[Lanen Kaelar 01] - Song in the Silence (6 page)

Jamie was silent for a moment, considering.
“I honestly couldn’t tell you, my girl,” he said at last. “I
don’t remember her being a great beauty when first I saw her, but that never
seemed to matter. She was—she looked—ah, there’s no words for it. She was so
alive, that was what you saw, and beside her the others were candles to the
sun.”

So, I thought. Not beautiful, but attractive.
There are worse fates.

“Tall as Marik was, he stood yet taller,
though he never stood straight—but he was a scrawny thing, compared to her.
Altogether he reminded me of a red hawk, stooped in the shoulder, nose like a
hooked beak and green eyes flecked with yellow. To this day I don’t know what
your mother saw in him. When I asked her she hadn’t the words, though she
seemed to think his voice the best of him. It just sounded high to me, soft and
mannered like a man who never deals with men. But then I wouldn’t know.”
Jamie stared into his tankard. “I never did understand it.”

“The long and the short of it is, she left
me for him that very day, with barely a word after three years.” Jamie’s
voice grew softer, just for a moment. “I would have laid down my life to
keep her from harm, and she ran to it fast as she could go.” He looked up
at me and a rueful smile touched his lips. “You’d think I’d have been
furious, wouldn’t you?”

“I would have been,” I answered, a
little sadly. “And I was just starting to like her.”

He snorted. “I’d been at it longer. I had
told myself all the while we travelled that there’d come a time when she’d
leave, but I never believed it. And even as her name was linked with his by the
market place gossips, I waited. I found odd jobs, nothing much, enough to keep
me near her, for my heart misgave me, and I would not leave her to him so
swiftly.”

“It was two months before I saw her again to
talk to, and it was the last thing I’d have imagined that made her turn to me
again. I began to weary of waiting, and I had gone to the marketplace with some
idea of buying provisions and leaving—though in truth I had no thought of doing
such a thingwhen someone grabbed me by the arm from behind.”

“Well, you don’t live long in my profession
if you let that kind of thing happen. Without thinking I whirled and braced in
a fighter’s crouch, my dagger in my hand though I didn’t remember drawing it,
distance between us that I pulled from thin air.”

“She laughed, part from surprise, part from
something else, something I had not seen in her before.”

” ‘I never thought to see you here,’ I told
her, putting my blade away, the anger of two months washing through me. ‘Lover
boy leave you, or you him?’

” ‘Neither,’ she said, her eyes troubled.
‘Take me somewhere private. We have to talk.’

“For a bent copper coin I’d have cursed her
and left, I was that angry, but even as I turned to go I finally recognised
what was new in her. It was fear.” Jamie shook his head gently. “I
had travelled the breadth of Kolmar with her for three years, Lanen. We’d
fought off winter storms and treacherous cliffs and the occasional band of
roughs and worse, and in all that time I had never seen fear in her. I swore to
myself then that I would banish it if I could, and if that bastard Marik had
somehow frightened my fearless Maran, I’d put the cap on my career and kill
him. Cheerfully.”

He took a drink. “Of course, it didn’t work
out that way. Usually doesn’t.”

He fell silent for a moment. The couple in the
corner clattered about, having a meal served them. I waited, but Jamie seemed
to have lost himself in his memories. “Jamie?”

“Eh? Oh.” He picked up my tankard, felt
the weight and set it down again. “You’re not drinking,” he said,
looking at me with a slight frown. “Something wrong?”

“No,” I said, lying. “Go on.
Please.”

“It’s not pretty, my Lanen,” he said
sadly. “Make you a deal. You drink, I’ll talk. You stop drinking, I stop
talking. Done?”

“Done,” I replied. I lifted my tankard
and half-drained it, filled it back to the brim and made a point of sipping at
regular intervals: The brew was starting to affect me, but I kept my mouthfuls
small and listened with all my might.

“We found our privacy in a hidden nook in a
crowded pub much as you and I have. Seems she had found a secret passage in
Marik’s house—and being who she was, instantly went in. She heard voices, Marik
and a stranger, a voice she didn’t know. ‘He was bargaining, Jamie,’ she tells
me. ‘The stranger is a demon master called Berys. He said he was a Magister of
the Fifth Circle; whatever that means. He was angry at Marik and said he needed
more gold. When Marik asked how he should gain it, Berys told him to send a
ship to the Dragon Isle!’”
       
.

Jamie paused: glancing at me. “You’ve
stopped drinking again, lass,” he said, a wry smile ghosting past his
lips. “And remember to breathe while you’re about it.” I nodded and
took a deep breath. He went on.
  
.

“Maran told me that Marik tried to beg off
that particular venture, because of the storms and. because every last one for
a century had disappeared without trace. Seems Berys didn’t much care. ‘He told
Marik to call on him again in thirty or forty years,’ she said. ‘Berys started
to go but Marik called him back. He said he needed power now, not in thirty
years. So Berys said he would make a Farseer for Marik. Thank the Goddess
Marik’s gasp was louder than mine. I thought such things were only legend, and
so did Marik, but Berys was serious, and the price is to be—oh, Jamie, it turns
my stomach!’ she said, covering her mouth. When she could speak again, she
said, ‘The price is his firstborn child. I thought for a second he was jesting,
but he meant it.’ She caught my eye and shook her head. ‘And no, I’ve not
quickened, he doesn’t have a child, Not yet,’ she said, shuddering.

” ‘Then Marik asked if Berys intended next
to go to his rivals and make Farseers for them, but Berys said there could only
be one of the things in the world at any time, and that if he never had
children there would be no price extracted. Marik asked what would happen if it
were stolen from him. Berys would only say that if he were unlucky he might
live.’

“Well, the long and short of it was that
Marik agreed to the bargain and signed away the life of his firstborn child in
blood. The ritual was set for that very night at moonrise.” Jamie wrapped
both his hands around his tankard and stared into its depths, and his voice
dropped to a rough murmur. “We talked for a while about what to do. She
had the start of a plan, and together we worked out the details. When all was
set, I—I offered her my services.” He swallowed hard. “As assassin. I
asked her if she wanted me to kill them. I had not killed in more than three years,
and the very thought made my gorge rise up to choke me, but if she needed me
to…”

I sat frozen, my throat thick with dread. For me,
no matter what came after, this was the center of all Jamie’s telling. I could
not breathe. I had to know. And below dread, below thought, deep in the center
of my soul, I prayed faster and harder than ever I had before. Blessed Lady,
Mother Shia, please, please let it be that my mother did not ask Jamie to kill
for her…

A tiny corner of his mouth lifted, he glanced at
me, and I breathed again.
    
.

“She took me by the shoulders and turned me
to face her. ‘Jameth of Arinoc,’ she says, solemn as judgement, ‘rather would I
cut off my own arm. If you have forgotten, I haven’t. I may be fool enough to
take a dark soul like Marik as a lover, but while I live you are the man I care
most about in the world.’ “

I saw the tears slip down his cheeks, this man
who was farmer and assassin and all but father to me, and I knew that he
remembered those words as if she stood before him and spoke them fresh at the
very moment, and that they were all he had of her to remember.

“I believed her, though I could see her own
words shocked her. And me. ‘I swear to you, Jamie,’ she says; ‘if either of us
has to kill anyone it will be only to save our own skins.’

“We waited until just after moonrise; then
she led me through the house to the secret passage. I was dressed in my old
uniform, a kind of mottled black tunic of silk with no clean edges. I left her
halfway down the passage, as we’d agreed, and crept on to the room at the end.
There was a little light only a few candles—but it was enough. I waited at the
corner some few minutes, listening, until I guessed they were too interested in
what they were doing to notice me. I peered round the wall just as the voice I
assumed was Berys rose high and loud in a kind of incantation. Just as I looked
round the light changed, from dim candlelight to a bright red glow, and I heard
a hissing voice like nothing I’d ever imagined.

“There, above the small altar between Berys
and—Marik, a figure of nightmare hovered in the air above glowing red coals,
and it was much the same colour. It didn’t take much to guess that it must be
one of the Rakshasa, a demon from the Seven Hells. I’d only ever come across
the Rikti, the minor demons, on one of my jobs—it was a pleasure taking out
that demon caller—but this was its older cousin, and a foul, fierce thing it
was. The voice made my skin crawl.

“That was a bad moment, because even if the
men couldn’t see me the demon sure as all Hells could.” He smiled grimly.
“I had forgotten the nature of the things. They don’t give away spit. It
probably hoped I was there to kill them, which would leave it free to go. In
any case, it never even hinted to them that I was there.

“I don’t remember what they said—there was a
lot of bickering, threats, and empty posturing on both sides. I remember
Marik’s voice swearing his firstborn child to Berys, though, and Berys saying
it was time for the blood sacrifice. I didn’t think much of it until I heard a
small sound, startling in that place. Even in those days I knew the sound of a
waking infant when I heard it.

“It took me a few seconds to understand that
they were going to kill some poor, nameless child then and there and give its
blood to the demon for the making of this Farseer.

“You must understand, Lanen, that all the
while I was watching and listening, I was planning when and where to strike.
All those years of killing left me with a good sound sense of survival and
strategy.” He frowned. “I wish I could say my first impulse was to
rush in and try to save the child. I thought about it, but I knew that the best
that could happen was that I would be killed myself and do Maran and the child
no good. Maran and I had decided it would be best to take the Farseer once it
was made, and I knew I had to keep to the plan:” He lifted the tankard
before him, which he had ignored for some while, and drank deep.

“I watched it all, Lanen,” said Jamie,
his voice deep with old sorrow. “Berys chanting, the child crying louder
and louder, screaming in fear and pain, then suddenly, horribly silent. I moved
no muscle, invisible in the shadows that hid me at the back of the room, but I
swore revenge for that babe as it died.

“Then Berys told Marik that he would have to
give of his own blood to seal the spell. The craven bastard yelled near as loud
as the child had, and cursed Berys through his teeth when his arm was opened to
let the blood. I began to slip my dagger from my boot. A poignard would have
killed, but somehow, in the face of that evil, the thought of giving more death
to that creature made me sick. My hands were stained enough as it was.’

“There was a loud hiss as Berys poured the
mingled blood of Marik and the babe over the hot coals, and the voice of the
demon slithered through the air. ‘It iss done, Masster. Behold that which you
dessire.’ There was a globe on the altar now, of what looked like smoky glass,
about the size of a small melon.

” ‘It is done, slave,’ says Berys, calm as
could be. ‘Begone to the Fourth Circle of Hell that spawned you, but know that
if this is not the true Farseer I will have claim to your miserable hide for a
year and a day.’
        
.

” ‘Ssso bee itt,’ the thing hissed; and with
a loud pop it disappeared. Then Marik grabs up the globe and says, ‘Show me the
head of the Merchant Bouse of Hovir.’ I couldn’t see exactly what was
happening, but from his expression the thing worked well enough. With that kind
of power Marik would quickly rise to lead the Merchant Houses. At least.

“I felt my jaw draw tight as my body set
itself for an attack. All of Kolmar’s trade ruled by demons? Not if I had word
to say about it.

” ‘Do you accept this Farseer and seal our
pact?’ asked Berys, calm as if he was asking about the weather. Marik should
have seen it coming. Idiot.

” ‘Yes. I will take this in exchange for the
life of my first child, whensoever it might be born,’ replied Marik, staring
into the depths of the thing like a man in a daze.

“Then Berys laughed, and it was a terrible
sound. ‘It is done! Fool! Could you imagine the road to power so swift and
simple? Ere ever you sought me, ere ever you were born or named, a prophet of
our brotherhood knew this would come to pass. For his pact with the Lords of
the Hells he was given visions of endings and beginnings, and for the four
Kingdoms he prophesied:

” ‘When the breach is healed at last—

when the two are joined in one—