The Complete Twilight Reign Ebook Collection (32 page)

‘Who are you?’ he wondered aloud in amazement. Vesna had an
equally bewildered expression on his face, while Carel smiled approvingly at the lack of fawning usually so prevalent among the servants.
Only Mihn matched her gaze with an impassive stare, his eyes running coolly over the woman and her attendants.

‘I, my Lord? I’m the head seamstress. I was instructed that your
men would require a uniform to match your crest and colours. We’ve
done most of the work, but we now need to take measurements. If it would be convenient, my Lord.’ Her tone indicated that if it were not
convenient, she would want to know why.

Isak asked Vesna, suppressing a laugh as he saw the count’s expression, ‘Well, Count, if it would not inconvenience you too greatly?’ As
he spoke, he saw the soldiers had formed up in two ranks - as always,
it looked like the entire palace knew about his plans before he did.
Kerin had drifted away, presumably to fetch the others, while those
who had been giving Isak a beating began to strip off their armour.

The maids fanned out among them, ignoring the comments they
got from the soldiers as they helped them undress. From the baskets
the girls produced cream leather tunics and breeches, decorated with
green braiding. Isak’s dragon, outlined in green and flecked with gold,
was
emblazoned across the chest and shoulders. The dragon itself was
an altogether more impressive sight than the austere black and white
of the Ghosts. Isak couldn’t imagine the full two legions of the Palace Guard wearing this, but it still affected him to see his personal guards
so richly dressed.

The others trotted along now, faces Isak recognised for the main
part as the men who’d been attending his rooms or eating with Carel.
Clearly the veteran and Kerin had handpicked the thirty who were now his guard, split evenly between hardened veterans and the best of the younger Ghosts. The unit looked tight and confident, apparently delighted at their appointment as they joked with each other and held up their new uniforms to show other Ghosts who’d begun
to drift over. Isak felt unaccountably awkward as he saw men discard
Bahl’s livery.

He rose and pulled off the sweat-soaked tunic he’d been wearing underneath his armour. His bruised body complained at the movement and the chill air rushed over his skin, prickling up the fine hairs and dancing down his spine. A thick woollen shirt sat rolled up at
the foot of the steps. Hurriedly he slipped the dark blue material over
his head, tugging it down as fast as he could. The cold didn’t upset
him, but showing his torso just highlighted how different Isak was to
the other soldiers there. Isak’s muscles were so sculpted it was obvious
that the Chosen were not just human. He was careful to hide the scar
on his chest, but still there were a few stares. People who’d grown used
to his size were still taken aback by the sharp lines of his body.

Isak was now the best part of a foot taller than most of his guards,
and more than double their weight. He could only guess at the difference in strength, but even thinking about it worried him. He was used
to being different, but living with such strength in his body unsettled
him as much as it elated him. It was so easy to forget how much more
powerful he was - he had once, and he still didn’t trust himself not
to do so again.

He straightened the shirt and took Eolis from Mihn, running a loving finger over the claws that imprisoned the emerald. Drawing the blade a few inches, he stared down at the surface, just able to make out the runes, faint and shifting, even under their master’s gaze.

Snapping out of the trance, Isak looked over at the assembled
guard, most now dressed in the new tunics and parading for admiring eyes while the maids tried to check the fit. It was a slight shock to see
Carel among them, but the veteran’s look of defiance told Isak that
his opinion was not invited. Isak scowled at the Land in general and
stalked over to the palace smithy, Mihn at his heel. He could hear muted voices from inside, but they broke off when he gripped the
door handle and opened it up.

He ducked through the doorway and stood inside, blinking as his
eyes adjusted to the dim light. Three faces looked up at him, but with
no words spoken, two rose and left. The third was the head smith, a taciturn man who tolerated the presence of few outsiders in his domain. The first time Isak had gone in, he’d received a glare that made nothing of his rank of suzerain, let alone Krann. After a minute of
matching Isak’s stare, the man had shrugged and gone about his work.
Isak had watched, fascinated by how a hammer could be used in such a controlled way. On his third visit the Krann had taken up a hammer
of his own and mirrored the strokes on the second anvil.

Now he crossed the forge and removed a block of black-iron from
the rack on the far wall. The smith watched him select one by stroking
the small rectangular pieces until suddenly his hand paused over one.
Those blocks were made of the finest steel, re-forged by the College
of Magic in some jealously guarded process. Each blank was waiting
to be turned into a sword of black-iron, so expensive to produce they
were rarely done.

‘Goin’ to teach me somethen’ new?’

As the confusion of his new life crowded in on Isak’s mind, the
simple, solid forge had increasingly become a sanctuary. There was no
idle chatter, no swirl of politics here. The smith respected ability with
a hammer and didn’t give a damn about much else. He was happy to tolerate Isak’s presence, though the young lord had yet to say a word
to him. There’d not been any need - and the smith was a man of few
words himself.

Isak didn’t reply. His eyes were already lost in the black-iron and
the smith immediately gave up his place at the fire. There was purpose
in those eyes. The smith recognised it and knew not to disturb Isak. He secretly hoped that Isak would forge with magic one day, some
thing he’d dreamed about but never yet been permitted to witness.

The smith picked up the bellows and began to stoke the flames.
Isak sat before the fire and waited, lost in the dancing surge of heat.
The image of Carel beaming down at the dragon on his tunic loomed large. Isak knew that Carel still kept a Palace Guard tunic among his effects for the day he died. He couldn’t imagine the man wearing any
other. The arrogant dragon symbol had been fine until Carel put it on, but then it looked a sick joke, one that would come back to haunt him. Isak had been tempted to go and ask the Keymaster what he’d
seen in his future, but something told him it would be futile.

A slight cough from the smith brought him back to reality. Taking the long steel tongs, Isak withdrew the glowing brick and held it be
fore him. Looking deep into that bright burst of colour, his eyes began
to water from the heat. As the image blurred he saw the shape this weapon should take: a slender, curved sabre with symbols he didn’t recognise etched and inlaid with gold. The rounded pommel was to be carved with a hawk’s head. The dusky steel would contrast with
Carel’s cream glove.

With a sigh, Isak nodded to himself and laid the metal down on the
battered anvil. The first few strokes were hesitant, but he soon found his rhythm. The smith stood and watched the sparks fly, mesmerised
by the sweet ring of the hammer. It was only when Isak stopped to return the metal to the fire that the smith realised his eyes had been closed after that rhythm had been reached. Though his bladder was
pressing, the smith couldn’t drag himself away. It was pitch-black outside by the time he did leave, drained by the effort of watching. Isak
didn’t notice him go.

After the evening meal, Carel found himself a stool in the forge and
puffed away on his pipe while Isak worked. The seamstress had been
dealt with earlier, storming off in a huff when Isak refused to stop to
be measured for his own uniform. Carel didn’t disturb the boy, but
Isak did acknowledge his presence. It was almost unbearably hot that close to the forge; Carel could see Isak’s chapped lips underneath the glisten of sweat, but knew he’d not accept any water. Once the sword
had gone back into the fire, Carel offered his pipe to Isak, who smiled
to himself and accepted. He drew on it a few times, then pulled the
sword out again and started hammering. As he did so, he puffed out the smoke from the pipe over the glowing surface and then struck it a
gain, repeating the process until the tobacco was finished.

Carel had half risen from his seat to reclaim the pipe when Isak slipped it under the cooling metal and smashed the hammer down again, shattering the fired clay and sending pieces clattering out around the room. Carel opened his mouth to protest and then closed it again. Isak had clearly done that for a reason, just as there had to be sense in the way the boy had repeatedly gestured towards Carel as though he was wafting the scent of the sword towards him.

Abandoning the Krann to his labours, Carel went into the frosty
night air, a heavy fur draped over his shoulders, and sat himself down
on a rough wooden bench against the wall. It gave him a good view of
the deserted training field, which glistened frostily in the moonlight.
Mihn’s eyes swept over the veteran, then he returned to his own distant thoughts. The foreigner had left the door of the forge only to fetch a fur for himself once the cold night air started to bite. As a
cloud covered the gibbous face of Alterr above, Carel fumbled through
his pockets for his tobacco pouch, which also contained the scratched
wooden pipe that had accompanied him on every campaign of his life.
He filled and lit it before offering the pouch to Mihn.

‘Come and sit down, man,’ he said, patting the bench. ‘Isak doesn’t
need a guard at this time of night.’

Mihn stared suspiciously at both Carel and his offering, shaking his
head to the pouch, but he did leave his post to cross the few yards to
the bench. He made no noise as he walked, even across the iced grass.
Carel was a Ghost; he had worked with the biggest and best of the Farlan, men who combined skill and grace with more deadly skills. Mihn was shorter than every soldier there, and slender too, but he stood out to the trained eye. The man reminded Carel of the black
leopard he’d seen once in Duke Vrerr’s menagerie in Tor Milist. The
animal had hypnotised Carel: it moved with an almost supernatural
elegance. A drunken soldier had got too close to the enclosure and in
the blink of an eye the leopard’s pose had changed from lethargy to
lethal purpose.

‘Have you been watching him?’ asked Mihn suddenly, bringing
Carel back to the present with a jerk.

‘I-ah, yes. I don’t know what he’s doing now, but that’ll be one
fine weapon when he’s finally satisfied. The shape’s there already, but
he keeps beating at it.’

‘Is he speaking?’ There was a slight anxiety in Mihn’s voice, but
Carel saw nothing in his face.

‘Nothing I could hear, but I saw his lips move from time to time.
Why?’

‘No matter. Is he going to engrave it too?’

‘If you’re so interested, what’re you doing out here?’

Mihn ducked his head slightly and Carel immediately regretted his
tone.

‘Sorry, lad, my mind’s still waking up. Feels like I’ve been in a
trance while watching him. I think he’s going to engrave it, yes. He’s
got some tools beside him - though I’ve never seen him do anything
like it before.’

‘I doubt he has.’

Carel drew deeply on his pipe. ‘Being as mysterious as ever tonight, I see. Care to tell me?’

The smaller man shook his head, blinking away the smoke.

‘Then let me tell you something then,’ said the veteran, his voice a low growl. Mihn caught the tone immediately and sat stock-still, his
body almost quivering with readiness. Had it been almost any other
man, Carel would have grabbed him by the tunic, but the image of the leopard rose in his mind once more. The drunken soldier had
died.

Mihn had already proven his skill publicly. A friend of one of
the soldiers he had felled in the barbican tunnel tried to secure some
measure of revenge. He was a hulking brute, but a skilled one. His wrist
was so badly dislocated the surgeons at the College of Magic had to
be called in to repair the damage. A rib, snapped under a well-placed
knee, was still giving him trouble. Carel had seen that Mihn had the
killing blow ready and waiting. Luckily, it had not been needed.

‘Whatever penance you’re doing, I don’t care, see? I’ve smacked
his arse and wiped his eyes; I’ve taught him when to fight and when
to stand back. Even if you’d give your life for him, that’s nothing big to me. If you know something, if you even suspect it, don’t you dare
hide it, not from me. In case your nose has been so far up his arse you
haven’t noticed, Isak’s a white-eye. He’s a stubborn and wilful shit
for much of the time, but I love him like a son and I know his mind
better than he does. He can protect himself from others, but he’s no
defence against himself.’