‘I recall. I was ten. I had just been shamed by Master Klun in front of the whole class. I was supposed to recite the Lay of Valan Saar, but when I stood up to speak, the words disappeared from my mind.’
Randill nodded, as if to himself, and said nothing for a time. Aren wondered if that was the end of the conversation. Then Randill stirred, leaned over the side table and laid a hand on Aren’s.
‘I never told you how proud I was of you that day,’ he said. ‘I don’t tell you enough. You’re all that is good in me, all I have left of your mother. Whenever I think of the choices I’ve made, the things I’ve done, I think of you, and I know I took the right path. For had I done otherwise, I would not have such a very fine son.’
The unexpected praise took him off guard, and Aren felt his eyes prickle with the threat of tears. But there were shadows in his father’s words; they thrummed with secret meaning. What choices? What had he done? He wanted to ask, but wasn’t sure he dared.
Randill took his hand back. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I am not myself tonight. Let’s breakfast together in the morning. I promise you a new man then.’
‘Of course,’ said Aren. He put down his glass, which he’d hardly touched, and awkwardly got to his feet, not knowing if he was relieved or disappointed. By the time he reached the door, his father was staring into the empty fireplace again.
‘Father?’ he said.
‘Hmm?’
‘Is everything alright?’
Randill turned his face towards Aren and smiled wanly. For the first time in his life, Aren saw the lie in his father’s eyes.
‘Everything is alright,’ he said. ‘Hail to the Emperor.’
9
The house creaked and ticked like a living thing in the deep of the night. Aren stepped out into the shadowy blue quiet of the corridor and eased his bedroom door closed behind him. The servants were mostly abed, but Aren was far from sleep.
He slipped along the corridor in his socks, carrying his boots under one arm, alert to every sound. If all went well, no one would ever know he’d gone, but if caught, he’d be punished. It was the one rule his father was very strict about. He had to be back home every night, and he wasn’t allowed out after dusk.
It galled him to be treated like a child. Other boys his age were allowed to run free till late. Randill was usually understanding and reasonable, but in this matter he wouldn’t be swayed, and Aren had never been given a convincing reason why.
Well, he was a young man now, a boy no longer. And there were more important things than following another man’s rules, even his father’s.
The lamps were still burning in Randill’s study, yellow light leaking beneath the door. He passed by silently. His father’s strange behaviour had filled him with unease, curdling his excitement about the night ahead; but that was something to worry about later. Right now, he had to escape.
His hand went to his pocket, touching the brass key there. It was a key to the servants’ door, copied from one he’d stolen from the maid. He’d bribed the locksmith’s apprentice to make him a duplicate and returned the original before its absence was noticed. It had given him pangs of guilt for days afterwards – petty theft and deception were not the acts of an honourable person – but then Cade reminded him that the heroes in his stories were always stealing swords, or magic rings, or maidens, and they were still counted as heroes. That made Aren feel better. Sometimes it was necessary to do something ignoble in pursuit of a noble goal.
Down the stairs he went and through the moonlit parlour. The castles board had been cleared away and the room returned to order, but the stale smoke of Master Orik’s cheroots lingered.
The low murmur of voices came to him from nearby. He pressed himself to the wall and peered through the doorway into the corridor beyond. The ostler and the steward were walking away from him, talking quietly by the light of the candles they carried. He waited for them to move out of sight then nipped into the corridor, where he came face to face with Nanny Alsa.
Both of them jumped, each as surprised as the other. She was wearing her nightgown and was standing in the doorway of the buttery holding a scone drenched in honey.
For an absurd moment, Aren considered running for it. Nothing could be allowed to prevent his escape. He opened his mouth to make some excuse, but Nanny Alsa raised a quick finger to her lips. It dawned on Aren that she was carrying no candle. She’d been sneaking around in the dark as well.
‘I did not see you,’ she whispered with a smile, ‘if you did not see me.’
Aren grinned.
‘Enjoy the show,’ she said, then slid past him like a spectre and was gone.
Aren gave silent thanks to the Primus for the luck that brought him a governess like Nanny Alsa. She remembered what it was to be young. Staying out late on the first night of the ghost tide was virtually a rite of passage in Shoal Point. Aren had always been frustrated in the past, but he wouldn’t be tonight.
He reached the servants’ door and let himself out, then locked it behind him, slipped on his boots and scampered across the grounds. The curtains of the house were mostly drawn, but he didn’t feel safe until he’d passed out of sight of the windows and was well away down the lane. There he stopped and took a moment to exult. He let the cool wind from the sea blow across his face and listened to the trees stir and the animals rustling in the grass. The lane was bathed with calm, steely light, and the freedom of the world was his.
He heard a low, mournful groan from beyond the cliffs, like a giant of old stirring in its sleep. In reply came an eerie, far-off, whistling cry that conjured a vision of some spectral eagle flown out of the Shadowlands.
The ghost tide was here. Spurred by the sound, he hurried on.
The route he chose took him parallel to the cliffs, but he was careful not to get too near the edge. He didn’t want to see the sea until the moment was right. Instead he followed the brambled lanes that wound through fields and sloping pastures.
The Sisters were close in the sky tonight. There was pale, bruised Lyssa, bright and smooth, brushed with streaks of pastel blue, green and pink. Nearby was baleful Tantera, black and swollen, riven with glowing red cracks. The Hangman stood station in the west, outshining the neighbouring constellations, and to the north a dim, glowing smear could be seen, speckled at the edges with uncountable stars. The Path of Jewels, or Joha’s River, as the Ossians still called it.
When he was little, Aren had looked up at Lyssa and imagined his mother looking down on him. She’d been named Lyssa, too, and to a young mind that had profound significance. On nights when there was no moon, or on blood moon nights when Tantera took lone watch and painted the land red, he’d wake distressed in the small hours and scream for his father. His mother might not have been there to comfort him then, but his father was a rock, strong enough to cling to in a storm.
Tonight, that rock had fractured. He’d never thought of Randill as a person, only as a parent; a force of authority, not a fallible man. Randill had never shown him worry or weakness before, so Aren had somehow assumed there was none to be found. Now, for the first time, he doubted him.
He tried to dampen those thoughts. They scared him. His father was just tired, he told himself. But the memory of their conversation gnawed at him.
Perhaps I thought you were the Hollow Man. You remember him, don’t you?
The Hollow Man. Aren hadn’t thought of him for years. A dead man who walked the land, searching for a soul to replace the one he’d lost. There was a great scar across his neck where his throat had been cut. ‘If you ever see the Hollow Man, you run,’ Randill had told his terrified son once. ‘You run and you don’t stop. For he’s come to kill you.’
Why had his father mentioned the Hollow Man tonight? Why, for that matter, had Randill tormented him with it at all? In all other ways he was so protective and warm, yet he’d given his son nightmares for weeks, and he’d done it more than once. Aren distinctly remembered overhearing Nanny Kria, his first gove
rness, complaining that Randill was frightening Aren to death with nonsense. What had inspired such uncharacteristic malice?
When he was older, Aren had told Cade about the Hollow Man, and Cade had been fascinated. He’d never heard the legend, and he prided himself on collecting tales of shades and bogeymen. So Cade went to his mother, who seemed to know every tale ever told; but she’d not heard of the Hollow Man, either.
A group of giggling figures crossed the lane in front of him and went forging off through the long meadow grass. They were heading for the coves, where most of their friends would be gathering. Aren was aiming for higher ground, where the tallest cliffs reared above the waves. He was heading for the watchtower.
At last it came into sight, and in his excitement he forgot all about his father and the Hollow Man. It was a broken fang against the clifftops, lit from below and behind by pearly light, its ancient bricks mortared with shadow. Only the side that faced the sea still stood, narrow and alone, looking out to the west and the islands of the elaru beyond the horizon. The rest of the tower had crumbled until it was little more than a ring of stones barely higher than a man, surrounding grassy piles of rubble and the fragments of arched doorways. This wasn’t the craft of Old Ossia, the long-lost empire of his ancestors, but a poor copy, clawed from the ground in the brutal centuries that followed when Ossia was driven back to ignorance, savagery and war.
He headed up the hill, following the overgrown road on the landward side where stones laid in another age still rested in the dirt. As he neared, he spotted others slipping towards the ruin in the moonlight.
He found at least two dozen inside. Groups of friends drank wine and joked among themselves while couples walked arm-in-arm through the tumbled remains, the stars bright above them. Despite their number and their high spirits, laughter was quiet and voices low. There was something forbidden about this place, something delicious and frightening that discouraged disturbance. Or perhaps it was simply the magic of the night that quieted them, and the plaintive cries coming from the sea.
His eyes were covered from behind and he felt a warm body press up against him. ‘Who could it be?’ wondered a voice in his ear.
‘It can’t be Sora,’ he replied with a smile. ‘She’s such a good, obedient girl. Definitely not the sort to sneak from her home in the dead of night against her father’s wishes.’
Sora gently nibbled his earlobe. ‘I have heard that love makes girls do the strangest things.’
Aren had to suppress a shiver of delight. The heat of her breath against his cheek burned away his patience in an instant. ‘Let me see you, then, if it really is Sora and not some shade sent to torment me.’
The hands left his eyes and he turned. There she was, laughing in the moonlight with that look she had, half innocence and half mischief. The sight set off a cascade of joy that spread out from his chest, leaving him stunned, empowered, amazed. He was helpless before the force of first love. There had never been any girl like her in his life, and there never would be again. He knew with dizzying certainty that she was the one he was meant for, that he’d marry her and they’d spend their lives together.
She was a Krodan blonde like her brother Harald, hair cut to the line of her jaw, with wide-set grey eyes in an open face that suited mirth and play, and a broad, toothy smile. Some distant part of him knew that she wasn’t considered one of the great beauties of the Empire – not even the prettiest girl in Shoal Point – but that didn’t matter to Aren. In his eyes she had no equal.
For their rendezvous she’d chosen a light, floaty dress of emerald green, now dirtied at the hem and entirely at odds with her stout walking boots. Elegant and practical; he marvelled at her cleverness. He reached for her, to bring her to him and kiss her, but she danced away, tut-tutting.
‘Where is your restraint, my wild Ossian boy? Kisses, is it? I thought you lured me from my bed to show me mysterious wonders.’
Aren’s grin was tinged with frustration. He wanted her lips against his, but she’d have her game first, her teasing and flirting. She’d make him wait. She’d said once that the chase made the catching all the sweeter, but all things being equal, Aren would rather cut straight to the good part.
‘Well, then,’ he said, holding out a hand. ‘Will you walk with me, my lady? I hope you’ll find the spectacle worth your while.’
‘Why, he’s a gentleman after all,’ she said and laid her hand in his. Just the touch of her palm made his heart quicken.
They ambled among the stones, making their way unhurriedly through the crumbling outlines of forgotten chambers. Walking with her hand in his, he felt a foot taller. That she should have chosen him, of all the boys of Shoal Point! Nobody appeared to be paying them particular attention, but he imagined secret envy and grudging respect in every glance that came their way.
‘They say this is where Kala of the Dawnwardens watched for the elaru fleet coming from the sea,’ he said, eager to show off his knowledge. For once, he didn’t mind telling an Ossian tale. ‘King Angred the Maimed had been told that the elaru were preparing to invade, but he was bewitched by a silver-tongued elaru ambassador who convinced him that the true danger came from the Harrish to the north. He sent his armies to the Harrish border, but the Dawnwardens knew better and set Kala here to watch. For thirty days and thirty nights she waited, and on the thirtieth day she saw the sails of the fleet just as the sun was setting. She took to her horse and rode non-stop night and day to Morgenholme to tell the king.
‘The king realised his mistake and sent his armies to the coast. Everyone believed it was too late, but when they arrived, they found that the Dawnwardens had raised all the local garrisons and held back a force of elaru ten times their number, keeping them pinned along the coast until reinforcements could arrive. The elaru were driven back to their ships and fled, and the invasion failed.’
She clutched his arm. ‘That’s so exciting! Were the Dawnwardens great heroes, then?’
‘They were an order of warriors, adventurers and scholars who swore allegiance to the Ember Blade. Sometimes they acted as an elite royal guard, trusted with the most sensitive and dangerous missions, but they operated in secret, too, always looking to the good of the realm. Their true loyalty wasn’t to any ruler, but to Ossia itself.’ He looked up at the seaward wall, rising above the ruins, strange white light glowing through its narrow stone windows. ‘Yes, they were great heroes. Back when we had any.’
Sora pursed her lips and frowned slightly, the way she did when she was thinking. Aren found it unbearably charming – but then, he found everything she did unbearably charming.
‘I have heard of the Ember Blade,’ she said uncertainly. ‘You lost it when Ossia fell.’
‘It was captured,’ Aren said, ‘by a Krodan general called Dakken, and taken to Kroda with the other spoils of conquest.’
‘And what about the Dawnwardens? Where were they?’
‘There have been no records of their deeds for two hundred years. They belonged to another time; they are nothing but stories now.’
She sniffed. ‘Petr says that when the Ember Blade was captured, the Ossians all gave up.’
Aren tensed at the mention of Petr, a Krodan boy altogether too sure of himself who spent more time in Sora’s company than Aren would like. ‘That’s true.’
‘But it’s just a sword,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Petr says the Krodan army would never surrender just because someone took a sword away.’
Aren was unable to keep the pout from his voice. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps that’s why you won.’
‘You’re jealous!’ she teased. He scowled. ‘Oh, don’t be. Petr’s a loudmouth. You’re the one I’ll marry.’
‘If your father and brothers allow it,’ Aren said sulkily. Just the mention of another boy had made him peevish and obtuse. ‘You know Harald and Juke warned me off again today?’
‘Ha! They barked at me, too,’ she said, waving a hand. ‘What a pair of sneaks, stealing a letter from their sister�
�s room! How very mature of them.’ She smiled at him wickedly. ‘But I’m the better sneak. They told me I couldn’t go out tonight, but I slipped past them anyway!’
‘They knew you were meeting me?’ Aren asked in horror.
‘They suspected. But they didn’t see me leave, and what they don’t know won’t hurt them. Oh, here are the stairs. Let’s go up!’
A set of precarious steps climbed the curved interior of the seaward wall. The stone was much eroded and in places there were alarming gaps where a chunk had fallen away. Aren, however, was less alarmed by the steps than by Sora’s last comment. It was as if she didn’t realise how serious this all was, or what might happen if they were caught. He was risking more than just a beating tonight. If Sora’s father spoke with the governor, the consequences would fall on his father, too, and he dreaded to think what they might be.
He took her other hand and turned her to face him. Suddenly, he needed to know if she was truly his, if she’d wait for him to return from the army. He wanted to spill his thoughts to her, confess all his insecurities and share his growing fear as he began to comprehend the enormity of the future bearing down on him. A year apart, unable to see or touch her. A year not knowing what she was doing or who she was doing it with. He’d avoided thinking about it for a long time – ignoring difficult questions, Nanny Alsa had once said, was a particular talent of his – but now he felt as if a terrifying void yawned at his feet.
She saw it in his eyes and put a finger to his lips. He was a man, not a boy, she said with that gesture. This wasn’t a night to be faint-hearted. Not if he wanted his kisses.
So he swallowed his fears, relieved and hurt all at once, and led the way up the stairs.
The stairs were broken off partway up, ending in empty air and stars. To their left was a doorway, which led onto a balcony that ran around the outer edge of the seaward wall. It was little more than a wide ledge chewed by the years, its parapets long fallen. Moonlit figures sat along its length, their legs dangling over the three-storey drop to the turf below. They’d braved the heights for a view that stretched fifteen leagues in every direction. From the watchtower, it was possible to see the whole spectacle.
The Ember Blade Page 6