The Bloodstained God (Book 2) (34 page)

Somebody
, one of her tutors probably, had once told Sheyani that fear could be boring, even dull. She had not believed it. Now she found it to be true. She sat in her bare cell with only a lamp for company and watched the flame. It was many hours since she had spoken to Narak in his dream, and she had lost track of time. She had slept for a while. It was hard to think of sleeping here, but the knowledge that Cain was still alive and safe gave her great comfort.

She knew that at any moment they could come through the door to kill her, and a part of her listened for a step on the stone beyond, for voices that might mean the end. Yet that part of her grew smaller with each passing hour. If they had not killed her after five hours, why would they kill her after six? If not after nine, then why after ten?

They were waiting for something, she decided. She guessed that they were waiting for news of Cain’s death. They did not know about the Wolf. The ring would be her trump card. When they came she would show the ring, ask if they wanted to face Narak’s justice, and hope that they would go away again and think better of their deed.

But she had not been idle.

Sheyani was a Halith first. It was her chosen path, but she was also a dream adept, a lord of the path of Belan Terak, and also a Gorisian adept, a lesser water mage. She knew that magic was limited, that men and women were limited, she could not know everything, but for a while she had bitterly regretted not following her father’s advice when he told her that she should study the path of Abadanon, the waymaker.

Baradan had always allowed her to make her own choices, but he had told her that Abadanon was the minor path of kings. It was a pun of sorts, she supposed. Abadanon was the maker of paths and doorways, of roads that defied distance. If she had possessed the skill she could have made a door in the wall of her cell and stepped through it to Waterhill, or the bar of the Seventh Friend, or the road where Cain’s soldiers waited.

Kings sometimes needed to be somewhere else quite urgently, her father had said. He had expected her to rule after he was gone, and she had expected it, too; expected it too much. She had been unprepared for Hammerdan’s deceit.

There was nothing she could have done, of course, once the trick had been worked. Her father had been forced to face Hammerdan with a sword. Those were the rules. Father had been provoked to challenge, Hammerdan had chosen mundane weapons, as was his right, though it had never been done before. The weapons named, Baradan had seen his doom and called Sheyani to him.

Run, he had said. You must run. He will kill you.

She had refused. She had wept. She had insisted that they would find a way. Yet all the time she had known in her heart that he was right. The choice was to run or die with her father. It was a difficult choice, even so. In the end she ran for him. She ran because knowing that she was still alive would make it easier for him to die.

He had made the door; he had possessed the skill; and she had stepped through into a back alley in Bas Erinor, the largest city in the world, and the only place where the heir to the occult throne could pass unnoticed. Her father had told her that it was a dangerous city, a place thronged with foreigners, with Avilians whose place it was, but also Telans, Berashis, and Afaelis. Duranders were rare. They did not like the closeness or the anarchy of the low city. She, too, did not like them. She hated the city, but she had survived. She had gold and she was not foolish, but in the end it had not been enough. She had been attacked, robbed, raped, thrown into the street with no more than her skin and a few rags and her pipes. She had been in the habit of hiding her pipes because she was afraid that someone would know them, would know her by them, and so they had not been stolen.

She had tracked down the men who had destroyed her honour, and she had killed them. It was something she had never confessed to Cain. After that she had been prepared to die, fatherless, friendless, shattered by the rough side of the city.

Then there was Cain.

Every man is a tune, her father had said. They have rhythm, they have many different songs, but to each there is a single defining tune, and once you can hear that you can judge a man. She had learned the skill. When you know a man’s tune you can make him dance, like a stringed puppet. It was a powerful thing, to know a man’s tune.

But Cain; she had seen Cain’s tune almost at once. She had been crouching in misery, hiding in the dark, waiting for death, and he had appeared, the light shining behind him. She had been afraid at first. He was Avilian, like the men who had attacked her, but Cain was not those men. His tune was sweet, and clear, and sad. It was the finest music she had ever heard. Even her father had been flawed compared to Cain. Here was the man she could serve, could trust, could even, perhaps, love.

She had not been proven wrong. In all the time she had known him she had not dared to put his tune to the pipes, for she doubted her skill to play it. More than that, she had never wanted to change him. She had no desire to make him do anything that was not of his own will. It would have been an act of barbarism to interfere with such music.

Each man is a thing made by his life, she had been taught. The things he sees, the things he does, and the things he does not do are all building blocks, but there is a tune beneath it all, a foundation. That foundation may become corrupted, life might build away from it and so the heart of a man could be hidden from his own eyes, but it was always there.

Cain had been such a man. His life had been hard, and he had been schooled in brutal and unforgiving places. Yet the foundation had remained, and when the Wolf had plucked him from the brink of destruction he had been freed from all the lies that he had built, from the way that he had believed himself to be. He had become Cain, the Cain she knew. She saw the tune in everything he did, in the way he hesitated before picking up a cup, touching the lip of it with a finger before gripping it, the small pause before he spoke, the way he shook his head slightly before accepting the inevitable things that he did not like. It was in the words he spoke, in his smile, in the way he scratched the back of his head.

She wanted to live because of Cain. Her music, which was hidden from her, was counterpoint to Cain’s, she was certain. There was no discord between them, and each somehow made the other better. She wanted to live so that the perfect song could continue.

So she had blocked the door.

Wood is useful to a water mage. When it is wet it swells, and the force it exerts is huge – far greater than a man’s strength. Sheyani had taken all the water she had been given and placed it in the door, and the door had swollen against the stone frame. Even if they wanted to open it, her captors would be unable to do so.

So she had slept for a while, locked into her cell by key and water, safe, for a while, to wait for Narak. When she woke again she had lost all sense of time, and she sat with her oil lamp and its single yellow flame, waiting for them to come to kill her, waiting for Narak to rescue her.

They came first.

She heard voices, then bolts drawn and louder voices. She could pick out three men, one servile, one blustering, and one that frightened her. The servile voice was a guard, or an officer of the guard. The blusterer she recognised as Carillon. The third man was a stranger, but his voice dominated the others, and his presence filled the space beyond her door, pressed on it like a physical force.

“Why did you put her down here, my lord?” the third voice asked. They were the first words she could make out. The man used Carillon’s title like a whip to beat him. In that voice respect seemed like mockery.

“She is a high born woman,” Carillon said. “She has the blood, even if she is not Avilian. One cannot simply execute one of high blood, certainly not a woman.”

“Can one not?” the voice asked, and the suggestion was that such a thing should be as easy as breaking an egg.

“Not if one has any honour,” Carillon said. There was no reply but a vaguely threatening silence. “Not that I mean to say…”

“Shut up,” the voice said. “I know what you mean, and I know what you are. You should have done this as I told you to do it, and we would all be safer.”

“Sir, I am a duke of Avilian,” Carillon blustered. “You will not speak to me like that.”

The voice ignored him. “Is the door locked?” it asked.

“Locked and bolted, my lord,” the guard replied.

“Open it.”

Sheyani sat in the chair and watched the door. She heard the scrape of the bolts being drawn back. She heard the rattle of the key entering the lock and the clunk as the key turned the tumblers. There was a long pause.

“It seems to be stuck, my lord,” the guard said.

“Stuck?”

“Yes, my lord. I cannot open it.”

Sheyani listened as hands, then shoulders were pressed and driven against the wood, but the door held firm. It was a thick door, and built to resist. She heard grunts and the sound of feet kicking the planks.

“Get out of the way.” It was the third voice, and something in it made Sheyani shrink away. She shifted to the back of the cell. She could hear a trace of this man’s music in his voice, a hint of his tune, and it frightened her.

Something struck the door like a battering ram. She saw the wood deform, bulging at the impact. She knew then that what stood on the other side of the wood was no man. Nothing human could strike with such force. She heard the guard cry out in fear.

The door was struck again. A piece of metal flew off one of the hinges and the door shrieked in protest, moving slightly in its frame. How many more blows like that could it stand? One or two, she guessed, and then whatever stood outside would come in, and she would die.

Another massive impact cracked one of the planks, splinters flowering along the edge of the rift, the door howling in pain as it shifted again in the embrace of the door frame.

There was another noise. A door slamming open, running steps.

“My lord!”

“What?” The question came from Carillon, and she could hear the quake in his voice. The duke was scared.

“The Wolf, my lord. He approaches the gate.”

“Narak is here?” The third voice again, surprised, perhaps even a little worried. It was certainly unwelcome news.

“He is here, my lord,” the new voice said. “He has demanded entry and the men are afraid to deny him.”

“I must leave,” the frightening voice was suddenly less confident. Sheyani could hear anxiety and urgency.

“There is no escape now, Lord Hesham,” Carillon said. “We must face him together.”

“No escape? For you perhaps, but I shall face Narak at a time and place of my own choosing, and it is not here and it is not now.”

Steps retreated, and there was a silence before the cell door.

“What shall we do, my lord?” It was the guard who spoke eventually.

“I fear that we shall die,” Carillon said. “Let us at least see if we can die well.” There was a rapping on the door. “Are you in there, Lady Sheyani?”

Sheyani did not reply for a moment. She was still shaking. She took a deep breath, feeling a flood of relief that the thing beyond the door was gone. What stood there now was a man.

“I am here, Lord Carillon,” she said.

“You will remember that I did not have you killed,” he said.

“I have a good memory, Lord Carillon,” she replied. After a brief silence she heard steps again; the sound of more than one person retreated up towards the castle proper. She did not hear the outer door close, or the sound of bolts being drawn.

She waited.

*              *              *              *

The thousand men had been no problem at all for Narak. He had not even drawn his blades. Their commanding officer, a short, muscular major who went by the name of Enhanis, met him as he approached their tents from the forest, flanked by a coterie of junior officers. Enhanis was respectful. There was no question but that he knew Narak by sight. He had been one of the men who fought at Finchbeak Road.