Mordraud, Book One (65 page)

A group of enemy
foot-soldiers took position in their path. Helming them stood a stocky solid warrior bawling commands steeped in curses, like a beast. They weren’t trying to evade Dunwich’s group like all the rest.

They wanted to
obstruct them with their own bodies.

“
GO ROUND!” he yelled, but he himself was too close to avoid the impact. The infantry hurtled off a volley of sharp spears. Dunwich saw a blade lodge an inch from his leg, stabbing into his horse. Another scraped his helmet, knocking it off. Their captain’s sword-tip shredded the face of the cavalryman at his side.

“
BACK! AWAY!” he yelled, seized by panic and unprepared for such suicidal defence. Droves of soldiers clung at the horses’ legs, grabbing their heads in an attempt to floor them. And ending up underneath the animals themselves. His men scattered, unable to cross that wall of human flesh. The Lances stopped their chanting and had to frantically defend themselves from the swords raining down on all sides. Dunwich screamed until hoarse for them to retreat, but he could no longer look behind to see whether his command had been heeded. The captain had just finished pulling down a rider alone, yanking him by his leg. And he was coming for Dunwich now.

“
RETREAT!” was his last word. Dunwich shifted his sword to the side, parrying the first lunge, but his numb fingers deceived him on his grip. The horse swayed and whinnied, knackered by its wounds and terror. The blare of the clash was fading – a sign that his men had found a way to move towards the bridge by fleeing backwards. He had to get out of there, and quickly. But the rebel captain was ruthless, hammering harder than anyone he’d ever come across. And he wouldn’t stop foul-mouthing like a brute.

“
THAT SHIT-HOLE CAMBRIA! I’LL POUND YOU ALL TO PULP! YOU’RE ALL DEAD MEAT!”

Dunwich
felt the blade tear his plating at arm height. He saw slivers of black steel fly off. His was a shameful disadvantage. His horse was about to ditch him entirely. Blinded by the ice and the clamour, he only spotted the sword plunging to his chest at the last second. He twisted his torso, gritted his teeth, and prayed. The iron tip grated on his metal shell, and penetrated, overturning the black and gold plating and ripping his chainmail. He felt no pain. But he wasn’t entirely sure he still had his arm.

He identifi
ed the only escape possible. A lightning movement as he thrust his weapon into the warrior’s shoulder left unprotected by the shield. He sank it in deep, but not deep enough. He’d earned himself some time.

No longer thinking about playing the hero, and no longer
fuelled by the exciting pulse of the throng, Dunwich turned his horse around and fled. He clamped himself tight onto its back to evade the poleaxe blades, blindly entrusting himself to the animal. Until he heard the din detach from the ground, as if he’d taken flight. He peered down. He was riding over his white bridge, now melting beneath the hooves.

He
landed well by the skin of his teeth, slipping to the side and clutching desperately at the horse’s ice-encrusted mane.

The
Imperial ranks materialised beyond the fog after what seemed an eternity to him. Some had trickled back. Others simply would not return. Behind them could be heard the rebels’ cries, as they set about sedating the fires.

“
HAVE YOU GONE MAD? Did you want to get yourself killed?!”

Someone
was shaking him like a rag doll, but the ice on his eyelashes prevented him from seeing properly. Their headquarters had plummeted into chaos. The surviving cavalrymen bawled ferociously. The Lances praised his name, prodding the ground with their swords. Their commanders barked orders, punishments, trials for insubordination. Dunwich couldn’t comprehend any of it. They’d managed to inflict real damage, to get beyond the Rampart in small numbers, and without premeditation. It was a success. It couldn’t have any other name.

“
These improvisations WILL... NOT... BE... TOLERATED!” yelled his torturer once again. If only he’d stop shoving him about. Dunwich felt the urge to be sick.

“
We have to press on... with this strategy...” he tried to say. “The Lances can create the openings... We all need to attack in the same point...”

“
We won’t be attacking anything at all!”

It was
Asaeld who was shouting. His face was purple and his eyes sprung wide. He seemed like another man, a mad one. Then his voice dropped to a worried whisper, and Dunwich felt a hand grope inside the tear in the armour, at shoulder height.

“
Show it to me... Bless us all – you came within a hair’s breadth of being run right through...” Asaeld was propping him up on his feet. There was no trace of his horse. He wondered where it had gone.

R
eaching the resonance for the bridge had gutted him.

“
I’m not hurt!” he said, stumbling on his words. It had all happened too quickly, and that breathable air outside the fog was making him giddy.

Then came the stabbing pain,
where Asaeld’s fingers were poking about. Dunwich felt his skin split, and a gush of boiling blood run down his side. It didn’t even seem a blade wound. It was more like a claw embedded in a muscle.

An injury he
didn’t think he had.

“
We have to find a healer! At once! It could get infected, and then that would be the end of you!”

“
But I’m fine, I say!”

Asaeld
didn’t listen in the least. Dunwich felt himself lifted off the ground. Asaeld was carrying him over his shoulder, to the infirmary tent. The blood wouldn’t stop spurting from the metal wreckage. Fresh, new blood.

“
You’ll be spending some time at home now... Too much is too much,” Dunwich heard, shortly before finding himself thrown on a bed amidst ranks of agonising death-rattles.

“
You make me worry too much, my boy. And besides... “ Asaeld went away, leaving him in the hands of two healers, who carefully set about dismantling his armour, to free the wound. “...you’re in pretty bad shape. A few months’ rest can only do you good... And it’ll help you sort out your ideas.”

Dunwich
had earned himself some leave. Precisely when he didn’t feel the slightest need for it.

“
That’s how we have to attack them...” he uttered, as the first herbal concoctions placed beneath his nose began to take effect. A soft heavy slumber induced by the heady fumes inevitably overwhelmed him.

“
That’s how we have to attack them...”

Saiden
was walking behind the two brothers, trudging as they were, along an invisible path submerged by the snow. Mordraud and Gwern were chatting in hush voices, while he stayed watching them in silence. He was witnessing something important. A reaction he’d hoped to observe when he got the idea of following them on that trip. The Long Winter didn’t interest him in the least. Halting the white death and helping Eldain’s rebels had never been his priority.

His true goal was to unlock
that secret held inside Gwern, unbeknown to the boy.

‘
His Flux... It’s concentrated exclusively in his chest,’ Saiden considered, as he stared at his back. To his eyes, Gwern’s body was like a clear glass casing. And inside his chest, beneath his sternum, Saiden could see a knot of Flux nesting. Extraordinary, he told himself. In his experience, the boy shouldn’t even be
alive
. His brother, astoundingly, was even more bizarre.

Not a single fibre
of Flux was visible inside Mordraud.

If
Saiden looked at a tree, he could see not only its shape and its usual colour, but also its
structure
. Chain upon chain of light, making up bodies, trunks, rocks, and so on. Every entity in the world, whether living or built, was made entirely of Flux. The whorls tracing out limbs or branches were narrow and perfect. The grain in wood was literally drawn in details of light, printed like white inscriptions on the grid structure of the trunk. In a similar manner, man appeared, to his eyes, as a statue made of a web of light, minutely describing every feature – eyes, mouth, fingers.

That was
the Flux, he thought. The framework of reality, constructed with the pure energy of light.

Instead,
Gwern was almost entirely lacking in it. What little he had was curled up in a jumble inside his chest. Absurd, Saiden said to himself. If the Flux didn’t mark out his arms, how could they exist? When he’d touched them for the first time, he’d been astounded by how convincing they were. Yet, without being made up of Flux, those arms couldn’t be real. The same was true for his legs, and even for his head. And his brain. Gwern was a hovering clump of Flux – a being with no real form. While his brother was totally lacking. Mordraud’s body was traced out simply by the void it created in the landscape’s weave of light: a dark silhouette cut out of the fabric of reality. Inconceivable, mused Saiden.

When
he’d seen them next to each other, something had moved inside Gwern. His Flux had very slightly opened up, had swollen. As if there were some special tie with his brother, who, in an entirely unfathomable way,
activated
it. Saiden was there with them merely to go on observing the relationship between Gwern and Mordraud, to try to work out what that mysterious entity in the two brothers was.

When
he’d noticed that peculiarity in Gwern, he’d at once taken action to have the chance to study it. He’d first approached Sernio, and then the boy plus the woman who’d taken him in and given him work at her inn. He’d drawn on the reputation he’d built up when practising as a chanter in Cambria. Back then he’d called himself Saite. Fifty or so years had gone by, he considered. He was pleased with how he’d managed to desert Saite’s life and step into the shoes of his grandson, Saiden. It was one and the same person, then as now. The story of the son who’d moved to Calhann, the grandson born outside Cambria and who nobody had ever seen. A well-articulated lie, that he’d carried on all those years, with the sole purpose of not stirring suspicion. He couldn’t age like other men. Time had a slackened, mellowed effect on him.

Saiden
was an Aelian.

He
’d been living among the Khartians for three centuries. In all those years, he’d had to change his story, name and past many a time. He would appear in one region, settle there for a few decades, and then vanish. He’d change name and legacy, he’d work his way into a human realm, then abandon it before anyone started asking too many questions about him. This time he’d used his real name, but he’d had many over the years. Saiden loved that. Changing and being born again were concepts poorly digested by his people. And it was a pity, he considered, as he stared at Gwern’s back. The Aelians had entirely lost their desire for
discovery.

Mordraud
and Gwern were the greatest mystery he’d ever come across. And to think that in the beginning he’d also been attracted by his fee, he said to himself in amazement. Until he’d understood the full extent of the mystery the boy held within. Gwern was worth much more than the money he’d had to scrape together in order to study.

The Aelians
possessed a far deeper knowledge of reality. Much of it had been lost over the centuries. The new generations had forgotten a great deal of the sophisticated culture of their forefathers, of the era when they dominated on the Cambrian continent. But the real difference lay between the Aelians and the Khartians – it was all in awareness about the existence of the Flux. Humans understood only what they could see, while the Aelians managed a more in-depth insight. And, as a consequence, they knew how to manipulate and shape the world around them, interacting with the structures of light it was built of. The Khartians had invented chanting to achieve the same wonders. But the result was blandly similar. Saiden could alter the Flux architecture of a tree, or a man – destroying, changing or reviving it. By chanting, a human could place his Flux in resonance with that of his surroundings. The same result, Saiden mused again. Yet setting out from a radically different concept of reality.

The
chanting method fascinated him. Before getting to know the Khartians, Saiden hadn’t been aware that an alternative world for interacting with the Flux could exist. Once he’d found this out, he hurled himself headlong into studying harmonies. He craved supreme knowledge of the true essence of the Flux, a secret that nobody – neither Khartian nor Aelian – had ever untangled. Where it originated from, what energy it was made up of. Why reality could be shaped by setting out from the simple desire to create. A power going beyond any god, in the hands of whoever was willing to look about with curious eyes.

Nonetheless, there was a subtle difference between
chanting and the pure use of Flux. The Khartian chanters were also capable of conjuring out of nothing fire, ice and land that hadn’t previously existed. While Aelians like himself had always shaped existent Flux, without ever creating it anew. In fact, when Saiden contemplated a resonance, never did he see material appear that hadn’t existed beforehand. A flame spouting from nowhere didn’t contain Flux. That was the most mysterious and absurd aspect. If a chanter believed, through his harmonies and his intense concentration, that some fire could exist in front of him, then it appeared. And it was made up of particles of the Flux belonging to those people around him in resonance with his harmony. In practice, the effects of chanting were mainly
a mass impression
. Long strings of meandering light unfurled from the onlookers’ eyes, and mingled with the Flux of the chanter and the others near him, giving form and colour to a flame that hadn’t previously existed.

In
deed, at least in these terms, the Khartians were more sophisticated than the Aelians. Far more complex. Saiden recalled some of his people who knew how to use Flux in combat. They could summons to their hands long lashes of light, and use them fatally against their enemies. Flux could also be dramatically tangible. And painful. But this was nevertheless a more unrefined way to harness it. He liked chanting, even if he’d been working on how to make it abstract for many years. To meld the Khartians’ imaginative scope with the Aelians’ pragmatism. And to do so, he had studied everywhere. He’d pretended to be an ordinary man, inventing stories of distant grandchildren and journeys ending in tragedy. He had died and been reborn many times in his life. All this, just to satisfy his longing to know and to understand. Saiden lived, by no stretch of the imagination, solely for himself.

“
Don’t you think it odd?” he heard Gwern say to his brother, quietly. Saiden smiled. ‘Oh yes...’ he thought. ‘I find it very odd...’

“
Whatever could we have done, just the two of us?” the boy went on.

Saiden
once again witnessed that occurrence that had so undermined him the first time he’d seen Gwern and Mordraud together. When the boy spoke to his brother, a fine thread of Flux span out from the youngster, a slaver of light that floated in the air and tried to break inside Mordraud’s empty shell. As if it wished to fill it.

Or, more likely,
invade it.

‘
Something ties those two... but it’s not blood. It’s something much greater. That’s not a bond between brothers.’

Saiden
had the distinct sensation that the thin yarn of light was not at all
friendly
.

“
...Many even believe this winter’s the work of the Gods,” he picked up, hearing half of Mordraud’s sentence. Gwern’s small ball of Flux suddenly puffed – an involuntary response to those words.

“
An idea you reject...”

“
Of course,” Mordraud replied impulsively.

A tress as thick as a finger stretched out from the mass of light and shot towards
Mordraud. Saiden saw it fly, passing through Gwern’s breastbone and hitting his brother’s stomach. The twine melted into a web of light. But instead of dispersing with no gain, its threads unexpectedly penetrated Mordraud’s casing. They dissolved inside him, and began flashing feebly.

Dozens
of tiny white lights, hovering inside Mordraud’s empty chest. For an instant, Saiden recognised a certain undulating rhythm in those weak gleams.

Suddenly, the
lash was sucked back within Gwern. At such a speed and with such brutality that Saiden wondered if Gwern himself had noticed, unwittingly, what his Flux was up to inside his brother.

It was attempting to
eat him
.

Gwern
’s Flux devoured the world to keep him alive.

Saiden stumbled and
fell to the ground in shock.

***

“Don’t you think it odd?”

Mordraud
shrugged his shoulders.

“
Whatever could we have done, just the two of us?” Gwern went on.

“
I’d have come up with something...” Mordraud answered.

“
Yeah, but we wouldn’t have known how to put it into practice. I wouldn’t have been able to help you, Mordraud. I’m sorry... but your plan was impossible. Instead, here we are with my teacher.”

“
I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

Gwern
pointed behind him.

“
It almost seems as if it was supposed to go this way... as if it was the only thing that could have happened.”

“
No, that’s a load of shit,” Mordraud replied curtly. Gwern looked at him, sniggering. His brother sometimes spoke as if he were at the front with his companions.

“
In the whole of Eld, nobody knows how chanting works. Many even believe this winter’s the work of the Gods.”

“
An idea you reject...”

“
Of course.”

Behind them,
Saiden stumbled on the snow and slipped to the ground. When Gwern approached him to give him a hand, the man rolled on the white blanket and turned on his back, eyes wide and a strained half-smile on his face.

“
Everything alright?”

“
Yes... I was daydreaming,” Saiden stammered, caught off-guard.

They pull
ed him up and carried on walking. Mordraud went ahead a few paces to get further away from the tutor. Gwern trotted after his brother.

“
But do you really think he can help us?”

“
If he can’t, who can? You and I don’t even know what to look for.”

Mordraud
sighed nervously. Saiden was behind them again. “At the first opportunity, let’s try to head more north. We’re veering off the right track slightly.”

“
So should we be making more that way?” Mordraud asked, lifting an arm to point north-west. He could see nothing but trees, a hill not far off, and the ever present snow. The horizon was black and depressing.

“
Exactly.”

“
But what is it you hear?” Gwern inquired. “I’ve tried to pick up on some resonances, but I haven’t managed it yet...”

“
Hmm, perhaps you just need to concentrate harder...”

Saiden
half-closed his eyes for an instant. He was witnessing yet another unexpected occurrence. Two more strands had spun out from the ball of light hovering in Gwern’s chest. They were slowly creeping up towards his head, from inside his throat. The boy wanted to see the world’s Flux. But he wasn’t consciously capable yet.

Saiden turned his gaze n
orth-west. To his eyes, the landscape was the mingling of reality’s colours with an enormously dense Flux web. Towering like an embedded column joining earth and sky was the channel of Flux that Cambria’s chanters were concentrating through their work. A startling tuft of spiralling light that invaded the clouds, and bent the weather conditions of the entire region to its will. And it was the fruit merely of a straightforward Khartian choir, he considered in amazement.