“Pretty, so pretty,” he said, his breath heavy with the smell of ale and spirits. He ran his fingers over her hair. “Pale as the winter sun.”
Erali’s husband was meat-armed and hairy like a bear. He had the strength of iron in his grip, and it only seemed to tighten the more she struggled. “Nnno-”
“I’ve seen the way you look at me…” He sneered. “….Lady Forllan. Superior.”
The temporary paralysis had now departed Celysane’s arms, and her mind had become sensible enough to know what she had to do. She twisted her right hand until one of her daggers dropped into her palm, and she shoved it as hard as she could into his shoulder.
Lord Oslond di Certa turned briefly to look at it, but his eyes immediately snapped back to her with a new fire in them. “I will punish you for that.”
Celysane stuck her second dagger into his side without thinking, and again he did not flinch. The man felt nothing! He was a monster!
“Don’t scream,” he whispered, “Not unless you want your little boy to see what I am about to do to you. That’s nothing for a young lad’s eyes, I can tell you.”
He needn’t have given her the warning. With his giant’s hand at her neck, the most noise she could make was a whimper. Oslond reached under her skirt and pulled apart her legs, but Celysane was not about to give up yet. She punched at him with her fists and kicked with her feet as hard as she could.
“Quiet, pretty one,” he said with his beer-filled breath. “Quiet while I show you what a real man feels like.”
No, she thought. No!
There was a flash of brilliant, white light, only this time it did not fade. He was no longer she, and this could only be that dead place where the fires had no heat: The Crux. Silar dropped forward and voided his stomach of its contents. An empty flagon lay on its side nearby, and the last dregs of its pale liquid had already soaked into the lifeless, glowing grass. Blazes, the smell of it! He could still smell it on Oslond’s breath!
He punched the flagon away and curled himself up as tightly as he could. The tears came thick and fast and hard. He knew it had been no false construction of the past; it had been real, every bit of it. Every, last, horrifying moment of it. And he had never known about it. His mother had never mentioned it to him, and nor had his father. Blazes, had his father even known? Silar wept even harder.
The flagon still lay in his line of sight, its body unbroken in spite of his assault on it. Silar thrust himself to his feet to pick it up, and threw it as hard as he could at one of the trees. It struck the bark, but dropped to the floor instead of shattering. That was impossible. His eyes were reddened enough by rage to make the light appear pink, but his vision was still sharp. Silar took up the flagon again and hurled it into the woodland. For a moment he felt relief, until he turned and found another full flagon waiting at his feet.
Silar kicked it over, and it immediately righted itself. Find her, a voice told him.
Find whom? His mother?
He was here to find something. Answers? What had happened after Oslond had committed that… violation of her? He wanted to know that much. And why had she said nothing of it in the years afterward? Again, his eyes found the flagon of ale. Silar never wanted to drink again after experiencing the stink on the breath of that man. But ale had been the gateway into that dream in the first place. It would have to be his gateway again.
Silar seated himself against one of the cold tree trunks, swept the last of his tears from his face and held the flagon before himself. The stench of it made him want to vomit again, but he lifted it, and drank.
Chapter 7
There had only been one way to dispose of Ulena’s body without attracting too much attention, and it had required the use of a trick Morghiad had promised himself he would not do again. He had ordered Kalad out of sight of it, of course; there was no need for his son to learn something that would give him so much pain. He had also sworn the guards and Kalad to secrecy about the attack. As yet, he had no idea who had employed Ulena to kill them, or how they had managed to convince her that it was the right thing to do.
Morghiad stood before the shallow grave he had dug for her, and regarded her motionless form for some time. Out here, beyond the city limits and in the shade of rocky outcrops, he was concealed from view of anyone who would question his actions. But Morghiad questioned those actions enough himself. Ulena had remained good friends with Artemi until the moment they had left Fate’s, and she had never shown any animosity toward him. In truth, Morghiad had grown to quite like her gap-toothed grins and overly bold statements about Hirrahan culture.
Perhaps she had become jealous over his hold on Artemi, or had felt that Artemi’s new duties had served to remove her friend somehow. Ulena had not known many other companions while at Fate’s, which might have been suspicious enough.
But there could be no question of her intentions before she died. She had headed straight for Kalad while he lay on the bed, and her sword had been raised to kill him. If Morghiad had not been obscured from her view by the back of the chair in which he had sat, he was sure that he would not have enjoyed the advantage of preventing her from assassinating his son.
And then there was the next thing he had done. Ulena was a good bladeswoman, but Morghiad would have had no trouble in rendering her unconscious and de-clawing her. Why had he allowed himself to kill her? When he thought back to the fight itself, it all seemed a dark, inexplicable blur.
The creatures were unusually quiet inside his head today, and though they ought to have been shouting obscenities at Ulena for attacking him, they seemed not even to have noticed her presence. Morghiad chose to enjoy that silence, and instead offered Ulena a single tear of sorrow. She had been an innocent child not long ago, and he could only guess at the tortures or blackmails that might have turned her into an assassin. Morghiad knew something of how poor treatment could warp a young mind.
He had no spade, and so with his hands he pushed the dirt back into her grave to cover her. “I will find out who made you do this,” he said softly, before placing some stones onto the bare soil to hide it. It took him two full hours to walk around the bare rock outcrops at the perimeter of the city, until he found a suitable route that would lead him to the minor gates. The Calyrish guard waited for him there, as promised, and together they shouldered their way through the bustling nobles and red-coated soldiers that seemed to fill every traversable area.
Along the route, they passed an open courtyard where wielders practised their forms. Before leaving with Ulena’s body, Morghiad had required one of them to provide him with the bundle of Blaze to use for his accessway, and few of the wielders here were well-trained enough to notice him syphon off a little fire from their forms. He had been fortunate enough in that respect.
The light from their power danced across the red bricks of the cloisters, and he was reminded of the times he had spent watching Artemi building weapons or experimenting with new forms in fire. He could feel the heat from the remains of the bundle he still held in his pocket, and it was the only thing in this damned world that would still give him warmth. Was she back yet? Morghiad checked the ether for her stream for the thousandth time, and was again disappointed to find it absent. She would be bitterly upset when she learned of Ulena’s fate.
Blazes, Collete would have noticed Ulena’s absence from his ranks, wouldn’t he? Or had he been the one to set her on this course of action? Artemi had always trusted him, but perhaps that trust had been misplaced. Morghiad sighed heavily. He was tired to his bones and cold with it!
His mind filled with thoughts of shirts with woollen sleeves and high collars, and he pulled his coat tighter around himself. When he and his small party stepped into the next hallway, a diminutive, slight man with long, blond hair stepped into their path. His movements were lithe – too lithe to be those of a normal man.
“Dorlunh,” Morghiad said, moving ahead of his guard, “What a pleasant surprise.”
He bowed courteously. “I
am here to help, Lord Calyrish.”
“You’re lucky my wife is not here.”
“Lucky? I suppose you could call it that. I would prefer to call it strategic.”
Morghiad could still feel the cold steel as it had touched the back of his neck, and could still hear the silence that had come when Dorlunh had held his breath. His death had not been nearly as instant as he had imagined it might be. “Are you here to present me with another impossible choice then? Or perhaps separate me from my youngest son for a second time?”
Dorlunh’s mouth tightened. “I was misled, my lord, as you were. I understand you are… one of the family now. ”
“In a manner, though Dog Slayer seems to be the best name I can earn for it.”
He smiled. “Sounds more adventurous than Reader at least. Tell me, do you think this peace-making of yours is going to be easy? And do you think that every jumped-up royal and overfed lord is not going to haul you over their battlements to get every copper coin out of you? Or your son? How many spies do you think they have in Calidell, or every other country, for that matter? How many spies does your son have at his command?”
“My son is well-informed.”
“Perhaps he could be better-informed, my lord. As always, I will leave the decision to you. You know where to find me if you need me.” Dorlunh made a final bow, and strode away upon his small, stick-like limbs.
I will leave the decision to you. Morghiad sighed heavily. He was more than weary to his bones.
He returned to his rooms, where Kalad had already blocked the broken window with a piece of shelving he had removed from the nearby bookcase. They were going to have to come up with a plausible explanation for that. There was no obvious sign of Ulena’s death upon the carpets, and someone thoughtful had thrown the broken glass onto the roof below to make it look as if it had been some event inside their chambers that had caused the break.
“Did you find the rope?”
Kalad nodded. “The roof up there is deserted. Quite a serious chink in their guard, as it happens. You’ll find the rope under the bed.”
Morghiad reached under the frame and pulled out the cord to inspect it. He was no ropemaster, but he was sure there would be a few in this city. He cut off a little and pocketed it for later investigation. Really, any nation could have put her up to this, but knowing who had done so could be advantageous to negotiations, as well as useful for the purposes of revenge.
“We should both rest,” Morghiad said. “While we can.”
“Don’t you want to find out who set this up while they’re still-”
“If there is anyone obviously culpable, they would have already left. We unsettle our enemies more by not acknowledging this. They tried; they failed. Now sleep.”
Kalad sighed as he dropped onto the edge of the bed, where Danner appeared to have settled himself quite comfortably. He ruffled his fingers in the animal’s fur. “I don’t think I can sleep.”
Morghiad kicked off his boots and stretched out on a chaise. “You know, your mother told me many stories about Danner. Did she ever mention how they came to meet?”
Kalad shook his head almost imperceptibly.
“It was while she was in what she calls her ‘hiding phase’. This was long before she was an assassin, and before she knew how to fight. She had realised that she would die and live again, but she did not wish to kill her next mother, and so she ran to an island in the – she calls it the Straits of the Raptor, but I think it’s the area around the Calben peninsular today. She sailed there on a tiny dinghy with only a pair of shirts for a jib, and when she hopped off the boat, she found the wolf, half-starved and near death in a cave. He should never have been there, of course – not that far south. Even in Calidell they ought to be rare, but there he was on this beautiful island of white sand, azure seas and tropical ferns. When he did not try to attack her, Artemi decided to feed him and help him to regain his strength, and in return, he helped her to hunt. I’m told he is good at that.”
Kalad smiled thinly. “He can track deer for two weeks without losing any excitement over it.”
Morghiad nodded. The animal he had known had been a guardian for the children more than anything else. “You know, she always said she suspected he had once been a man, and that someone made him into a wolf as punishment. You could almost believe it, couldn’t you – the way he looks into your eyes and seems to understand?”
Kalad chuckled. “He does seem to enjoy watching naked women more than a wolf ought to.”
Was that true? Morghiad thought back to the times when Artemi had walked about their chambers in Gialdin without shame or clothing. Had Danner been watching her while he panted? He shook his head. Jealous of a wolf!
He drifted into a troubled sleep after their discussion – a sleep filled with dreams about Artemi in a place full of shadows, and of monsters with red eyes and claws for hands. He thanked the fires that she was in The Crux rather than that place when he awoke. She was almost certainly still arguing animatedly with the Law-keepers at that very moment. Time did pass differently there, after all.
Morghiad looked about the chamber then, startled by a noise he had only just noticed. Kalad and Danner still slumbered upon the bed, and the sun had set long ago. There was no one else present, but… What was that? It sounded like distant chattering. Morghiad sat up to listen with a keener ear, and only then did he realise that the noise was coming from inside his own head.
Seek the light.
Morghiad did seek the light. He placed his hand inside his pocket and felt for the remnants of the Blaze bundle. It vibrated softly in his palm, and it worked well to silence the many voices of the creatures in his mind. He was going mad. He had to be. Blazes, but he needed to hold it together through these talks! He needed Artemi here. Why had he ever agreed to let her go?! What had he been thinking?!
He had not been thinking, he decided. The monsters in his head had made it seem like a good idea; they had twisted his vision somehow. They knew she was his strength, and they had purposefully ridden him of her in order to take control. I’ll incinerate every one of you when I work out how!
You can’t.
Try it.
You need us.
You are us.
You failed to rid me of Artemi, he said back to them. She’s here with me. At least a part of her was. Morghiad studied his son as he slept. Kalad may not have borne any resemblance to his mother, but his heart beat the same rhythm as hers alright. You can never win.
You’re wrong about us.
Shut up! Morghiad hissed back at them, but when Danner twitched, Morghiad realised he had said it aloud.
He garnered little sleep through the rest of the night, and was a poor conversationalist to his son when Kalad finally awoke. Kalad could have slept through wars and not been disturbed by them! But they did not have time to discuss moods or women that morning; there were other duties to attend to. The first of Morghiad’s obligations was a reverent visit to the tomb of King Xarrelsar. The idea of it made his skin feel as if it might clamber off his body in an attempt to escape, but appearances had to be kept and shows made.
Morghiad doubted that anyone would believe he truly wished to pay respects to a man who pushed thousands of his own soldiers into a slaughter, and a slaughter that Morghiad had fully endorsed at that, but he could at least tell one small lie. He admired Xarrelsar as a brave warrior, he would say. A man who sacrificed his life for his nation. Small though the lie was, it made Morghiad’s stomach turn just to think of it.
Xarrelsar, it soon became clear, had already been treated very well in death indeed. His tomb filled a wing of its own in the castle, and it was crammed with hundreds of life-size, painted warriors. Morghiad put his hand out to touch one of them, and the sound his fingers made told him it was made of hollow, baked clay. “If you would not mind waiting here?” he said to his Hirrahan family.
His father and step mother nodded in understanding, but Qeneris folded his arms and began tappin
g his feet.
“They have to meet Kalad first,” Morghiad said quietly.
At the end of Xarrelsar’s great hall was a golden brazier three feet wide, and it held a column of flame high enough to brush the vaulted ceiling. How was it, Morghiad thought as he led his son to the glorious heat of the altar, that Xarrelsar had been honoured with all of this, when he had only earned a stone plinth underground? It just did not seem fair at all.
The High Priestess Parfal was waiting beside the altar when he arrived, as was the Sunidaran Queen Dorinna, the Ortan King Irfamsis and the Kemeni Queen Valizia. They had all come to watch him embarrass himself. Blazes, even Valizia! And after all the times he had ridden to her country’s rescue!
“Bloody light!” Irfamsis exclaimed. “I never would have believed it until I saw it. Alive, and braided like a true Hirrahan no less.”
“I am Hirrahan, Irfam,” Morghiad responded.
“Irfam, is it? Oh, I don’t know if first-name terms are appropriate between a lord and a king. You are not ruler of Calidell now, Morghiad.” The King of Orta could not have governed a much larger area of land than the Calyrish’s estate, but that had never prevented him from having an inflated sense of his nation’s importance. He was a poor remnant of a line that claimed descent from the great King Ironheart, and that the country had survived at all was probably due to its relative insignificance. Other nations ignored it because it was weak, and those that supported it only did so out of pity, or perhaps some reverence for the memory of a legendary king. With his permanent scowl and feet that belonged to a man twice his size, Irfamsis presented the image of no legend. Morghiad smiled as he recalled how Artemi had giggled at Irfam’s ungainly swagger behind his back. She had been cruel about him, true enough, but he had earned that treatment from her after the things he had said.
“Forgive me, sire,” Morghiad said in good humour, “But a number of the other kings and queens here have already asked me to address them as I would have in the past.” Of course they had not… “All done in the spirit of friendship, you understand?”
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