Stonewielder (55 page)

Puller straightened, his eyes widening. ‘Really? Me? Corporal?’ He stood and the two pushed their way through the crowd. ‘You think so?’

‘If you’re the best candidate.’

Bakune watched them go.
All the foreign gods help him. What did he think he could possibly accomplish? Still, he had to try, didn’t he? Yes. That’s all one could do. Follow the dictates of one’s conscience
.

He got up to return to his room, where the priest would no doubt be sound asleep despite the raucous crowd of the night.

*    *    *

They followed the track of the daemon migration. The carnage it wrought across the rolling Shadow landscape was unmistakable.
So much for my fears of wandering lost
, Kiska thought wryly. How long they walked she had no idea. Time seemed suspended here in the Shadow Realm. Or so it had seemed to her. But now change had struck. What the daemons described as a ‘Whorl’ had opened on to Shadow and drained an entire lake, obliterating their aeons-old way of life. That Whorl sounded suspiciously like the rift that had swallowed Tayschrenn. It even touched on to Chaos, or so Least Branch claimed.

They’d been walking in a protracted silence. Neither, it seemed, knew what to say. She thought of asking about his past, but comments from him suggested that that was a sensitive, if not closed, subject.

Then something moved beneath her clothes.

Kiska shrieked her surprise; she dropped her staff, tore off her cloak, her equipment, her jacket. Jheval watched, tense, hands going to his morningstars. ‘What is it?’

Kiska retrieved her stave, pointed to her heaped clothes and equipment. ‘There!’

Jheval regarded the pile, frowned his puzzlement. ‘You were bitten? A scorpion perhaps?’

Something beneath the clothes shifted. ‘Did you see that?’

One of Jheval’s morningstars whirred to life. ‘I’ll finish it.’

‘No!’ Gently, she prised apart the layers until she revealed her blanket and the few odds and ends wrapped in it. Kiska felt an uneasy sourness in her stomach.
The sack! Some
thing
inside?

Kneeling, she untied the blanket and gingerly unrolled it. The dirty burlap sack was exposed. Something small squirmed within.

‘Do we let it out?’ Jheval asked.

Kiska rocked on her haunches. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think we should yet.’

‘Well I’m not carrying it.’

She gave him a hard stare. ‘You haven’t been, have you?’

The man had the grace to look chastened. He brushed his moustache. ‘I was just saying …’

‘Never mind.’ Raising it gently, she tied the sack to her belt. Perhaps there it wouldn’t get crushed – if it could be. She drew on her jacket, her bandolier of gear, shoulder bags and cloak and started off again. ‘Come on.’

After walking for a time she regarded the man who was pacing along beside her, hands clasped behind his back. ‘So you participated in the Seven Cities uprising.’

‘Yes.’

‘And now you are here hoping to buy some sort of pardon.’

Jheval waved a hand deprecatingly. ‘Oh, not a
full
pardon. I don’t think I will ever be granted that … but it would be good not to have to worry about my back for the rest of my life.’

Now Kiska wondered just what crimes the man had committed against the Empire. Or, in a case of bloated vanity, he may just
fancy
himself an infamous wanted criminal. Or he was just plain lying to impress … her. She cleared her throat. ‘So. You served in the army of this Sha’ik?’

The man stopped dead. ‘
Served?
I? I …’

‘Yes?’

A cunning smile crept up his lips and he waved a finger. ‘Now, now. You see a mystery and you thrust a stick in – what will emerge? A lion or a goose?’ He walked on. ‘You thought you’d found a weakness, yes?’

Thought?

‘But all that is over,’ he said, waving a hand again. ‘For a time I was a true believer. Now, I’m just embarrassed.’ He slowed suddenly, shading his gaze. ‘What is that?’

Kiska peered ahead: a dark shape in the midst of the daemons’ wide migration track. Some sort of abandoned trash? A corpse?

Jheval picked up his pace. Kiska clasped her staff in both hands, horizontal across her waist. Then the stink struck them. She almost gagged. Rotten fish; an entire shack of rotting fish. A shoreline of putrescence. ‘Gods!’ she said, turning her head and wincing. ‘What is
that?
’

Jheval pressed a hand under his nose. ‘Perhaps we should go round.’

The dark shape moved. It seemed to heave itself. Jheval growled some Seven Cities curse, started off again. Kiska followed.

Closer, the shape resolved itself into the disintegrating, putrid remains of a very large fish. A fish that at one time might have
been as large as a full-grown bull. Two extraordinarily large ravens stood atop the corpse – both looking very glossy and well fed. But that was not what captured Kiska’s and her companion’s attention. What they stared at was the scrawny old man in rags attempting to drag it.

He was yanking on a rope tied to a grapnel stuck in the fish’s enormous bony jaw. Kiska and Jheval stopped and watched. The man was making no progress at all that Kiska could see, though a track did extend off behind the carcass.

Jheval cleared his throat.

The man leapt as if stabbed in the rear. The ravens let out loud squawks of surprise and protest, launching themselves to whirl overhead. The old man spun round, glaring. He was dark, his frizzy hair mostly grey. ‘What are you looking at?’ he demanded.

Kiska did not know where to begin. Jheval pointed. ‘That’s a big fish.’

The old fellow hunched, peering suspiciously about. He held his arms out as if trying to hide the huge corpse. ‘It’s mine.’

‘Okay.’

‘You can’t have it.’

‘I assure you—’

‘Get your own.’

‘I don’t want your damned fish!’ Jheval shouted.

The old man put a finger to one eye, nodding. ‘Oh, yes. That’s what they all say … but they’re
lying!
’

Jheval caught Kiska’s gaze. He tapped a finger to his head. ‘Let’s go.’

Kiska followed, reluctant; it seemed to her that there was more here, that none of this was an accident. In her earlier visits to Shadow she’d had the impression that the Realm had been trying to tell her things. That everything was a lesson, if she could only understand the language.

The old man straightened, astonished. ‘You would go?’ He waved both hands at the fish. ‘How could you abandon such a prize? Surely you would not turn your backs on such an opportunity?’

‘It is of no use to us,’ Jheval said.

‘Use?’ The man shouted, outraged. ‘Use! Is that your measure? Utility? Have you not longed all your life to catch the big one?’

Overhead, the ravens’ raucous cawing sounded almost like laughter.

Kiska glanced back. The man was staring after them. As it became
clear they would not stop he ran round the carcass to follow but something yanked him back to fall on his rear and he let out a startled squawk. The rope, she saw, was tied round his waist.

‘Wait,’ she called to Jheval.

The Seven Cities warrior halted. He hung his head. ‘Kiska. He’s a mage lost in Shadow and gone insane.’ He faced her, hands apart. ‘I’ve heard of such things.’

‘We can’t just leave him …’

The man shrugged, unperturbed. ‘Why not?’

‘Well
I’m
not going to just walk away.’

She found him lying on his stomach, kicking and punching the dirt, crying, ‘It’s not fair! Not fair!’

‘What’s not fair?’

He stilled, turned his head to look up at her, smiled crazily. ‘Nothing.’ He sat up, brushed the dirt from his tattered grimed robes.

Peering down at him, Kiska sighed. She pointed to the huge fish, its exposed ribs, saucer-sized eyes milky and half pecked out. The two midnight-black ravens had resettled on its back and now paced about searching for morsels. ‘It’s dead. Putrid. Useless. Drop the rope and come away.’

The old man gestured helplessly. ‘But I can’t.’

‘You can’t? You mean you won’t.’

He shook his head, bared his grey uneven teeth in what might have been meant as a cringe of embarrassment. ‘No, I mean I can’t. I can’t untie the rope. Could you … maybe …’

‘Oh, for the love of Burn!’ She turned the handle of her stave and its blade snicked free. She stabbed the rope, slitting it.

The old man sprang up. ‘I’m free!
Free!
’ And he giggled.

Kiska backed away, uneasy. It occurred to her that she might just have made a serious mistake. But then the old man threw himself down on the slimy putrescent carcass, hugging its jaws. ‘I don’t mean
you
, my lovely one. No, no, no. Not you! I won’t go far. I promise. There could never be another like you!’

The ravens cawed again, protesting.

Her stomach clenching and rising with bile, Kiska continued backing away. ‘Well … good luck.’

She rejoined Jheval, who’d been watching, arms crossed. As they walked he jerked a thumb backwards. ‘You see? What did I say? Crazy as a sun-stroked rat.’

Walking with her staff across her shoulders, arms draped over it,
Kiska reflected that that may be so, but at least the crazy mage was free of the trap he’d made for himself.
Not that he might not blunder into something worse, here in Shadow
.

The track had become soft underfoot. The surface was brittle, dried in patterns of cracks; the wheel-tracks deep slit ruts. Ahead, the flat horizon was one dark front of churning black and grey clouds. Lightning glowed within.

‘You are looking for the lake?’

Kiska and Jheval jumped, spinning. It was the old man. Jheval glared at Kiska as if to say,
Now look what you’ve done!

‘What are you doing?’ Kiska demanded.

He peered up at her, his beady yellow eyes narrowing. ‘I should think that’s obvious. I’m following you.’

‘Look,’ Jheval said. ‘What do you want?’

He tilted his head, considered the question for a time. ‘I want to be left alone.’

Jheval gaped, spread his arms to the vast emptiness around. ‘You want to be alone yet you follow us?’

A scowl of annoyance. ‘Not you two.’ He pointed to his head. ‘The voices. They won’t leave me alone. Do this. Do that. Give me this, give me that. Will they never stop?’ He dug his hands into his thin hair. ‘They’re driving me crazy!’

Jheval eyed Kiska then rolled his gaze to the sky. ‘Okay. The voices. Listen, I’ve heard that if you dig a hole in the ground and stick your head in it makes the voices go away.’

‘
Jheval!
’ Kiska cuffed his shoulder. She turned to the man. ‘What’s your name?’

His brows furrowed in thought. Kiska flinched away when a waft of fish-rot struck her. She glimpsed two dark shapes wheeling far overhead – the giant ravens?

‘Warbin al Blooth?’ the old man muttered. ‘No, no. Horos Spitten the Fifth? No. That’s not right. Crethin Spoogle?’ He yanked frantically at his hair again. ‘I can’t remember my name!’

Kiska held out her hands. ‘It’s all right. Never mind. But we have to call you something – just pick one.’

‘I can’t! You pick one.’

‘I have some suggestions,’ Jheval muttered.

Kiska waved Jheval onward. She tried to think of inoffensive names. ‘Okay. How about Grajath?’

‘No.’

‘Frecell?’

‘No.’

She clenched down on her irritation. ‘Warran?’

‘Warran,’ he echoed. As they walked along he repeated the name, trying it out. ‘Okay. I suppose that will do.’

And thank you too!
She gestured ahead. ‘You came this way?’

‘No. Yes. Maybe. Once. Long ago.’

Jheval snorted, shaking his head.

‘And the lake?’

The old man shot her a narrowed glare. ‘Why? The fish?’ He pointed. ‘I knew it! You’re after an even bigger one! Well, you’re too late! It’s gone.’ He laughed hoarsely, cleared his throat, and spat something up.

‘Not the fish!’ Kiska snapped. ‘The Whorl – the Rift – the thing that drained the lake.’

Warran waved dismissively. ‘Oh, that. No fish there.’ He gestured aside. ‘Best to go that way.’

Now Jheval was eyeing the old man. ‘Why?’

‘Shorter. No crabs.’

‘Crabs?’

‘You think that fish was big? Wait till you see the crabs that eat
them
.’

‘Ah.’ They stopped. Jheval looked at Kiska. She squeezed her hands on her staff. She squinted to the storm on the horizon.

‘Is that it?’

Warran nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘You’ll show us the way round the lake?’

‘Yes – but then we’re through! No more favours! I mean, fair’s fair.’

She let out a long breath. ‘All right. Show us.’

He rubbed his chin, clearly taken aback. ‘Really? Okay. Ah, this way – I think.’