Warlock's Shadow

by Stephen Deas

  The warlock was falling apart, his hands dissolving like smoke. He lurched down a hallway and into another room at the end, as cavernous as the first.

  ‘Be gone!’ Tasahre was closing on him. One by one, candles flickered and died, plunging the room into darkness except for the light that shone from her. The warlock was half vanished, his arms and legs formless stumps, shadows swirling around him. But here he stopped and turned.

  Tasahre’s light flared. ‘Be gone!’

  ‘No!’

  The warlock’s face twisted. The shadows around him began to swirl, slowly at first, then faster and faster.

  ‘Tasahre!’ Now was the time to run, Berren had no doubts about that. Whatever the warlock was doing, he wasn’t dying.

  She flared again but not as brightly as she had at first. Berren could see the sweat on her now. She was drenched, almost steaming. The shadows around the warlock recoiled but they didn’t vanish.

  ‘Tasahre!’ His hand felt as though it was on fire where the warlock’s knife had cut him. Daylight! There was no daylight here, that’s what it was, there was no sun, none at all! This was the warlock’s place, his domain, his heart! He grabbed Tasahre’s shoulder and pulled at her. The light shining from her skin flickered and failed. They were in darkness now, and a faint glimmer from where they’d entered was the only light.

  She screamed at him: ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘It wasn’t enough!’ He pulled her to the door and then they were both running, sprinting away as fast as they could, out of the House of Cats and Gulls with Tasahre’s swords still in the warlock and the warlock still alive and flinging curses in their wake. Out into the glorious daylight, into the afternoon rains come early, up the Godsway towards the temple. Halfway there, he remembered that his hand was hurting.

  It was the little finger of his left hand. Half of it was missing.

  26

  SOME THINGS CAN’T BE HAD

  Berren was almost sick when he saw the damage to his hand, but Tasahre pulled him on. He paused long enough to tear his sleeve and wrap some cloth around his hand, then ran the rest of the way dripping blood behind him. They didn’t stop until they were standing in the gateway to the Temple of the Sun.

  They were holding hands. He didn’t remember when that had happened.

  Tasahre jumped away. They were wet, both of them, soaked through. The air smelled of the rains, but the sky was clearing again, the sun breaking through the cloud.

  Berren looked at his hand and whimpered. It burned. The last joint of his little finger was gone. He felt faint.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said.

  Berren blinked. What he’d expected was a torrent of anger for pulling her away, or for having gone there in the first place, or for a hundred and one other things he’d done wrong.

  Tasahre put a hand on his shoulder. He couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘You were right,’ she said. ‘He was too strong for me.’ She winced and screwed up her face, put a hand to her head. Berren looked at her then. Looked at her eyes, searching for any trace of what the warlock had done to her. There were no marks, no scars, nothing. She was scared, that was all, scared like he was.

  His head throbbed, a searing ache that pushed through the pain of his finger and slowly devoured it.

  ‘Why did you go to that place, Berren?’

  ‘I thought I might find Master Sy. I’m sorry. You saved my life.’

  ‘And you mine,’ she said. ‘Come. You have unmasked a monster. It cannot be allowed to escape.’

  ‘No.’ Berren shook his head. ‘You go.’ The more he looked at her, the more it hurt that he’d have to leave again. He would though. He couldn’t stay here. The House of Records, the Headsman, now the warlock, they were all too much. No, he couldn’t stay. ‘You tell them. I can’t … Look, I just can’t. There’ll be lots of questions and I’m so tired. I can’t.’ His head was crippling him.

  Tasahre stared at him and he didn’t know what to make of what he saw in her face. Longing? Or was that just a reflection of his own? She touched his cheek. ‘Stay here. I won’t be long.’

  Master Sy had said something like that. He nodded, knowing full well he’d be gone before she got back.

  ‘Stay,’ she said again.

  He bit his lip. Made to touch her and then thought better of it.

  ‘Your hand!’

  She took his hand in her own and looked at it, and then all of a sudden he was telling her everything, right from the start. The prince, the assassin in the scent garden, Kasmin, Kol, the Headsman, the papers they’d found and what he’d seen in the Two Cranes and what the Headsman had said after he was dead, all of it. It was too much to keep inside him any more and he had to let it out. He watched her as he spoke, looking for any sign of what she already knew. When he was done she looked at him, brow furrowed and face fierce.

  ‘Show me the wound.’

  Berren held out his finger. It was hurting badly now. Blood was oozing out from under his makeshift bandage. He didn’t dare look. Thinking about it made him shiver and feel sick.

  She looked at him then shook her head. ‘This needs to be dressed, and properly. Come!’

  ‘It’ll be all right. Don’t you need to go tell someone about the witch-doctor?’

  ‘More likely than not the abomination has already fled, if he has the power, and this will not take long. Today is the day of the Abyss, the day of the dark, a bad time to face such a creature. Perhaps that’s why my strength was not enough to break him, even as wounded as he was. Come!’

  The practice yard was empty. The clouds had unveiled the sun and the sky was bright again. All the monks and the priests and the novices were closeted away in their temples. Tasahre took Berren into a small low hut with a sliding door, the place where the monks kept the tools and devices they used for training along with their weapons; and, it turned out, other things. Berren stared, wide-eyed. He’d seen lots of swords in one place in the Armourer’s Quarter, certainly he’d seen bigger swords there, but here … there were so many! Straight swords, curved swords, swords with a hook on the end, all short-bladed and in pairs to be used the way the dragon-monks liked to fight. He’d never seen so many different styles and designs.

  Tasahre smiled. ‘When an elder dragon merges with the sun, his swords are left to the order. That is how we have remembered those who guide us for more than five hundred years, since before the schism. Since before the first of the sun-king’s ships with their Taiytakei guides cast anchor in Aria.’ She opened a small chest by the entrance, filled with neatly arranged pots of powders and salves.

  Berren tried to grasp how long that was and failed. He started to count the pairs of swords instead but there were too many. There must have been close to a hundred.

  ‘Every sword has its story.’ Tasahre sat Berren down on a bench. Several of the swords were missing their twin, he noticed, and a few had clearly seen a good deal of fighting. ‘Berren! Look at me!’

  She jabbed him in the neck with one finger, somewhere near where his jaw met his ear. He gasped, paralysed and swamped by a pain that ran up the entire side of his face as though all his skin had been torn off. After a second or two it ebbed and he could breath again.

  ‘What …? What was that for?’

  Tasahre dangled something in front of him. He was starting to notice that his hand hurt. Really hurt. Warm blood was running down his palm and dripping onto his legs. Oh Gods – now she’d ripped his makeshift bandage off him.

  ‘Distraction,’ she said. She dipped into the chest and set to work, sprinkling powders into the bleeding wound, pressing a gobbet of black mud over the top and then wrapping a piece of cloth tightly over everything. ‘You have seen how we train. There are accidents, at times. So we learn to dress them. This is how a sword-monk treats a wound, Berren. See the difference.’

  He tried but there were tears in his eyes. It burned like acid and he thought he might be sick. Tasahre stood back. She held his wounded hand in her own and touched the firs
t two fingers of her other hand gently to it. Berren winced and almost whined, squeezed his eyes shut, fearing what would come.

  The pain began to recede. In the dim light of the hut, he saw, her fingers were glowing. Not much, but enough that there was no mistaking it. It was the way she’d glowed when she’d chased down the warlock.

  ‘You’re …’ The pain was almost gone.

  ‘The blessing of the sun,’ she breathed. ‘A priest would do it better, but this will suffice. The wound will heal quickly and the pain will be tolerable. You will not lose more than you already have.’ Then she picked up the bandage she’d taken off his hand and sniffed it. ‘You know I cannot be silent about what you’ve told me. Where is your master, Berren? Truly now, do you know?’

  Sword-monks could smell a lie, that’s what everyone said. They could sniff them out, easy as smelling out a dead fish. Tasahre was looking at him, eyes hard, straight into him.

  ‘That was the only place I could think of. He wasn’t there.’ The Headsman had told him where Master Sy might be, but the Festival of Flames was months away. ‘I don’t know where else to look.’ And that was true, and if he had known, right there and then, he would have told her too. ‘How did you know where I was?’

  ‘I followed you through the city.’

  ‘You tracked me? What, followed my footprints on the cobbles or something?’

  ‘I followed you, Berren. It seemed you might go looking for your master after Justicar Kol came to ask his questions. You were not truthful when you spoke with him. I watched and then I followed. It was easy enough.’ Tasahre’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are your master’s dealings with that monster?’

  Berren shrugged. ‘He never says. I think … I think … The Headsman – he said he was bringing soldiers to the city for you from across the sea. He said the priests in this temple were going to start a war. Is that true?’

  Now it was her turn to look away. ‘I cannot answer that, Berren. The city men who came here today think the same. That is why they were here, and that is why they are looking for your master who they say holds the proof. They cannot say who has done this, so they point their accusations at us all. I came to Deephaven to bring the word of the Sun. I came to serve the Autarch and to protect him. That is all.’

  ‘But he hasn’t come.’

  ‘I know.’

  Berren swallowed. ‘Velgian. He was dressed like a sword-monk. Was he one of you once?’

  Tasahre shook her head, almost laughing. ‘We heard the story. Not then, but later. You threw a bowl of porridge at him and then hit him on the nose with a waster and he ran away, yes?’

  Berren nodded. ‘He had swords like yours.’

  ‘Perhaps he meant to be seen? Do you think, Berren, you could have hit a true sword-monk on the nose? Even now?’

  He thought hard about that. No, there was the answer. He’d spent nearly two months with Tasahre and her brothers and sisters, and no, he couldn’t have hit any of them on the nose, or probably anywhere else. Not then, before the training, and probably not even now. He shook his head.

  ‘He was never one of us, Berren. In your heart, you know this. We do not murder men in their sleep. That has never been our way.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I remember His Highness coming to the temple and ordering me to train you. I thought the sun was punishing me for something. I didn’t know what it was but I hated him for doing that to me, for separating me from my brothers and sisters, for giving me such a burden. I didn’t want anything to do with you. I thought you were a stupid idiot boy.’ She laughed. ‘And sometimes you are. You are uncouth, rude, you have so little respect for our ways that you could never be one of us and you would never want to be. I thought all you wanted was to learn how to kill so you could strut about like the snuffers this city seems to breed like rats. And in part, it’s true that you do, and don’t try to tell me it’s not. But we are taught to take whatever the sun passes down upon us and carry it without complaint. So I did as I was asked, and in the end you were not such a heavy stone around my neck.’

  Berren got up. His hand throbbed but it wasn’t so bad now. His skin tingled. He wanted to throw himself around her and hold her close to him. He took a step closer but she stopped him, a hand against his chest, gentle and firm.

  ‘It would not be right.’

  He took her hand in his own. Pressed it to him. He could have cried. ‘I want to …’ Wanted to what? Run away with a sword-monk? Yes, but that wasn’t ever going to happen.

  A sad smile flickered over her face. ‘The crossing of our paths will be a fleeting one. The time will come when you will leave and I will stay. When you are gone, I will remember you fondly, as you will remember me. I am glad to have met you, Berren.’ She reached out with her other hand. Two fingers glowing with a faint light in the gloom, warm and yellow like the sun, touched his brow. ‘The sun’s blessing be with you.’ For a moment, her fingers lingered. He half raised his injured hand to touch her arm and then stopped. ‘We should go now. The priests will need to decide what to do. I must tell them everything you have told me. I will have no say in what is to be done, but when they are deciding your fate, I will do what I can. When the abomination turned his power on me you had a chance to run. If you had, I would have been lost, but you didn’t. I will not forget that.’ Gently she withdrew and smiled one last time. ‘I am sorry about your hand.’

  ‘Tasahre, who is Sunbright Ansinnas?’

  She laughed and turned to look at him with a smile. ‘You’ve been in this temple for more than a year and you don’t know who Sunbright Ansinnas is? Ansinnas is the Sunherald’s aide.’

  A chill ran down Berren’s spine. ‘What does he … what does he do?’

  ‘She, Berren. The Sunbright looks after the Sunherald. Come!’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that if the Sunherald desires to visit the City of Spires, Sunbright Ansinnas will be the one who makes it so. If someone wishes to see the Sunherald, they will see the Sunbright to ask for his time. Come! We must tell the priests the truth of what lurks by the river.’

  ‘He did something to me.’ Berren shivered. The pain in his head and in his finger were receding now, but there was still the knife. The vision of his own soul, laid out before him, cutting a tiny piece out of it with his own hands. ‘He made me …’ Made me into something. But I don’t know what! ‘I saw some of the papers that Justicar Kol was looking for,’ he murmured. ‘In Master Sy’s house.’

  Tasahre shook her head. ‘Then give them to him. The Emperor is no friend to our path but we do not start wars. That is not what we are for. Come. The priests will know what to do.’ she smiled once more, and he watched her walk away through the afternoon sun towards the temple doors. He made as if to follow but lagged behind a little. She didn’t look back, didn’t wait for him but kept walking, as though she believed he was at her side.

  Sooner or later, Master Sy would come looking for his old friend Kuy again.

  He stared at the temple gate. He couldn’t shake the sense that there was somewhere he was meant to be, somewhere that wasn’t here.

  He turned back to Tasahre, still walking away with the sun on her back, still not looking over her shoulder towards him. She was letting him go, he knew, letting him run if he wanted. She was letting him be free.

  No. This was where he was meant to be. He’d made his choice, back in the House of Cats and Gulls, even if he hadn’t known it.

  He trotted across the practice yard and followed Tasahre into the temple.

  27

  ERRANDS ON ABYSS-DAY

  The monks didn’t wait for the next day. Berren watched them go, seven of them with the elder dragon himself, as many priests and a score of temple soldiers. Tasahre went with them. They were gone the next day too, Sun-Day, all of them. When Tasahre came back she had her swords with her. She held them up to Berren. ‘They were lying on the floor,’ she told him. ‘The abomination has disappeared.’ And that was all she had to say. For the rest
of that day she worked him hard, mercilessly hard; the more questions he asked, the more she pushed him. Twice he tried to ask her about the golden knife, whether it had been found, tried to find the words to ask about what the warlock had done to him. Both times she came at him with a sword for an answer. Gone, he slowly pieced together, meant vanished gone. Not dead gone. Not finished.

  And that was all there was. Neither of them talked about what they’d seen there. No one came with questions about Master Sy. There were no visits from Justicar Kol and for the rest of that day it was as though nothing had ever happened; at least until the next sunrise when Berren found himself being shaken out of bed.

  ‘We have duties,’ Tasahre told him. Once he was dressed, she told him they were going back to the House of Cats and Gulls.

  ‘No.’ Berren shook his head.

  The look she gave him was a strange one, half sadness, half affection. ‘Yes, Berren. Yes you can and you will. We are both going. We will not be alone, it will be daylight, and the abomination is gone. He is merely driven away for now, but my brothers and sisters are hunting for him and they will find him and end him. You have nothing to fear while we are close to you.’

  Berren shook his head again. ‘If he’s not there, why do we have to go back?’

  She looked away. ‘We must face our fears, Berren. That is what makes us strong. He touched us both and we must take back what is ours.’

  However true that was, it wasn’t why they were going. Berren waited.

  ‘I cannot tell you,’ she said after a bit. ‘I have sworn I would not. Your master had dealings with the warlock. There may be papers. You said you had seen some.’ An uneasy look crossed her face. ‘There may be other things, too.’

  Like the golden-handled knife. Berren shuddered.

  ‘Please.’ She looked him in the eye, full of earnest hope. ‘I cannot offer you much in return, but I will teach you what I can while we are there.’