‘We killed them! We killed them all. We felt the Gods walk beside us, the Reapers and more besides, all burning with anger I cannot begin to describe. The refugees were innocents; the militiamen just frightened fools, decent men who would not abandon the defenceless to Fate’s cruelties. We left none alive. I can still hear the screams - every night I hear them, and I smell their blood upon me.
‘We left the dead for the scavengers and just walked away. I . . . I don’t remember much of the following days. The land around Scree was as dead as the city. We watched the smoke rising from the last of the fires as we walked to the Temple of Death where Lord Isak had made his stand, but the stink drove us away. The whole Temple Plaza was full of corpses, most as unarmed and pathetic as those we’d killed the day before. And, Gods help me, I prayed with the Devoted officers amidst the carnage, and I felt
holy
- vindicated, even. I didn’t see the horror of what had been done; only satisfaction that the first step had been taken.’
‘First step?’ she asked, trying to hide her fear.
‘The first step towards a purer Land.’ There was pain in his voice now, and he hugged his royal bride tighter, like a frightened child. ‘All these years I’ve fought the fanatics, and now I find myself the worst among them.’
‘That’s not true,’ Oterness insisted, ‘you are
not
the same as them; you’re no coward who interprets holy words according to his own prejudice; who twists the scriptures to use them as tools they were never intended to be. The king of this nation is not such a man. The father of my child is not such a man.’
‘My child,’ Emin gasped, a flicker of life returning to his eyes as he struggled to straighten himself up. ‘How is our child? Are you both well?’
Oterness hugged him. ‘We’re both well, Emin, we’re strong and healthy.’
He stroked a reverential hand over her belly, his eyes widening in wonder as he realised how large she’d grown. ‘Oh my child, what is this new Land you will be born into?’ he asked, his voice shaking.
‘A Land yet to be determined,’ Oterness answered gently, ‘a Land that you have fought twenty years to forge, Emin, and one you cannot give up on now. I know you, better than those who work in your shadow, even Morghien. You’ve worked for years to contain these fanatics, and these new reports of priests demanding greater measures are just an escalation of that age-old problem. Your agents are still at work; your networks remain in place. Only yesterday Count Antern brought a letter from one of your spies, sealed with green wax.’
‘Green wax?’ He sat up a bit straighter. Usual matters of state were sealed with red wax, matters of national security used white, and he encouraged his queen to read both, even in his absence - there might have been other women with lineage equal to that of the former Lady Oterness Bekashay, but her intellect was far beyond that of any of the other potential wives, and her help in governing his kingdom remained invaluable. But the green wax was different; it denoted messages concerned with his war with Azaer, the shadow, and that matter he was determined to spare her.
‘It’s up on your desk,’ said Oterness with a nod toward the spiral stair behind him. The pulpit-like mezzanine was shrouded in shadow, for Jorinn knew not to set foot on the stair, let alone go up, even to light the lamp on the king’s desk.
Emin helped his wife into her chair before going to retrieve the letter, which was folded up so small that it could be concealed in the palm of a hand. He opened it, and read the message inside, his eyes darting towards Oterness as he finished. Without speaking he went to the bell-pull by the fire and gave it a sharp tug to summon Coran, his white-eye bodyguard.
‘Can’t it wait? You need to eat and rest, give yourself an hour at least,’ Oterness said, concerned, though she knew he would ignore both his own needs and the hurt he was feeling and attend instead to the demands of his position.
But will you never let it out? Your rage at Ilumene’s betrayal was buried deep, but it’s still there - and now? You’re asking too much of yourself, my Emin, far more than any man should.
‘I will rest soon,’ the king replied at last, gripping the back of her chair and resting his hands on her shoulders. Coran stormed in without knocking as usual, his expression blank.
‘Give this letter to Anversis Chals; tell him to draft a plan for Midsummer’s Day.’
‘Anversis? Your uncle?’ Oterness interjected with a puzzled look. ‘I thought he was no part of your war - doesn’t he spend his days researching migration patterns?’
‘True enough.’
‘Surely you’ve not found a use for his obsessions? The man is so indiscreet - you can’t possibly trust him with your secrets!’
‘Also true,’ the king sighed, ‘but he has applied his theories to the movements of Harlequins and this letter is the first sign of something we’ve feared since Thistledell.’
‘
We?
’
‘Morghien and I. You remember when I first met him?’
Oterness nodded warily. ‘Something about a ghost in the library your father had sponsored, and Morghien saving you from it.’
Emin scowled. ‘It was no ghost, it was Azaer. The shadow was unable to resist the lure of a library open to the whole population, all that knowledge, available to everyone, and it started to rewrite some of the books, changing our history. At the end of that week I had declared war against an intangible immortal, and I had a sister to bury. There is one group of people better equipped than any other to edit history, and Rojak showed us at Thistledell the power a minstrel can wield.’ He raised the letter before handing it to Coran. ‘This is a report from Helrect: a Harlequin passing through there in late summer made a mistake when telling a story!’
‘A mistake?’ Oterness said, surprised. ‘But Harlequins have perfect memories, don’t they? That’s the whole point.’ She ignored Coran as he offered the pair a perfunctory bow and hurried out.
‘Exactly. And now we need to pay great attention, to see whether any other instances crop up.’
The queen froze. ‘You said “draft a plan for midsummer”. What sort of plan, exactly?’
Emin crouched down at her side and put a protective hand on her swollen belly. ‘If they have become the servants of Azaer, even unwittingly, the damage they could cause could be incalculable. In Scree, Azaer’s disciples turned the citizens against the Gods - what if that happens across the whole Land? We have had so few opportunities to derail the shadow’s cause, and I must not flinch now.’
‘You would kill them all?’
‘It seems,’ said Emin slowly, ‘that there is nothing I will not do.’ He bowed his head, a man defeated by his own deeds.
‘Fate’s pity, did Scree have such an effect on everyone? Did no good come of it at all?’
The king laughed coldly. ‘No good?’ he echoed, then the hardness faded from his face and was replaced with a look of profound sadness. ‘Doranei, that poor boy Doranei: he fell in love.’
CHAPTER 3
Unhindered by the weak candlelight, Lord Isak looked around at the assembled faces and tried to ignore the ache at the back of his head. One scowled back, making little effort to conceal his displeasure, but Isak had grown to expect that from his Chief Steward. The young white-eye had inherited an entire nation from his predecessor, Lord Bahl, and whatever else one might say about Chief Steward Fordan Lesarl - megalomaniacal sadist being one of the more colourful terms bandied about - the man knew how to run a country.
The rest of those present were quite a handsome bunch, something that had surprised Isak the first time he’d met them, although he had never been able to pinpoint why exactly. They were divided into those staring back like cornered rabbits and those with eyes miserably downcast. He took a deep breath. The day hadn’t been going well and his already bad mood had only been darkened by the persistent drizzle that worsened to a downpour every time he ventured outside.
Don’t lose your temper
. Isak had to keep repeating this simple message to himself:
don’t lose your temper; don’t turn on those you trust
. He’d seen the warning in the eyes of his friends, his advisors, especially Carel. Though he was thin now, and aged ten years or more since losing his arm in battle, Carel had always recognised better than anyone else the temper boiling within Isak. Carel had been more of a father to him than Isak’s real father during the years they had lived on the wagon-train, and he had been made a marshal as much for the calming effect he had on Isak as anything. He was still the person Isak trusted most.
Arranged around three tables were the nine members of Lesarl’s coterie, as disparate a collection as anyone was likely to find anywhere, and not all of the Chief Steward’s agents looked as if they belonged in the dusty attic of a tavern just off the bustling Crooked Tail Street. The main river docks in Tirah were only a stone’s throw from the Cock’s Tail, and the tavern’s regular patrons were as rough and raucous as they came. The grizzled first mate sitting at one of the tables, his arms and bald head covered in tattoos and scars, looked as if he’d fit right in downstairs in the taproom; the silk-clad dandy next to him did not - but no one here was fooled by the appearance of either.
‘I see you’re all as delighted as Lesarl to be here,’ Isak said eventually.
The Lord of the Farlan was dressed almost as splendidly as Dancer, the foppish nobleman. His tunic and breeches of deep blue had swirls of silver thread and moonstones down the left side. Isak had abandoned his silver ducal circlet after a day of official functions, but everything else bar the lack of crest on his dark grey hooded robe was as custom dictated: a pristine exterior, even down to his smooth cheeks and trimmed hair, but all the finery could not disguise the muscles underneath.
‘They are concerned, as am I, about the security issue,’ Lesarl said.
Isak acknowledged the point, and the informality. The Chief Steward had made it clear that his coterie were encouraged to speak freely and frankly, and without reference to rank.
‘There are so many clandestine meetings going on every night in this city, no one is going to notice one more.’
‘You are hardly unremarkable,’ said the youngest member of the coterie, Whisper, who headed Lesarl’s personal spy network. ‘And neither is Dancer, especially in this district.’
Dancer gave her a broad smile and indicated those even more out of place than him. Prayer was a tonsured priest of Nartis, a sour-faced man in his early fifties who had sat as far as possible from the bejewelled woman called Conjurer. She in turn was making a futile effort to be inconspicuous. Isak suspected the woman was unused to this, but he knew most mages found it difficult to be comfortable in his presence. A combination of the raw skills of youth, the brute force of a white-eye and the vast power of two Crystal Skulls would make any sane person nervous.
‘Which is why there are pre-planned routes for you all to get here,’ Isak said. ‘It may not befit my position to sneak through attics and alleys all the way from Cold Halls, but anything Lesarl considers safe for himself is good enough for me.’
‘Not everyone has that luxury,’ Whisper persisted, her voice gaining a slight edge. ‘Prayer has to be loaded into a barrel upriver of Holy Docks; Conjurer’s route takes two hours to travel and more to prepare. The shorter the notice you give, the more likely it is that the routes are compromised - even without the increased patrols of Ghosts round here to catch the interest of our enemies.’
‘Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear,’ Isak replied after a pause.
Even in the dim candlelight her eyes flashed and he could see Whisper had caught the warning. She was surprisingly young for her position, no more than thirty summers, and a handsome woman. Right now she was dressed like a merchant’s son, apart from the mass of wavy black hair that shadowed her face. When she’d slipped through the single attic window it had been tied back. Isak guessed she was new enough in her position to be wary, even of the rest of the coterie. Unlike the others, he suspected she’d put some thought into her attire, for he could see she was wearing nothing unusual or identifiable, not even a piece of jewellery.
‘I wanted this meeting to take place,’ he continued, ‘and so it is. I know you have rules in place to protect your identities, but at the moment that’s not what I’m concerned about.’
There was silence. Isak inspected the faces, trying to decide who would be the key to winning over the group. Lesarl was leader, sure enough, but Isak had grown up on a wagon-train and he knew full well there was always a leader among the equals. Carel had been the commander of the wagon-train guards, but Valo Denn was the mercenaries’ man, the one who formed their opinions and presented their arguments when necessary, the person who was just that fraction more than his peers.
So who’ve we got here?
he wondered, managing not to jump when he got a reply from the privacy of his own head.
‘
Isn’t it obvious?
’ came the scornful mutter in the corner of his mind: Aryn Bwr, last king of the Elves, or at least what remained of his tattered soul. The last king, unable to fully possess Isak’s body and return to life, had been reduced to a bitter memory of former glory, while forever fearing the retribution death would bring.
‘
To you I’m sure it is
,’ Isak replied. ‘
How many years were you king of your people? For the rest of us, it takes a little more thought
.’
He looked around at the nine faces, men and women as different as you could find, each bound within the fabric of those communities they represented. Whisper, newly chosen by Lesarl to lead his spy networks, working hard to live up to the standard her father, the previous incumbent, had set; Dancer, marked out as a knight or a marshal by the single gold hoop in his left ear - and Isak had no doubt he was a marshal, born to the title. Perhaps it was Sailor, sitting next to Dancer, a scarred veteran with a crumpled nose. He was dressed in red, typical of his trade among the Farlan, though he was risking a flogging by eschewing the macramé knotting on his shirt that marked his ship - and made him traceable.
Confident in his ability to manipulate a superior? I wouldn’t bet against it
, Isak thought.