The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (24 page)

He closed his eyes. Now to sleep, and the little bit of forgetting that it brings.

Narak dreamed.
He knew it at once as a vision dream, a dream that was not a dream. The clarity of his mind was extraordinary. His sight was sharper than it ever could be in real life, and he knew this because he was flying, flying high above the world. He could feel the shape of the air beneath his wings, feel the rush of it over his face, and below, far, far below, he could see forests and villages and towns and people. They were so small, and yet he could see the colour of their hair, count the fingers on their hands. Not even an eagle could see so well.

He turned, tipped, spilling air from beneath a wing. He slid sideways into a shallow descent, watching the world spin slowly beneath him as he carved graceful arcs in the sky.

They had not seen him. This he knew. He did not know how he knew, but he was certain.

He was also certain that this was not something seen through the eyes of one of the Bren. The Bren were creatures of the rock, dark lovers, shy of the light. Here he was bathed in the light of the noon sun, revelling in its warmth as much as he enjoyed the crisp, cold air that rushed by.

He turned his head from side to side, studying all that lay below. He was picking out a pathway that swept across villages, forwards and back again, and came at last to a town. He knew by looking where he would pass, how the wind would hold him, where the thermals would rise and pick him up again. He saw the places where he must beat his wings, and even the pattern of his breathing was laid down, second by second, and when all was decided, each and every second mapped, he folded his wings and dropped.

The air became a roaring torrent. Quite quickly its caress became something that tore at his skin, its whisper became a shouting in his ears, and he revelled in it. This was what he was made to do, to be. The land grew quickly. Trees raced towards him faster than arrows, and the ground itself filled up his vision, the horizons that had belittled it passed beyond his sight until it seemed he must strike the earth and plunge beneath it, deep into the core of the world.

He opened his wings, and they made a sound like nothing he had ever heard, but of course he had. This was the noise they always made, like a great stone splitting, but a hundred times louder, a crack that rang in the villages, echoed in the town, and turned every head, every face towards him.

Now they saw him.

They ran in terror, but there was nowhere to run. He was moving so fast that none could flee, and as he pulled out of his dive, the air screaming over his wings drowning out all other sound, he breathed in; one huge breath, filling him, stretching him. Then he was level, exactly where he had intended to be level, and he opened his mouth and roared.

But it was not sound that came out, or at least not just sound. It was fire, and the fire cut through the wind, was not turned or lessened by it, but instead bathed the ground, sweeping from side to side with the motion of his tongue, and where it touched, it burned. It was no ordinary fire, and no ordinary burning. People became cinders, trees puffed into smoke at its touch, and stones glowed and dripped, walls collapsing into pools of molten fire as he passed.

It was a great breath, but it did not last for ever, and soon it was done, but the destruction did not stop. He drew air into himself once more, but he was so low now that he could stretch out and touch the ground, and he did, ripping and ploughing with talons thicker than a man’s leg, tearing buildings from the soil as though they were flowers to be plucked from a field, and he scattered their remains in a rain of mud and brick and wood. People were nothing more than burst fruit when he touched them, and his legs grew red with their juice.

Narak watched all this with horror, and yet with joy also. Not for the first time he was aware that he knew two minds, his own and that of the creature he inhabited. He saw with both sets of eyes, scented with two noses, and judged with two moralities. The thing that he was, the destroyer, revelled in its power, enjoyed its purpose. It was untouched by the terror and death it caused, or if touched at all it was by a sense of delight, of satisfaction that it did these things so well.

He reached the end of the first pass and turned. The wind was as solid as a road beneath him. He roared again, and all life perished at the touch of his fiery breath.

Even as Narak felt the creature’s joy at the power it possessed and knew it to be wrong, so he recognised its seductive appeal. Some men, brave men, rushed towards him with bows, and arrows flew at him. He laughed. His skin was steel, his bones were gold, his eyes were basalt and granite. The arrows shattered against him wherever they struck, and the archers vanished in the fury of his breath.

I am the wind that comes from the sun itself. I am the fire at the heart of the world. I am the mountain that falls from the sky, and I cannot be stopped.

Now he flew through the landscape that he had made, all burned flat, wreathed in black and grey smoke, nothing but bare, baked soil, rivers boiled dry, forests of blown ash. Still he roared, and burned the once burned ashes, made thick tiles of the charred clay soil, and burned the air itself.

At last he came to the town. They had seen him long ago, and each reacted in their different ways, all futile, all doomed. Some men stood on the walls with spears and bows. Some cowered in cellars. Some rode fast horses out of the town gates.

The brave men, the foolish men died first as the walls disintegrated and melted, and then the ones who ran panicked in the streets, crushed, burned and smashed. A great tower stood at the heart of the town, a citadel of sorts, rising thirty feet above the other buildings, and thirty feet broad. It was nothing. He flew at it, flew into the cunningly laid stone, strongly crafted by masons, and it shattered about him as though it were made of lightly packed snow. Men flew through the air among the broken stone and he burned them before they touched the ground.

Those hidden below the ground died on his second pass, the molten stone seeking them out, choking and burning them, killing them all as the town died. The last to die were the cowards who had fled, the wise men on horseback. No horse was as fast as he, and he quartered the plain after them, burning one here, crushing another there, until only one remained, and he followed that one, passing him and landing on the ground with an impact that shook the earth itself.

The man fought to control his horse, to turn it away, but the beast was mad with fear, and threw him from the saddle before bolting back towards the city. He burned it, turned back to the man who now sat on the dry grass of the plain, waiting for death.

He walked towards the man, feet sinking into the ground unable to bear his massive weight, and when he stood no more than ten feet from the cowering figure he stopped. He did not kill the man, though his heart and purpose desired it.

“Tell them I am coming,” he said. Those were the only words. He beat his wings once more, the wind from the first stroke pressing the man flat against the ground, and the second lifting him twenty feet into the air. Quickly he was rising again, climbing into the perfect blue sky. His stroke changed, propelling him forwards towards the great mountains in the west, and as he flew he crossed a lake, a great mirror of cold water, blue as the sky.

He looked down and saw himself, a distant shape, a great cross of wings and body reflected and blurred by the watery glass. He knew the shape, the grace of it, the perfection of form and power that he was, but Narak did not, and now Narak saw what was unmistakable. He saw the great head, the long, segmented wings, the lithe, grey body and the long, scaled tail.

He was a dragon.

Narak awoke with a shout. He was bathed in sweat and fully in his aspect. His heart was hammering on his ribcage and his breath came in gasps.

A dragon! But there were no dragons. Not in all the years of his life had there been dragons. They were a myth, a story, a mistake. What he had seen in the vision dream had not been real. It was not happening.

He threw aside the thin sheet that covered him and rolled to a sitting position, rubbing his face with his hands.

A dragon. His vision answered in every way to the myth. He had been vast, powerful, unkillable. There had been no remorse or empathy in the monster’s mind. It challenged his belief that his visions were real. If he clung to that conviction then he was forced to conclude that dragons were real, that they still existed somehow. If he discarded it, then where did that leave him? What purpose did his visions serve?

A dragon. His mind pointed him inevitably to the Bren Alar. A dragon? He recalled the voice from the dream when the dragon had spoken, and he recalled the voice from his other dreams, the silk and thunder words. They were close enough, though the pitiless voice in the dream was a bland, raw sound compared to the nuanced, wise voice that had spoken before.

He could not deny the dreams. He knew that some great truth was being revealed to him, a fragment at a time, and now he had seen this. It was a confession. He could see it as nothing less. The Bren Alar had confessed to him that it was a dragon, a destroyer, a fire breather, and even Wolf Narak, most feared of the Benetheon, knew that he should fear such a creature.

Dragons had been made to destroy the world.

It was to be an early spring. Word had come from the north, from Wolf Narak and the Eagle god that snows were melting in the
White Road Pass and the streams were beginning to flow again. Their time of peace was coming to an end.

Cain set things in motion. He knew where all the wagons were, where they had to be, who would be driving them, what loads they would carry. He had planned it to the smallest detail. He had even made allowance for several of the carts to fail on their journey north, for delays and hold-ups, and a little extra for what even he could not foresee.

Unlike the others he knew that his betrothed would be coming with him. He had not even tried to dissuade Sheyani. He knew how valuable she would be in the battles to come, how many lives she might save with the magic of her pipes. For him it was both a burden and a delight to have her by his side. It was one more thing to worry him, one less thing he needed.

He said farewell to his bed very early, leaving Sheyani to catch up, and made his way to the training grounds in time for first light. It was now a gathering place for the first regiment of the Seventh Friend. Skal’s orders were different, and his men were due to leave the next day, having a shorter journey to their position. He was by no means the first there. Hundreds of men were already assembled. Wagons had made their rounds and stood fully loaded at their stations while the drovers fed the oxen that were to pull them.

He found his second, Major Shale Gorios, standing at the centre of the chaos with a sheet of paper pinned to a wooden board in his hand, making marks against one of Cain’s lists. Gorios was a veteran of the wall, a man of considerable education and ability, and a good blade into the bargain. Before the war he had been a merchant, and before that he had served as a soldier. It was a natural progression for the third son of a lesser noble house.

He grinned when he caught sight of Cain.

“General, we’re doing well. The muster is ahead of schedule.” He handed the board to Cain, who looked it over quickly.

“Very good,” he said. “The wagons are all moving?”

“They are. I sent men to roust them out before dawn, but they were already loading at the forges, queued down the streets. The men are keen.”

Cain nodded. It was something he’d seen many times, something he’d felt himself: the eagerness to be started, to be doing what they had prepared to do, and yet he found it strange. These men were going to war. At best they would be facing great odds, and at worst would be caught undefended and slaughtered. Whatever happened he was sure that many of them would not return. Yet here they were, bustling about him, smiles on their faces, keen.

“Any word on Seth Yarra, sir?” Gorios asked.

Cain shook his head. “Nothing,” he said. “I have no word.”

They all assumed that he had some sort of pipeline to Narak, but the Wolf spoke to him when it suited the Wolf, told him what he wished him to know. He did not doubt that Narak knew if the enemy had moved. From what he understood he, the Sparrow and he, would be aware of the first foot outside a stockade over in Telas, would be able to track the Seth Yarra armies every step of the way north, but Cain had been told nothing. Indeed, the orders to move had come not from Narak directly, but through Lord Quinnial, and for some reason Cain felt he had earned a more personal touch.

It was something he was able to shrug off, though. If the war ended this very moment, just went away like a star at sunrise, he would be the happiest man on earth. He had all that he wanted, perhaps more, and a thousand times what he had ever hoped for. There was not a shred of bitterness in him.

He looked up and saw Sheyani. She was riding across the practice ground aboard a grey horse that looked three sizes too large, steering slowly through the cross traffic. In the chaos of the muster he did not see for a moment that she was not alone. A second horse rode a parallel course through the soldiery, and was at the moment he first saw her a little way to the right. The horses came side by side again, and he saw. The figure on the second horse was Narak.

“Gods, it’s the Wolf,” he said.

Gorios turned and followed his gaze.

“What should we do, my lord?” he asked. Cain thought it was odd that his major had defaulted to the most exalted of his titles when it was known that he preferred to be addressed by his military rank. Then he thought that Gorios had never seen the Wolf before, let alone met him.

“Nothing, major,” Cain told him. “Just be yourself. He prefers that.” He sounded more confident and relaxed than he felt. He watched and waited while the horses approached. The two riders were in conversation, and he wondered what Narak had to say to Sheyani, or indeed the other way about. It seemed amicable enough.

The horses stopped before him and both riders dismounted.

“Deus, it’s kind of you to come to bid us on our way,” Cain said.

“Not at all,” Narak said. “It seems that I have several duties to perform here.”

“Deus?”

“I am inspired, Cain,” he said. “The plans you drew up, your first line of defence. They have given me an idea. I need men, and I thought to draw them from your regiment.”

“How many, Deus?” Cain hoped it would be a small number. His men would already be hard pressed, considering the duty they had been given.

“Fifty, if I’m greedy,” Narak said. “Twenty would do, but fifty to be sure, and they must be steady men, not given to panic or fancy.”

“What duties?” Cain enquired. Fifty was all right. He couldn’t spare ten, not really, but fifty was a pain he could bear.

“Stealth and patience. Do you have any men who are country born?”

Cain thought of Skal’s men, Tilian’s squad. “There may be some who are more suited than my own men, Deus,” he said. “Colonel Hebberd has a squad of foresters. I think they would be perfect.”

“Foresters?”

“Yes, Deus.”

“And they’re Skal’s men?”

“As I said.”

“Well, I suppose one Seventh Friend is as good as another,” he smiled. “You always seem to have a wise suggestion, Cain. I must make a point of speaking to you more often.”

“As you wish, Deus. I am at your service.”

“And there is something else. I understand that you have some happy news.”

“Deus?”

Narak glanced at Sheyani, who had waited silently by her horse through this exchange, and Cain followed his eyes. She was smiling.

“Oh, yes. We are to be married, Deus.”

“So I was told.” He smiled, but it was not complete. Part of it was a frown. “Will you walk with me a while, Cain?”

For a moment Cain felt like a boy again. His father had always invited him to step out of the house before a beating – often as not a beating that he deserved – and this felt similar. He wondered if he had done something wrong. He knew that Sheyani was royal blood, and he was the opposite, if such a thing existed. Perhaps the Wolf objected to such a thing.

They walked to the edge of the training ground in silence, crossed a small bridge over a bright, chattering little stream, and found themselves on cultivated land. They walked along the edge of the field, following the brook. The Wolf seemed to be having some difficulty finding the words he wanted, because it was some time before he spoke.

“I congratulate you, Cain,” he said at last. “She is a fine woman.”

“Thank you, Deus.” But?

“You know that she is of royal blood, of course?”

“I do, Deus.”

“What you may not know is that I have promised to support her claim to the Occult Throne if we all survive this war. Hammerdan’s attempt on her life has been construed as a challenge, and that gives Sheyani choice of weapons. I have guaranteed her safe passage to Durandar , and she is probably a better Halith than Hammerdan.  She will win. I expect her to win.”

“She will be queen?”

“It seems likely.”

Cain still didn’t see it. He would be consort to a queen. That didn’t seem a bad thing. Narak was looking at him, as though he expected some realisation to dawn, but Cain was still waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You are in my favour, Cain,” Narak continued, seeing that the colonel had not made the leap. “It means that you do not age, you are not subject to sickness, your wounds will heal more quickly than those of other men. You may live for a thousand years. But it is forbidden for the Benetheon to take the mighty into their favour. Sheyani will become queen of Durandar. She will age and die. You will not.”

So that was it. In truth he had not set much store by being in Narak’s favour, but he remembered how quickly he had recovered from his wounds at the wall. He had thought it was Sheyani’s piping that had helped, but apparently it was not. As for the rest, well, he was a few months from his first meeting with the Wolf and had not had time to notice any benefit.

“I will give it up to be with her, Deus,” he said.

“Sheyani does not wish it,” he said.

“You asked her? That was unkind, Deus. You must have known the answer she would give. I will not sit by and watch her grow old alone.” He was indignant. What right did Narak have to say what they must or must not do?

“She said that she would set aside her claim to the throne, but I fear she does not want her people ruled by Hammerdan. She does not consider him a good man.”

“But the throne is her birthright.”

“No. The throne of Durandar is an open seat. It is supposed that only those who desire it and have the power to take it may rule. If Sheyani does not desire it, then it is not hers. I am not trying to be difficult, Cain. I am not trying to trick you. She sees things in you that even I cannot see. She sees music, she says, that touches the heart of the world. You have a part to play for the good that would be greatly diminished by an early death.”

“If she gives up her claim will you take her into your favour?”

“I will, Cain, but you must first understand what that means.”

“I think I do.”

Narak shook his head. There was an old cherry tree by the side of the stream, and he leaned against it, blew into his hands to dispel the cold.

“No. You do not. I did this once before, and it was a mistake.”

“Why?”

“Immortality is something that we all must do alone, Cain. How can I explain? I am of the Benetheon. I am very hard to kill, and yet most of those of my own kind whom I loved are dead. I knew them for centuries, trusted them. For all that I can do for you, both you and Sheyani are mortal, any spear, arrow, rock, fall, accident – anything at all can end your life, and it will. Something will happen, and one of you will die, and the other will be alone.”

“This happens to all who love, Deus. It is a price that we are willing to pay.”

“Yet you do not understand the price. If she dies you will go on, and on, century after century, each year blunting the pain, but never erasing it. The truer your heart, the greater the pain. You may think to kill yourself, but you will realise that the only part of her that survives is within you, in your memories, and you will find it hard indeed to throw those last remnants away.”

Cain turned away and looked back at the training ground, now some half mile distant. He could see the men and wagons bustling, but he could not make out Sheyani, not even her horse. He tried to imagine what Narak described, but how could he? His being was filled with the now, with the war and Sheyani, with duty and love. No future, however certain, could force its way into that busy place.

“The road brings what the road brings,” he said, quoting Sheyani, he realised. “All we can do is choose our road.”