“Why do they smell so bad?”
“You would too, if you left your food in your mouth until it had rotted enough to swallow.”
The flowers had been wider than the span of his hand. If the pink bits had been only their mouths, that would make the spiders huge, big enough to catch up to him even if he ran.
He looked nervously back up the slope, but the spiders’ patch was lost in a gloomy patch of trees. All those jumbled blackbriars had been legs, folded up around each flower!
“We want to be far from here by nightfall,” Saladon added. “Sapspiders can be quite a nuisance at night if they are still hungry.”
Bevn didn’t believe him, but he suddenly found the strength to carry on.
_____
The inside of the tent was rank and dark. Furs hung from the crossbeam. The hunter, a lean weathered man with bleached locks that clustered around his balding pate, worked on a pair of rough boots with needle and thong. In the corner, beside a saucer of ale, sat what Zarost had been looking for, surly-eyed and gaudy.
“How much for the parrot?” Zarost asked.
“Immerna for sale!” screeched the parrot.
“He’s na for sale,” answered the hunter, his voice like parched gravel. “Essa bitterparrot frommin Azique. Dyee kenner rare those things howbe? He’s ma eyes inner forest.”
“Imma rare! Wraak! Imma rare!” The parrot tilted its beak to look more directly at Zarost. It had those lidded human eyes that showed its mixed ancestry—another victim of Ametheus’s manipulations. The empire of Azique had fallen recently, only a century past. It was sad to see the descendants of that fine civilisation reduced to servitude. Zarost doubted that the bitterparrot was loyal because it valued the human company. The ale kept the sha-lin bonded to the hunter—the ale it was addicted to.
“What’s his name?” Zarost asked.
“Querrihim yerself.” The look the hunter gave him told Zarost that he was only tolerant because he wanted to sell some furs. Zarost approached the perch. “What’s your name, little one?”
“Brreek! Zaul. Noo little one, nooo sweet beak.”
“Breekzol?”
“Aaak!” the parrot shouted, his beak wide. “Getit rrright, herrychinchin! Zaul. Zaul. Zaul!” He shook his feathers.
Zarost chuckled. The bitterparrot had a fine temper. “Well, Zaul from Azique, I’ll pay you directly if you work for me,” he offered. “A fistblock of salt a day, which you can trade for ale, or whatever you want.”
“Oy!” shouted the hunter, throwing his leatherwork from his lap and rising to his feet. “Oy! What a’strange words ye bespeakin to him? Aye a’say he’s na for sale.”
“Then I’ll not be buying him,” answered Zarost. “I have offered Zaul a job.”
“He has a job! Hesserna working for ye.”
“Whatizzit, pay?” asked Zaul from the corner. “Be a’salt mine? Mine? Kroo.”
“Get a’ye out!” ordered the hunter. A wet-tipped arrow pointed at Zarost. His bow creaked. “Get. A’ye. Out.”
Zarost nodded politely. He turned to leave, but as he ducked beyond the tent-flap he said, “A fistblock a day,” over his shoulder. He danced aside, just in case, but the arrow did not fly fast enough to catch him.
If the hunter had been sharper of wit, he would have loosed a whole quiver at Zarost, for Zarost had offered the sha-lin enough to make even the most hardened of its kind think twice. A bitterparrot was an intelligent creature. After all, it wasn’t really a parrot. The first of their kind were descendants of the resistance fighters of Azique, proud warriors who had faced the onslaught of the Sorcerer’s invasion into their land. When the harbingers of Chaos had toiled through the gap from Koraman in the north, dragging the net of tangled spells behind them like a dirty train of silver filigree, the warriors had stood firm on the borders of Azique, their feathered head-dresses ruffled by the dry wind of the storm’s approach, their faces stern with the hard lines of battle paints, their deadly scimitars raised. What had come of that defiance, but ruin? How could men stand against a sorcery that hollowed out the bodies of bullgorgons and filled them with fire? How could the Gyre prepare for what Ametheus sent upon Oldenworld?
The Aziqueans had attacked the first line of fell beasts, only to be enveloped in the Chaos they had not prepared for, for the beasts were saturated with it. The men were scalded with change, as chips of randomite erupted in their faces. Gravity was reversed and the warriors were thrown into the air, their feathered headdresses exploding around them. That was probably how the genetic material of parrots had become mixed up with men, but no one truly understood what had happened that day, for they faced Chaos, and Chaos often defied analysis.
One way or another, those men had been altered, into multitudinous forms. Those few who remained airborne were spared from death, and so in a way, it was a blessing to become a bitterparrot. But their new forms were useless in battle. They had to flutter around, hopeless, ineffectual, watching their own people being ravaged, watching their comrades fighting on, falling to the ground, writhing and dying. It was understandable that they harboured bitterness so deep that it spanned generations.
Zarost guessed that Zaul was fourth- or fifth-generation sha-lin, which meant there was still much human blood in his veins. He would have no problem understanding the principle of trade. Salt was a prized commodity within the Hunterslands. With a fistblock of salt, Zaul could buy the ale he so desperately depended on and have salt spare to trade for food. There would be more to his life than spying on game for a hunter who only paid him with a dirty puddle of sour grog.
The sha-lin would understand that it had been offered its freedom.
Zaul would find him.
The bitterparrot would be a valuable ally. Not only would he take the challenge to the Warlock, but if he was smart he would be able to escape and bring back word as well, of where Black Saladon was, and what he was doing. Zarost strode quickly away from the low dwelling at the edge of the Hunter settlement, up to the ridge, away into the forest. The day was cooling in the long shadows of the trees. The forest smelled of wet wood. He whispered the words of a small Reference spell, drawing the small block of material he needed from the Gyre stores.
Zarost remembered how he had been called from Eyri to watch the fires rush across Azique like a shimmering flood, driven onward by nodes of Chaos that rolled into the raised plains, fanned by great winds, attended by colossal smoke-filled thunderclouds whose low black bellies dragged over the altered landscape.
The only thing the Gyre could do was to drive the Great Rift all the way around Azique, to split it off from Oldenworld, to contain the disaster and prevent it from ruining everything. It was no solution, it was just a limited failure, and Azique was now a wasted land. It would never be the same again.
Ametheus. His ideas were always unexpected, his designs so horrific—sane minds could never conceive of such diabolical manipulations, and thus they could put no plan in place to combat the next assault, until it was upon them.
_____
The wizard Black Saladon commanded their halt with a raised hand. He stood, a tower of brooding silence, looking past the shaft of his battleaxe as if something in the forest was moving, up ahead.
“Why have we stopped?” Bevn whispered to Gabrielle.
“Because he says so, my lord,” Gabrielle said then looked suddenly away. Bevn narrowed his eyes at her. The golden morning light shimmered on her skin. Bevn didn’t understand what he felt when he looked at her. Something like anger and hunger; something like anticipation. Her hair cascaded in loose dark locks over her shoulders.
Had she just called him ‘my lord’? He couldn’t be sure. Was the crown finally starting to work? It was weighing down on his forehead, but at least now that his hair was matted and curly, it didn’t slip down over his ears so much. He wedged it back into his tangled hair.
Black Saladon pointed down the trail. “Look, by the tree. We must wait.”
Bevn couldn’t see anything that way until he squinted against the sun and looked far ahead to a distant copse, where a group of brown piglets foraged among the undergrowth, beside a larger sow.
“Ironpigs,” said the wizard. “We’ll be run down if we come too close.”
Honestly, Bevn thought, he’s stopped for a grunt and her litter! He knew how to deal with pigs. He’d seen his father hunting them from horseback, and the one time he’d even managed to kill an old sow. His father had wounded her by mistake, but he had finished her off. It was easy; he just had to jump on its back, grip its shoulders between his knees as he faced the tail, reach down and around and drive a long-bladed knife in between its ribs, hugging it tight to press the blade in deep. There’d been nothing as exciting as that feeling—the pig squealing and thrashing beneath him then writhing together with him on the ground, and the hot warmth and shuddering sigh as the creature died. His father had never taken him on a hunt again, but he remembered everything about how to kill a pig.
They were scared of a pig! He would show them both what a man he was. Gabrielle would see it, and be properly affected by his manliness. Then the Kingsrim would definitely be able to work its magic.
He pushed past Saladon. The wizard struck his chest and lifted him by his collar in the same movement. Bevn’s legs dangled in the air. “Let go of me! I know what to do!” He swung his arms, but the wizard’s arm was longer, and he couldn’t reach him.
“Shut up,” said Saladon, still not looking at him. “You’ll be run through with their tusks. Those are ironpigs, not playthings.”
Bevn couldn’t see why they would be any different. A pig was a pig. Saladon was making up stories again, trying to make him seem stupid, when he was actually clever. He would show them!
“Then why don’t we go around them!” He pried at Saladon’s fingers to try free himself.
“We’re downwind of them at the moment,” Saladon said quietly, “but if we pass them they’ll sense us and track us down. They can’t see beyond fifty paces, but within that they’re deadly. We shall wait here until they move off.”
“Why can’t you just cast a spell on them?”
“From this distance? It would trigger the wildfire. If I was close enough to use my magic quietly, they’d know I was there.”
“So what? Surely you can kill a pig? They just look like a bunch of stupid porkers.”
“Your brain is weaker than your eyes. Do you really think something would survive for long in this vicious forest without having a particularly good defence? You don’t want to make those things angry.”
Saladon dumped him on his butt, and there Bevn sulked. He hated the way Saladon treated him like a little boy, especially in front of Gabrielle. He wanted to kick the big wizard in his shins, or hang on the long tails of his moustache. He glared at the pigs. Stupid pigs.
He began to brighten as he realised that he could pull a prank on the wizard. The pigs might be good survivors, but he had his own particularly good defence. He knew how valuable he was to Saladon—so valuable that the wizard was accompanying him on foot across land he could easily have traversed in a moment with his magic. Saladon didn’t want to let him out of his sight. The wizard would protect him against any danger. If he charged the pigs, the wizard would have to do something, and he’d get to see more of the magic Saladon refused to show him.
He needed to test what Gabrielle would do. Was she being influenced enough by the Kingsrim now, or would she side with Saladon? His blood pounded in his ears. Some inner sense told him she would side with him. The Kingsrim was warm, hot on his forehead. It made him strong. It made him King.
He stood and moved out of range of Saladon’s long arms. He sauntered over to Gabrielle, where she rested against the bole of a tree, and squatted beside her, so the crown was right against her head. “Protect me from him,” he said, with all the kingly command he could muster. Then he grabbed one of her knives from her belt, and he ran, before they had realised what he was about to do.
“Bevn, wait!” Gabrielle called after him.
He laughed and lengthened his stride. Let her run to catch him—that should remind her of a time before, in the Penitent’s pass, when she’d recognised his power over her. Let her run. Let them both run. He sprinted down the trail, toward the rooting pigs, the knife brandished like a commander’s sword. The air tightened for a moment as a strange pattern of glistening tendrils wove around him. Magic! It seemed to disperse around the Kingsrim, and he ran on unhindered. Black Saladon cursed behind him. Bevn whooped with delight. The crown gave him some protection from the wizard’s magic. That was an unexpected bonus.
He made for the trees. Upon his approach, the sow looked up in surprise and waggled h
er tusks in his direction. The pigs drew closer to each other. They had seemed so very small in the distance, but something about the perspective of the downward slope had hidden their true size. The piglets stood almost waist-high, the sow came up to his chin. Still, she was just a pig. She would run, wouldn’t she, if given a choice? He didn’t turn to look behind him. The others were sure to be close.
Another pig burst from the undergrowth beside the sow. It had tusks as well, dark-stained at the tips and well worn. Both pigs had hides like rusted metal. Bevn felt a stab of alarm. He waved his arms at them. The pigs watched Bevn falter and come to a halt. Their little eyes were steady. Solid wet snouts tested the air. The daddy-pig, the boar, even had the nerve to drop its head, as if it was considering facing him down. At least the smaller critters had the sense to cower behind their mother, but they didn’t run away.
They probably weren’t sure what he was, the stupid things. Pigs didn’t charge humans, did they? They were swine, not predators. No, he was not going to back down for a bunch of pigs! He was a ruler of men. He certainly ruled pigs. Besides, Saladon would save him.
Where was he? He had expected Black Saladon to be on his heels, but it was silent behind him.
The ironpigs stepped back a few paces, tossing their heads, swinging their tusks from side to side. The boar was wider than the sow. He seemed more like an armoured bull. His tusks were as long as Bevn’s forearms. The boar bellowed, showing sharper teeth than Bevn had expected, more like wolves’ teeth than the flattened stubs of a pig. Bevn kept his eye on the brute as he backed away, but it was the sow who charged him first. With a bloodthirsty squeal, she came for him. Those mean little eyes held no fear.
“Gabrielle,” he cried weakly, looking for her as he stumbled away. With a horrible hollow feeling in his stomach, he realised where she was. Grappling with Saladon, back where he’d left them. He’d ordered her to prevent Saladon from hurting him, and she’d complied. She had listened to him! She was following an order of the king! The Kingsrim had worked, at last, but there was no time for Bevn to enjoy the triumph.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 49
