The Dark Defiles (43 page)

“Archeth told me they’re sulking because they got left behind.”

A stiff moment of silence. “That, too.”

“Bit childish for dark and powerful spirits summoned from the void, isn’t it?”

“Yes, well. Since you have not yourself ever looked upon the void, Ringil Eskiath, let alone existed within it, perhaps you should reserve judgment of those beings who have.”

Ringil got up from the cramped desk and stretched until he creaked. “I just think they sound like pretty shabby allies, even if they do ever get cranked up to their, uh, fullest capacity. Not the sort I’d want holding my flank for me, anyway.”

“You are entitled to your opinion, however ignorant it may be. But it does not alter the facts of
kir
-Archeth Indamaninarmal’s situation, which is that the Helmsmen are what she has to work with. And which of us has not had to make do with less than perfect allies at one time or another?”

Ringil grunted.

“True enough,” he said, and went to look for Klithren.

can see you’re still upset.

He’s been avoiding the Helmsman since they set sail for Trelayne, but there’s no getting away from the iron demon’s voice in his head.

And, believe me, I would leave you to sulk in peace if I could.

I’m not fucking sulking!

He’s sworn to himself that he’ll no longer rise to its lures and provocations, but that particular barb gets through. He’s a soldier, he’s an imperial fucking marine; he doesn’t sulk. He takes orders, reads strategy and troop strength and terrain, executes accordingly. Protects his men in the process where he can.

Forgive me, Anasharal says smoothly. You gave the appearance of—

What I’m doing is ignoring your lizardshit lies and false prophecy for what they are.

He bends closer to the task at hand, restitching a torn canvas sleeve to his combat jerkin so he can wear it once more under mail and not rub the flesh of his upper arms raw. He tries to silence any further response, but the words are already crowding into his mind.

There’s an injunction in the Revelation not to listen to demonic spirits, he snarls. For they are of the void. I should have followed scripture from the start.

From the start, you needed my help. You were confused, were you not, even when we met for the first time? You were plagued by doubts and visions.

I—

Your mind torn by the forces within you, unable to deal with the evident destiny that was yours and that you must assume. Sometimes you even doubted your own name. Had I not taken you under my wing then, what might the violence of your dreams and delusions have done to your sanity by now?

He is silent, paused in his needlework. There’s truth in the Helmsman’s version of events, sure enough—he’d been racked by nightmares any given night out of three, how far back he can no longer be sure, but the first one he clearly recalls woke him screaming and into the throes of the worst hangover he’d had in years. They’d been out celebrating the new appointments, including his own to the river frigate and the lady Archeth. He remembered drinking in the Drowned Daughter’s Arms, thought perhaps it was there that he’d passed out, but he woke in the East Main barracks with his purse and all his off-duty gear intact, so someone must have carried him home.

Out of the bowels of his aching head, the terrors vomited up—comrades and loved ones turning away from him, not hearing his voice when he cried out after them. Left alone in a chilling wind under a leaden sky, no purpose and no way forward. The lady Archeth, at risk and far from his reach. A multitude moaning and screaming somewhere, a creeping sense of inescapable doom … 

He choked it down. He got over his hangover, he got on with his job.

But the dreams persisted, and in time they rode him haggard. He started making mistakes, little ones, but enough piled up over time that he’d have put another man on report for it. He forgot where he was, he forgot how much time had passed. Found himself standing immobile for long periods until someone snapped him out of it. His memory played tricks on him. He’d look at some common sight—his bunk at the barracks, the practice yard at sunup, the river frigate’s main mast towering into the sky over his head—and it would feel like he’d never seen it before in his life. And all the time, the dreams chittered at the edges of his vision like rats in shadows, waiting for dark to come.

Until the day they retrieved the Helmsman.

At first he was as terrified by the iron demon’s voice in his head as he had been by the dreams. Of course, it spoke to them all at first, out of the scintillating desert air like it was the most normal thing in the world. Spoke to the lady Archeth to begin with—which was, he supposed, only fitting—then to Commander Hald, then a seemingly random selection of the men as they carried it down off the volcano’s slope. Captain Nyanar, too, and the invigilator of course, when he tried that half-arsed exorcism back at the frigate.

But as far as he knew, the only head Anasharal spoke inside was his own.

He would have gone straight to the commander with that fact as soon as they got back to barracks, but on the voyage downriver and home, a curious thing happened.

The Helmsman calmed him.

You should not fret at your condition, it told him. I have seen men in similar straits before. It is simply that you were born to a great destiny, as certain men are, and now you have encountered the pivot upon which that destiny turns. The recognition stirs inside you, like a great serpent waking. This why you are troubled.

The lady Archeth?

Blurted out before he could stop himself, and other men elsewhere on the river frigate’s deck glanced curiously in his direction.

Just so.
Kir
-Archeth Indamaninarmal is a woman of great destiny herself, and it is clear that you have a significant part to play in her fate.

The words, the meaning—like door bolts slotting into place, like a sheet of canvas snapping clean and full in the wind. It felt right, the way nothing had for weeks.

Then what do I do?

Muttered under his breath, as he leaned on the rail and watched An-Monal slide away upriver behind them.

Watch and wait, my friend. As I, too, must do. In this we are more alike than you can imagine. We are both fated to deliver the lady Archeth along the path of her destiny, we both have a role to play. Mine is clear to me, but yours is not, at least not yet. All I know for certain is that you must relax into that role, not struggle against it.

There was more, much more, in the same vein, lulling him until the day darkened toward dusk and the lights of the Imperial City came in sight round a bluff and a bend in the river. And that night at barracks, if he dreamed at all, he had no memory of it when he woke with the dawn.

See, Anasharal told him as he dressed for muster. Though the iron demon had by now disappeared into the bowels of the palace and he had no expectations of seeing it again anytime soon, it spoke to him across the city as comfortably as if they shared a cabin. Just as I promised you. Men of destiny breathe easier when they accept the pattern of their fate. Only watch and wait—the levers of providence will carry you to where you need to be.

Yeah, and now look where the fuck we are.

He misses the stitch, spikes the end of his finger with the needle. Curses under his breath. Squeezes out the blood across the ball of his thumb and sucks at the wound.

Your anger is misplaced and premature. We are victorious, are we not? Despite all your fears, despite your painful lack of faith in my advice.

You could not know it would turn out this way!

Perhaps not. And perhaps I miscalculated when I recommended that you accompany lord Ringil in his search for the black mage’s resting place. But destiny is not easily thwarted from its path, and we are on that path once again.

I should have been with her, he mumbles.

Had you been with her, you would now in all probability be dead. Instead of which, we are both now on our way directly to the lady
kir
-Archeth, to bring her to safety, to bring her home.

He leaves the half-sewn jerkin aside, straightens up, and arches his back to stretch it. He stands for a long moment under the straining sails, wanders to the rail, and stares out at the dance of sunlight across the water. For some reason, it fills him with nothing but dread. What the Helmsman says should make sense—the privateer force is routed, their leader brought low. Lady Archeth’s rescue is in hand, lord Ringil has proven himself a warlord worthy of following, the men are grimly confident that whatever his plan, they can get it done. And if he must die in taking the last of the Black Folk from the heart of infidel Trelayne, then what better end could an imperial soldier ask for?

Yeah, it should all make sense.

So why have the nightmares crept back?

Why does he dream, time and again, that he looks out across a marsh plain of tree stumps upon which are cemented human heads, thousands of them, severed at the neck but still living, moaning in torment and grief?

Why does he wake, clutching at his throat with both hands, knowing with mounting, choking horror in the fading moments of the dream, that he, too, is just one more of those severed, abandoned but still-living souls?

What the fuck is
that
all about?

ate afternoon sun soaked across unshaded decks aboard
Mayne’s Moor Blooded
, plucked strengthening, lengthening shadows from rails and masts and rigging. The light hit Klithren full in the face, gave his features a haggard, careworn look—
yeah, probably not doing you any favors either
—and showed up every gouge and flaw in the table top between them. Ringil hefted the wine bottle he’d brought, and the sun lit it the color of blood from within.

“Drink?” he asked the mercenary. “Ornley’s cellars aren’t much to shout about, but this was the very best they had.”

“That they told you about.”

“That they’d take money for.” Ringil leaned back in his seat, rolled the bottle a little on his palm. “I know it might not seem much like it, the way things were when you arrived, but we were never an invading force in Ornley. I didn’t steal this. I like to pay my way where my vices are concerned.”

“Very noble of you.” Klithren placed his hands on the rough wood surface of the table. The echo of his stance from the torture board three weeks ago was unmistakable. “House Eskiath would be proud. If you hadn’t mired up your tavern etiquette there by murdering a bunch of Trelayne slave merchants, that is.”

Ringil hauled out a knife and cut wax off the wine bottle’s neck, tugged out the oiled rag stopper beneath.

“You’re in favor of Liberalization?” he asked mildly.

“I’m a soldier, not a law clerk. But from what I’ve seen, there’s always going to be slaves. Some men have the nature to be free, some don’t.” A shrug. “Makes sense to have laws governing that, just like anything else. Why should we be any different to the Empire?”

“Should all have six wives as well, then.” Gil set out two thick glass goblets he’d brought over from
Dragon’s Demise.
He poured, and the same bloody light the bottle had shown now came and sat in each glass as it filled. “You reckon?”

Klithren snorted. “Most men I know can’t handle one woman, let alone six. Why give yourself the trouble? Plenty of cheap pussy hanging round the taverns if you need it.”

“You speak from a lot experience, I suppose.”

“More experience than you, faggot.” The mercenary snagged the closest goblet and knocked back its contents in one gulp. He set it down, smacked his lips. “Yeah, that’s not bad. Hit me again.”

“I was going to propose a toast, actually.”

“Sure, propose away.” Klithren tapped at the glass with a fingernail. “C’mon, hit me.”

Ringil picked up the bottle, watching the other man covertly as he poured. According to Senger Hald, Klithren had been drinking pretty heavily the last couple of weeks. He played dice drunkenly against himself in his cabin, muttering and exclaiming as he rolled the cubes and fumbled them up again. He prowled the decks in the late watches, glowering suspiciously up at the night sky as if it might suddenly fall in on him. Most nights, he woke himself screaming.

Problem was—Gil didn’t know Klithren well enough to tell if any of this was unusual behavior or not.

But you know how hard you hit the krinzanz when you came back from the Grey Places for the first time, don’t you, Gil?

Truth was, the full force of that memory was hard to come by now. The Grey Places were a mild terror compared to what he’d had to face since. And so much had happened in the last two years, it seemed like another man’s life altogether.

Yeah, but you still remember how hard you tried to drown it, that icy understanding of what’s out there, beyond the walls of your own little world. How hard you tried to hang on to your grubby little certainties. So why should this poor bastard be any different? Why should he be any tougher than you were back then?

Because he’s the fucking dwenda’s chosen champion, that’s why.

Or not.

I
N THE TANGLED MESS OF UNCERTAIN FACTORS HE WAS SAILING WITH,
Klithren of Hinerion was his last remaining cause for concern. Fix Klithren before nightfall, and he’d sleep in his still slightly haunted cabin like a baby doped with flandrijn.

Battle calm.

It was in him now at depths to rival any other aspect of who he’d become, so much so he sometimes felt as if he’d been carrying it since infancy. He was used to marching against unknown odds, used to carrying the day with sheer bravado and battle momentum, and that was more or less what he expected to do in Trelayne. He had a plan of sorts, had thrashed it out in the resting intervals Hjel insisted he take between his time in the clefts and defiles of the
ikinri ‘ska.
He thought it would work, pretty much. The forces ranged against him would either not know he was coming or, if dwenda sorcery had somehow informed them of the fact, then they ought to welcome it with open arms. They had, after all, sent Klithren to get him in the first place.

If they
didn’t
know, well, then they were in for a big fucking shock, and that just made things easier. If they knew, then it was going to be a harder fight, with a lot more blood and spilled drinks across the tavern floor, but so be it. Gil doubted even the dwenda could know what he’d been doing in the weeks of the voyage south, where he’d been, and what he’d brought back.

Thus much for his opposition.

Among his allies, he’d worried for a while about Anasharal, but the Helmsman’s rather wistful dream of putting a Kiriath Empress on the Burnished Throne brought them into perfect alignment. Not a scheme that had a virgin’s hope in Harbor End of succeeding, but that wasn’t his problem.

That left Klithren—a forced alliance, made in haste, and one he’d agonized back and forth about to Hjel until he was sure the dispossessed prince was sick of hearing about it.

I don’t know, maybe I was wrong about him,
he mutters as they camp out under the long pallid march of the glyph cliffs and Seethlaw’s
muhn,
high in the darkened sky overhead.
You’d expect a dwenda champion to stand up a bit better to the Grey Places, wouldn’t you?

Hjel shrugs.
Perhaps. You did drag him there without warning, confront him directly with some of the worst it has to offer. From what you tell me, Seethlaw was much kinder with you when it was your turn. He, uhm, broke you in more gently, so to speak.

Ringil tries to grin, but can’t quite bring it off. He’s still sick and shaky from his new encounter with the Creature from the Crossroads, still can’t recall how it ended, and is pretty sure he doesn’t want to. Talking about Klithren at least keeps that at bay.

I’m not denying the connection,
he says.
Klithren flickers with blue fire in combat, just the way I did when I came back from the Grey Places two years ago. But maybe that’s just, I don’t know, armor or something. They knew they were sending him against me. Maybe they just did something to give him a temporary edge.

Maybe.

He didn’t seem to know anything about them, about the dwenda.

Hm.

When I spoke of the cabal in Trelayne, he knew the names. He reacted. But he sneered when I talked about magical force.

Well.
The dispossessed prince munches at a strip of dried pork, eyes on the fire. He doesn’t seem to want to look at Gil.
Why don’t you just fucking ask him?

“
A
TOAST.”
H
E RAISED HIS STILL UNTOUCHED DRINK. “
D
EATH TO THE
dwenda and all who cabal with them; and a libation to the Dark Court, for my safe return last night.”

He took a swallow from the goblet—Klithren was right, wasn’t bad, actually—poured out the rest on the deck planking at his side. Looked expectantly at Klithren. The mercenary shrugged, lifted his drink a minimal couple of inches, and wagged it in echo. Hoisted and drained it. He shook out some last drops over the deck.

“You been somewhere, then?”

But his voice wavered just barely as he said it, and Ringil knew that he’d heard. There’d not have been much cause for traffic between the three vessels on the way south, but they wouldn’t have remained wholly isolated, either. Meetings of senior officers, transfer of vital supplies suddenly found lacking on one ship but not another, medical emergencies—he knows for a fact that one man aboard
Mayne’s Moor Blooded
took a fall from the rigging two weeks back, and had to have an arm set and splinted by the doctor from
Dragon’s Demise
; probably there’d been other, more minor cases, too, less worthy of comment when Nyanar, Hald, and Rakan briefed him. Men rowed back and forth, went as attendants or assistants, hung around waiting for their boat to go back. In the long boredom of the voyage, you’d need only the hint of something out of the ordinary, and rumor would kindle like flame in parched grass. Ringil’s black mage vanishing trick into his own cabin could not have gone unremarked, and nor now could his return.

“You know where I’ve been,” he said.

Klithren gestured. “Whatever, man. You going to fill this up again? I mean, since we’re drinking buddies all of a sudden.”

Ringil set down his empty goblet. “Did they take you there?”

“Take me where? Who?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

Locked gazes across the table. They were alone up here on the forecastle deck, the minimal crew aboard confined to stern and waist or belowdecks at Ringil’s order. Ringil leaned in.

“I am not your enemy,” he said softly. “I grow tired of telling you that.”

Klithren sniffed, reached for the bottle. Gil let him have it. He watched as the mercenary poured his goblet full, set down the bottle, drank deep.

“You not got anything stronger than this piss?”

“You know we do. But I don’t think that’s going to help you.”

Klithren drained the rest of his goblet. Cradled it empty in his hands, stared down into it for a while.

“I have … dreams,” he muttered finally. “Crazy fucking shit. Like …”

He shook his head.

“Nothing like that in years, you know. Not since … I don’t know, it’s got to be nearly twenty years I don’t dream like that anymore. But
this
… ”

Ringil nodded. “Yeah. In all probability, they took you to the Grey Places to prepare you, then hid the memory from you. Had I not taken you there again, it’s a memory that might have stayed buried for the rest of your life.”

“Am I supposed to thank you for that?”

“No. You’re supposed to hate. Believe me, that does help. But you need to direct your hatred where it belongs.”

Klithren grinned savagely. “Do I see some squirming on the hook there?”

“Our agreement stands, if that’s what you mean. You still want a shot at avenging your asshole axman friend? When we’re done in Trelayne, I’ll be happy to oblige. But you’re looking for the wrong vengeance.”

“Yeah—don’t tell me. I should be fighting the good fight alongside you and your imperial pals. Siding with the Empire against my own people.”

“You never brought in League marauders for Tlanmar?”

“That’s different.”

“So is this. I’m going to war with the dwenda, not Trelayne. Findrich and the cabal, they’re just in the way.”

“That so?” Klithren tipped his chair back and studied Ringil with an expression that was suddenly shrewd and sober. “I thought you came to get your friends.”

Oops.

“That, too.” Came out smoothly enough—he hurried on. “But I made a promise awhile back to rip the living heart out of the next dwenda I saw walking around like he had a right to be here. And I have it on pretty good authority they’re busy doing exactly that in Trelayne.”

The mercenary poured himself another goblet full of wine. “Pretty good authority?”

“Yes.”

“What authority’d that be, then?”

He isn’t going to say
the dark queen Firfirdar,
because the words are going to sound ridiculous coming out of his mouth with light still in the sky, and anyway it isn’t strictly true. Firfirdar never told him there were dwenda in Trelayne. He’s reading between the lines now, like any other worshipper grasping at straws. He gestures dismissively, impatient as much at himself as the other man.

“You know where I’ve been,” he says. “You want to argue black mage vision with me now? The dwenda are there, in Trelayne, and we’re likely going to have to carve a path through them. Believe me or don’t. What I want to know is whether I’d be able to count on you in that particular fight or not.”

“Right.” The mercenary drank. Looked at him speculatively over the rim of the goblet before he put it down. “Tell me, black mage. Why’d you hate them so much?”

“Are you fucking kidding me? You want to go back and have another look at those heads, refresh your fucking memory or something?”

“No.” A shudder, not quite held down. “But …”

“But
what
?”

Klithren got up and walked to the starboard rail. Took the bottle with him. He leaned there for a while, not drinking, staring at the setting sun. Ringil waited, long enough to understand that no more was going to be forthcoming at this distance. He rolled his eyes and went to join the mercenary at the rail.