Authors: Nathan Hawke
Suddenly a single screaming Marroc sprinted down the road, hurling fistfuls of salt into the faces of the Fateguard as he passed. He reached Gallow and two of the Fateguard lurched away, caught in clouds of the stuff, but the last stepped up and ran the Marroc through. The Fateguard and the Marroc stood together for a moment, and Gallow saw the Marroc’s face and knew he’d seen this man twice before, the drowning Marroc pulled out of the Isset in Andhun three years back, and then in Varyxhun when Angry Jonnic had meant to hang him.
The Fateguard threw the dead Marroc over the edge into the road below. Gallow turned back, stabbing his spear
into the salt-blinded face of the ironskin in front of him. He drew out his axe and hacked the hand off the second and then its head, but now the Lhosir had returned. Shields locked together, they swallowed the Fateguard into their ranks as they came up the road at a slow run towards the sixth gate, the last before the castle of Varyxhun itself, and Gallow retreated before them. At the open gates of the castle with the Dragon’s Maw at their backs, Sarvic had managed to rally the Marroc at last.
‘Salt! For the love of Modris, who carries salt?’
The Lhosir stopped a dozen yards short. The last handful of Fateguard stepped forward again. Before the Marroc behind him could break and run a second time, Gallow stepped forward too. The ironskin in the middle took another step and saluted him. ‘Gallow Truesword.’ He took off his helm and his mask and crown. The face underneath was as sallow and as pale as Beyard’s had been.
‘Do I know you?’
‘You were meant to be one of us, Truesword. My brother the Screambreaker was meant to bring you to us. Fate gave him that time for that purpose.’
‘Your brother? Who are you?’ But the Screambreaker
had
had a brother – everyone knew that. It just wasn’t possible, for the Moontongue had been drowned at sea almost twenty years past.
‘You know my name, Foxbeard. All Lhosir know my name and spit upon the sound of it. I am Farri Moontongue, brother to Corvin Screambreaker, and I am dead.’ He levelled his sword at Gallow’s heart and came forward, and Gallow backed away because, even before someone had wrapped him in an iron skin, there was no man alive or dead except the Screambreaker himself who could beat Farri Moontongue, the thief of the Crimson Shield. Gallow caught the first blow on his shield but the Moontongue was already lunging again, and Gallow moved barely in
time; and then the ironskin had an axe in his other hand, and it came so fast that Gallow hardly even saw it before it smashed into the mail over his ribs and knocked the breath out of him; and Moontongue’s sword was already flashing at his face, and Gallow lunged, not caring that he was about to die as long as he might take this abomination with him.
And at that moment, in the tomb beneath Witches’ Reach, Achista poured salt over the armour of the Eyes of Time, the first of the Fateguard. On the top of that same tower King Medrin dreamed that his iron hand burst into flames, while somewhere not far from there the Eyes of Time felt a pain that seared through all its creations, and on the road outside the gates to Varyxhun castle the last of the Fateguard staggered and clutched their heads and fell to their knees, and the thief of the Crimson Shield paused in the blow that would have killed Gallow but Gallow’s spear did not. He drove it through Farri Moontongue’s throat and twisted. There was no blood.
‘I did not mean for this, Gallow Truesword,’ said the creature that had once been a man, ‘when I did what I did.’
Gallow’s axe rose and fell, he bellowed and roared, the Marroc swarmed over the other writhing Fateguard with salt and iron and fire until the ironskins were done, and then it was the Marroc who charged, not the Lhosir, and the forkbeards who melted away, too stunned by what they’d seen to stand and fight.
‘I
will tell you a story, Aulian, and then perhaps you’ll tell one to me.’ The king of the Lhosir rode on his new horse and Oribas rode beside him, wrists tied to his saddle. Behind them some five hundred Lhosir fighters were marching up the Aulian Way to Varyxhun. ‘I don’t know how the Eyes of Time came to our land. Your people brought it here, whatever
it
is. They buried it in salt. It was meant to stay here for ever.’ He fixed Oribas with a look that bored into the Aulian. ‘I have to imagine they didn’t know how to destroy it, otherwise they would have done so, but then how is it that
you
do?’
Oribas met his eye. ‘I came here to do what I could, King Medrin of the Lhosir. I had thought the Mother of Monsters had made you its slave. I see now I was wrong. It is the other way around.’
‘No, Aulian, you still have that wrong. My mind is my own and always has been, though a fine battle we’ve had on that score, but the Eyes of Time serve a mortal?’ Medrin smiled up at the sky. ‘I think not.’ He chuckled to himself. ‘Aulian, I’ll kill you if I have to, I won’t pretend otherwise, but I’d prefer you alive. Maybe it lightens your thoughts to know that. You travelled with Gallow a while so I suppose he must have told you about the day he and Beyard and I entered the Temple of Fates?’ His six-fingered hand tapped the Crimson Shield. ‘All we wanted was to see it, not to steal it, but we were found and taken for thieves. I ran and left
Beyard and Gallow behind. I don’t know what happened between them – something very noble, I suppose. Somehow Gallow escaped as well. I didn’t know him then, had barely even heard his name before that day, but Beyard was my friend and he was taken by the Fateguard, and I was a coward, too afraid to own up to my part in it. When I begged my father the king to save my friend, he told me I must do it myself. And he was right, and I should have gone to the temple and given myself to them. Both of us should, Gallow too, but neither of us did. No one else knew, of course. To this day no one else does. Beyard took our names with him to his pyre.’ He looked across at Oribas from the back of his horse. ‘Gallow was only there because his father was a smith. We needed helms that made us look like the Fateguard and someone who could climb the temple walls, and he could give us both.’
For a long time the Lhosir king stared into the distance, into the past. There was shame in his face, Oribas thought, and pain and regret and perhaps a little longing, and it took a while before he shook himself and came back. ‘After Beyard was gone I came across the sea to fight with the Screambreaker. I asked him for his help. I thought, after the Fateguard had stolen King Tane’s shield from him, he might harbour a grudge, but he only looked at me with scorn and shook his head. I fought beside him anyway, with the passion of a shamed man and in due course I found the punishment I was looking for.’ He patted his ribs. ‘It was a bad wound. I didn’t even see what did it. They say it was a spear, but whatever it was, it punched through my mail and ripped me open. The wound went bad. My flesh started to rot. If I’d been anyone else they would have let me die and burned me and that would have been the end, and if an honest man who knew the truth had spoken me out, they’d have said that I’d abandoned a friend to die and remorse drove me to follow him. The Maker-Devourer doesn’t take
a man like that for his cauldron, Aulian. Deeds are what matter, not remorse.’
Medrin stopped as another rider drew alongside, and for a while Oribas rode between silent guards while the king did whatever it was that kings did when they rode to war. He let the sights of the valley wash through him. The sky was blue without a cloud in sight and the sun was already warm. Not hot like the desert and it never would be, but almost pleasant – he might even sweat later – and then he wondered whether that helped the Marroc of Varyxhun or the forkbeards or made no difference at all. In the morning the castle was in the shadow of the mountain. The forkbeards would prefer to fight in the mornings then.
His eyes drifted to the river. This far down the valley the Aulian Way ran a little away from the Isset, carved into the lower slopes of the mountains that channelled the water. Between the river and the road lay a steady succession of abandoned Marroc farms, most of them burned. The river ran fast and high; now and then whole trees washed by. The fields were littered with stray boulders, even the trunk of one colossal Varyxhun pine, swept down by the spring floods of years before when the river burst its banks. The Aulians had carefully built their road where the floods wouldn’t reach, carving notches into the mountains where they had to, building bridges over the sharp-sided ravines and valleys between. The Aulians had always liked to dig and they’d liked to build too. The streams under the bridges rushed and hissed and foamed. The winter snows were melting, and it was a pity, Oribas thought, that he wasn’t going to live to see the valley in summer. It was probably a pretty sight.
It wasn’t until the middle of the afternoon that Medrin came back, and when he did he looked annoyed. ‘Tell me your name, Aulian.’
‘I am Oribas, O King.’
‘And that Vathan woman?’
‘Mirrahj Bashar.’
The king laughed. ‘Bashar is a title, Oribas of Aulia. Thank you.’ The more Oribas studied the king, the more he knew he was wrong about something. The king had been vexed by Mirrahj’s escape and the loss of the red sword, but no more. ‘I wish I’d met you back then, Aulian. So much might have been different. Do you know how to cure flesh rot?’
‘You must cut out the rot. All of it.’
Medrin laughed again and shook his head. ‘I was the son of a king. No one dared. They took me to Sithhun flat on my back in a cart. The Screambreaker thought it was bad luck to have his prince die in the middle of the army and so he sent me away to die alone instead. Oh, he said he was sending me back to my father but I knew better. Away, that was all that mattered. Flat on my back, and I a proud Lhosir prince.’ He snorted. ‘In Sithhun there was an Aulian wizard. A man like you.’ He turned and looked down at Oribas and smiled. ‘He said I couldn’t be saved but he did his best anyway. I was close to my end. He made potions – I don’t know what they were – and had me drink them. I was delirious. He talked to me as he worked and I told him about Beyard. I don’t know why. Because it preyed on me and because I thought I was dying. I remember how he changed when I spoke of the Eyes of Time. His face, his voice, everything about him, as though he was suddenly a different person. We were in Sithhun among the Marroc. The Fateguard had crossed the sea and taken the Crimson Shield and so they
had
been seen, but this Aulian knew them by another name, one I’d never heard.’
Oribas didn’t try to hide his curiosity. ‘Another name?’
‘He spoke it but I was delirious and didn’t properly remember it, only that he said it.’ Medrin spat. ‘The Aulian opened my wound and drained it. I remember the stench. It made me want to retch and I thought it was one of his potions and then I realised it was me. I can’t tell you how it
feels to smell such a terrible thing and know it’s your own putrefaction. I don’t remember much after that. As far as I can put it together, the few friends I had left heard my screams and ran into the room. When they saw what the Aulian had done they murdered him on the spot.’ He shook his head. ‘We are not reasonable people, Oribas. Perhaps you’ve seen this already. I think what saved me in the end was that they thought that I too was dead. The Aulian had filled my wound with maggots and honey. Do you understand?’
‘To eat away the bad flesh.’ Oribas looked up. He’d seen no sign of Achista and not knowing what had happened to her was wearing him down. For all he knew she’d been hanged before they even left. ‘Mighty king, You told your soldiers I should not be killed. You did this for a reason. For the knowledge I—’
‘Are you trying to bargain with me, Aulian? After everything you’ve done? Perhaps I want you kept for a very special death.’
Oribas bowed his head. ‘I do not take you for a wasteful man, King of the Lhosir.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The Marroc woman from the tomb. She was nothing but a guide. I will give—’
‘Don’t lie to me!’ Medrin bared his teeth. ‘You’ve been in that tomb before and have no need of a guide, and besides which she was with you when we met on the road and you turned back my ironskins with your circle of salt. I know exactly who she is, and you’d failed before we even spoke if you meant to hide what she means to you. You’ll give me all your knowledge but only if I let her go, was that it? But I won’t, and you’ll give it anyway if that’s what I want from you. I’ll keep her. Cage her and never hurt her but always let you be very sure how thin is the thread of her life. Yes. And you are right, of course: maggots to eat away the bad flesh. My stupid friends couldn’t bring themselves to touch me
and so the creatures were allowed to do their work. For two days I lay there, pickled in the Aulian’s potions and eaten by his creatures but by the end the rot was gone. I didn’t die. I suppose I started to recover, though it hardly felt it at the time. It took a very long time before I could even walk without gasping for breath.’ He patted his side, just under his left breast. ‘It’s not a pretty sight. It had spread a long way.
‘When I could speak again, I asked after the Aulian who’d cured me. When I had the answer I sent the men who’d killed him to seek out his family, but he had none. Later, when I looked for myself, I learned this Aulian was not such a pleasant fellow after all. He had a fine house in Sithhun. A palace almost, yet none of the Marroc would go near it. They said he was a witch. In time I went to his house myself and there were strange things there – few that I understood – and even now no one goes to that Aulian’s palace unless I say they must. I heard he had a woman, a wife perhaps, and I heard that she fled after he died and that the Marroc caught her and tore her to pieces. I don’t know if that’s true but I never did find her – either in one piece or many. What I remembered, though, was how he’d changed when I spoke of the Fateguard. How he asked questions about them, about where they came from. He even spoke the name of Witches’ Reach, although it wasn’t until years later that I learned of the fortress that guards the Aulian Way. I spent a long time in Sithhun in that Aulian’s palace. The Screambreaker was off fighting his war and I was recovering my strength from a wound that should have killed me, and when I had that strength again, I found I had no desire to fight beside a man who’d sent me away to die alone. So I stayed in Sithhun until I had my answers, and when I thought I understood how to destroy the Eyes of Time, I went home.’
Oribas looked up sharply and found Medrin was looking at him again, smiling faintly. ‘That never occurred to you,
did it, Aulian? Not once. Admit it. Not that I once wanted the same as you want now.’ He smiled wryly at some private memory and nodded. ‘One thing for which I thank my father – that he forced me to learn to read a little Aulian as well as our own tongue. The Aulian’s books called it the Edge of Sorrows, and so that’s what I looked for, Oribas of Aulia, and found nothing because I knew only its Aulian name. Other matters occupied me: the Screambreaker and his war, my father falling ill, the Screambreaker eyeing his throne.’ He was laughing out loud now, shaking his head. ‘And then after Andhun and the Vathen I found to my amazement that someone had walked this path before me. No less than Farri Moontongue, the Screambreaker’s big brother.’
He might have said more, but that was when a shout made them both look up and back to where a Lhosir was pointing up the mountain. When Oribas squinted, he picked out a lone figure leading a horse along a trail hundreds of feet above them. It took a moment to realise that the figure was standing still, looking down at them, and a moment more to realise that the figure had a bow.
King Medrin snorted. ‘From all the way up there? He can’t possibly hope to hit anything.’
Oribas judged the angles and wasn’t so sure. The archer was a long way away but he was a long way up too.
‘What’s he shooting at? Us?’ Medrin had stopped to look. He didn’t sound at all concerned.
‘I can’t see, O King.’
‘He’s shooting at something in the road ahead but I can’t see what. Look.’ Medrin pointed. A moment later Oribas saw a puff of dust from the middle of the road some fifty yards ahead of them. ‘What
is
he doing?’
‘That is Mirrahj,’ said Oribas, too quietly for Medrin to hear, ‘and she is finding her range.’