Shadowkings (24 page)

Tauric could feel the first spots of rain when they reached the postern gate, a low, narrow door made from a single, foot-thick piece of blackwood fixed between iron plates and so heavy it took three men to crank the winch that lifted it out of the way. Once through, there was a rattle of chains and cogs and a thud that Tauric felt through his boots as the gate fell back into place. They climbed a flight of stone steps to a small room where three waiting guards bowed (but only to the Armourer, Tauric noticed).

"Sire," said one. "I was instructed to inform you that Sentinel Kodel has returned, and that Steward Eskridan requires the immediate attendance of both yourself and the ward Tauric."

The Armourer frowned. "I and my companion are not permitted to make ourselves presentable?"

The guard looked uncomfortable, and Tauric began to feel uneasy.

"Sire, the message was quite specific - you are to see him immediately upon your return to the holding."

"Very well, we shall do the Steward's bidding." He looked at Tauric. "Follow me and stay close."

They encountered few people on the way to the Steward's chambers, which lay near the top of the old keep. Most were servants but occasionally they met some of the Hunters Children in ones or twos, who saluted the Armourer as they passed yet left Tauric with the feeling that they were looking at him. Despite knowing that his imagination was to blame, his uneasiness grew as they progressed through the lamplit, cold stone quiet of the stronghold. His mind turned to thoughts of the Lord Commander's brother. On their arrival here, the last he had seen of Coireg Mazaret was a bound, hobbled figure being roughly led down to a lower level, 'the cages' as Tauric heard one guard call them. Since then, there had been neither word nor sign of the man.

When they at last came to a tall, iron-banded door at the end of a passage, the Armourer seemed to pause for a moment before knocking. A voice bid them enter and the Armourer lifted the latch, leading the way in.

The chamber was well furnished with wall hangings, patterned mats, cabinets and a polished, oval table, but what caught Tauric's eye was the debris scattered to one side of the hearth, splintered pieces of a chair and something else, a small stand perhaps. There were also two men in the room, one waiting nervously next to the table, eyes flicking down at a small scrap of paper on the unmarred, shiny surface while a taller man stood over by the high window, leaning on its sill. It was Sentinel Kodel. Without turning, he said:

"My thanks for your prompt arrival, Armourer." His voice was level and relaxed, in stark contrast to the palpable tension in the room. "Matters have arisen which demand our loyalty and recognition of duty. Steward Eskridan, recite the message again."

The Steward carefully picked up the scrap of paper and began to read.

The Steward let the paper fall to the table and in the silence that followed, Tauric's uneasiness turned slowly to fear. They were sending him to Oumetra, not back to Krusivel. There was a threat in the message - I shall be there to meet them on their arrival. Volyn he knew regarded him with suspicion if not dislike, so what was the man's intent in this? His mouth was dry, his new arm felt heavy at his side and his legs trembled under him, but he made himself stand steadily and betray no anxiety.

"Events," said Kodel from the end of the room, "seldom happen as one expects." He turned from the window and approached the table. Tauric saw scratches and smears of blood on his hands and a smouldering fury in his eyes, and realised who had smashed the furniture.

"I can have a troop of riders made ready whenever you wish, Sentinel," the Steward said.

"That will not be necessary," said Kodel.

"But the Captain's orders - "

"The Captain's orders will be carried out," Kodel snapped. "I will escort the boy to Oumetra and the Armourer shall accompany me. No others are necessary - I am confident that our ward will follow my commands without question." He looked at Tauric. "Do I have your bond on this, as you have mine?"

Tauric remembered the incident at the mill and Kodel's words after slaying the old man - I'm going to see you crowned Emperor if it's the last thing I do.

"Yes," he said hoarsely.

"Good. Sir Steward - have three of your hardiest mounts harnessed and provisioned within the half hour."

"As you wish, Sentinel." The Steward bowed and left and Kodel turned to Tauric.

"Go to the bath house and get washed and dressed in journey clothes. When you return here, we shall have armour for you and perhaps even a blade?" He looked at the Armourer who glanced at Tauric and gave a half smile and a nod.

"Yes. He's ready."

As he left Tauric wondered how much danger he was getting into, now that Kodal seemed to have set himself against his own leader. He flexed his metal hand, trying to imagine a sword held tight in its cold grasp, but felt only a hollowness in his stomach as he hurried down the main stairs of the keep.

Beyond this tract of dream and fancy,
Beyond the wrack of hate and death,
Lies a far, sweet land,
Where once I was a prince.

—Jedhessa Gant,
The Lords Desolate
, Act 1, ii,9.

The birdloft was warm, the air heavy with the combined odours of seed and droppings. Blade-thin shafts of noon sunlight slipped in through cracks between the timbers, piercing the gloom, outlining rows of wickerwork coops and the hunched-over figure who muttered to himself as he peered in at his charges.

Bardow waited by the trapdoor entrance, fanning himself with one long sleeve, enjoying the occasional wafts of fresh air that came up from below. No matter how often he came here, the archmage always felt as if his nose were under assault and it took some moments for his senses to accustom themselves.

"What was them places again, laddie?"

Bardow allowed himself a small smile. Mecadri was from the Ogucharn Isles and never had been one for respectful terms of address.

"Oumetra, Scallow, Oskimul, and Scarbarig," he said.

"Scarbarig...hmm, that's that mining town south of Sejeend, is it not?"

"The very same."

Mecadri the pigeon keeper nodded and came over. He was a short burly man with a straggly beard and was wearing several layers of grubby clothing liberally decorated with food stains and fragments of bird seed. On his head sat an ancient hat gone shapeless and floppy with age, its wide brim frayed and notched and bearing other stains unlikely to be food.

He held out one hand gloved in an old black leather gauntlet whose finger and thumb had been cut away and Bardow gave him a little sheaf of slips, two of each except for the Oumetra message which had three copies. Mecadri tsk-tsked and shook his head.

"Sending three birds is a waste, ser. There won't be another delivery from Oumetra for at least a week."

"That particular message has to get through," Bardow said. "Time is against us and I cannot risk losing one of your birds to a hawk or a hunter, and it being the only one with the message."

"As you say," the keeper said and returned to the coops at the other end of the loft and began busying himself with the slips and the birds he had chosen while humming a tavern song.

Bardow stood watching but his thoughts were going back over what he had discovered a day and a night ago. That invocation of the Spiritwing canto was far more exhausting than the time before and had taken him to the very limits of his endurance. He'd had barely enough strength to scrawl a note to Ikarno Mazaret before slipping into unconsciousness and a sleep he did not wake from until early this morning.

His note to Mazaret had been only a few words -
Oumetra, a square with two fountains, house of sheep, flowers in the window
- and his recollection of their exact meaning was hazy at best. He could remember the sheer effort needed to make the Spiritwing look for any of the heirs of House Tor-Galantai, no matter how far removed, and then to trace the bloodline through the gulfs and veils of the Void, leading to Oumetra.

What the note did not contain were the other things he had discovered. Upon picturing the swordswoman Keren in his thoughts, the Spiritwing had made not the slightest movement, which implied that she was dead. And when he tried the same with the trader Gilly, all he could discern was that he was somewhere far to the north-east, perhaps in central or northern Khatris. Tauric he had seen soundly asleep in the fortified monastery of Grinok, not yet aware of Volyn's message winging its way towards him.

But it was Suviel who was the focus of his worries. The Spiritwing had swept him through the Void and brought him out south of Prekine to a narrow trail which threaded along a ravine choked with thorny bushes, leading to a clearing where a group of travellers were making camp beneath a dusk sky empty of clouds. Suviel was a robed and hooded figure sat bound and gagged in the back of a small cart, while one of the others was standing nearby, saying something to her. Then the stranger's face had come into view and Bardow had been astonished to recognise Keren. It took him a moment or two to discern the subtle differences and realise that this had to be the mirrorchild Nerek, Byrnak's abomination.

Suviel lay still in the cart, despair starkly apparent in her bowed head, her tired features. She looked so helpless and pitiful yet still not defeated - twice Bardow saw her slowly shake her head in response to something Nerek said. His heart went out to her and almost involuntarily he had found himself moving closer, seeking to let her know that she was not forgotten.

It had almost been his undoing. The mirrorchild had spun to face him, her hands already full of a shimmering emerald glow which cast a lurid light across her features. Bardow barely had time to withdraw as that deadly fire leaped towards him, widening to engulf him. There had been a moment, an instant of stinging pain when it almost had him, then the Spiritwing broke away and he was hurled back into the fathomless deeps of the Void, free to begin the search for the Hunter's heir.

In the loft, Bardow watched Mecadri whisper an endless stream of soothing noises to his birds as he fastened tiny message cases to their legs and one by one took them to the open, slanted casement and flung them skyward. Each message gave specific orders to their secret rebels, commanding them to avoid any conflict with Hunters Children agents or sympathisers for the next few days. The ones bound for Oumetra included notice of Mazaret's imminent arrival, and were the last to be dispatched. Yet as the pigeon keeper released the first of the three birds, Bardow felt a dark foreboding steal over him. While he had been in the smothering grip of exhausted sleep, Mazaret had persuaded the leaders of the Southern Cabal not to make any far-reaching decisions, assuring them that he would be able to return the Hunters' Children to the alliance. Then he had taken one of the best horses, a grey Yularian stallion known for its endurance, and left in the middle of the night.

What was Mazaret's purpose? He could think of only two possiblities - either the Lord Commander was going to try and kidnap the boy (Bardow was nine tenths sure that the heir of Tor-Galantai was male), or he was going to kill him.

No,
he thought.
Ikarno would never do such a thing
.

But a shiver passed through him as he pondered the situation, his thoughts growing darker, drawing together what he knew and what he felt and other less certain shreds of chance. And Oumetra began to loom large in his mind. Many threads were gathering there, forces and destinies twisting together in a knot of dread consequences.

And try as he might, Bardow could not unravel it.

Unnoticed at the other end of the loft, Mecadri the pigeon keeper carefully carried the bird bearing the third and last message for Oumetra to the slanting casement and the sunshine. He lifted the little creature to his face, met its beady regard for a moment, then murmured a farewell before tossing it up and out of the loft in a flurried flapping of wings.

* * *

Ikarno Mazaret rode hard beneath an ill and leaden sky, his face masked with a swathe of cloth against the chill rain coming wind-driven in from the north. It was late morning and the trail he followed was little more than a ribbon of hoof-hammered turf winding through the wooded hills and downs west of Lake Audagal, a route on which he was unlikely to encounter a Mogaun patrol. After leaving Krusivel the previous day, he had rested half the following night in a shabby hostelry on the Redway, the wood-and-brick road that ran northwards arrow-straight through central Kejana. But true sleep had evaded him and he rose, resaddled the grey and left at a gallop with the predawn light.

Now Mazaret's mood was as grim as the weather. What would he do when he found the scion of House Tor-Galantai? Hold him hostage, thus risking everything on his safety and wellbeing, as well as Volyn's willingness to comply? Would it not be better to secretly spirit the boy away and then have him killed?

He shuddered. Till now his plans and purpose had been clear and straightforward, his enemies the savage Mogaun and their sorcerous allies, his tactics plain and direct. But this predicament burdened him with a choice of poisonous gambits and shrank the world to a dark and narrow path.

I don't know
, he wanted to cry out.
I don't know what to do
! And when he wondered what Suviel would have said, he could almost see and hear her say -
You cannot...you must not
...