The Raven Collection

by James Barclay

  Finally, his eyes came to rest on Hirad, sleeping so deeply his breath hardly registered. He had been lucky. For all his confidence, Denser had no idea whether Julatsan-shaped WarmHeal mana would mean anything to him, or whether Ilkar’s reluctance to channel the mana would affect the flow. It was a sudden source of interest to Denser that, give or take the odd spike, the WarmHeal shapes of the two opposed Colleges were identical. Again the smile. He wondered if Ilkar would ever open his eyes to the truth his Masters had buried from him and all of his brothers.

  One magic. One mage.

  Denser was sitting close to the door, listening to the wind rattling the sparse brush against the base of the barn. He filled his pipe from his belt pouch, frowning as he felt around the dwindling supply.

  ‘Hmm.’ He lit the pipe, letting the flame he produced on his fingers warm his face for a moment. Within his cloak, his Familiar shifted, its head nestling against his stomach.

  Outside, there was another sound; a whispering on the wind. Something gliding. It was a sound Denser knew very well, as did the Familiar, who poked its head from his cloak to look at him, nose and whiskers twitching, ears pricked.

  The whispering came closer, the gliding changed to an idle flap and there was a landing just to the right of the barn door. Claws scrabbled briefly at the earth, the wings flapped again and the whispering became distant and was gone.

  Denser and the cat stared deeply into each other’s eyes.

  ‘Well, well, well,’ said the Dark Mage. ‘That’s why you did it. You knew they were coming.’ He shook his head. ‘And I never suspected a thing.’

  Chapter 10

  Hirad awoke to sounds of movement and organisation. As he opened his eyes, he could hear Ilkar demanding someone ready the horses, while the crackle and smell of a fire told of Richmond preparing a meal. Light streamed in through the barn’s open door and any remaining shadows were crisscrossed with light that shone through gaps in the planking. Hirad shifted. He felt a dull ache in his back but the pain he remembered had gone.

  ‘Good morning, Hirad.’

  Hirad turned his head and pushed himself up on his elbows. ‘Bugger me, Talan, but I pity the woman who wakes up staring at you.’ He offered an arm and Talan hauled him to his feet. Once up, a look around the barn brought reality back with unpleasant force.

  There weren’t enough of them. No way. The gap left by The Unknown was enormous. Unbridgeable. Hirad felt his heart thumping in his throat, and his eyes swept the barn once more as if he’d somehow missed the big man, sitting on a bale of straw behind the horses perhaps. His eyes pricked and he set off for the door to give himself the confirmation he had to have.

  Sure enough, the grave was there, and by it, Denser and the cat, the mage staring at the low mound of earth in a kind of sombre surprise. As Hirad watched, he shook his head slowly.

  ‘I know how you feel,’ said the barbarian.

  Denser smiled thinly. ‘Probably not.’

  ‘What’s causing all this?’ Hirad waved an arm at the view in front of them. The air was no clearer than on the previous day. Despite the sun riding into the sky unchallenged by cloud, Septern’s estate shimmered in a light mist, keeping anything further than thirty-odd yards away just out of plain focus. At least today there were no dark shapes moving against the horizon. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘I think it’s either another after-effect of all the spell casting around the house, or the rip is causing eddies in the atmosphere. We don’t know how dimensions interact but it may be that they can’t mix.’ He glanced back down at The Unknown’s grave. ‘Perhaps we should talk.’

  ‘Yes, I think we should. We’re in trouble.’

  Denser indicated they walk away from the barn, and the two men moved off together in the direction of the house.

  ‘I’m not—’

  ‘I think—’

  A brief pause. Denser gestured for Hirad to speak.

  ‘We’ve got to take stock,’ he said. ‘The Raven isn’t used to its people dying. Not for years.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ said Denser. ‘And I know we didn’t start off right—’

  Hirad laughed, a contemptuous sound.

  ‘I’ll say we didn’t.’ His voice was low and cold. ‘First of all, your damned secrecy about what you involved us in almost killed me and ended in the death of my best friend. Then, because of that, we end up in this nightmare country and the second of my friends dies. To save you.’ Denser opened his mouth to speak but Hirad glared him down. ‘Your life is forfeit and I want you to know that the only reason you aren’t dead is that Ilkar seems to believe you are the only chance Balaia has got.’

  The wind gusted, picking at Denser’s cloak. The cat’s ears appeared briefly at his neck line, twitched and withdrew. The mage pulled his pipe from a pocket, made to put it in his mouth and decided against it.

  ‘That’s all I really need to know. You of all The Raven have to believe in me even if you hate me for what has happened.’

  ‘I didn’t say I believed in you. I said Ilkar did, and that’s good enough for me.’ Hirad looked into Denser’s face, seeing a frown developing as his words sank in. ‘You just don’t get it, do you? It really doesn’t matter what I believe. Ilkar says this is important. The Unknown thought so too, and that means The Raven is with you. That’s why we’re so good. It’s called trust.’

  ‘And now there’s a problem.’

  ‘Well spotted, Denser. Yes, there is. Your lies and our haste led to The Raven’s heart being torn out.’ He took a pace forwards, threatening. Denser was unmoved. ‘The centre of The Raven. Me, Ilkar, Sirendor and the big man. We’ve been fighting together for more than ten years. We meet you and in less than one week two of us are dead. Dead.’ Hirad dropped his head and sucked his bottom lip as images of Sirendor crowded his mind.

  ‘We can still do this without them,’ said Denser. ‘We have to.’

  ‘Yeah? Did you somehow miss what happened yesterday? The Unknown took out five of those dogs on his own. Who do you think’s going to do it next time?’

  ‘Well, there’s you standing in front of me and two other good swordsmen in the barn. The only reason we believed we had a chance of recovering Dawnthief was that The Raven would be involved.’

  ‘And you’ve killed two of us already!’ said Hirad. ‘Gods, Denser, there just aren’t enough of us now. And none of us who’s left was ever as good as The Unknown. Or Sirendor.’

  ‘But that doesn’t—’

  ‘Listen to me!’ Hirad breathed deeply. ‘We cannot face another attack like yesterday.’

  Denser nodded. He filled the bowl of his pipe and tamped the tobacco down. A muttered word and a flame appeared around the mage’s index finger. He lit the pipe.

  ‘I’ve considered this, believe me. And like you say, we have to take stock. Depending on how wide our search is for the components will decide how it’s going to go from here. That’s all I ask right now - that we go to the house, find the information we need, assuming it’s there, then all sit down and talk it through.’ He paused. ‘Now those Wesmen have got away from us, they’ll report to Parve. The Gods knows what that will lead to.’

  ‘Why were they here?’

  ‘Because the Wytch Lords will have always assumed that here was the key to Dawnthief. You have to stay with me, Hirad, whatever you think of me. This is too important for the whole of Balaia.’

  ‘So you keep saying,’ said Hirad. ‘But first we have a Vigil to observe. Then we’ll sort out this house and see where we are.’ He turned and walked back to the barn, Denser following a few paces behind.

  The Dark Mage was invited to stay inside the barn while The Raven conducted a shorter Vigil than The Unknown deserved. It was a tradition as old as mercenary camaraderie, but this time reverence had to be tempered with the reality of the situation in which they found themselves; and it was for the same reason that they all left the barn and rode the short distance to the house soon after, instead of walking. Should the Wesmen c
ome back, having the horses even as far away as the barn could prove fatal.

  The once grand structure lay in almost complete ruin. Blackened stone and scorched wood were scattered around a central hub of collapsed walls, with the odd splash of colour from ancient furnishings somehow surviving.

  The house was maybe two hundred feet on its longest side, and had a main entrance that was still just about discernible. Part of a stone archway leant at a crazy angle above a shattered stairway, and next to it the mangled remains of a window frame clung desperately to the vertical, a shred of material flapping in the breeze, stuck on a nail.

  Hirad dismounted, the others following suit. Denser led the horses to a fallen tree some yards away, then returned to stand by Ilkar. Both stared at the destruction, concern plain on their faces.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Hirad. ‘Someone burned his house down. So what?’

  ‘That’s the problem. You don’t just burn down a mage’s house,’ said Ilkar. ‘They’re too well protected. The power needed to do this—’ he gestured at the ruin - ‘is enormous.’

  ‘Is it?’ Hirad turned to Denser. ‘Still think we can do it?’ The Dark Mage raised his eyebrows. ‘So who did it? The Wytch Lords?’

  ‘Almost certainly,’ said Denser. ‘They would have known the extent of Septern’s research into Dawnthief just as we did. He obviously vanished before they got to him.’

  ‘Not happy, were they?’ Talan kicked at a piece of rubble.

  ‘Nor would you be. If they’d got hold of Dawnthief, it would all be over by now.’ It was Denser’s turn to look at Hirad. ‘That is why it’s so important we succeed. We must believe we can, and we must do it.’

  ‘Don’t lecture me, Denser,’ said Hirad. ‘Let’s get inside . . . well, you know, in.’ He pointed through what was left of the arch.

  ‘What are we looking for in there?’ asked Richmond.

  ‘If we’ve read the amulet correctly, the entrance to the workshop is through the floor, and Ilkar is going to have to divine the way through it,’ said Denser.

  ‘Why Ilkar?’ Talan frowned.

  ‘There’s Julatsan code on the amulet. Septern wanted it to be as hard as possible for mages to find his workshop, it seems.’

  ‘More than that,’ said Ilkar. ‘If it was going to be found, he wanted more than just Xetesk represented.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m not getting this,’ said Talan. ‘What College was Septern?’

  ‘Dordover,’ replied Denser. ‘And most of the code on there is Dordovan, but Xetesk could read that easily enough. What we couldn’t read was a passage concerning the opening of the door to the workshop, because it was based in the lore of Julatsa.’ Denser shrugged. ‘We could never read it even if a Julatsan mage told us how.’

  ‘So how did he write it?’

  ‘That, Richmond, is a good question. And I don’t know the answer. He may have worked with a Julatsan, but Ilkar’ll tell you that’s impossible.’

  ‘Not impossible. Just extremely unlikely. Shall we?’ Ilkar led the way over the crumbling rubble, leaping up the steps to the steadier ground on which the arch stood. He turned round. ‘Aren’t you coming in, Talan?’

  ‘Not yet. I think someone should keep a look-out, don’t you?’

  ‘Good idea.’ Ilkar moved gingerly into what was left of the mansion. Devastated stonework lay in chips, covering the cracked stone floor and making walking tricky. Nothing much else was left. The wall by a fireplace had survived to three feet, and beneath the flame marks, a pale blue was just visible. As for the furnishings, a few pieces of scattered wood and iron, the odd strip of deep green upholstery and the oval of a table top were all that remained.

  Denser set about sweeping the stone dust and chips from the floor with his boot and gestured that he could do with some help. The floor itself was cracked in many places, particularly where it joined the walls. The central portion was scored and darkened but otherwise unscathed for an area covering maybe thirty square feet.

  The Dark Mage fished out the amulet, his cat treading gingerly down his cloak as he did so. It padded about the floor, sniffing close, its ears and eyes alert. Denser clacked his tongue, took the amulet from its chain and walked into the middle of the cleared area.

  ‘As obvious as this may seem, the way into the workshop is right in the centre here.’ He knelt on the ground and brushed at it with his free hand. ‘Ilkar, it’s your turn.’ He held the amulet up to the elf, who took it with reverential care and stared at it at length before turning it over in his hands to stare again at the other side.

  ‘I should have looked at it closer the first time, shouldn’t I?’ he said.

  ‘I was praying you wouldn’t,’ said Denser.

  ‘Mean anything to you?’ asked Hirad at his shoulder.

  Ilkar glanced round. ‘Not much of it, no. This bit, though—’ he pointed with his little finger to an arc of symbols which ran around an inner ring near the hub of the amulet - ‘that’s Julatsan, although the lore is very old. The style, I mean.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Hirad.

  Ilkar chuckled and patted Hirad on the shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. Look, here’s a very brief lesson. College lore is something that is passed down through the College over generations. It’s not something you can learn like you can the words of a spell. You have to, I don’t know, assimilate it over years, I suppose. That’s why Xetesk couldn’t read this. It’s Julatsan lore code.’ He stopped.

  ‘Go on. I think I’m there,’ said Hirad. ‘What does this lore do, then?’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t do much in the sense you mean. It’s a way of storing College memories. In simple terms, the lore I know teaches me how to shape mana for the spells I use, although it’s actually much more complex than that. And if I can work out the code on this amulet, it’ll tell me how to divine what it is that operates the entrance to Septern’s workshop. Or at least, that’s the theory.’

  Hirad studied Ilkar’s earnest face, the elf’s sharply tapering eyebrows angled down between his eyes so that they almost met at his nose. He smiled.

  ‘Thank you for that, Ilkar. I suppose you’d best get on with it.’

  Ilkar nodded and walked to the centre of the room, sitting where Denser indicated he thought the entrance to be. Hirad moved to sit in the rubble, where he could watch Ilkar’s face. It struck him again that for all the years they’d known each other, he’d never taken any interest in magic at all. How it worked, who was who, what you had to do. Nothing. Hardly surprising really, he reflected. Magic was Ilkar’s job. Hirad could never perform it, so he’d never bothered to look into it.

  Sitting cross-legged, Ilkar held the amulet on his open palms, examining it intently, occasionally mouthing words. He was breathing slowly and deeply, and when he closed his eyes, his chest continued to move, somewhat to Hirad’s surprise.

  Hirad glanced at Denser, who was also studying Ilkar, right hand absently scratching the cat’s chin, unlit pipe clamped between his teeth. There was a half-smile on his face and fascination in his eyes.

  Ilkar was searching for something, that much was apparent. His head was sweeping the area immediately in front of him, his eyes roving behind closed lids. Hirad frowned and shifted, his mouth turning up at one corner, dimpling his cheek. He found the sight unnerving.

  Ilkar licked his lips and started probing the floor with his fingers, amulet now in his lap. Suddenly, his sightless eyes shifted to his right to where Denser was standing. The Dark Mage flinched reflexively. Ilkar kept staring, unmoving, for fully half a minute.

  He opened his eyes. ‘Got it,’ he said.

  ‘Excellent.’ Denser’s smile broadened.

  Ilkar got to slightly unsteady feet and walked over to the Dark Mage. Hirad stepped over to examine the floor where Ilkar had been probing. To him it was just hard and cold.

  ‘It’s a control spell. Dordovan, I think. I’ll try it, it should be simple enough.’ Ilkar looked again at the amulet, turned it over and mouthed a few words. He gl
anced over his shoulder. ‘Hirad, I would advise you to move a couple of paces backwards.’ The barbarian shrugged and did so.

  Ilkar placed a palm on either side of the amulet, closed his eyes and muttered a brief incantation. There was a momentary hiss of escaping air from a seal, and an entire slab of stone disappeared from where Hirad had been standing.

  ‘All right, Ilkar, I’m impressed,’ said Hirad.

  ‘Thank you, Hirad.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Denser, moving to the hole Ilkar had made. ‘Dimensional transference. No wonder the Wytch Lords never found the way in.’

  He was joined by Hirad. ‘They don’t make doors like that nowadays, eh?’

  ‘Hirad, nobody ever made them like that. Except Septern, it seems.’

  They could see nothing down the hole. The first few steps of a flight led into the darkness, and there was an impression of size, but that was it. Hirad called to Talan to bring in two lanterns, and with them lit, he moved cautiously down the stairs, unsheathed sword in one hand, lantern in the other.

  The air was musty and smelt of age, and Hirad could see he was descending into a chamber almost the same size as the room above it. All but covering the wall directly opposite him was a moving dark. Swirls of deep greys, flecked with brown, green and the odd flash of white, poured over each other, going nowhere. The dark roiled and swam within its frame, alien and menacing, its silence adding to its threat. The room held an air of expectancy and Hirad couldn’t shift the sensation that the swirls would snatch out to grab him and pull him into nowhere. The thought made him shudder. He stopped and felt a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘It’s the dimensional rip. Nothing to worry about,’ said Denser.

  ‘Can’t things come through, you know, from the other side?’ Hirad wafted his sword in the direction of the rip.

  ‘No. Septern stabilised it using his magic and lore. You have to start this side to get back to this side.’

  Hirad nodded and moved on down, only half convinced by Denser’s reply. The rip was compelling. It gave an aura of impenetrable depth but Hirad could see its edge and it seemed to hang on the wall like a picture, less than a hand’s width thick.