Dark Moon (4 page)

‘
Do you want us to die?
’ asked Tarantio.

‘
I don’t much care
,’ replied Dace. ‘
Perhaps that is what makes me the best
.’

The storm passed as suddenly as it had come, and the moon shone bright in a clear sky. ‘
Come then, brother
,’ said Dace. ‘
Come out into the world of mud and mediocrity. I have had my fun
.’

Tarantio took control and eased himself from the tree, then turned back to gather dry bark and dead wood from the hole. With this he started a new fire.

‘
We could have been in a palace
,’ Dace reminded him. ‘
In that large soft bed with satin sheets, within the room of silvered mirrors
.’

‘
You would have killed her, Dace. Don’t deny it. I could feel the desire in you
.’

The Duke of Corduin had sent a famous courtesan to him: the Lady Miriac. Miriac of the golden hair. Her skills had been intoxicating. Even without the mirrors the night would have been the most memorable of his young life, but with them Tarantio had seen himself make love, and be made love to, from every angle, giving him memories he would carry for as long as the breath of life clung to him. He sighed.

But at the height of his passion he had felt Dace’s anger and jealousy. The raw power of the emotions had frightened him.

And Tarantio had fled the arms of Miriac, and turned his back on the promise of riches.

‘
I would have been a great Champion
,’ said Dace. ‘
We could have been rich
.’

‘
Why did you want to kill her?
’

‘
She was bad for us. You were falling in love with her, and she with you. The courtesan could not resist the young virgin boy with the deadly sword. She stroked your face when you wept. How touching! How sickening! Is that why we are going to Corduin? To see the bitch?
’

Tarantio sighed. ‘
You don’t really exist, Dace. I am insane. One day someone will recognize it. Then I’ll be locked away, or hanged
.’

‘
I exist
,’ said Dace. ‘
I am here. I will always be here. Sigellus knew that. He spoke to me often. He liked me
.’

With the dawn came fresh pangs of hunger. Tarantio spent an hour trying to catch another trout, but luck was not with him. He scooped a two-pound female, but she wriggled in his grasp, turned a graceful somersault in the air and returned to the depths. Drying himself, he dressed and strode off towards the higher country.

The air was thinner here, the wind cold against his face. Autumn was closing fast, and within a few short weeks the snow would come. Slowly and carefully Tarantio climbed a steep slope, moving warily among huge boulders which littered the mountainside. He wondered idly how the boulders had come to be here, since they were not of the same stone as the surrounding cliffs. Many of them had deep grooves along the base, as if haphazardly chiselled by a stonemason.

‘
Volcanic eruptions
,’ said Dace, ‘
way back in the past. Gatien used to talk of them, but then you had little interest in geology
.’

‘
I remember that you liked stories of earthquakes and volcanoes. Death and destruction have always fascinated you, Dace
.’

‘
Death is the only absolute, the only certainty
.’

Finally, with the sun beginning its long, slow fall to the west, Tarantio reached level ground and stopped to rest. Several rabbits emerged from a grassy knoll and he killed one with a throwing knife. Finding a flat rock he skinned the beast, then removed the entrails, separating the heart and kidneys. There was a small stream nearby, and close to it he found a bed of nettles, and beyond it some chives. Further searching brought him the added treasure of wild onions. Returning to his camp-site, he prepared a fire. Once it had caught well, he drew his knife and cut two large square sections of bark from a silver birch. Using a forked stick he held one section of bark over the fire, warming it, making it easier to fold. Then he scored the bark and expertly folded it into a small bowl. Repeating the process with the second square, he grew impatient and the bark split. Tarantio swore at himself. Painstakingly he selected and cut another section.

Filling the first bowl with water from the stream, he returned to the fire, built a second blaze and fed it steadily with dry wood. When the coals were ready, he placed the bowl on the fire and added a handful of nettles, chopped chives and several onions. On the first fire he skewered and cooked the rabbit. The meat was greasy and tender, and he ate half of it immediately, tearing the remainder and adding it to his simmering bowl.

At this high altitude the water boiled away swiftly and three times Tarantio was forced to fetch more water from the stream to add to his stew. Bark bowls would not burn – unless the flames of the fire rose above the water line.

Back at the mercenaries’ camp he had left several fine copper cooking pots and various utensils gathered over the years. But when Karis’s lancers had struck there had been no time to think of possessions.

Tarantio lay back, staring up at the sky. It was difficult now to focus on a time when there had been no wars. Almost a third of his life had been spent marching from one battle site to another, while Dace and others fought to hold a town, or take it – charging an enemy line, or resisting a charge.

Up here in the mountains such petty squabbles seemed far away. But then so did the charms of beautiful women like the Lady Miriac. Dace was right. He had fallen in love with her and he thought of her often, remembering the satin softness of her skin and the sweetness of her breath. It mattered nothing that she was a courtesan, a whore for the nobility. He felt he had seen something beyond that, something deeper and more enduring.

‘
Such a romantic, you are, brother. At the first glint of gold she would hurl herself on her back and open her legs. Your gold or someone else’s. It would mean nothing to her
.’

‘
You said she was falling in love with me
,’ he reminded Dace.

‘
In love with the virgin, I said. That’s what touched her. After a while she would have tired of you
.’

‘
We’ll never know, will we?
’

At dusk Tarantio ate the stew. It was bitter and good, but the memory of his last meal with added salt back among the mercenaries eroded the pleasure. Dace had fallen silent, for which Tarantio was grateful. He could still sense his presence, but the lack of conversation was welcome.

The following morning he continued on his way, across narrow valleys full of alder and birch and pine. The weather had cleared and the sun shone now in a clear sky, the snow on the distant peaks glowing like white flame.

As he walked, his mind was far from battles and war, recalling gentle days with Gatien, researching ancient texts, trying to make sense of the tortured history of this fertile continent. If ever these wars end, I will become a scholar, Tarantio decided.

Even as the thought came to him he could hear Dace’s mocking laughter.

Three hundred miles to the north-east, at the centre of a new desert of barren rocks, a slender, blond-haired man climbed to the top of what had once been Capritas Hill. His green cloak was torn and threadbare, the soles of his shoes worn thin as paper. Duvodas the Harp Carrier stood at the summit and fought to hold down a rising tide of desolation and despair. His gentle face and soft grey-green eyes reflected the sorrow he felt. There was no magic left in the land. Black and grey mountains bare of earth reared up from the plains like rotting teeth, and Duvodas felt as if he was sitting in the jaws of death. Where once had been sculpted beauty, amid forests and streams and verdant valleys, now nothing remained. The flesh of the land had been stripped to the bone, clawed away by a hand larger than eternity. The four cities of the Eldarin had vanished, and even the whispering wind flowing over the dry rocks could find no memory of their existence. Not a trace. Not a broken cup, not a tombstone, not a child’s toy.

His grey-green eyes scanned the jagged peaks, pausing at the Twins, two pinnacles of rock that for centuries had been an elegant backdrop to the city of Eldarisa. Upon reaching the age of majority the children of the Eldarin would climb Bizha, the left-hand peak, then leap the eight feet to the rugged platform atop the neighbouring Puzhac. The pinnacles had graced the Enchanted Park, and many and glorious were the flowers that grew there. Now all was dead stone. Not a single blade of grass grew here now, and even his memories could not flower in this barren place. Duvodas rose and unwrapped his small harp.

It seemed almost blasphemous to consider music in such a cold and empty landscape, but music was all he had, and his slender fingers danced upon the strings, sending out a stream of melancholy notes to echo among the rocks. Closing his eyes he sang the Song of Elyda, and her love of the Forest King, his voice almost breaking as he reached the chorus of farewell, where Elyda stood by the dark river watching as her lover’s body was borne away to eternity on the black barge of the night.

The music faded away and Duvodas covered the harp and swung it to his shoulders.

Leaving the hillside, he took what once had been the forest road and walked swiftly towards the distant plains. Eight years before he had travelled this way, striding under the overhanging branches, watching sunlight dapple the trail, listening to the ceaseless music of stream and river. Bird-song had filled the air then, sweet and piping, and the scent of the forest had intoxicated him. Now dry dust billowed around his feet, and not a sound disturbed the graveyard silence.

For most of the day he walked, angling his journey to the north-east. By dusk he could see the long black line of earth, like a ten-foot dike thrown up against a threatening sea. It stretched for miles across his path. He reached it as night was falling and scrambled up its loose banks, pausing at the crest. This was once the northernmost border of Eldarin land. Shrouded in mist, protected by magic, it was here that Duvodas had crossed during that long-ago autumn night. There were still oaks growing here, but it was no longer a wood. Many trees had died through lack of water.

He had expected to feel more comfortable with earth once more beneath his feet, but it was not so. The smell of grass, wet from the recent rain, made a bitter contrast to the desolation he had left behind.

Duvodas trudged on through the trees. Eight years ago he had come to a village, a thriving farm community on the banks of the River Cruin. Unlike the furry-skinned Eldarin who raised him, Duvodas, being human, could walk among the races of Man without fear. Even so, without coin he had not been welcomed, nor offered a place for the night. Not even a bowl of soup. The villagers had viewed him with suspicion, and when he offered to sing for his supper had told him they had no need of music.

Tired and hungry, Duvodas had moved on.

Now he stood at the edge of the village once more. The houses were deserted, the forty-foot-wide river bed dry and cracked.

Whatever dread force had ripped away the soil of the mountains had sucked the river dry. Without water the farmland had been robbed of its sustenance. In the moonlight Duvodas could see that the villagers had vainly tried to sink wells to feed their crops.

He sheltered for the night in a deserted barn, then moved on at first light to higher country, remembering the kindness of the hunter and his family whose long cabin had been built in a fold of land bordering the tree-line of the hills. Eight years ago he had arrived there wet and miserable, a victim of hunger and desperate weariness. When a huge dog had rushed at him, baring its teeth, Duvodas had no time to react. One moment he was on his feet, the next the dog had leapt, crashing into his chest and hurling him to the ground. All air was punched from his lungs and he lay gasping under the weight of the mastiff, listening to its low, rumbling growl. A man’s voice had sounded. The dog reluctantly backed away.

‘You must be a stranger to these parts, my friend,’ said the voice. A powerful hand gripped his arm, hauling him upright. In the moonlight the hunter’s hair seemed to glint with flecks of steel, and his pale grey eyes shone like silver.

‘I am indeed,’ Duvodas told him. ‘I am a … minstrel. I would be pleased to sing you a song, or tell a story in return …’

‘You don’t need to sing,’ said the man. ‘Come, we have food and a warm cabin.’

The memory lifted his spirits and he walked on, coming to the cabin just after noon. It was as he remembered it, long and low beneath a roof of turf, though the second section built for the children had now weathered in, losing its newness and blending with the old. The door was open.

Duvodas strode through the vegetable patch and entered the cabin. It was dark inside, but he heard a groan and saw the hunter lying naked on the floor by the hearth. Moving to him, Duvodas knelt. The man’s skin was hot and dry, and black plague boils had erupted on his neck, armpits and groin; one had split, and the skin was stained with pus and blood. Leaving him, Duvodas moved to the first of the back rooms. The hunter’s wife was unconscious in the bed; her face was fleshless, and she too had the plague. Duvodas opened the door to the new section. When last he had been here the couple had only one child, a boy of nine. There were three youngsters in the room, two young girls and an infant boy all in one bed. The boy was dead, the two girls fading fast. Duvodas pulled back the blanket covering them.

Duvodas unwrapped his harp and returned to the main room. His mouth was dry, his heart beating fast. Pulling up a chair he sat in the centre of the room, closed his eyes, and sought the inner peace from which all magic flowed. His breathing deepened. He had learned much in his time among the Eldarin but, being human, healing magic had never come easily to him. The power was born of tranquillity and harmony, twin skills that Man could never master fully.

‘Your veins are full of stimulants to violent activity,’ Ranaloth had told him, as they sat beneath the shadow of the Great Library. ‘Humans are essentially hunter-killers. They glory in physical strength and heroism. This is not in itself evil, you understand, but it prepares the soul for potential evil. The human is ejected from the mother, and its first instinct is to rage against the violation of its resting place in the womb.’