by Lucy Hounsom
Pain exploded in the wound and he screamed, cradling the arm to his chest. The impact cracked the fragile scabbing and blood welled up.
Blood. His blood. Even in a mist of pain, Char knew what that meant and he put his other hand over the wound, hiding the black blood, feeling it slick on his palm. No one could see. It was Ma’s first and most important rule. Never let anyone see you bleed. Never let anyone see your eyes.
Ma looked over at his cry and took in his situation in one awful glance. Then she was moving, faster than even the Khronostians moved, until she’d placed herself in front of him, her sticks daring the assassins to strike.
And strike they did, in a sickening rush. Ma met their attacks head on, her own sticks a blur. When Char didn’t think the battle could get any faster, the two Khronostians began to vanish and reappear, just like the assassin out on the dunes. They were slowing time, so that they could attack from several directions seemingly in the same moment.
Ma blocked every blow. Although she didn’t vanish and reappear, still she seemed to know where each attack would come from before it did; always she had a stick ready to parry. Char could only clutch his arm and look on, helpless.
Finally, the two Khronostians stepped back, just as the other assassin had done when faced with Ma’s prowess. ‘Who are you?’ the man demanded, chest heaving, his mismatched cheeks flushed with exertion. The woman tilted her head on one side, assessing.
Ma answered both question and gaze with silence.
‘We do not wish to fight you,’ the man said. ‘We only came to take the Kala back to his people.’
The words dealt Ma a visible blow. Shock replaced the snarl she’d worn since the start of the fight. ‘You … what?’ she asked faintly.
‘Now that the Kala is reborn,’ the woman said, ‘he must lead his people in the forging of a new world, as he himself foretold so many years ago.’
‘That’s why you’re here?’ Ma asked. ‘You think he is the Kala?’
The way she said it was strange, Char thought, as if she’d heard the term before and was familiar with its use.
‘We do not think, we know,’ the man said. ‘The marks of his presence are evident.’ His fat lip curled briefly as he gestured at their surroundings. ‘You may not be aware, but talk of this slaving caravan has spread far beyond the Beaches. Its fame is such that even we began to pay attention.’
‘We shadowed you long enough to witness the Kala’s influence for ourselves,’ the woman said. ‘It is surely thanks to the Kala’s presence that this caravan has suffered so little misfortune. The sand dogs never attack you, even when you pass through the heart of their territory. You evade many an unscrupulous iarl’s cut-throats, and you make more ken than you have a right to. You face the same threats as other slaving caravans and, where they fail, you continue to prosper.’
Both Khronostians turned to Char. ‘Time and circumstance bend to your will, Kala,’ the man told him and he bowed. ‘You must return to your people. War is coming. The empire weakens and now is the time to strike. With you to lead us, Sartya will fall.’
‘I …’ Char shook his head. ‘I didn’t do any of those things. If we’ve done well, it’s down to luck and skill. I don’t have any power.’
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ma stiffen. Surely, surely she didn’t believe this rubbish?
‘You have had a potent guardian,’ the woman said, ‘one who has worked very hard to conceal the truth from you.’ She looked at Ma through narrowed, speculative eyes. ‘Hasn’t he, Mariana?’
Ma’s face blanched and she stepped back, closer to Char.
‘It took me a while to remember,’ the woman continued, ‘the girl who turned traitor, who ran from our battle with the dragons. The prodigy – the one they said would be the greatest of the dualakat. Does it sadden you to know we were victorious? The Lleu-yelin won’t be bothering this world again.’
‘You killed them?’
‘As good as. They’re shut away in a place where no one will find them, a prison they’ll never escape.’ Her eyes narrowed, flicked to Char. ‘Such irony that it would be you who found the Kala. You won’t be able to keep him hidden, Mariana. He grows more powerful every day.’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Ma said, but her usual stoicism had cracked and fallen away.
‘Why have you chosen to poison him against us, Mariana? Does your hatred run so deep?’
Char’s breath caught. ‘Ma?’ he managed. Blood was beginning to drip through the gaps between his fingers and, though the pain made his eyes water, he tightened his hold on his arm. No one could see.
But perhaps it didn’t matter any more. Perhaps the black blood meant he was this Kala, just as the Khronostians said. When his eyes flamed and the rage built – what if that was this power they spoke of? Char felt sick, remembering the fight with Ren and Tunser. The moment that Ren cut him, a wind had blown up, a wind out of a windless day.
‘Gods,’ he said. The slave auction this afternoon – what if he had somehow split the sack of ken? When the anger had flared up and he’d struggled with it … was this the reason Ma avoided talking about the rage, why she always told him to let it go? He looked over at her, a horrible desperation growing inside him. If the Khronostian woman was telling the truth, then …
‘You’re one of them,’ he whispered, his throat burning, and Ma shook her head. But tears shone in her eyes and they told him all he needed to know. ‘Why?’ he asked, still hiding his blood from force of habit. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘Because Mariana Leskovian is dead,’ she said. ‘I’m Ma. Your Ma. I love you.’
‘Enough to lie to me,’ he said viciously. ‘Enough to imprison me in this forsaken pit of a life.’
‘No,’ she said, her face anguished. ‘No, you don’t understand.’
‘I think I finally do,’ Char said. His breathing sounded harsh in his ears and it wasn’t the rage he battled against. This emotion was worse, sharper, as if his pounding heart had a razor edge and each successive beat cut him deeper until he couldn’t keep his agony inside. ‘Why shouldn’t I go with them?’
‘You mustn’t,’ Ma gasped. ‘I saved you from them, I hid you. They want to kill you.’
‘You are deluded, Mariana,’ the woman said. ‘Why would we harm our Kala?’
‘Don’t listen, Char,’ Ma said and Char’s surprise stopped him in his tracks. She never used that name, never. He stood confused, hurt and bleeding, looking between the three of them. They all wanted something from him, but no one had asked, had ever asked, what he wanted.
‘I’m not your leader,’ he said to the Khronostians. He looked at Ma and had to force the next words out. ‘I’m not your son.’
For a moment it seemed Ma’s face would crumple, but instead it hardened. ‘You owe me,’ she said. ‘You have no idea what I sacrificed when I chose to save your life. I won’t let you give it to them.’
Amidst the silence caused by her words, someone flung back the flap of the tent and stepped inside. ‘I hate to break up this little scene,’ Genge said, looking around at them all. Lamplight sparked along the drawn length of his sword as he turned a pale-eyed glare on the two Khronostians. ‘But this is my caravan and these are my people. Now piss off.’
The female Khronostian moved …
… And Genge was dead.
It happened between breaths. Char had gasped at Genge’s sudden entrance; by the time he exhaled, it was over and the slave master lay twisted on the ground, his neck broken.
Char couldn’t stop staring at him. This was the man he’d been going to kill, the man whose death would free both himself and Ma from a life that had become a prison. He was the one to kill Genge, not some stranger. He’d planned this moment, imagined standing over Genge’s sleeping form, gripping the knife that would spill out his blood. A coward’s act for a coward.
But Genge was dead, murdered by someone who knew nothing of his crimes, or Char’s own plan for revenge. With a furious
cry, Char leapt at the Khronostian woman, whipping the knife he’d meant for Genge from his belt. But before he reached her, Ma caught him around the chest and knocked the blade from his hand. ‘Don’t let anyone see you bleed,’ she growled and pushed him towards the tent entrance. ‘If you ever loved me, then do as I say and run.’
Still stunned at the suddenness of Genge’s death, Char stared at her. He did love her – like the mother he had never known. As the Khronostians moved towards him, he did as she asked and ran for the tent’s entrance. They moved to stop him, but Ma was there, blocking them, giving him time to flee. As he threw himself into the night, towards the grimy lights of Na Sung Aro, Char knew his was a coward’s run, a slaver’s run. He didn’t stop and he didn’t look back.
Keeping his mind blank, fingers still clamped around his bloody arm, he burst through the gates of Na Sung Aro and made for the warren of sand-choked backstreets. His clumsy flight drew little attention. Someone was always running from something in the Black Bazaar – a trade that had soured, or a hooch-fuelled argument gone out of hand, or perhaps just an ithum-user chasing the visions. There were no guards to exact justice, as there were in the empire’s cities. You were on your own in Na Sung Aro, and that was how most people liked it.
The wider streets were paved, but Char avoided those, preferring to lose himself in the darker alleyways where the desert still held sway. Sand drifts had piled up against the adobe bricks, making it seem as if the desert itself had birthed these buildings. None were tall, height being unwise on land frequently battered by sandstorms, and their windows were small and covered by mysha hide or canvas.
When he felt as if he’d put a safe distance between himself and the Khronostians, Char sank down on his haunches and put his back against a wall still warm from the day. The first thing he had to do was stop his wound bleeding – already he felt faint and the alleyway swam in his sight. But was that from the wound or from Ma’s revelations? His whole world had shifted in a matter of moments with a few, significant words. For the first time, Char wondered – really wondered – who he was, with his umbra skin and his ashen hair and eyes that burned when the rage took him. Could he be the Khronostians’ prophesied leader?
He began to laugh bitterly and found himself unable to stop. The ludicrousness of the situation – a slaver being the reincarnated leader of a band of disfigured magicians – was too much. Char laughed and laughed, clutching his stomach with the pain of it and he wasn’t sure when the laughter turned to tears or who the tears were for.
Finally, his throat sore and his head pounding, he dragged off his headscarf, wiped his face with it and then tore it into strips to bind up his arm. He’d lost track of time. The black, starry sky told him nothing except what he already knew: he was alone and homeless without a single ken to his name. He wouldn’t be able to return to the caravan – it was nothing without Genge. And the Khronostians would expect it. He tried not to think of Ma and where she was. Had the assassins overpowered her at last, or had she killed them with as little compunction as the first?
His brief fit of madness had left him sprawled like a drunk against the wall and now Char felt two hard objects digging into his hip. He looked down and was surprised to see the kali sticks he thought he’d dropped tucked behind his belt. Ma must have stuck them there when she pushed him from the tent. He slid both sticks from their sheath and closed his fists around them. Their smooth surface was cool and reassuring. He was glad to have them with him.
He ought to stay here, lie low until the Khronostians stopped searching. But they’d found him twice now and a chill and sudden certainty told him they’d never give up. He would need to leave Na Sung Aro, make for the nearest frontier – that would be Baior. Char tried not to think about what he’d do once there. Follow his and Ma’s plan, he supposed, and head for the Heartland, hoping to meet up with her again. The only profession he’d ever known was slaving. Slaving and fighting, and the Khronostians had shown him quite painfully that he wasn’t too good at the latter. Still, he knew enough to offer his services to a trade caravan – he’d fought off bandits before.
He needed food and water, supplies for the road. Char dismissed the option of asking Iarl Alder for help; he didn’t know him well enough. Then he thought of going to Rogan, but the iarl would ask questions, too many questions, the first being why Ma wasn’t with him. When it came down to it, did he even trust the man? Char grimaced to himself. Without the iarls’ assistance, there was only one option left.
An hour later, as the fledgling thief ran through Na Sung Aro, a group of men hot on his heels, Char cursed himself for being a fool. Panting, he tightened his hold on his pilfered goods and swallowed profanities he didn’t have breath to express. He was tired and injured. What had made him think stealing from Walker a good idea? The ithum parlour had seemed like the ideal target, peopled as it was with addled users lost in worlds only they could see. But he hadn’t counted on the toughs paid to guard the parlour’s customers, or just how ardent in their pursuit they’d be.
Stupid. His head was too full of fog to think straight. Thieving was rife in Na Sung Aro, even expected, but that didn’t mean it went unchallenged. He urged his tired body faster, each gasped breath searing his lungs. A grim certainty dragged at him: he didn’t have the strength to fight the thugs. And there was only one place to go where they wouldn’t follow him.
Char swung a sharp left, narrowly missing an overturned crate. Leaping it, he dashed for the outskirts of the small town, scanning the walls for a likely spot to scale. With a heave, he tossed his sack up and over the wall and then launched himself at the bricks, scrabbling for purchase. A shout reached him. The men had entered the alleyway, but Char couldn’t spare a glance. Boots slapped on sand, someone tried to grasp his ankle and he kicked out. He reached the wide top of the wall and crouched there against the sky, looking down at his pursuers.
Five men glared up at him. One made to climb, but another hauled him back with an oath. ‘Enjoy that while you can,’ he said. ‘And give the mysha our regards.’
Char eyed the men. Their drawn blades glinted dully in the starlight. He could run along the top of the wall, certainly … and they would follow below, waiting for the moment his courage failed him and he slipped back into town. They’d likely beat him bloody then, perhaps they’d kill him. This was Na Sung Aro – no one would stop them. No one would care. His corpse would be feeding the mysha either way.
So Char gathered what little shreds of will he had left, turned his back on Na Sung Aro, and jumped.
9
Skar, Acre
Medavle
The atrium is a hazy banquet of sunlight, a colour of such startling wonder, it brings tears. On clear days, it is always like this, but he never wearies of it. He comes here to listen to the songs of Solar birds. They fly overhead, golden wings filling the hall with music. Fountains trill softly, as they trickle into basins. Trees share their branches with tiny silver claws. The Lunar birds are statues until night, glories of changeless metal.
Wielders drift around him. All is light and laughter and the shadows of war are short. Their robes are silken, elaborate, but there are others too, dressed simply and in white. Their faces turn to acknowledge him and a few smile. These are his people and for a moment, he feels sadness.
She chases it from him. He sees her across the hall. The sun clings to her body, gilds each golden hair. She walks in beauty; she is beauty itself. Like a lodestone, she draws him to her and she smiles a smile that is his alone. Her lips are pale roses. Her eyes are the sky.
‘Isla …’
He cannot touch her, not here, not where the Wielders might see them. It is enough to be near her, to hear his name on her tongue. She lifts a hand to his face, briefly daring, and lets it drop. ‘You’re troubled,’ she whispers. ‘What is it?’
He woke, her voice in his ears, as clearly as if she were beside him. But she was ash and light, killed by a madman’s dream.
Medavle raised sha
king hands to his head – he had not dreamed of Isla in years. Perhaps now that Kierik was dead and Acre restored, she returned to show him how empty his vengeance was. It wouldn’t bring her back. He remembered that awful day, the day Kierik had murdered all five hundred of his people, the Yadin, for the power in their bodies. All save himself and Anohin. Medavle had bound his own life force to the Starborn and so turned Kierik’s spell back upon him. But whatever satisfaction he felt in breaking Kierik’s mind was lost in the horror of running through doomed Solinaris, searching for any Yadin Kierik might have missed. She had to be all right, his Isla, the woman he’d loved the moment he saw her. No matter that it was forbidden for Yadin to love one another, no matter that their sole purpose was to serve their masters, the Wielders. What he and Isla shared was too powerful, too perfect, to give up.
So he’d run, the glass citadel crashing down around him, seeing pile after pile of empty Yadin robes. The ghosts of his people seemed to linger about the abandoned clothes, a fleeting impression of their presence, soon lost. He hadn’t found her. Neither her robes, nor her ghost. It was as if she’d never existed.
Now he’d discovered his people again, only to lose them to another Starborn.
Medavle sat up, brushing a hand over his eyes. Kyndra lay on her side, limbs curled in protectively, breathing the evenness of sleep. They were all here together, though the rebels had offered the women separate quarters. Kyndra had said firmly that they would stay as a group.
Although they lay under rock, he guessed it wasn’t yet evening, and instead of returning to his troubled rest, he found himself watching Kyndra. Even in the dim torchlight, he could see the mark on her hand – a mark that was clearer since yesterday.
It wasn’t the only one. Other constellations were sharper too, on her wrist, her neck. Medavle had seen what she’d done in the Sartyan camp … it had almost convinced him to take his knife and kill the young woman while she slept. She had shed her bloodstained clothes and burned them, perhaps thinking to destroy the memory in the fire too. But Medavle knew and the knowledge lay like an iron mantle across his shoulders.
