Map’s Edge

by David Hair

  He sent Jesco back to guide in the main body of the caravan, then joined the other scouts in readying the campsite for their arrival. Working alongside his people always brought a reward, in lifting their spirits. A leader needed to be seen to serve, he knew well by now.

  Not long after, the main body arrived, cooking fires flared up and people busied themselves with the myriad tasks of the day. Only Norrin wasn’t labouring, instead playing his harp beside the central fire, but no one minded when he entertained them so well.

  There was an extra concern today: many of the women were gathering around Kemara’s cart, where Regan Morfitt was in her second day of labour. There had been four new births on the road already, but one of the older men had died of heart failure as well. Life and death, the eternal cycle.

  ‘Hoi, Raythe!’ a gruff voice called, and he turned to see Vidar trotting in on his brown mare.

  ‘Just the man,’ Raythe replied, striding to meet him. ‘What lies ahead?’

  ‘Grassland rising in a long slope to a plateau,’ the bearskin replied, swinging from the saddle and handing the reins to an eager boy. ‘But we lose the river, somewhat. About three miles upstream, the banks become a gorge with no room on either bank for passage. But we can follow it from the top of the cliffs. And there’s more of those carved poles, mostly fallen and rotting. Whoever left them is long gone.’

  By Vidar’s standards, it was a massive speech. ‘Any sign of game?’ Raythe asked.

  ‘Plenty: Killerbeaks, and smaller walking birds too, less aggressive, but they can run like the wind. Ain’t seen a thing that goes on four legs yet, mind.’

  ‘Sounds like they’ll be a tricky to hunt,’ Raythe smiled.

  ‘Can’t outrun a lead ball,’ Vidar drawled, patting his flintlock. ‘I caught a glimpse of the northern horizon, too. We’re heading into mountains again – there’s a whole blasted wall of ’em, right at the edge of sight.’

  ‘It’s warm as southern Pelaria here. The istariol won’t be far away now.’

  ‘Gerda be praised. It’s already going to be a fair hike to get the stuff back to civilisation. If we faced another mountain trek, I’d say it couldn’t be done.’

  ‘But it can.’ Raythe slapped his shoulder. ‘Good work, Vidar. Get some food and rest – if you can: the camp’s lively tonight. Everyone can sense that we’re nearly there.’ He looked around. ‘Have you seen Zar?’

  ‘Nope. Try the river: she had that flank this afternoon.’

  Raythe went searching, and found his daughter sitting alone on the riverbank, her hair wet but her clothes mostly dry. ‘Been swimming?’ he asked as he sat, putting an arm around her shoulder. ‘Bloody lazy scouts.’

  ‘Huh!’ she retorted. ‘We work harder than anyone. I must’ve walked thrice the distance you did today – and you had a horse.’ She pointed across the misty river. ‘There’s a spot on the far bank down there where the water’s like a warm bath. It was heaven.’

  ‘Glad you found it – I might have to have a soak myself,’ he said, tousling her hair. ‘I’m sorry I’m away all the time. How are you?’

  ‘Practising hard.’ She flashed through some rune-patterns with her fingers. ‘Adefar and I have all the basic spells down pat. He’s obedient as a cherub, too. We just need to learn more spells.’

  ‘As soon as we can set down our loads a while, I promise.’

  ‘Sure you will,’ she grumbled.

  ‘No, I really do promise, it’ll be my first priority.’

  She looked up at him. ‘Is Kemara practising? She won’t tell me – and people are talking.’

  ‘She’s managing,’ he lied. Kemara’s mizra wasn’t his secret to reveal, he decided, so he turned his mind to something just as awkward. ‘What about you and Banno? Are you, um . . . being careful?’ When she hesitated, he added, ‘I’m family, I have a right to know.’

  She squirmed and went scarlet. ‘Dad, we’re being very proper. I’m still . . . you know . . . virginal.’

  ‘Oh!’ He’d assumed his admonishments to put the praxis ahead of love would be ignored.

  She gave him a forbidding look and pointedly asked, ‘How about you, Dad? Seeing anyone?’

  ‘Me? None of your business!’

  ‘Why, am I not family?’

  ‘Touché,’ he snorted. ‘No, no one.’

  ‘Not Tami?’

  ‘Definitely not Tami.’

  She pursed her lips, then said, ‘You should court Kemara. I don’t like that creepy sailor she’s always with. He should be travelling on his own by now. His back looks repaired enough to me.’

  ‘Kemara? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Why not? You work with her on her sorcery. You can meld together and that’s got to mean something.’

  ‘She’s a grumpy cow who thinks I’m a charlatan. And she’s not my type.’

  ‘Why, what type’s that?’ she asked cheekily.

  ‘Women like your mother,’ he replied, to shut the conversation down.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work. ‘Do you think Mother’s all right?’ Zar asked wistfully.

  ‘No, I think she’s probably pretty damned miserable, but at least she has the compensation of a vast marble palace, servants to do everything for her and inexhaustible wealth to comfort her,’ he snarked, then he remembered who he was ranting to. ‘Ah, sorry. And thank you for waiting.’

  ‘Huh. If it were up to me . . . But Banno’s more worried about propriety than I am.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes – he’s petrified of you, for a start. The mysterious praxis-sorcerer. And I think he really, really wants to do the right thing by the Church. He’s quite serious about that.’ She gave him a tart look. ‘If all boys are like him, I’ll be a spinster yet. Won’t that make you happy?’

  ‘Ecstatic,’ he told her, with a wink. ‘Get yourself back to camp. I think I’ll have that swim.’

  *

  Toran Zorne decided that the evening was a write-off in terms of inveigling his way further beneath Kemara Solus’ skin. Her little cart was the centre of a gathering of women right now, all helping, advising, cooking or just nosing around, while the slow-moving crisis of Regan Morfitt’s prolonged labour unfolded.

  ‘The joys of a healer’s lot,’ Kemara told him. ‘You can drive tomorrow – I’ll be asleep in the cart.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘But I’ll get no sleep tonight unless I get away from all this – and I don’t think your friends want a man here anyway. I’ll rest elsewhere.’

  So he took his bedroll away from camp to a spot with a good vantage over the comings and goings to the river. It was quiet just now, so he took his time, gnawing on a strip of cured phorus meat – the taste and texture reminded him of wild turkey – while laying out his things. It was late afternoon, daylight still, but after ascertaining that he was alone, he went to work.

  First, he traced a symbol using a burning stick, drew on the praxis and muttered, ‘Animus, Ruschto.’ He felt his familiar crawl into his senses. ‘Praesemino pharos, intimus Jorl et Karil,’ he then added, constructing a beacon that only the twin sorcerers Jorl and Karil, who were hopefully among the pursuers, could sense. When it was ready, he gathered the energy, traced the rune of fire and said, ‘Incipere, nunc.’

  Ruschto fed the spell and the sending pulsed out through the nebulum.

  He’d been doing this for days, ever since the destruction of the imperial column in the glacier. Four pillars of ice had resisted Vyre’s flood, but he didn’t know who the other sorcerers were. Ominously, all four had eventually been swept away, so Jorl and Karil might well be dead.

  A sending like this was inhibited by distance, and the mountains provided another barrier, so Jorl or Karil would have to be alive and have reached the lake where the glacier met the istariol-bearing river for them to receive it. The odds felt remote.

  But the nebulum chimed and a curious voice said, ‘Zorne?’

  His heart thudded so hard, he almost lost the link. ‘Jorl?’
>
  In moments, he knew everything: Komandir Persekoi had rallied his men and was just days behind. Losses had been minimised by two Izuvei sorcerers: four hundred men still followed Persekoi, although they’d lost most of their gunpowder, both bombards and almost every horse. But they were even now traversing the frozen lake, having found the caravan’s trail.

  Jorl bade him wait while he consulted, then returned to say, ‘Persekoi bids you delay them – kill this man Vyre to create a disruption. We’ll be upon them the day after tomorrow.’

  Zorne grimaced. Too often, his missions went this way: a superior who didn’t understand the real situation would force him into an unwise action, usually for their own glory. ‘Vyre is too important,’ he argued. ‘He may be the only one among them who can find the istariol.’

  ‘Lord Persekoi says that the Izuvei can find the istariol. Fulfil your mission and eliminate Vyre: that will throw them into confusion, and we will fall upon them from the rear.’

  Zorne fumed silently, but he knew he’d do as he always did and put his faith in the system.

  ‘Those above us see the bigger picture, so place your trust in their judgement,’ he’d been told again and again. So he tried to see it from Persekoi’s point of view.

  Vyre is the only one in this column who can threaten his forces. Eliminate him, and the rest will fall apart. This foolish expedition will end in slavery and death, as it deserves to.

  My role, as always, is to obey.

  ‘I understand,’ he intoned.

  ‘Excellent,’ Jorl replied, and repeated, ‘Kill Vyre, delay the caravan. Those are your orders.’

  The connection was broken before he could reply.

  Once he’d got over his annoyance, he considered the news that Persekoi had two Izuvei sorcerers with him. Intriguing. He had once contemplated cauterising his normal senses to enhance the mastery of his magical senses himself, but his Ramkiseri masters had had other plans for him.

  ‘You are cauterised of emotion already, Zorne. You have no empathy. That is a far greater gift, for it makes you relentless and allows you to disappear into your task. It frees you from doubt and regret. Keep your physical senses and hone yourself into a blade.’

  He’s spent his life doing exactly that.

  ‘Ruschto, abeo,’ he sighed, and the familiar drained from his senses. He sat back on his haunches and took heart that his empire was still with him.

  His orders troubled him, but he’d obey, of course. A single dagger was all he’d need – in any case, ‘Trimble’ had no other weapon – so he slipped it under his belt, then drifted to the edge of the campsite, as if just stretching his legs. Presently, he saw Vyre’s daughter head for the river, and twenty minutes later Raythe Vyre himself took the same path. Zorne followed warily, ghosting through the mist that clung to the river, through thick bush dotted with mud-pools belching noxious gases, taking his time to get the lie of the land.

  Then he heard footsteps and darted behind a tree just before Zarelda Vyre returned, her hair wet. She passed within feet of him and he almost seized her to use against her father – but a male voice greeted her and he watched Banno Rhamp kiss her chastely.

  Zorne let them depart unharmed, for now Raythe Vyre was alone.

  Moving into the shroud of mist that clung to the willows on the riverbanks, he closed in on his prey. ‘Ruschto, animus,’ he whispered, and his familiar returned, sharpening his sight and senses. He inhaled a calming breath of damp loamy air, laced by the noisome fumes of a bubbling mud-pool. Every sense was jangling. Then he found Vyre’s clothes hanging from a low branch and glimpsed the man’s head and bare shoulders wreathed in steam in the river, forty yards away in a pool beneath the far bank.

  There must be an underwater thermal. Dear Gerda, to be clean again—

  He settled behind a bush, ready to rise and pounce, blade in hand, as Vyre left the water. The Otravian would die before he could summon his familiar, let alone reach his weapons.

  But then a sharp point touched the back of his neck and he went rigid, mastering the reflex to flinch.

  ‘Such discipline, for a simple sailor,’ a woman snickered. ‘If that’s really what you are?’

  Tami. He cursed himself, realising he’d been too focused on his prey and forgotten his own safety. An elementary error – and possibly a fatal one.

  The Pelarian woman plucked his dagger from his belt, but the blade against his neck didn’t waver. ‘Now why would you be sneaking around the boss?’ she drawled. ‘Unless you just like watching men bathe?’

  He could picture her stance as clearly as if he were standing to one side watching them both: her dagger was in her right hand, and his now in her left – swords were too slow for close-quarter work. He knew her build: smaller than him, lean and wiry, but he didn’t underestimate her. Her reflexes were primed; anything untoward and she’d ram her blade into the place where his spine met the skull, instantly severing the cord, then it’d plunge into his brain. He’d be dead before he hit the ground.

  How fast were those reflexes? Very, he decided. But she was a loner, so it was just him and her – aside from Vyre, of course. And Ramkiseri training covered just this sort of situation. He knew the moves he’d need when the chance arose.

  That came sooner than he’d dared hope: someone shouted, ‘Raythe!’ from upstream; he didn’t hesitate, banking on her attention wavering, if just for an instant . . .

  He spun and ducked and instead of killing him, Tami’s knife slashed the back of his scalp, but his elbow slammed into her throat, choking off her cry. Her eyes bulged but she pulled back her left arm, holding his dagger – but he tangled her legs, twisted and bore her down, a moment before she slammed his own blade into his side. They crashed into the mud, his sight red, in agony, but he was on top.

  Tami tried to stab again, but he ignored the pain and rolled onto her left arm, pinning it, then caught her right arm and held it, finding himself face to face with her. As her tortured throat sought air he bit her, clamping his teeth over her windpipe and squeezing, tasting blood and choking her cry. She weakened quickly and he used that to change his grip on her right wrist and twist, snapping it.

  Convulsing, she dropped her blade, which he snatched up. Then he unclamped his teeth, licked away her blood and looked down into her eyes, into her soul.

  Tami made a pleading sound, a helpless, gagging that jolted through him like a bolt of adrenalin. The elation of the hunt filled him, that moment when the prey succumbs. His whole body pumped with energy, even arousal.

  Then he drove his blade down into her breast, through the ribs and into her heart, and watched enthralled as she died, kissing her so that he inhaled her last breath, basking in the moment of ultimate victory, when one became predator and the other, merely prey.

  This is why I’m alive. This is why I love my work.

  A moment later the pain hit him from the stab wound to his side and the cut on the back of his head. The latter was more of an annoyance, but the former was soaking his shirt, even though, numbed by adrenalin and triumph, he could scarcely feel it.

  ‘Is someone there?’ Raythe Vyre called from the far side of the stream.

  Zorne rolled aside and peered carefully through the bush to see Vyre standing in waist-deep water, looking his way. A moment later, he felt the thrum in the nebulum that told him that the sorcerer was summoning his praxis-familiar.

  Then that voice came again from upstream, calling Vyre’s name. ‘Raythe? Damn this fog!’

  It’s the Shadran, Zorne realised as his ardour cooled. If he’d had a flintlock or pistol, he might still have chanced it, but there was only cold steel and Vyre was wary now, and Jesco was getting closer.

  ‘I’m here,’ Vyre called to Jesco.

  Zorne hurriedly wiped and sheathed his dagger, put Tami’s back in her sheath, then scooped her up. She was sparrow-light, even in death, and it took only a moment to haul her to the bubbling mud-pool and push her down. Her empty face still made him shiver hungrily,
even as it sank beneath the surface.

  By the time Vyre and Jesco met, he was gone.

  He spent the rest of the evening using the praxis to seal over his two wounds, then returned to the river, further downstream, to wash the blood away. By then, his post-kill flush had ebbed, leaving a profound sense of contentment, despite the ultimate failure to take down Vyre.

  Tami came and went as she willed, so they won’t be immediately alarmed if she’s missing. And there’ll be other chances. If it takes longer than Persekoi likes, well, damn him. Who is he to command a Ramkiseri under-komizar?

  As he returned to the main camp, he recognised traditional birthing songs; presumably the celebrations were for the Morfitt woman, who must have finally delivered her brat. He should join them, but his wounds were too fresh, the blood-loss still debilitating, and a healer like Kemara would instantly recognise them as knife wounds.

  I’d have to kill her too.

  Much as the thought excited him, it was too soon.

  Taking her life is a meal to savour, not one to devour recklessly.

  3

  Over the ravine

  Raythe woke early from a nightmare of being stalked through misty forest; weirdly, the morning was just like his dreamscape. But they were well into the Iceheart now and he was now certain the istariol was near. That galvanised him into action.

  He wasn’t the only one; perhaps it was the eerie nature of the mist-bound river, or the poumahi poles they kept finding, the darkly demonic faces, lascivious tongues and leering eyes seeming to watch the travellers as they passed. Restless unease and a sense of urgency filled the camp. So despite hangovers from celebrating the birth of Tyl and Regan Morfitt’s baby son, everyone was up and about, also eager to get moving.

  They breakfasted, packed and loaded up without needing to be chivvied along. Boisterous children ran about, herding the remaining cattle under the direction of Gan Corbyn. Everyone was ready to move – except Tami, whose little pup-tent remained untouched.