The Horse Lord (10 page)

“So you want my aid in wrecking this kingdom of Alba, because you think I would enjoy taking revenge for my defeat… ? How very true. But instead of turning it over to your Imperial masters, you would hold it for yourself. Laudable ambition—if you succeed. And since you hold the last thing I touched in life”—Duergar nervously raised the sword-hilt as if it was a protective amulet—”I have no choice but to obey your wishes.” Cu Ruruc’s smile faded as if the implications of what he had said were sinking in, although if Duergar had seen the sardonic glitter in his eyes when they observed the broken chain, he would not have felt so comfortable. “So be it, then,” Kalarr’s voice was resigned. “I shall obey.”

He turned away and as if for the first time, though he had known it all along, Duergar realised that his… guest was dressed entirely in red. He had intended to ask how a summoning came into existence fully clothed in the height of half-millennium-old fashion, but thought better of it. No Alban would ever wear red without some other colour; red and particularly vermeil, that shade of deep scarlet or rich crimson which Kalarr wore with such arrogance, was the single most unlucky colour in the spectrum. It was associated with blood, with misfortune and violent death.

Cu Ruruc and his chosen colour were well matched.

Aldric lay back, half-dozing, and let his mind wander over the past three years. It still surprised him that they had passed so quickly and that he was already into the spring of his twenty-fourth year. He felt no different, even though he was: not merely older, but with a thin white scar under his right eye and a mind better versed in certain subjects than an honourable
kailin-eir
would care to own. Gemmel called it “survival.”

Gemmel… When he first told Aldric how long he was to stay, there had been an undignified scene when the youngster lost his temper. To defer his vengeance for so long was the act of a coward, he had snarled, and whatever else he might he be, Aldric, was no coward. Gemmel had weathered the storm of abuse with a little half-smile on his face, thinking to himself how very fitting was the
kourgath
wildcat on Aldric’s crest-collar. His smile was that of a man who knows he will always have the last word in any argument, and this one was no exception.

An
eijo
, an honourless wanderer, had nothing to lose by accepting some tuition in the Art Magic. So Aldric thought when the old enchanter offered, since he had already picked up a few
pesok’n
, as the little spells were called, from old books filched from his father’s library. Filched, because
Haranil-arluth
considered sorcery sly, devious and no concern of a warrior. Not that ability with dogs, cats and horses, or finding lost trinkets, was anything more than toy magic for women and children. Aldric came face to face with the real thing that day and saw how much chance his intended revenge would have had against Duergar.

None at all.

A few days later he was calling the old man
altrou
, meaning foster-father. It seemed fitting somehow, and Gemmel’s unfeigned pleasure at a title meaning more to him than a lordship had broken down the sometimes formal host-guest attitudes once and for all.

Even so, Aldric should not have laughed aloud when the wizard announced he was a
taiken-master
—for one thing, if it was true his mirth was most unwise. The young man knew, as did every warrior, that there had not been a true master since Baiel Sinun died two hundred years ago, and said so. Gemmel was unruffled and his response took Aldric unawares.

“Sinun was passable,” he said blandly. “Not as good as some, but he taught me some moves and I him.” Before Aldric could recover sufficiently to start asking questions, Gemmel had found a pair of foils and shown him the truth of his words. The lean old man had taken him off-guard three times within the first four passes, and that was something not even Joren had ever done.

Despite his apparent age—and Aldric had not the nerve to ask what it might be in years—Gemmel’s gaunt frame concealed a wiry strength and his hands the kind of skill harpers exaggerated about. Gemmel was not a master—he was a genius, a virtuoso, perhaps the finest swordsman Aldric had ever met, seen or heard of. Without false modesty, the
eijo
knew himself to be good—in latter years he had beaten Joren several times and that needed more than luck—but against Gemmel Errekren he was like a child with a stick trying to harm a battle-harnessed
kailin
.

Whenever Aldric thought about fencing now, he could see the wizard, eyes glittering like emeralds, whirling and stamping like some dementedly graceful dancer. Gemmel, when his wizardly dignity was set aside, was opinionated, excitable, quick to argue and impatient to a fault.
Taiken-master
or not, he had no time for any of the rituals Aldric associated with swordplay. He knew, from the ymeth-trance, that the boy could fight and not merely duel—he had done so against Baiart so long ago, after all. So when Aldric took up a stylised guard-position with both hands on his hilt, Gemmel copied him and then shot out a free hand and slapped him across the face.

“Two-handed rubbish!” the old man barked. “Had I a dagger, your throat was cut. Only one hand on the hilt, except when you need both. Secure your index finger—thus—over the quillon. The hilt-loops will guard it.”

“What hilt-loops?”

“I know what I’m talking about! These are only foils, remember. Again!” His moustache bristled with the intensity of his passion.

Aldric was slapped frequently during the fencing lessons; his teeth were rattled and more than once his nose was caused to bleed. He bore it as calmly as he could, because he had seen early on what
Gemmel-altrou
was doing—having lost one son already, he was trying to teach another how to stay alive.

There came a day when the boy’s cheek was opened by an accidental stroke. It was not a dangerous cut, not even unsightly although he would bear its mark to the day he died. But it meant he was too fast for the wizard to slap any more. As the realisation dawned, a grin twisted the stream of blood on his face into grotesque tributaries. Gemmel grounded his blade and leaned on the pommel, watching as Aldric saluted politely. He had no objection to saluting; as he said, in a real fight only the winner
can
salute.

“You’ll have a scar when that heals,” he observed. Aldric looked at his right cheek in the polished sword-blade and was forced to agree. “Make sure it’s the only one you ever receive in single combat.” The old man’s voice grew severe. “Being wounded in a melee is excusable; if you heed my teaching at all, being wounded in single combat will be damned careless! Remember that.”

This fierce tuition was to continue for three hours a day on six days out of every seven. Aldric did not enjoy it, but he had not expected to do so, even though without a doubt he was improving. When Gemmel lectured him on other subjects while they fought and he could remember the discourse; when he was able to think out the often abstruse questions and answer them—sometimes even correctly; when a sudden flurry of Jouvaine or of Low Drusalan words no longer left him floundering in a morass of bad translation and worse parrying: then he knew within himself that he was growing more skilled.

As Gemmel had so waspishly pointed out, Aldric had intelligence. He had guessed long ago that whatever the sorcerer was planning, it was more than simply helping an
eijo
who happened to look like his son to achieve a difficult task. All the lessons in languages, politics and geography added up to something on a scale Aldric preferred not to think about. Even so, one day soon he was going to ask for a full explanation, and not hints and guesses. One day… probably after a meal when he had bolstered his courage with a cup of wine—or perhaps two. Interrogating Gemmel when he did not feel like answering questions was definitely a two-cup enterprise and more probably three. As a smile began to form around his mouth, Aldric fell asleep. For once, he did not dream.

“Where can he, be?” Kalarr cu Ruruc’s voice was a soft, introspective murmur, but it stung Duergar like the shrillest accusation of guilt. He shrugged and made helpless gestures, but on looking up from the books on which he had been working he found that the other sorcerer was ignoring him. The tall, lean figure was outlined against a window of coloured glass, his red
elyudlas
blending eerily into the carmine-tinted sunlight. “Where… ?” he breathed again.

Duergar did not know, despite hunting Baelen Forest and beyond for almost two years before abandoning his search. In all that time there had been no trace of Aldric Talvalin after his trail went cold at a strange cottage. It had been magically concealed, an insignificant lesser charm which might well have been cast by the Alban himself—Duergar had seen the little cache of dubious books hidden in the youngster’s room—but he privately opined that the boy was long since dead from the arrow he had taken as he fled from Dunrath. Kalarr, however, was not so easily convinced, even though had Aldric been alive no power on earth would have stopped him from coming back in a quest for revenge. There were times when Duergar felt that his… colleague… was trying to find something other than just the
eijo
, irritation though he might prove. What that something might be, the necromancer did not yet know, although he was trying to find out—without cu Ruruc’s knowledge.

Aldric was not his only problem. Locked in his desk were five letters, four of them enciphered but one, the latest, written in dangerously unequivocal plain language—and the language was plain indeed. Warlord Etzel was losing patience with his agent’s carefully worded excuses; he wanted action and an end to subtlety. The Alban Royal Council, stated the letter, was blatantly financing an insurrection by two prominent Jouvaine city-states and arms of Pryteinek manufacture had been seized in the province of Tergoves, right at the heart of the Empire. Where was the political instability he had been sent to foster? it demanded. Why had his much-vaunted seizure of a fortress not borne fruit before now? What, snarled the spiky letters, did Duergar Va-thach think he was doing?

The Drusalan necromancer was perfectly aware of what he was doing—but by the letter’s interrogative tone, nobody else was. Not yet, anyway. Except of course for Kalarr, who seemed to derive cynical amusement from Duergar’s intended treachery. As always whenever he thought of things which cu Ruruc found humorous, the necromancer put one hand to the sword-hilt which he wore now like a tau cross, around his neck on a chain. Its cold metal afforded him little comfort, and less when he realised Kalarr had caught the gesture. For some reason his mouth curved slowly into a smile that was thin and yet so heavy with malign significance that it made Duergar’s stomach clench like a fist inside him.

Although the necromancer had requested that his companion start something—anything—to justify his rebirth and aid Duergar’s mission, Kalarr had… not actually refused, but been so evasive that the Drusalan’s wishes were never carried out. The ancient charm which imbued cu Ruruc’s sword-hilt with power over its previous owner should have allowed Duergar to command, not merely request—but the necromancer was strangely reluctant to test his strength even though at present he was unable to define his reasons. He had not recalled all the spies sent out after Aldric and was certain Kalarr remained unaware of the fact.

Duergar was equally unaware that Kalarr had posted spies of his own, under the same orders: find Aldric Tal-valin and bring him, with everything in his possession no matter how insignificant, straight back to Dunrath.

It was the wrist-band from the sword, of course. What Duergar had read from an old grimoire given to him by Etzel was a spell of summoning, where any artifact of a sorcerer’s previous existence may be used near the place of his death to restore him whole and entire. There had been a rider to the incantation, stating that if such an artifact were the last thing touched before death, it would grant control to whoever held it. While a skilled sorcerer, Duergar knew nothing of Alban military history—otherwise he would have known that a dying man may drop a sword from his fingers but not the metal band clasped about his wrist. It was the sort of niggling oversight which slew many otherwise careful wizards, and when Kalarr no longer had need to pretend subservience he would make sure it slew another. All he needed was to destroy the wrist-band, render it inaccessible by sealing it within a sphere of magic or sinking it in deep water—or best of all, lay his hands on the Echainon spellstone.

If he did that, it would negate the charm of the wristband and bring into his grasp a means of focusing his own considerable power, as he had been able to do so many years before, until that stupid day when fear of loss had made him conceal the spellstone under a sheath of bronze on the band of his war sword. The stone’s power had been muted by its metal shroud, but he had never foreseen a time when he would not be granted the few seconds needed to free it—until that last suicidal charge by Clan Talvalin’s cavalry which had burst his battle-line heedless of their losses and had swept him dying to the ground. He could not remember the then-
arluth’s
name, but if he closed his eyes he could still recall the man’s wide blue eyes, the bloodied teeth bared in a fixed snarl under his sweeping blond moustache, the helm buckled and scored—and the shining
taiken
which had lopped his hand in two through the palm. Kalarr could remember the sword’s name: Isileth, it was called, so long, long ago. It had ruined his hand and even as he killed the Talvalin
arluth
with a lethal blast of sorcery the long blade had come whirring back towards his face. There had been a flare of red and black, pain, heat, cold dark silence and the deep fall which never reached bottom…

Kalarr drew a shuddering breath and massaged his right hand with his left; the palms of both were damp with sweat. It was fitting that he should now hold the Talvalin citadel, but at the same time terrifying that a Talvalin should hold his spellstone. A Talvalin who in defiance of the
kailin
honour-codes read books of sorcery, who failed to kill himself when it was expected of him—what might such a man not do to achieve the vengeance he had brooded on for three years? If he regained the spellstone Kalarr would be invincible; he would show Duergar, and Rynert of Alba, Emperor Droek and his Warlord, show the Earth and the Sun and the Moon the dark majesty of a true Overlord, for after half a thousand years there would be no wizard with enough schooling in the Old Magics that he knew to defy him, once his spells were amplified through the stone of Echainon.