* * *
She wheeled her horse and galloped across. She was almost at the house's tall double doors when a tall man with a long, single-edged axe jumped up from behind some stacked barrels and rushed at her. He made to swing at her but tripped so that the axe bit into her horse's head. Uttering a ghastly scream the beast collapsed under her, blood jetting from its cloven skull. Keren scrambled clear of its thrashing hooves, regaining her feet in time to face her attacker. It was Shaleng.
"Slut!" he shouted, his long-jawed face contorted with fury. "I needed the horse alive, not you!"
The heavy battleaxe seemed as light as a walking stick in his big hands. He spun it in a blurring figure-of-eight then aimed a swift crosscut at her midriff. Keren leaped backwards then ducked to avoid a second blow to her head. She snatched a handful of dirt, tossed it up into Shaleng's face and came up to shoulder-charge him. Choking, the bandit-chief staggered back but managed to grab Keren's jerkin, pulling her off-balance. Half-blinded, he swung at her as she stumbled forward, but she kept her feet, parried the axe and slid her sabre along the wooden haft and into his hand. Shaleng let out a roar of agony and the axe flew from his bloody grip. Without hesitation Keren plunged her blade into his throat and he died at her feet.
Gasping for breath, swaying where she stood, she looked up and saw Falin the scout staring open-mouthed. Muscles ached and the wound in her arm stung as she bent and picked up Shaleng's axe. It was a Mogaun-forged piece, its heavy haft carved along most of the length, its blade bearing cruel, tearing hooks at top and bottom.
"Here," she said hoarsely. "Take this to your lord and master...no, wait, I'll give it to him myself."
She had reached the steps at the front of the house when the doors were thrown open and Byrnak stepped out. He assessed all that had happened with a single glance.
"So you took my prize for yourself, woman."
"I had little choice in the matter," Keren said, tossing the axe at his feet. "But if Kiso had done as I'd ordered - "
"Yes," he said. "I know about that." He reached down behind him and dragged a body out onto the veranda. Handless, footless and dead, it was Kiso. "The fool thought I might die without his aid." He gave the corpse a brutal kick, then grinned at Keren.
"But that's not all," he went on. "Look at what else I found." He turned to one of his men. "Bring out our new pet!" A slight figure, a young man naked from the waist up, was thrust forward and Byrnak casually threw him sprawling on the veranda. Keren immediately noticed the filthy blue breeks he wore.
"A Rootpower priest," she said numbly.
"That's right, Keren, my lovely - the last of a dying breed, but soon to be extinct, eh?" Byrnak's malicious laughter was echoed by the crowd at his back. "They were getting ready to torture him, but I decided to reserve that pleasure for myself."
Keren turned away. The moans and cries of the wounded came from all around and the air stank of blood and smoke. Across the town square, one of their riders was despatching the dying of both sides with a spear. Others were looting what freshly-harvested grain and roots the villagers possessed. More laughter came from behind her and she heard Falin join in from nearby.
She took a kerchief from her jerkin pocket and tried to clean her sabre. But the blade was bitten and notched and tore the cloth, leaving it in rags.
This is death's realm,
Keren thought emptily.
And we are its ragged people.
Prayers are like smoke or water - they either
vanish without trace or feed what is unseen.
—The Book Of Stone And Fire
The birth was going badly.
For at least the tenth time that night Suviel Hantika wished she could find within herself a shred, the merest glimmer of Rootpower to help heal the suffering woman. From the frail mindbond she had already made, she could feel the awful pain of torn inner tissues and exhausted muscles. But all she had was the Lesser Power, sufficient only to dull the worst of the woman's agony while praying that she would live.
Pray?
Suviel thought bitterly in a corner of her mind.
Pray to who or what?
Shouts and fearful cries from the street outside filtered through to the tiny, shuttered back room, but Suviel kept the circle of her concentration pure and unbroken. The muffled, savage sounds told of another beating, robbery or murder, familiar evils in a city which had changed hands twice in as many months.
There was another contraction. The woman let out a gasping moan and Suviel fought to keep her self separate from the torment. When the midwife and the other crones looked pleadingly at her, Suviel masked her weariness and bent closer to the woman's ear. Stroking the sweat-beaded forehead and neck, Suviel murmured the thought-canto of Subdual. The half-words circled in her mind, things of smell, sound, texture and enigma interlocking with themselves and her own being. Shared with a patient, it was meant to coax the natural healing abilities into working harder.
The Lesser Power began to chime softly through her mind and she could feel calmness edging into the woman's turbulent awareness, slow as a tentative dawn. But the waves of pain were so intense, so full of the dreadful damage taking place, that Suviel began to feel ghost twinges in her pelvis. She ignored the echoes and reached deeper into her own physical and mental resources, pouring her own vitality into the Subdual canto.
Exhaustion crept slowly, inexorably upon her. Her arms grew heavy, her breathing shallow, her throat dry and aching. Yet while part of her was absorbed in the ritual of the canto, another part became aware of the details of her surroundings: the yellow glow from the wall lamps; the old women, small hooded figures clutching Earthmother amulets; the midwife, a tall, bitter woman who had once been a Khatrisian aristocrat; the pregnant woman and the scrap of life, a boy, that was struggling to be born. Across the room, in shadow, was the woman's despairing husband, a standard-bearer in Gunderlek's ill-fated rebel army; family friends had smuggled him into the city, past the Warlord Azurech's guards.
Then the vision drew further back to show her, as if through mist, the flat-roofed, two-storey house and its drab neighbours, the tiny yards, one with a scrawny dog gnawing on a bone, and the dark, cobbled street littered with rubbish and the still body of a man lying near an alleyway, death grimace on his face, bloody tear in his ear from which some bauble had been torn...
At some point she was vaguely aware of being helped from the room by one of the old women, who whispered trembling thanks and comfort. The child - a boy - had been born safe and well and his mother still lived. The husband came up to her as she sat before a low fire, stammering out a gratitude she could only accept with a tired nod. The fire's heat soaked into her, wrapped her in a soft warmth which somehow became thick, heavy blankets and a quilted down mattress and a cotton-covered pillow smelling of herbs. Weary through and through, she caught the faint sweetness of melodyleaf and a hint of musky rainbark and was swept off into slumber.
Daybreak's pale and haggard light seeped into her room, filling it with greyness, dissolving the last threads of sleep. Once dressed in the plain green dress and patched brown cloak of her herbwoman disguise, she left the little bedroom and found steps leading up to the roof. There had been rain during the night. The air was cold and clean and the roof's crudely mortared planks were still dark and wet. She found a fairly robust crate and sat down to look across the city, letting thoughts come to her as she watched the dawn grow.
Before the fall of the Empire, Choroya had been a prosperous, lively cityport famed as much for its acting troupes as for its merchant princes. Now the theatres were burnt-out shells and the exchange halls were sullen, half-deserted places where the poor produce of the northern farmlands fetched exorbitant prices.
Suviel peered into the hazy northern distance, to the spreading patchwork of fields and smallholdings that stretched away to the far-off foothills. She could make out the dark stretches of encroaching marsh and several dull grey areas where nothing grew, ground that had been poisoned by Mogaun shamen during the invasion. Once, this land had fed fully half of Honjir but the recent harvest of inferior grain and feeble livestock would be scarcely enough to keep Choroya and its stinking shanty towns from starvation through the winter months.
This is the bane that lies across the land
, she thought bitterly.
Warlords and bandit kings who pursue their skirmishes and petty wars amid the ruins of our greatness while the people suffer and weep and bleed
.
Suviel raised a fold of her cloak to dry tears from her eyes. Then she looked into the further distance beyond the mountains and saw in her mind all the lands of Khatrimantine as they were in her youth, from the lush woods of Kejana to the vineyards and orchards of Ebro'Heth, from the singing cave-cliffs of Yularia to the windswept isles of Ogucharn. She remembered riding with the witch-horses of Jefren, sailing into the teeth of a summer storm aboard a Dalbari fishing boat, and undergoing the dreamrites of magehood on a cold mountaintop in Prekine.
Now only the foul Acolytes of Twilight trod the hallowed halls of Trevada where once mages had taught and studied, and abominations moaned in the chambers of the High Basilica.
There was a footfall behind her. Cursing herself for wallowing in memories, she dried her eyes once more and turned to see the midwife waiting, hands wringing a neckerchief, face full of uncertainty. Then she stepped forward.
"
Shin
Hantika," she said tearfully, starting to kneel.
Alarmed at this use of the forbidden mage title, Suviel rose and quickly grasped her by the arms, forcing her to remain standing.
"No, Lilia," she said. "Not here, not out in the open. Anyone could be watching."
The midwife began to apologise but Suviel laid a hand on her shoulder and hushed her. Lilia Maraj, she recalled, was a daughter of one of the Roharka nobles and had been a children's tutor at the palace.
"Don't worry," she said calmingly. "Tell me - how soon did you know who I was?"
"It was not until you used the healing lore for the second time - I remembered you from when I used to bring children to the mage halls to tend to their cuts and bruises." Her voice grew wistful. "They were so alive, so full of curiosity. Always getting into bother..."
"How are mother and child?" Suviel said.
Lilia sighed. "Weak, but recovering. I doubt that she will be able to give birth again. Her baby is very well, though. A robust little soul he is, too."
"Good. I'm glad," Suviel said sincerely, then laughed softly. "Few things these last few years have pleased me as much as helping to bring new life into the world."
Lilia was silent a moment, a deep weariness showing in her faintly lined features. "It's an awful world to be born into," she said quietly, then looked up, suddenly animated. "Why must it go on like this, lady, why? Surely the warlords and the chieftains cannot last forever."
Suviel sighed. "The clans of the Mogaun have strength and a kind of unity, and their shamen have great and terrible powers, Lilia. All the things which were taken from us."
Lilia shook her head. "I believe that the time must come when we can regain our freedom."
"Gunderlek thought the time was now," Suviel murmured.
They were both silent for a few sombre moments.
"Shin Hantika, you escaped the fall of Besh-Darok," Lilia went on. "Did no-one else survive, none of the other mages and loreweavers, none of the temple knights? Is there truly no way of bringing back the light into our lives? Is there no-one to help us?"
Suviel heard the despair in her voice and for one pitying moment wanted to say, Yes, some of us did escape and have these sixteen long, black years remained in hiding or disguise, working selflessly towards the very end you've wished for.
But the potential dangers were too great: If even just a rumour of still-living mages reached agents of the Acolytes, nighthunters and other sorcerous beasts would be loosed across Khatrimantine to hunt down any user of the Lesser Power. She and her colleagues would have to flee, perhaps even across the Wilderan Sea to Keremenchool. No, the risk was unacceptable.
She steeled herself. "Lilia...I was near the river when the firehawks descended on the mage halls. No-one could have survived that inferno. I'm sorry..."
Suviel saw the desperate hope in her eyes die. They both stood in silence for several moments. Suviel was about to offer words of comfort when Lilia spoke, head bowed.
"It is not you who should apologise, lady. I was wrong to burden you with my fears and longings when you have to make your way in this world without the rootpower. I can't begin to imagine how you've coped with such a loss."
Yes
, Suviel agreed silently.
You cannot
.
"With nearly all the mages and loreweavers dead," she continued, "the responsibility for ridding the empire of the foul Mogaun must lie with the people themselves. We only have to find the strength."
Suviel heard the seed of anger in her voice and shivered. Gunderlek had voiced similar sentiments while gathering his ill-fated, ragtag army.
"Lilia," she said. "I have to go."
"I understand. It's dangerous for you here." She took a deep breath. "Don't worry about the others speaking of you - as far as we know, you were just an old herbwoman passing through."
"Thank you," Suviel said and turned to leave. Half way down the steps she looked back. Lilia was sitting on the crate, hugging herself tightly while staring past Suviel at the grey reaches of the sea.
* * *
An hour later, Suviel was riding at a steady canter along the muddy road leading north from Choroya, through one of the shanty towns that hugged the city's outer walls. All along the track was the evidence of the most recent siege. Wrecked carts, broken shields and spears, the splintered remains of kegs and crates, burst wicker baskets, remnants of food and grain ground into the mire, and scorched and torn rags of clothing. A scattering of debris now being raked through and squabbled over by the desperate and the dispossessed.