Mordraud, Book One (68 page)

Deanna flustered on the step.
The tall man swivelled at once. He saw her a few paces away, above on the stairs. He propelled himself forwards, dropping the cushion. The other trespasser’s grey face also materialised between the banister bars. Deanna struggled to pull back but her heel slipped on the marble. The man at the foot of the stairs swooped on the steps. His hands missed her by a thread. Other fingers thrust through the railings and lunged at her padded dressing gown. Deanna let out a piercing scream. She tried to get back up but failed. She saw the tall one slither towards her, dragging with his chin on the stone. She lifted a foot and crashed it down on his hands. His knuckles were on the edge of the steps.

They cracked, following the pattern of her shoe.

Fragile. Like parched paper. The whole hand crumbled. The man didn’t retreat. He simply stared at her. As if feeling nothing. The other’s fingers vanished. The short one joined his companion and pulled at a leg. He eyed Deanna, as he bent away, against the wall.

Life returned to her limbs
. Deanna climbed the stairs sitting, without turning her back on the two relicts. She saw the tall man make another attempt at raising an arm, and his fingers hung miserable from his wrist. Bruised black lumps protruded from his tattered jacket sleeves. His cheeks sagged. He was dying of hunger.

His friend grabbed him by the feet and feebly
began pulling him in the direction of the door. Deanna had already reached the bend in the stairs, when she heard the lanky intruder’s head crack on the steps. She retched. The tugging man revealed a slow malignant smile.

Deanna fled screaming towards the other end of
the house and took refuge in her lounge. She shut the door, shoring it up with the armchair. She heard the elderly servants approach from the cellars.

They shooed
out the two beggars without yelling, shoving them with bitter determination.

***

“You said it didn’t seem that far away.”

“
So I was probably wrong...” Saiden replied. An annoyed Mordraud hissed. They’d been trudging through snow up to their waists for weeks. They made progress little by little, with gruelling constant exertion. Gwern was lolling at his brother’s side, and often needed a hand to make his way over the white wave accumulated by the wind on the plain. The skies were charcoal, the rest of the world reflected a pale grey light in a haze drained of all colour. Mordraud was constantly touching his chest. The burns from the green fire darts were throbbing beneath his skin, like an illness consuming him inside.

“
Can you manage to carry on, Gwern?”

“
Yes, I can...” he panted as he waded his way through the snow, steering with is arms. Underneath it was as hard as rock, at the top soft and fluffy. They were all clad in damp clothes, and the cold was shocking. The plain’s landscape was uniform: when they came across a clump of trees they barely noticed. The wood had rotted and crumbled from the freeze. They hadn’t crossed paths with a wandering animal for many days, and were still living on the last mouthfuls of meat Mordraud had secured from a lynx. Tough, tasteless and gristly. Cooked only to avoid the risk of it going off. “It wasn’t a good idea,” he blurted in disagreement with Gwern.

“
What?”

“
The meat... With this cold, we could have kept it raw.”

“
That wouldn’t have changed anything,” Gwern concluded gloomily. “I don’t think I’ve managed to distinguish the taste of anything for ages.”

“
Is Larois still making her usual stew?”

Mordraud
’s question threw Gwern. They’d chatted a lot during their lengthy hike, but he tended to scrupulously avoid asking for any news of home. Gwern smiled. However much Mordraud had longed to set off for the Rampart, there was still a part of him that missed life in the fief.

And
a special someone who lived there.

Gwern
bit his tongue not to ask about Deanna. He wanted to believe nothing had happened, deceiving Adraman would have been a regrettably foolish move on Mordraud’s part. But he suspected his hope was merely in vain. He could sense his brother was inquiring about home only as he couldn’t speak about something dearer to his heart. Something forbidden.

“
I don’t know. You should be able to tell me,” Gwern answered. “I’m away from Eld just like you are. I don’t know how Larois is...”

Mordraud
’s mood darkened and he cursed, pushing away the snow with his sweeping strides.

“
She’ll be fine. She’s always coped, that old battleaxe...”

“
Don’t talk about her like that, it’s horrible,” replied Gwern, irritated.

“
I’m sure someone in Eld is taking care of her too. The last time I stopped by, the townsfolk were more united than ever,” Mordraud went on, mellowing his tone. When it came down to it, Larois had never done anything to harm him. To the contrary, she was to thank for everything he’d achieved in life. She’d taken them in and given them work. It was through her he’d met Adraman.

And
Deanna.

That
was the only thing she was to blame for, he reflected sadly.

“
Have you already got a plan?” Gwern asked him, gripping onto his hand to haul himself through the snow. He could no longer feel his feet. He was always on the verge of slipping over. ‘Why did I agree to give him a hand?!’ Gwern considered, stunned at his own stupidity. Somebody like himself was completely useless on a journey of that kind. Simply a burden. Yet, even before he knew Saiden would provide them with his precious help, he’d already enthusiastically offered to come to his brother’s aid.

They definitely needed a plan.

“More or less...” Mordraud bumbled in confusion. He’d had his brother explain to him an example of how the whole chanting, harmonies and resonances business might work, but the truth was he’d understood little of it, and poorly too. He only knew they would come up against a sort of choir concealed somewhere. And to hinder the effects of the chanting, he’d have to come up with a way to kill its members. He wasn’t aware whether this meant all of them or just one. Differently to his usual spirit, Mordraud hoped that doing away with just a couple would be enough. The chanters terrified him. He couldn’t understand them. They were deadly dangerous because he didn’t know how to tackle them.

“
Perhaps we should discuss it with Saiden. If he’s accepted to come with us, maybe he’s already got something in mind.”

“
Not now,” Mordraud replied. He still wasn’t sure how much he could trust the man. But he was more than willing to change his opinion if he could watch with his own eyes as Saiden attacked one of the Empire’s men. He bet with himself that he could manage it alone. His brother’s teacher rarely spoke to them, and spent all his time staring at them through indecipherable eyes.

Mordraud
fingered his chest once more. The pain was agonising. He wondered how many people he’d be able to slay in that condition. Very few, he mused in frustration. That damn wound made him slow and weak. If they bumped into some armed guards – something he’d been fearing since they’d set out – it would be his task to take care of it. He asked himself if he was up to the job.

“
I’m just waiting for your tutor to get a move on,” whispered Mordraud. “But he still doesn’t want to tell us where the chanters are hiding. It would make things much easier.”

“We’ll manage it, you’ll see,” Gwern exclaimed, pulling at his arm. Mordraud turned towards him. He was young and yet old at the same time. The appearance of a boy, with a gaze holding thoughts of a depth that startled him. He hadn’t talked to him for many months. Numerous things had happened since they’d lived together at Larois’s house. Mordraud’s life had totally changed. But so had Gwern’s. It had a purpose now. To dissect the magnificent complexities of harmonies. Mordraud envied his brother, free as he was of the chains of revenge that instead bridled him, along a crazed path of violence and gutted corpses on the Rampart’s ridge.

All in pursuit of the hope of at least once bumping into
Dunwich.

Gwern
remembered practically nothing of his eldest brother. Mordraud coughed wheezily. He was glad that burden was his alone.

He was happy
Gwern was finding a road all of his own.

“
Saiden, are we carrying on through to the night or shall we stop?” he asked the man ahead of them. He failed to reply, nor gave any sign of slowing.

“
Did you hear me? Saiden?”

Mordraud
halted and turned to stare at the tutor, dumbfounded. He seemed as if he’d just re-emerged from a long angst-soaked thought.

“
No, we’ll press on. We should try not to waste any more time.”

Saiden
scrutinised Gwern, then Mordraud. He smiled nervously, colder and more cynically than usual. Something was wrong, he considered as he watched the two brothers talking to each other in hush tones. He could not figure out what was happening.

The
Flux contacts between the two brothers didn’t progress into something more comprehensible.

‘
I don’t think I’ll get much more, for now...’ Saiden surmised.

He returned to his trekking, irked.
The patterns he’d observed during the early days of the journey had not mutated into something else. Saiden had hoped they would, but unsuccessfully. The strands of light went on emerging from Gwern to come into contact with Mordraud. He hadn’t noticed any particular consequences. Gwern attempted to take possession of a portion of his brother’s vitality but, so it appeared, without success. Saiden had come to the conclusion the boy wasn’t even aware of it, and that it was the Flux itself that acted on its own initiative. Inconceivable, he mused. He located on the horizon the immense column of light unleashed from the spot where Cambria’s chanters were generating the Long Winter. For him, it was impossible not to see it. Instead, for Khartians like them, the Empire’s staggering chanting was utterly impossible to pinpoint. It was feasible to strike up a resonance with it, but the rebels did not possess any harmony masters capable of this.

‘
I’m doing them a great favour. If they only knew it’s merely a side-effect...’ he considered, smiling to himself.

He wanted to comprehend what was so special about
Gwern’s Flux, plus the reason why Mordraud, by contrast, seemed to be totally lacking in any. It was something unfathomable, he told himself, gently shaking his head. Every being or thing in the world was made of, was built of Flux. It was the framework to reality. It couldn’t
not
exist.

‘
There must be an explanation. Mordraud has got a body and is alive, there has to be a Flux grid inside him somewhere. Something, at least... What’s so strange about these two Khartians?’

Saiden
wished to know more. It’d have been easy for him to explain that absurd manifestation with a rose-tinted or sentimental cause. They were brothers, that was their bond. ‘Bullshit!’ he thought, annoyed. ‘It’s nothing to do with affection. Flux is always Flux – it doesn’t feel emotions... It just wants to feed, to keep its casing alive... I’ve never seen or heard anything of the sort.’

M
any Aelians still possessed an appreciable knowledge of the Flux’s mechanisms. He was perhaps one of the greatest experts alive, along with Cambiryon – the most influential Aelian in all the communities spread throughout the continent. He’d have to ask him, but tracking him down wasn’t easy. He spent a great deal of time among the Khartians, and Saiden wasn’t in a position to wait for him who knew where and for how many years until he returned to visit his people. A pity, he told himself. He could have helped him solve that mystery.

‘
Besides, even if I wanted to, it would be dangerous for me too to travel so far in such a cruel climate... From all angles, it would be good if this winter ceased. However admirable it might be... as a sophisticated demonstration of power.’

They were near it now. Many days had been eaten up by journeying in the snow, but as the bird flew they hadn’t gone very far. Mordraud and Gwern couldn’t see it, but Saiden knew the light column pinpointing the chanters’ lair was almost within reach. He could also discern the spot where the Long Winter broke off the resonance with the world – a couple of nights’ travel and they’d be in Imperial territories. He had to contrive a ploy to provoke a watershed in the study of Gwern’s Flux. He wanted to unearth what linked those two – it had become a priority. It was a unique opportunity for delving deeper into understanding Flux, its origins and the fine thread connecting it with every being’s life and decisions.

He required the right stimulus
.

‘
Stopping the chanters isn’t any trouble... not for me,’ he mused, as he distractedly went on eavesdropping on the confessions the two brothers exchanged in low voices. ‘But I can’t say the same about Mordraud.’

He would have to give
Gwern a coaxing shove. To establish what his Flux was capable of. Would he reveal his true force if his brother found himself in danger?