Tears stung his eyes, and he squeezed the old woman’s bloodless fingers until his grip all but crushed them. Erminet had been a true friend, putting aside duty for a more personal loyalty. And this was her reward … Her deception discovered, she had known what her fate would be if she was convicted of abetting him, and had chosen to do the Circle’s work for them, to give herself the dignity of dying, if die she must, in her own way and in her own time. And her death, the cruel needlessness of it, fuelled Tarod’s hatred of Keridil and the Circle, and their warped idea of justice. If he could avenge her - but she wouldn’t want that. She had made him promise to harm no living soul in the Castle, and he had already broken that pledge by killing two men.
There must be no more. He owed her that, at very least.
Tarod realised that some time had elapsed since the Novice had fled from the room, and knew that he must go, if he was to avoid being found when the girl returned with help. The Circle would understand quickly enough when she described the black-haired Adept she had met in the corridor, and the hunt would be redoubled as they sought him, too. He had little fear of recapture, but it would be a grim irony if Cyllan were found before he could reach her and Erminet had died in vain.
He folded the old Sister’s hands across her breast, then bent to kiss her forehead gently. His left hand still rested on hers - he raised it, then made a small gesture over her heart. The gesture was a blessing, but no blessing that had ever been given by a servant of Aeoris.
Then he rose to his feet, and swiftly and silently left the room.
The High Initiate received the news of Sister Erminet’s suicide with chagrin and distress - and also, reluctantly, with the acknowledgement that her action was positive proof of her guilt. But when he heard, from the tearful Sister-Novice, of the mysterious Adept whom she had encountered and who couldn’t be found, the pieces of an ugly puzzle fitted together all too well.
Of the four men despatched to check on Tarod, the youngest was violently sick when he saw the carnage in the cellar and the other three had difficulty controlling their stomachs. Keridil heard their reports in the privacy of his study, thankful that he had at last persuaded Sashka to retire to her parents’ suite until morning.
There could be no sleep for him - especially now that Cyllan wasn’t the only enemy they had to contend with - but at least she had been spared this …
‘I want the search intensified,’ he told Taunan Cel Ennas, who was the Circle’s most experienced swordsman, as they stepped out of the Castle’s main entrance and stood at the top of the sweeping steps in the sickly first light of dawn. ‘Double the guard on the gates, and make sure they’re not opened for any reason without my authority.’ He hunched his shoulders and stared about him at the towering black walls, which seemed suddenly oppressive. ‘The gods know there are enough crannies in this damned place for them to hide in. But we’ll find them, Taunan. We’ll find them, if we have to take the whole Castle apart stone by stone!
Taunan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose in an attempt to clear his vision. Despite his tiredness he knew Keridil was right; there could be no rest until their quarry was run to earth. He only wished he could share the High Initiate’s certainty that they would succeed.
‘It’s easy to forget that we’re not dealing with an ordinary man, Keridil,’ he replied wearily. ‘Tarod has the cunning of Chaos, and a good many of its powers.
‘Not without the soul-stone,’ Keridil reminded him.
‘And we know that’s in the girl’s possession.
Taunan grimaced. ‘And if they should find each other before we find them … ?
‘We can’t afford to let that happen. We must apprehend one of them - and I don’t care which - before they have the chance to meet. If we fail in that, the gods alone know what the consequences might be.’ Keridil squinted up at the lightening sky. ‘I’ve called a meeting of the higher Adepts in an hour, to discuss what occult methods we can call on, but before that I -‘ He stopped, his eyes narrowing.
‘Keridil?
The High Initiate took hold of Taunan’s arm, and his voice was dry with unease when he spoke. Taunan …
look The older man followed his gaze. ‘What is it? I don’t -
‘Look to the North. And listen.
Taunan sucked in a sharp breath as he understood, and stared beyond the towering bulk of the Northernmost spire. It seemed that another dawn was breaking in the far distance, challenging the true dawn in the East; the grey arc of the sky was tinged with a pale, sickly spectrum of colour that seemed to be shifting, moving, like a vast, dim, slowly turning beam of light. The wind was fresh in off the sea, but underlying its faint susurration was another sound, far off - a thin, unearthly wail as though, hundreds of miles out beyond the coast, a hurricane was raging and speeding in towards them.
The bands of colour in the sky were intensifying slowly but surely, and even as the two men watched a vivid slash of orange flickered across the heavens like a scar, followed by another, smaller streak of harsh blue.
‘It’s going to be a bad one … ‘ Keridil said quietly.
Taunan nodded, his throat dry. Even protected as they were by the Maze which held the Castle in a fractionally different dimension from the rest of the world, a Warp was a terrifying experience; and Keridil was right; the flickering colours in the sky presaged an abnormally powerful storm. Taunan forced down the mind-numbing terror of these weird and deadly phenomena which he shared with every living man, woman and child, and tried to smile.
‘I’d defy even Tarod to try to flee the Castle during a Warp.
Keridil glanced at him in surprise, then his face relaxed and he, too, smiled. ‘You’re right … and perhaps it’s the first time in history that the Warps have been to our advantage!’ He looked up again, and shivered. ‘Come on. Let’s go back inside. Advantageous it might be, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch it coming.
From her hiding place in a storeroom that adjoined the Castle’s stables Cyllan saw the first threatening changes in the dawn sky, and felt the faint vibration beneath her feet that presaged the onset of the storm. The thick stone walls blotted out the sounds of the approaching Warp, but couldn’t protect her from the primordial fear that turned her stomach to water as, through a narrow window, she watched the bands of colour growing stronger, marching out of the North. Sick with fright, she crawled into a dark corner and pulled the cloak hood over her head, but she couldn’t escape; though sight of the coming horror was blotted out, the vibration increased until it seemed to permeate her bones and beyond them to her soul.
She wished she had chosen another hiding place.
She’d tried to reach the North spire, thinking that perhaps Tarod, if he too was free, would look for her there, but in trying she had almost run across one of the search parties and only a chance piece of good luck and quick thinking had saved her. She’d fled to the stable wing as the nearest sanctuary, and since then hadn’t dared to emerge.
Now, even without the Warp to imprison her here, the coming of dawn had made it too dangerous for her to move. If anything the search seemed to have intensified, and though she hoped it might be a sign that Tarod had escaped, it did nothing to help her immediate predicament. He’d never think of searching here for her, and when a few minutes ago she had tried to focus her mind and reach him subconsciously, her own thoughts were too confused by fear of the Warp to allow her to concentrate.
A door at one end of the storeroom led directly to the stables themselves, and beyond it she could hear a restive stamping and snorting as the Castle’s horses sensed the approaching horror. Cyllan left her corner and crept towards the door, reasoning that, now of all times, no one in their right mind would have need of a horse, and the company even of animals would be better than the terrors of solitude when the storm struck. She tried not to glance at the window as she went, but couldn’t help seeing the strange play of sickly light over her hands and clothes. Swallowing the bile which rose in
her throat and threatened to choke her, she pushed the door open a crack and peered through.
Tall, dim shapes moved in the gloom beyond; brown and grey and warm chestnut; one black with a wild, white eye. The nearest horse, a big bay, saw her and stamped back in its stall, ears flattened; she slipped through the door and approached it, speaking softly to pacify it. These Southern-stock beasts were more kindly tempered than the shaggy little Northern ponies she had ridden as a drover, and the bay quietened quickly under her hands, nudging at her as though grateful for human company. Cyllan passed down the line, talking to each animal in turn and glad of the chance to divert her mind from what was happening outside. At last the horses began to settle a little, and she reached the end of the line. Here straw bales for fresh bedding had been piled in a corner, and she sank down on them, pulling the cloak tightly around her body. She could do nothing but wait until the Warp had passed … shivering, she hunched deeper in to the straw and tried not to think about the storm.
The spectral bands of blue and orange and green that advanced across the sky were rapidly changing to dark, evil-looking shades of purple and livid brown when a man burst from the watchtower by the Castle gates and pelted head down across the courtyard. He took the wide steps three at a time, burst through the main doors just as a surprised servant was about to set the bars in place, and skidded to a halt, gasping for breath.
‘Where’s the High Initiate?
The servant, nonplussed, gestured towards the dining-hall, and the man raced away.
Keridil was eating a hasty breakfast which his steward, Gyneth, had persuaded him to take, when the gateman came running in.
‘Sir!’ the man croaked, his lungs heaving, ‘Riders! A party, coming across the causeway -
‘What?’ Keridil got to his feet, pushing his plate away.
‘Now, of all times? Damn it, the Warp’s about to strike!
Who are they?
The gateman shook his head. ‘Don’t know, sir. But there’s a herald with them, and a retinue -
Keridil swore. He had enough to worry him without strangers needing sanctuary from the Warp at this last moment, but he could hardly leave them outside to face the coming horror. He turned on his heel and shouted at a servant who was putting up the hall’s shutters.
‘Leave that! Find Fin Tivan Bruall and tell him to get to the stables to take in new horses!’ And to the gateman: ‘Can you get them through in time, do you think?
The man peered out at the dangerous sky. ‘Just about, sir, if they don’t fall foul of the Maze.
‘Pray they’ve been here before, then - and hurry!’ The man left at a run, and Keridil followed, swallowing back his terror of stepping through the doors and seeing the Warp in its full spate. As he approached the entrance he could hear the high, screaming note that accompanied the storm, like damned souls howling in agony, and he shuddered before, taking a deep breath, he forced himself to walk out on to the steps.
The Castle gates were already opening, swinging ponderously back with what seemed to Keridil agonising slowness. Overhead the sky raged and its insane colours tainted the walls and the flagstones, staining Keridil’s skin so that he and the men who had followed him out looked like ghastly apparitions. The Warp would hit them within two or three minutes, and though in the Castle they were safe enough from its power, no reasoning on earth could stand against the sheer animal terror of being beneath one of the supernatural storms as it came shrieking overhead.
Now the gates were fully open, and he could see the approaching party. They had crossed the causeway from the mainland, but were having difficulty controlling their horses, which reared and plunged as the riders attempted to guide them across the darker patch of sward that marked the Maze. But at last the leading horse was through, and the others followed, kicked into a desperate gallop that brought them clattering and thundering under the great arch and into the courtyard.
Seven men - and three women. Keridil’s heart sank as he recognised the tall, slightly stooped figure dismounting from the sweating iron-grey gelding while two Initiates ran to help him. Gant Ambaril Rannak, Margrave of Shu Province … Drachea’s father.
He started down the steps, the Warp momentarily forgotten in the face of this unexpected and unwelcome arrival. But before he was halfway down, a commotion from the stables made him turn. Someone shouting, his bellow audible above the mindless yell of the storm - and a woman’s high-pitched scream of protest.
‘High Initiate!’ The stentorian voice of Fin Tivan Bruall, the head horsemaster, was filled with triumph as he and one of his stable boys dragged a struggling, hooded figure towards the steps. ‘We’ve got the murdering little bitch! We’ve got her!
A howl from the sky, as though the Warp answered Fin’s news with a furious protest of its own, drowned out all other sound, and Keridil swung his arm in an urgent gesture towards the main doors. ‘Get those people inside! It’s about to strike!
The Margravine and her two maids were screaming in terror, their male companions faring little better. They stumbled up the steps, while several more Initiates braved their fears to take charge of the panicking horses as Fin and his boy dragged their captive towards Keridil.
The High Initiate glimpsed Cyllan’s bloodstained clothes and her stark white face, grotesquely distorted by the whirling spectrum reflecting from the sky, saw her mouth twist in a shrieking snarl though he couldn’t hear the curse she spat at him. Then an instant later the sky turned blue-black, like a monstrous bruise, and red lightning spat across the heavens as the wail of the storm swelled to a howling crescendo.
‘Get to shelter!’ Keridil’s cry was lost in the cacophony as a ferocious wind shrieked out of the North and the Warp came thundering overhead. Fin kept his wits sufficiently to hang on to Cyllan, hauling her bodily up the steps and cuffing her with a powerful fist when she started to struggle again. Keridil turned, started ahead of them - and stopped dead.
The voice of the Warp dinned in his ears, the insane sky blotting out the rising Sun and plunging the courtyard into chaotic darkness. But enough light flickered from the violent streaks of colour exploding across the face of the storm for him to see the tall, gaunt figure that barred his way to the doors. A tangle of wild black hair streamed in the gale, and the face, illuminated by a violent explosion of green and crimson overhead, was demonic. An appalling memory of Yandros, Lord of Chaos, smashed into Keridil’s brain - this apparition was the Chaos lord’s dark twin, and a hideous premonition of his own nemesis stunned him into immobility.
But if he was paralysed, Cyllan wasn’t. She redoubled her efforts to escape Fin’s grip, and her voice sounded shrilly above the Warp as she screamed, ‘Tarod!
Her cry broke the thrall that held Keridil. He sprang back, darting down the steps to where Cyllan struggled, and snatched his sword out of its scabbard. Tarod came after him - then froze as Keridil stopped a pace from Cyllan, whose arms were now pinned by the horsemaster, and touched the point of his blade to her heart. The High Initiate’s face was wild with fear of the storm and the fury aroused by this confrontation; Tarod knew that if he made a single untoward move, Keridil would run Cyllan through.
The other Initiates in the courtyard had by now realised what was afoot and, leaving one of their number to manage the Margrave’s frightened horses as best as he could, came running to Keridil’s aid. They were all armed, and Cyllan feared that without the stone Tarod couldn’t hope to defeat them. She had to reach him - had to, whatever the risk -
Keridil was taken completely by surprise when, with a violence born of desperation, Cyllan brought one foot up and out in a savage kick that took him full in the stomach. He went down, losing his grip on the sword, and Cyllan twisted around to bite Fin Tivan Bruall’s hand with all her strength. The horsemaster yelled and she kicked out again, backwards this time, breaking away from him. Her momentum sent her staggering down the steps; she turned with the agility of a cat as Tarod started towards her
Three Initiates blocked her path, while two more ran at her from behind. Cyllan snarled like an animal, saw Tarod grappling with the first of her three assailants, and realised that the trap was closing around her. Over the shriek of the Warp she heard his voice.
‘Cyllan, go! Run - get away from them!
The High Initiate was on his feet, advancing - Cyllan turned and ran, hampered by her skirt and almost falling as she reached the foot of the steps. And suddenly she was in the midst of a group of milling, panicking horses, half of them running free while one young Initiate struggled to keep the others under control. A tall grey shape loomed across her path; she cannoned into the Margrave’s gelding and reflexively clutched at a stirrup to stop herself from falling.
‘Stop her!’ She heard Keridil’s yell behind her, and the gelding whinnied piercingly. Cyllan didn’t pause to think - she reached up, gripped a handful of the animal’s mane, and sprang. She landed half over the gelding’s neck and frantically jack-knifed herself into the high-pommelled saddle, hanging on grimly as the beast reared in frightened protest.
‘Tarod!’ Her cry was lost in the cacophony overhead.
‘Tarod!
He saw her, but couldn’t reach her; two men were attacking him and in the chaos he could barely defend himself, let alone spare time for any other consideration. His mind roiled - power was surging in him, fuelled by the insanity of the Warp, but it was wild, uncontrollable, he couldn’t grasp it. He evaded a wildly swinging blade and his left hand locked on his assailant’s wrist, twisting, crushing - he felt a bone snap, but the second Initiate was coming at him again ‘Tarod!’ Cyllan’s cry this time was a shriek of alarm as Keridil, who had regained his own blade, ran at her with Fin and another man at his heels. The gelding reared again, almost unseating her, and snatching at the reins she pulled the animal into a sidestepping buck as the High Initiate lunged towards her. The blade missed her thigh by a hairsbreadth and instead sliced a shallow but ferocious gash along her mount’s flank.
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