Tides of Rythe (The Rythe Trilogy)

by Craig Saunders

  She rang the call bell and sat on a comfortable divan to wait. She would pen Lunan a note. It would give him time to work. By evening, he would have his plans. That was his business, but he was particular, in a way she could understand. He was an artist, the night his palate. It was not for her to interfere, but she could not wait for a masterpiece this time. Just a swift execution. He might not like it, but she would never place a man’s satisfaction before her own.

  *

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Klan Mard sat quietly in his tent, contemplating his next move. His breath frosted the air within his tent, but his feet were bare and he only wore a cloak of sickly colours. It did not seem thick enough to keep out the cold, but he did not shiver. No fire burned within the tent. What little moisture there was in the air was frozen to the inside of the tent’s wall, turning the beige canvas as white as the lands outside.

  The cold was invigorating. It helped him to think. Not that thought would change anything. Only time could do that. It was their move – the three that had eluded him for so long. His nemeses, three strong for all that they were mere humans.

  Shorn was coming, of that he was sure. He had no guarantees that his Anamnesors could stop the mercenary when he landed on the wastes, as he undoubtedly would. Would that he could get close enough himself, but he had his orders. Jek did not want him to go against the mercenary, and with the wizard in tow, the fabled watcher, he was not sure he would triumph. He had seen the power of the Watcher first hand, in a small village on the Sturman coast. The watcher had wiped out twenty Draymen, as easily as Klan could have now he was ascended.

  Yet he was a human. There was no ascension for humans. It was puzzling that one man could wield as much power as ten Incantors, as much power, perhaps, as Klan himself…maybe Jek, but the Speculate remained an unknown quantity.

  No matter the humans’ plans, though. He had his orders, and he was doing what he was able. More than most Protocrats, he knew, but perhaps not enough. He had sent men to deal with the Watcher, and the Saviour, and their strange entourage. He was hunting Tirielle A’m Dralorn with all his resources on Lianthre (he was sure she was still there – how could she be anywhere else?) but both Tirielle and Shorn were hidden from the Prognosticator’s far-seeing eyes. He had not that gift, so he could not attempt to scry them himself. Traditional means must suffice.

  Either way, if he could just be patient, he had no doubt they would come to him.

  But he was impatient in some respects. He wanted to test himself, to go against the Watcher. To see if he was as powerful as the fables and legends of the ages said he was. The most powerful human caster to walk the earth in any age, with an army of paladins in tow. What a test that would be. But instead, he was attacking from afar, going against a helting mir during the day with a spear – it was not a true contest of skills.

  Instead of fighting, he was skulking. He had no doubt of the importance of his mission. Finding the last wizard’s resting place and putting him to sleep for eternity was his duty and he must place it above his growing pride, but he suspected any Protocrat could just as easily have fulfilled the task. This endless, blasted hunt grew tired and old. More and more he became convinced that Jek wanted him out of the way. Out of sight, to do whatever it was Jek was doing…he did not know, and it riled him.

  But he was ascendant, and on the face of it he had been given an important task. He would not fail. But, he thought with considerable irritation, it would be so much more interesting to pit his powers against their foes head on, rather than forever waiting, searching for mountains in the snow.

  He was bored beyond belief. He passed the time as only he knew how, examining the bone archive, the scrolls of the ages he had etched onto his very bones with his new found power. He had learned much of note.

  He scoured the plains, using his men to search for any sign of the mountain, one among many. It was a fire mountain, and it too slumbered as the wizard did. If only it had been awake…its smoke could be seen for tens of mile – perhaps hundreds. They had found the mountains, climbed to the tops in the arduous weather, losing men he could ill-afford to sacrifice, but found nothing to mark the mountains different.

  He had even communed with his undead slave, Fernip Unger, travelling back to Arram when he could, and the dictates of the search let him, to see if the reader had discovered anything new. He suspected the reader was holding something back, but he knew if it was of immediate import the man would have been unable to keep it a secret. When Klan had given the man life everlasting he had also placed a geas on him. Fernip Unger could not lie.

  And yet the mountain of fire had been lost to the ages. There was no mention of it in the scrolls, in the island archive, and certainly not in Klan’s bone archive.

  Outside a cold wind howled down from the mountains, tearing stinging shards of ice from the permafrost in a driving, endless dry rain. The only relief came when the heavy snows lay in weighty flakes thick on the ice. But he had lost many soldiers and scouts in the snows. The white shroud hid deadly crevasses in the ice, or sudden cliffs where there should be none. His Anamnesors never imagined they would be in a battle with mere terrain. It was almost a relief for them when the Teryithyr came. He let his men fight them. He could not summon the enthusiasm to burn them from the plains. It was character building for his warriors, and his casters, and provided entertainment for him in this dull exclusion.

  There was nothing for it but to search laboriously through the endless white wastes.

  His breath frosted in the frigid air of his tent as he sighed through his pinched nostrils. It was time to talk to the Speculate. He did not know the meaning of dread, but was cautious by nature, and more than anything else in his vast experience conversations with the leader of the Protectorate required caution in abundance. His master would not be pleased at his progress. He had lost many of his Anamnesors, soldiers in the last battle and vanguards of the return, that the Protectorate could ill afford to spare. His master might prove…irritable…when he was informed. Perhaps, Klan mused, he could couch the news in terms less likely to cause irritation. Brother San would be a welcome diversion, perhaps, but a visit to the Protectorate’s most accomplished torturer would mean that Klan would be ill-disposed to lead the search himself. He needed to be prepared when the three mites came close enough to be swatted, not curled in a ball. Healing himself would be little problem, ordinarily. He would just feed on someone he had no need of, but he had too few men to spare, and probably could not get away with feeding on another of the Protectorate within Arram. He would risk further punishment, and at this stage he did not want to rouse Jek’s ire. There would be time for that later, when he was better placed. As it was, in the eyes of the other nineteen Speculatae, he was an untried member. They would not support him, should he try to oust Jek. Then he would be at their mercy. If he was lucky enough to survive an open battle with Jek, or remain undetected should he try to remove his master by more devious means.

  Bide, he told himself. His time would come.

  He steeled himself, and began his preparations. He clutched his meticulously written reports (he had been forced to severely reprimand his scribe for a smudge on the original. His scribe needed no tongue to write) in one blue-tinged hand. The Speculate did not allow communion, only reports in person. It was no more difficult, and in some ways more satisfying to travel in person.

  He cleared his mind of all but the hall outside Jek’s door, and opened his eyes wide. Red light flowed forth, as if a dam had been breached, filling the tent with its blood-bright glow. A portal sprang into place almost immediately. The air around it crackled with unnatural power.

  It galled him, but while Jek could travel at a whim, Klan still needed to summon a portal. It was the work of moments, but he could be followed, if someone were quick enough.

  He rose smoothly and stepped through into the space between worlds. A whirling riot of blackness that was not quite absolute surrounded him, harangued him with disturbing
noises, and sometimes the hint of a voice. He was accustomed to the unknown within the portal space, but this time, as every other, he wondered if any caster alive knew what the voices were saying, or what the colours meant, leaking whorls drifting in the nothingness held at bay by his magic.

  He strode purposefully through the rift, untouched and unperturbed by its dark nature. Time seemed drawn out within a portal, but it was a tunnel, and both ends were always in sight, but only once entered. Unless you knew where a portal led, there was no way of telling short of entering the portal and looking. Even hardened soldiers sometimes balked at entering a portal. Protocrats were hammered into the hardest steel by their trails, but still many were undone by the whispering voices and the bleeding colours of the vortex. Klan found it fascinating, and sometimes the time it took to travel this way irksome, but was never fearful. Nothing within the portal could do him harm. He was an ascendant. It would take more than this inarticulate susurration to unman him.

  After a time, unbothered by the eerily sentient sounds of the portal space, Klan stepped out in front of Jek’s chambers, and let the Portal close behind him. A student jumped out of the way, altering his course with a gasp of shock at Klan’s sudden appearance – none were permitted to travel within the halls, outside of the use of the portal rooms. One glance told the student that to report Klan’s abuse of the rules would mean death. He passed on without comment, straightening his robe in passing and murmuring quietly to himself about liberties, but not loudly enough so that Klan could hear.

  The closing of the portal took but a moment, and it closed with a snap. He could have used the portal back at the base camp in Teryithyr, but that led to the portal rooms below Arram, and Klan did not have the patience for those murky, slippery stairs today.

  He knocked politely, and waited outside, staring at the dark oak door. He had tried knocking and opening the door immediately before, but if Jek did not want the door to open, it did not. He could have tried his power on it, but to what end? Whatever Jek did in his private chambers was Jek’s business, and Klan understood that. What people did in the privacy of their own chambers was their business alone. After all, he would not want anyone to enter his chambers and disturb his congregation while they slept, or whisper sedition into their ears while he was away, turning his only true friends against him.

  He resolved to take the time to visit them. He would not want them to get overly lonely while he was away on his duties.

  He stilled his breathing and waited. The door remained stubbornly closed. He stood stock still and closed his blooded eyes. A muted glow seeped from his eyelids, lighting his thin face in the dusky hall. Sunlight played in the grounds outside, but little risked the interior of Arram. Its halls were shrouded in permanent gloom.

  Students walked around him without comment. There were few within Arram who did not know who he was – Speculate member, the twenty-first, and Anamnesor. He ignored the staccato clack of their heels on the stone.

  Klan was becoming well known within Arram, and few outside had not heard his name whispered among their ranks. Rumours abounded, and he did nothing to stop them. Let the rest of his Brethren and Sistren fear him. Fear was a useful tool. He did not take pride in his reputation. He was an ascendant, and it was right that those below him should fear him.

  Not long now, he thought without a smile, and the hunt will be over. Tirielle and her pet rahken. The mythical Sard, Shorn and the Watcher – all would come to him and finally he would test his powers against someone of worth. It would be good to find out just why the Protectorate had been so afraid of human magicians throughout the ages, executing them before they discovered their powers. Klan could not imagine why in all the ages they had not fought back, if they were so dangerous. There were accounts, too numerous to mention, of human magicians, and their deaths, their tortures, and not one had put up a fight worthy of more than a passing note. His bone archive contained many such accounts from Inquistors through the years. Each was boring, dull in its descriptions and worthless. He knew no more of the threat now he had read on the matter than he did before.

  He found he was drumming his fingers impatiently against his leg. He had been waiting too long. Jek had never made him wait this long. He relaxed his hand, and concentrated on his breathing. Perhaps he should go to his quarters and wait – but he would not be dismissed so easily. If waiting was what it took, he would wait. In time, Jek would come to understand just how powerful the Anamnesor had become. But this was not the time. He was not ready. Not yet.

  He toyed with the idea of going to see Fernip, but to what end, he wondered? He had seen him not two days previously, and had gleaned little new from his servant. It would do no good to pester him every day. Although he confessed, if only to himself, that he enjoyed tormenting the reader. It provided a modicum of distraction from the hunt.

  But it would not be today.

  The door opened ponderously (strangely, their were no warning footsteps to precede it), and Jek stood before him, lips curled into an unpleasant smile and red eyes alight with magic and forbidden knowledge.

  “Klan, I have been expecting you. Do you have news? Do come in.”

  “No, Speculate. I am merely reporting what I have not yet found, as you insisted.”

  “Do I detect a note of chagrin, Klan?”

  “Of course not, Brother. I am simply being dutiful.”

  “And yet,” said Jek with a frightening smile, “I suspect you wish you could do more.” He did not say more of what – whether it be the hunt, or an elevated position within the Speculate. “Come within, and we will discuss new matters that have come to my attention. I may be able to grant you a reprieved from the mundane…would that be of interest to you, or do the wastes demand your constant attention?”

  Klan stepped inside as he had been bid. He looked around – there was no excess in the room, as in his own. Jek lived for his duties – where humans played, Jek plotted the lives of thousands. Klan resolved that he would, too. Already he had his troops in place, and power that once he could not have imagined.

  “I must confess, the wastes have little allure for me. It is dull, Brother, dull beyond comparison.”

  “Then perhaps you can send some of your Anamnesors on a small errand for me. I seem to have happened upon one of our thorns…a small irritation by the name of Tirielle A’m Dralorn, sometimes known as the Sacrifice in human prophesy, and more plainly as a pain in ours.”

  He handed Klan a letter, in fine penmanship, and indicated a hard wooden chair with a low back for the Anamnesor to take.

  Klan sat on the seat, which was uncomfortable, and read slowly. He took care to note the urgency of the letter, deducing much about the character of the writer from its tone, its language, and the penmanship itself.

  “A proud, intelligent woman. Straightforward, without guile. Right handed, obviously, but the length of the down strokes indicates decisiveness. The hand is steady, indicating a brave heart. Here, on the third paragraph, she pauses, when she talks of an uprising, but the hand becomes firmer thereafter – she is resolve on this course of action. I would say from the hand that this is not the only letter she penned – you are sure it is her, of course?”

  “You have an excellent eye, Klan. I believe there is little that escapes your attention, apart, obviously, from your inability to find that which I have bid you seek…”

  “Brother, I have been hampered…”

  “Spare me your excuses, Anamnesor!” The Speculate barked, but was disappointed to find that Klan did not squirm, as so many would when faced with his displeasure. Jek would not waste his time trying to cow Klan. He was astute, too, and understood that Klan feared little, but was wary of him. That would have to do for now. One day, soon, he would have to put Klan in his place. But that time was not now. Now, it was time to hold out a hand in friendship. Let him think he was trusted. But never would he let himself be deceived.

  “Now, attend me. This is a letter penned by Tirielle A’m Dralorn th
at was intercepted when she fled from her crimes, not that those crimes matter any longer. Compare the hand.”

  He passed a letter to Klan. Klan noted the fine paper, and the watermark – a Lianthrian stationer he happened to know. He read the letter, and compared the writing.

  “It seems she has a soft heart, also. I should have noticed that from the original letter. She was fleeing, and still risked her life to inform a mere servant of her plans. Stupid, but touching.”

  “And a weakness we can exploit. Now, as to other evidence. There are reports of a rahken uprising in the human city of Beheth, but the reports only speak of a single rahken ever being seen…I have heard of this rahken before – Roth. It destroyed a ten of particulates in the first battle against the rahkens, and tore a chanter’s head clean from its shoulders. I cannot even see into the city and have to rely on second-hand reports for my information, but I strongly suspect the beast that is attacking my tenthers – and destroying them – is Tirielle A’m Dralorn’s assassin. Your powers will avail you little there – it is warded against our kind, but I’m sure you could see your way to transporting a few of your men there? Tenthers seem insufficient.”

  Klan suppressed the urge to smile. At last! The scent was fresh!

  “And we are to hunt her through the city?”

  “Oh, I can do better than that. I know where she is staying. I have had my spies watching all our human subjects, and one, Iriya Mar’anthanon, a counsellor of the Kuh’taenium, has ordered Tirielle’s death. Perhaps she will succeed, but if she does not, I will not be surprised. A’m Dralorn is far from defenceless. But I believe your soldiers can achieve that end, where so many have failed before.”