Path of Revenge (27 page)

‘We could grab a boat and row out there,’ the priest said quietly.

‘Oh yes? Ever rowed a boat before?’ He did not disguise the scorn in his voice. Useless fellow. ‘It takes a special technique, I’m told. And what will you use for a left arm?’

‘We need to do something.’

‘You are right. We need to be somewhere else when the grey guards turn up in force. We’ll be no use to her in prison. And I, for one, don’t want to face a certain greycoat without a sword in my hand.’

With a roar the two rowers redoubled their efforts, but it proved their undoing. Robal watched as one of them accidentally elbowed the other, forcing one of his hands off his oar. In an instant the river plucked the oar from his remaining hand, sending it spiralling lazily downstream.

‘Fool!’ came a shout across the water, accompanied by laughter from the crowd. Robal watched as Stella pulled firmly at her oars, turning her boat athwart the
current, heading for the far side of the river, which was barely visible in the dust-filled distance. The guards’ boat followed their oar downstream, both men paddling with their hands, trying to manoeuvre closer to shore. Within minutes they had disappeared around a bend.

Robal led the priest through the festive crowd, many of whom were exchanging coins as though paying out wagers. ‘We have to get across the river,’ he said.

‘They hate the greycoats, don’t they,’ the priest said sadly. ‘I suppose not one wager was placed on the guards to win the race.’ He sighed. ‘What has the Archpriest done?’

‘There have to be two sides to every wager, priest,’ Robal said, shaking his head. ‘Even if one person covers all the bets. Now, did you mark where Stella beached her boat?’

‘Er, no. Didn’t you?’

‘I did, and just as well. You must stop relying on others to do the work and start to contribute yourself. Now, follow me. We have to find a boat.’

Stella bent over her oars, completely exhausted. She had seen Conal and Robal on the wharf—at least, it had looked like them—and so had forced herself to row as hard as possible straight for the far bank, in the hope they would be sensible enough to notice the place she landed. In retrospect it wasn’t the cleverest thing she could have done, but it seemed of a piece with the plan she’d come up with. Unpredictability sometimes worked as well as cleverness, and the idea of hiding in the rushes had captured her mind like a compulsion. Though she ought not to remain in the dinghy overlong; there may have been more guards keeping an eye on her progress. She would wait here just long enough to regain her breath. Just a little longer. She backed the boat into a thick section of rushes, shipped her oars and curled up lengthways on the seat. Relief and bone-weariness
overwhelmed her like birds of prey descending on a carcass. She would wait here. Only for a moment…

She awoke to a sore head and the sound of the rushes swishing in the wind. What a fool she had been! The hot middle-day sun had burned one side of her face, her lips were dry and cracked, her muscles stiff, the leg that had been curled up underneath her numb.

The rushes continued to swish all around her. But the clouds…the clouds hung in the air like limp flags. The simoom had died while she slept. Then what had made the rushes rustle?

Shouts erupted to her left and to her right. Startled, but not yet truly fearful, she took up an oar as defence as two men waded through the rushes towards her. Robal and Conal? Guards?

Neither.

Two unkempt, bearded men stood by the stern of her little boat, staring down at her with dangerous smiles. ‘This is she, sure, sure,’ one said to the other.

‘Just where Da said,’ the other man replied.

‘Don’t see what’s so special ‘bout her. We’ve had plenty prettier.’

‘Right, missa, you come with us,’ the second man said to her. He reached for the gunwale.

‘What—’ She cleared her throat. ‘What if I don’t want to come?’ As quick as she could, muscles still paralysingly slow, head thick with sun and tiredness, she half-stood and swung the oar at the closer of the two men. It hit his shoulder with a resounding
thud
and jolted free of her grasp.

‘You’ll regret that, missa,’ the man hissed. He hefted the oar, then swung it, handle first, towards her. She made to duck; her leg collapsed under her and she fell into the path of the oar, which took her behind the ear with a blow far harder than anything she could have imagined. She shrieked, her head exploded with pain, and a blurry white light swallowed everything.

Just before the light went out she heard a voice say, ‘Ramzy, you fool, you’ve killed her.’

The next she knew she was leaning over the bow, vomiting into the water, then some time later lying in the dinghy, staring into the sun, her head afire with pain, and later again lapping bilge water from the bottom of the boat.

‘She’s coming to.’

‘She should be dead, you dolt. Look at that oar. Five fingers thick and snapped in half. You hit me like that, I’d be dead.’

‘She fell into it. She’s witchy, like Da, no need to worry about her. Anyway, she got me a good one. Still can’t move my arm.’

‘Pah. You’ll move it quickly enough when the work’s over and the fun begins.’

‘Look at her, drinking her own blood.’

Oh.
Stella eased her eyes open: the water in which she lay was cloudy and red, as though someone had poured a half-fermented Trenstane wine into the boat.

‘You hear us, missa?’

She did, but her body gave out again and she faded away into the light.

Her final awakening found her draped over a shoulder, presumably not that of the man she had hit with the oar. He walked slowly, but she felt every step. Her left ear buzzed loudly, damaged, no doubt, from the blow the brute had landed behind it. She could barely raise the energy to be worried about it.

She could see very little from her disorienting vantage. A few long-leafed plants, a gravel path, an almost-dry stream, a wooden doorstep. The man stood up straight: the sudden movement went to her stomach and she vomited over his back. Growls from him, laughter from his companion. He threw her onto a mattress of rushes and stripped off his filthy shirt. For a moment she feared…but no, he bent over and
picked up the shirt, bundled it up carefully and threw it into a corner.

‘Here she is, Da. Ramzy bashed her head in but she’s all right, look.’

‘Silence, boy.’ So a snake would sound were it given voice. ‘Let me look at her.’

A grey-cloaked figure shuffled into her field of vision, then tossed back its hood. Stella’s breath caught in her throat.
Oh no, no.

Depthless hollows for eyes, a nose cauterised by fire, skin cracked and weeping like a lake bed in a drought. So like her first vision of the Destroyer, when she had seen him unmasked at the extremity of his power. This was not he. The presence in her head remained remote, but she felt a stirring, as though someone ventured to look through her eyes.

The lipless mouth opened on a bright red throat. ‘It is she. The one who abandoned our lord. I have felt her drawing closer for a week or more, and here she is in my house.’ A pale tongue flicked out, flicked back in. ‘It took the best part of my power to draw her here. Ramzy, Tunza, you have done well.’

‘Our reward?’ one of the bearded men—Tunza—asked carefully, submission in his voice.

‘Very well. One prisoner each. Take them outside, but keep the noise down. There may be those seeking this one out.’

The two men left the room.

‘I would welcome your friends,’ the snake-man said, his eye-slits narrowing. His first words to her. ‘They would provide entertainment. Though not the sort I will derive from you.’ His ruined face hungered.

‘You know what I am, do you not?’ he said.

And she did, the bitter knowledge descending on her as he spoke, as the sorcery keeping him alive caked her with its familiar foul aroma.

A
Maghdi Dasht,
a Lord of Fear.

Like his fellow lords he had been used up in the service of his master, one of a hundred or more
Maghdi Dasht
who sacrificed their lives aiding the Destroyer to escape Instruere seventy years ago. The greatest magicians of their time, they had been drained of power by their master and reduced to empty shells.

The Falthans had assumed them dead—such a dangerous, erroneous assumption. Now proved false.

‘Yes, I know what you are,’ she said, terror and repugnance fighting for mastery of her voice.

‘But you do not know how much power I expended to place my thoughts in your head. On the river you followed my plan and thought it your own. So here you are.’

She stared at him, unable to speak.

‘And do you know what I want from you?’

The truth descended on her like a cage. The Lords of Fear had been a cadre of magicians high in the Destroyer’s service, familiar with the workings of power. Achtal, the renegade Bhrudwan who chose to serve Hal, had been merely an acolyte, not a fully trained Lord of Fear. Nevertheless he had served Faltha well, playing his part in bringing his former master down, and had served out his days training the guardsmen of Instruere in the battle techniques of the
Maghdi Dasht.
Achtal had never quite shed his strangeness, but Stella had forgotten the dread accompanying the Lords of Fear. Thirteen thirteens had been their number, and all had accompanied their master westwards on his journey of conquest. This one knew who she was, which meant he
knew
what ran through her veins. Could sense it, undoubtedly; it would smell like a sweet fragrance to him.

Wanted it.

Yes,
she tried to say,
I know what you want,
but dark dread robbed her of her voice.

‘I see you do. I have waited ten and three score years in this hateful land. I will wait no longer.’

Reaching into the folds of his dirty grey robe, the monster drew out a dagger with a twisted blade. Stella tried to back away, but her body refused to cooperate. He raised the blade in front of his face, both hands on the hilt, point to the ceiling, and spoke a series of arcane words. The blade seemed to glow in his hands. He moved the dagger towards her throat, and his dreadful gaze, intense and ravenous, settled on her.

‘She came through the rushes here, I’m sure of it! Look, can’t you see the broken stems?’ Robal said angrily; unreasonably, in Conal’s opinion. ‘She must have pulled the boat along the riverbank.’

‘I see the stems,’ Conal replied, ‘but how can you tell what caused them to break? Couldn’t the wind have done it?’ He used his voice of reason, so difficult to find on this dreadful day, but it sounded like whining in his own ears and served only to inflame the guardsman.

‘The wind? A gust a pace wide beat a winding path through the rushes, beginning just where Stella came ashore? As likely as the wind blowing you over and breaking your arm. Stella thinks you intelligent: prove her right by using your brain, man! What else could it be but Stella pulling her boat?’

‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ said the miserable priest. ‘But she’s in peril of her life, wherever she is.’

Since his arm had been broken Conal had inhabited an unreal world. He had never experienced any serious pain before, and the continued grinding agony of his left forearm had done something to his mind. It seemed all his priestly morality was a façade, a veneer quickly abraded by the constant ache. Unpriestly thoughts flowed through his mind like a
flood: deep angers, towering resentments, fears fit to paralyse him, and a stream of curse-words in a language he had never thought to hear again. The language of Andratan.

Madness.

Was he so weak that insanity could come from a broken arm? He had barely been able to prevent himself saying some of the things he had been thinking, and at one point while rowing across the river he had actually begun to tip the hateful guardsman out of the boat. Thankfully he had come to his senses before the man noticed, or Conal would be the one in the water, he knew it.

But no matter how much he fought them, the delusions grew worse. Perhaps
because
he fought, his callow mind told him. A voice had begun to speak to him, sounding for all the world like the voice that laughed at him whenever he entertained private thoughts about the queen. No, no, he could not let this happen! Voices, delusions, everything in his head would see him kicked out of the Koinobia. Here was the voice again, hoarse, breathless:
she’s being held in a cottage, follow the broken reeds, you’ll find the boat soon, then a path to your left.
The words came from a white place behind his eyes, like a nail driven through the back of his head into his brain, pulsing brightly, flowing through all his senses.

‘How do you know? What are you saying, priest?’

‘I’m sorry?’ He could barely see what lay in front of him. Another image—Stella on the floor of a hut, her face ashen-white—superimposed itself on his sight. He could barely hear the guardsman, his ears instead full of a hissing voice.

‘What is wrong with you? You just told me to follow the broken reeds until we find a path to a cottage, something like that. How do you know?’

I don’t know, I don’t know, please help me,
his mind
shrieked, but his voice said, ‘Do you think the Most High wishes the queen dead? If not, follow my lead.’

‘I wouldn’t follow you if you had the keys to a Sna Vazthan harem,’ the guard said, then added, as if to himself: ‘First sign of trouble and he goes to pieces.’

You’re right, I have, help me.
‘If you will not follow, I must go ahead alone.’
No, no, let me rest.
‘Keep up with me if you are able.’

As soon as the words were uttered the white spike burst into incandescence. Strength surged through his body.
What, what is this?
His arms and legs began pumping, propelling his reluctant body through the rushes. He closed his eyes, willed his muscles to stop, but he might as well have willed his heart to cease its staccato beating.

‘Hey, wait! What…where are you going?’ The voice came from a long way behind him.

Time became a confused smear of sound, vision and fear. His true sight disappeared, to be replaced by visions of grey cloaks, frightened faces and the cruel blade of a dagger held high. He heard nothing but cold words, the intoning of an incantation, overlaid with a woman’s pleading voice. And fear, above all fear, fear of plans ruined, of power lost, of revenge unsatisfied.