Shadowkings (33 page)

"Perfect, lord," Gilly said to Yasgur. "There will be no interruptions if you attend the feast and announce your good fortune."

Ghazrek looked puzzled and Gilly explained what had been discussed earlier. The officer nodded in vigorous agreement.

"The southerner is right, my lord. This accursed Byrnak will have you slain as soon as possible."

"You speak of our commander with disrespect," Yasgur said half-heartedly.

"Lord, you saw what I saw," Ghazrek said. "The man is hag-ridden, as is the other one, Ystregul. Who can tell what evil spirits are sitting in their heads, claiming to be the Lord of Twilight himself? You must survive so that we may survive, and ser Cordale's plan is a good one. And if you wait a while before speaking of your new role, I may be able to sow seeds here and there."

Yasgur looked thoughtfully at Gilly, then Ghazrek and back again. Then he nodded, smiling. "Your counsel is good, and I shall follow it. Old Atroc was right, Gilly - you are a good advisor as well as a good companion."

Gilly inclined his head, acknowledging the praise and remembering his first encounter with Atroc, Yasgur's personal seer. When the Daemonkind Orgraaleshenoth had snatched him away from Suviel' side, he found himself in the middle of a boar hunt, sprawled in the dust and rocks of a dried-up riverbed with a party of Mogaun warriors riding towards him. The only thing which stopped them from hurling spears at him was a stooped, scrawny old man clad in furs and a loincloth who calmly stepped in front of the riders and held up his hands.

Then when Yasgur arrived moments later, the old man had told him that Gilly was sent by the gods to be his companion on his journey to Arengia. To Gilly's amazement, the Mogaun pondered this proclamation for all of a few seconds before nodding and agreeing. The old man then took Gilly by the arm, steered him off to one side and said, "You may call me Atroc, southman. I have been seeing your face in the stars, in the clouds, in the lines of my hand since I was a boy."

After that, Gilly was almost constantly in the company of Yasgur and Atroc for the few days before Yasgur was due to leave for the Blood Gathering. There had been many times when he could have murdered Yasgur with a good chance of escape, but he had found himself liking the man, a personal discovery nearly as profound as that of realising that some Mogaun could be fairly civilised. At least those under Yasgur's command.

And as Yasgur and Ghazrek prepared to leave for the feast, his thoughts went back to his last sight of Suviel in that pale, eldritch realm the Daemonkind had called Kekrahan.

What happened to her?
he wondered.
Was she as lucky as me?
He grinned and shook his head.
Assuming that this is lucky
!

Wear masks, not mirrors,
In the Kingdom of the Dark.

—The Litany of Magehood
, prologue

The image of Byrnak hung over the fire, features sculpted in ensorcelled smoke. From where she sat, bound, gagged and propped against a pile of saddlebags, Suviel could feel the awesome power radiating from Nerek as she strove to gain her master's attention. The woman was standing with arms outstretched and a faint green aura shifting and twitching about her like a thing alive.

Everything in the clearing was cast into sharp focus, blades of grass, dry twigs among the dusty ash and charred pebbles of old fires, the stack of spears, knives and cleaning rags, the four masked guards sitting cowed and subdued to one side, the gleam of firelight on the studded leather they constantly wore. Suviel could see the utter concentration in Nerek's stance and her visibly trembling hands...

Then the eyes of the face in the smoke came to life and Nerek cried out: "My lord, your faithful servant seeks your counsel!"

The eyes gazed down at her and for an instant the mouth seemed about to speak. But the intelligence went out of the face which lost its shape, drifting apart and upwards as the spell broke. Suviel felt the accumulated tension of power in the clearing collapse and die away. The light from the fire lost its brilliance and the surrounding night closed in like a tightening noose of shadows as Nerek sank to her knees, mumbling and quietly sobbing. She looked defeated and exhausted but a moment later she sprang to her feet, went round the fire and spoke rapidly to her guards. The words were spoken in an archaic dialect of the Mogaun tongue and Suviel caught just enough to understand mere guard duty orders.

Eyes closed, she sighed and let her head fall forward. Nerek's mood swings were becoming more pronounced the closer they came to the Oshang Dahkal and Trevada. In the four days since the Daemonkind pitched her into Nerek's hands, Suviel had found herself coming to pity Byrnak's creature as she was torn this way and that by raging, and sometimes conflicting emotions. Suviel was sure that Nerek feared Byrnak while also being drawn to him, having seen a hunted look come into her eyes whenever his name was mentioned. Then there was the pursuit of Keren, this savage need to capture and slay her, which contrasted sharply with an obsessive interest in the swordswoman. Suviel had been repeatedly questioned about Keren, what she was like, her likes and dislikes, what she had done and why. Lacking personal knowledge of the woman (Keren had not been the most garrulous of companions), Suviel had found herself embroidering her recollections with deduction and guesswork in order to satisfy Nerek's hunger for detail.

There was the scrape of a footstep nearby and she looked up to see Nerek standing over her. With her hands she loosened the gag and removed it, while Suviel wondered what would happen next. More questions to do with Keren, perhaps, or Raal Haidar? She had kept silent about the Daemonkind, insisting that the man was a mysterious sorcerer from beyond Keremenchool who had turned on herself and the others due to some unknown purpose.

It was her own purpose which had led to such guile. They were camped just an hour or two from the gates of Trevada, and were Nerek to know that a prince of the Daemonkind was intending to gain entrance to the Acolytes' citadel by stealth, she might see fit to alert the Acolytes, thus eradicating whatever slim chance Suviel might have of laying hands on the Crystal Eye.

Nerek regarded her neutrally, then pushed several strands of Suviel' hair back from her face. Suviel almost flinched but held herself steady as her captor tucked the stray hairs behind her ear in a surprisingly gentle manner.

"We shall enter Trevada in the morning," Nerek said. "Just you and I - the guards will wait here for our return. We will present ourselves as hunters seeking work as scouts or spies, or even just foragers, so consider how you can best play the part before you sleep tonight."

"As you wish."

A small smile came over Nerek's face. "I will have your cooperation in this, Suviel Hantika. I know what to use to ensure it."

She reached down to one of the saddlebags behind Suviel, tugged out a flat cloth-wrapped object which she set to one side, then pulled a blanket from another bag and draped it carefully over Suviel. "Now, think, and sleep."

She turned and went back to the fire, sat on the ground and unwrapped the small package. Suviel felt a ripple of uneasiness as Nerek produced a handmirror into which she stared, tilting her head this way and that, as if looking for something. The memory of that terrible transformation in the mountains of Honjir came back to Suviel and she wondered what had happened to the mind of the young man that Nerek had once been. Had he been wiped away, like footprints on a sandy beach at high tide, or did some fragment of him yet linger, haunting Nerek's thoughts?

She pushed aside the insoluble problem, and wriggled into a more comfortable position facing away from the fire. A short while later she became aware that fine rain was falling, little more than a heavy mist, but she was too tired to care. Quite soon she was too tired to stay awake.

* * *

She woke to a grey morning full of the sounds of packing and horses being harnessed. One of the guards brought her a cooling bowl of broth and a handful of berries then stood waiting as she ate hurriedly. The masked servants of the Acolytes remained a mystery - she had already suffered pursuit by the likes of these, and suspected from both their posture and their sharp musky odor that they were not entirely human.

When she finished, another guard came over and hauled her to her feet while the first one used a dagger to sever the bonds on her feet and wrists. Once this was done, they stood either side of her as Nerek came over, halting several yards away. She had tied her pale hair back in a topknot and wore a long cloak of some heavy blue-grey material over her mailed jerkin and leggings. But it was the fire she was carrying which struck dread into Suviel' heart.

A bright knot of flames writhed in her cupped hands, tiny undying flames of carmine and amber that rippled and coiled around each other like a burning thread with no end. Nerek bent her head, moving her lips as if whispering to it, then glanced up at Suviel, smiling a secret smile. Without warning the two guards grabbed Suviel by the arms and Nerek lightly tossed the living fire at her.

She twisted uselessly against the guards' grip as the burning thing flew towards her face, tendrils spreading like wings. She fought the urge to close her eyes, staring with futile courage at the oncoming doom...

...which blurred into opacity just feet from her, all the colour and detail draining from it as it flowed into nothing before her. Suviel felt a wave of warm air strike her face, smelling like the heat of a forge, hot stone and iron. The guards released her and Nerek came nearer.

"Do you know what I have done to you?"

Struggling against dizzy nausea, Suviel shook her head.

"And you call yourself a mage. Are you even able to name the fires of old?"

Suviel straightened in surprise. Nerek's question was part of the rote catechism of mage teaching, albeit a part that never seemed to be of any practical use. Nerek stood watching her with an expectant tilt of the head, so she dredged her memory and began to recite.

"Fire of the earth, fire of the sky, fire of the waters, never burning, fire of song, fire of learning, fire of night, fire of day..." She tried to remember, "...fire that sleeps, fire that rages, fire that watches, fire that..."

There was a prickling sense of presence, and as she glanced quickly to one side she caught a glimpse of something hovering at her shoulder, a feathery form bright with flaming colours. Then there was nothing, only empty air.

"The fire that watches," Nerek said with a kind of intense satisfaction. "I have made a servant and set it over you. I gave it my breath and my word so I will know if you intend to become... troublesome."

Suviel summoned her remaining dignity and met Nerek's gaze. "Then since my fate is in your hands, I have no choice but to trust you. So be it."

Nerek uttered a quiet, mocking laugh but Suviel saw the shadow of uncertainty in her eyes as she turned and walked away, passing out the final orders to break camp.

Fitful showers came and went as the party finally left the clearing on horseback. The air was mild and heavy with the moist odours of earth and foliage, yet there was a pervading taint of decay which Suviel could almost taste. There was the occasional howl and yip of some unseen beast, more mournful than menacing, and once Suviel saw a black furry creature the shape of a rat but the size of a dog dash across the trail ahead.

Not long after that, they came to the edge of the forest and paused for a moment or two as Nerek issued her final commands. The masked guards were heading north through the undergrowth while Nerek and Suviel, and her invisible watcher, continued towards Trevada.

The Oshang Dakhal loomed ahead, a two mile curve of rocky promontories and crags that rose steadily to the sheer cliffs and peaks upon which was the High Basilica and the academies of magecraft. Between it and the forest lay a wide valley divided by a river, a ruined terrain where clusters of charred tree stumps poked out of the weedy ground and rubbish floated on stagnant pools, and where only the broken traces of walls suggested that people had once lived here.

The bridge over the river was crudely made from large blocks of pale stone but only when they drew nearer did Suviel realise that they were columns and flagstones looted from an ancient Fathertree temple which had once stood near the riverbank. She had thought that her prior knowledge, gained from travellers and spies, had prepared her for this poisoned, ravaged scene but the reality of it shook. As she rode over the bridge and saw where countless other hooves and feet and cartwheels had chipped away at the beautiful relief carvings she found herself weeping.

Gone, she thought. All of it gone, all the gardens and the songbirds and the groves of
ankeril
, the homes of farmers and artisans, all the sweetness of Prekine, ground down and wiped away.

It was worse, far worse than anything told to her second or third-hand. She brought her horse to a halt at the mid-point of the bridge and gazed down at the swollen waters of the river she once knew as the Aithel. With tears running down her face she stared at the ugly brown torrent and contemplated throwing herself into it. It would end this drawn out spasm of pain and there would be no more need for grief and struggle and loss. But before she could dismount there was a flash of fiery amber near her shoulder, and a leaden lassitude settled over her.

"What is this? What were you going to do?"

Nerek came back alongside and angrily snatched the reins from Suviel's unresisting hands. Then she saw the tears and anger gave way to puzzlement. "You wanted to kill yourself. Why?"

For the first time Suviel felt a flash of raw, unreasoning hatred towards the woman, and for an instant pictured herself with her hands round her throat. Then a kind of shame came over her and she shied away from the image. Bending her head, she wiped the wetness from her face.

"You do not know what this place was like before the invasion," she said. "And I cannot explain to you what I feel at seeing it now."

Nerek shrugged. "New things will grow here - is that not so? Others will come and build homes and farms, too."