The Pariah

by Anthony Ryan

  It was the mention of the hangman and the twinkle of amused reproach in her gaze that banished my puzzlement with the requisite memory. That night in the forest after Deckin killed the Ascarlian with the sword, the night I had come between Erchel and his prey. “Berrine,” I said.

  “You remember.” Her smile broadened and she descended one of the overlarge steps to come closer, peering at my face. “Not quite sure how I remembered you. Your nose was a good deal straighter then, I think.”

  “That it was.” I gave a formal bow. “Alwyn Scribe, of Covenant Company.”

  “A scribe and a soldier both? You were odd back then. Seems you’re odder still. What happened to your leader, the big fellow with the beard? I always had a sense I would be hearing more of him.”

  His name was Deckin. I watched him die for his ambitions. “No longer among the living,” I said. “And his legend lives on in the south, after a fashion.”

  She moved her slim shoulders in an affable shrug. “Skeinweld got the fame he wanted too, after our return to the Geld. My former comrades spun such a tale of his bravery and death at the hands of a southern monster. I found it all too sickening to endure. When they began their recent insurrection, I wanted no part of it.”

  “No more Skard-ryken then?” I asked. “No more Altvar?”

  “There comes a point in life where childish notions must be abandoned, or one is condemned to a fool’s existence. Either that, or end up cast into the fjord lashed to a boulder, which is where you’ll find the Skard-ryken these days.”

  She paused, her gaze shifting from me to the library entrance. “Told you to get lost, did they?”

  “I’m just a poor scribe seeking to better his mind. Sadly, that appears to be insufficient reason to grant me entry.” I looked closer at her sash and the strange lettering stitched into the fabric. “I take it this is some mark of distinction?”

  “The Ribbon of Learning signifies that I am a trusted servant of the elderman’s council and the treasured Library of King Aeric, which is their most sacred charge. I work here, most days anyways, when I’m not checking the accounts of various merchants to ensure they’re paying their due in taxes.”

  “A tax collector?” I winced again. “In the Shavine Marches, such folk are often less popular than outlaws or heretics.”

  “It’s a trade with certain advantages. Besides, I merely count what is owed. The actual collecting is left to the eldermen and their guards.” She glanced again at the library doors before stepping closer. “Forgive me my suspicions, Alwyn Scribe of Covenant Company, but I’d wager you’re after more from this place than just an improved mind.”

  I gave a tight smile and retreated a step, deciding it was time to leave. This woman was a far less closed and resentful version of her younger self, not to mention highly pleasing to the eye, but her irksome gift for insight remained as sharp as ever. “I’ve detained you long enough…”

  “I can get you in.” She angled her head, mouth bowed in a faintly amused curve as her keen, unblinking eyes gauged my reaction. “If you would like.”

  I paused, letting what little I knew of her churn in my mind, weighing danger against reward with accustomed swiftness. She’s far too friendly. And if coin is her object, a soul so clever would have little trouble fleecing the merchants of this place in return for a smaller tax bill. So, what she wanted I couldn’t say, but what I wanted was so near at hand and, I reckoned, worth a risk or two.

  “Such an offer is both generous and welcome,” I said. “But a favour done raises the question of what might be expected in return.”

  “Just an honest answer to a single question.” Her smile returned as she stepped back, giving a very slight incline of her head towards the library’s west-facing wall. “There’s a set of steps leading down to a small door. Be there one hour past the midnight bell.”

  “And your question?” I asked as she resumed her ascent of the oversized steps.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” She laughed, striding upward with practised ease. “I want to know what you’re looking for.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  It was Ayin’s habit to sing as she cooked, her voice high but far from grating. Her songs were sometimes pleasing renditions of old staples like “The Ballad of the Hawk, the Hound and the Lady”, but more often than not consisted of her own compositions. These ranged from wordless melodies to more cryptic verse forged from phrases pushed into concordance for no other reason than that they rhymed.

  “The Gelder-man raised his axe,” she sang, as she chopped onions for the stewpot, “And the weaver woman twisted flax. A man rose high in a sailing boat, While a huntsman skinned a fine old goat…”

  She had taken on the cooking duties for our troop during the march to Farinsahl, a chore I had performed for a time until popular opinion saw me usurped in favour of Ayin’s more flavoursome concoctions. Her songs tended to summon smiles among the audience of hungry soldiers awaiting their evening feed, although there was always one exception.

  “It was her,” Toria said, brow heavy and eyes dark as she stared at Ayin. “In case you were wondering.”

  “Her?” I enquired, although I had a fair notion of what she meant.

  “She followed us.” Toria’s brow creased as her frown deepened. “That night we took Brewer to the Sack Witch. Simply can’t keep her mouth shut around the Anointed Captain. Now you’re in the shit and getting packed off to the wilds and she’s singing songs.”

  “Thought as much.” My offhand tone drew Toria’s dark gaze to me.

  “Squealers don’t deserve second chances. Leastways, not where I’m from.”

  I watched Ayin consign the onions to the pot before turning her attention to the meat, a large side of pork, the fat running from its slashed sides hissing as it fell into the fire in a slick cascade. Her song became wordless as she turned the spit and sprinkled a mix of salt and sage onto its upper side, the resultant aroma bringing an appreciative growl from the stomachs of all present.

  “She’s better than she was,” I said. “Her mind is less busy with the urge to do… what she used to do. Instead, it’s filled with love, or worship depending on how you look at it. Of course she told the captain. Can’t blame a believer for saying prayers, can you?” Seeing no softening in Toria’s features, I added, “Leave her alone. I mean it. If I return from tomorrow’s excursion and find any harm’s come to her, we’re done, Toria.”

  I could have said more, added a reminder about my weakness for nurturing unresolved grudges, but the threat of ending our friendship seemed to suffice. “Was only going to suggest a beating,” Toria grumped, turning away.

  No, you weren’t. I left it unsaid. With Toria, it was always better not to poke at a cooling fire. Also, she’d made a relevant point. Ayin, for all her confusion of mind, remained a disturbingly observant person.

  “You still got any of that stuff the sailor sold us?” I asked. “Not the rum and brandy; the elixir he said was good for calming the guts.”

  In truth, the elixir had little effect when it came to alleviating my seasickness, but it did result in several hours of blissfully oblivious sleep. So much so that Ofihla had had to kick me awake the morning after I took a small, experimental sip.

  “Still got most of it,” Toria said, fishing in her bundle for the bottle. “Didn’t like the way it made me feel.”

  “Then you’d best eat elsewhere tonight.”

  I waited until Ayin began to sing a more familiar song, “The Ferryman’s Wake”, a lively, jocular tune that never failed to rouse the rest of the troop to join in. The shared laughter that followed provided distraction enough for me to tip the entire contents of Toria’s bottle into the stewpot without drawing undue notice.

  When all the eating and merriment were done, we drifted back to our billets in the Shrine to Martyr Athil. Although young by the standards of most local architecture, the shrine had the chilly atmosphere common to old buildings, its generally unwelcoming ambience heightened by the f
act that it hadn’t been constructed as a barracks. For the most part, Covenant Company bedded down beneath the vaulted, echoing roof of the main chapel. Thanks to our unannounced but now customary role as guards to the Anointed Captain, Ofihla’s troop was consigned to the rooms adjoining the Aspirant’s chambers where she had established her private quarters. The shrine’s sole remaining cleric, a stoop-backed old Supplicant, who I suspected had stayed when the others fled because he reasoned it unlikely he would have survived the voyage, had insisted Evadine take the largest room by dint of her seniority in clerical ranking.

  Having surreptitiously grabbed a meal from one of the neighbouring troops, I lay in my bunk without suffering the effects of the sailor’s sleep-inducing elixir. Toria had ignored my advice and slipped immediately into slumber, quickly followed by the rest of the troop. Even so, after counting off the minutes following the chime of the midnight bell, I was careful to ensure Ayin was truly and soundly asleep before making a soft-footed exit. The shrine was guarded but, as is ever the case with sentries, their gaze was focused outward and it wasn’t too difficult to slip away unnoticed.

  Once clear of the shrine, I found a shadowed corner and paused to pull on my boots. I made hurried progress to the library, keeping to the gloomiest alleyways for fear of encountering the elderman’s patrols. For a fellow who claimed to embody the will of his townsfolk, Fohlvast appeared greatly concerned with watching them closely, especially after dark. I was obliged to hide from three separate patrols during a relatively short journey.

  Finding the required descending steps and small door was not difficult, although I discovered it to be firmly locked when testing the handle. Suspecting a trap, I crouched at the base of the steps, a hand on my knife. She was far too friendly. However, the soft clatter of a carefully worked lock quelled my suspicions and I quickly sheathed the blade as the door opened to reveal Berrine. She wore much the same half-amused smile from before, her eyes catching a yellow gleam from the small lantern she carried.

  “Come on, then,” she told me in a cheerful whisper, stepping aside and inclining her head. “No dawdling. If you’re caught in here, it’ll be a gut-opening for both of us.”

  The prospect of such a fate seemed to amuse her further, a soft laugh escaping her lips as I hurried into the gloomy interior. Old instincts made me flatten myself against the wall of the passage inside, eyes searching the shadows that danced in the wayward light from Berrine’s lantern as she locked the door.

  “Don’t worry,” she said in a mock-dramatic whisper. “We’re quite alone, I assure you.”

  “No guards on the main door?” I asked, following her silhouette along the passage to a spiral staircase.

  “Two, as always. But they’re accustomed to me working the late hours. I often sleep here as well. It pays to be known as a diligent soul, don’t you find?”

  Her tone held the taunting note of a joke shared between those of the same profession. I had already marked her as a practised deceiver, but was she a thief too?

  I followed as she ascended, the confines of the stairwell abruptly giving way to a cavernous space in which the glow of her lantern appeared little more than an ember. Straight, tall shadows rose on all sides, ascending from floor to distant ceiling in monolithic grandeur. As Berrine led me towards the nearest monolith I recognised it as a huge stack of shelves, her light playing over a long row of leather-bound books. Looking up I saw that what at first appeared to be a complex web woven by some form of giant spider was in fact a network of ladders and walkways stretching between each of the vast shelf stacks.

  “Welcome to the Library of King Aeric,” Berinne said. Her tone had changed, losing much of its humour and her gaze was shrewd and appraising as it studied my rapt, wonderstruck features. “I can see we share a common interest,” she added.

  “How many?” I breathed. Even in the meagre light, the array of books seemed endless.

  “In truth, an exact count is impossible.” Berrine stooped a little to play her lantern’s glow over the lowest tier of the nearest stack. The binding it revealed was ancient and flaking, the degraded skin of a dying book. “Old books wither and new ones are added. We copy the oldest, of course, but inevitably some have been lost over the years. Others languish in our vaults awaiting resurrection that may never come. It is the way with any archive. Like memory, a measure of it will always fade.”

  She straightened and stepped closer to me, causing me to blink in alarm as she put the lantern close to my face. Her humour had all but gone now, however the shrewd insight blazed bright in her eyes. “Which brings me to my singular question, Alwyn Scribe. What are you looking for here? And please do not insult me with a lie. Not if you want my help, that is.”

  My gaze flicked up at the dark bulk of the stack towering above. Just one of many in this place, a maze of knowledge impossible to navigate without expert assistance.

  “Yes,” Berrine murmured, reading my thoughts with apparent ease. “You’ll never find it, whatever it may be, without me. I have climbed these shelves since childhood. It was here that I learned the older, darker legends of the Altvar, also the truth of our history rather than the nonsense spouted by the likes of Elderman Fohlvast. My parents were merchants, loyalists who followed the Covenant and cast me out when I took up with the Skard-ryken, but I never felt any love from them in any case. They grubbed for money while I always thirsted for knowledge. These books are my true parents and if you want their help, you’ll need to be honest.”

  I met her gaze again, knowing lies would not suffice for one so sharp of insight. “Lachlan’s hoard,” I said.

  Berrine blinked and let out a faintly disgusted sigh before stepping back, the sudden removal of the lantern’s glow leaving me in a void until I caught sight of her retreating silhouette. “How utterly mundane,” she said. “Just another treasure seeker.”

  “I have sound reason to believe it real,” I said, hurrying to catch up. “Deckin had a notion of where to find it, and he was not a man given to fancy.”

  “A claim made by gullible idiots the world over.” Berrine’s voice echoed loud as she moved with a purposeful stride, leading me down one channel between the stacks before turning to traverse another. “Do you imagine you’re the first deluded soul to turn up here convinced he’s found a clue to the location of some long-hidden treasure or other? If it’s not Lachlan’s hoard it’s King Thaelric’s golden axe. Don’t you think, after the passage of so many centuries, that if such things could be found they would have by now?”

  “Things get lost. You said so yourself.”

  She sighed again and came to an abrupt halt beside a wrought-iron ladder ascending a cliff-like stack. “That I did. I also promised you access in return for answering my question, which you have done, disappointing though your answer is. Three tiers up—” she inclined her head at the stairs “—twenty paces to the right. Every book, map, scroll or letter in this library that ever made mention of Lachlan’s hoard. We compiled it decades ago, in return for a considerable fee, at the behest of a southland duke convinced he could find the fabled hoard that had eluded so many others.” She gave me an empty smile. “He failed. Have at it as you will, Alwyn Scribe.” She set her lantern down and turned to go. “I can only give you until dusk, so work fast.”

  I spared only a brief glance of consternation for the ladder, knowing that a scant few hours would be grossly insufficient for any meaningful research, before picking up the lantern and hurrying after her. “I can promise a share in the spoils…”

  “So does every gold-maddened fool who fetches up here. If you’ll excuse me, I have a rather fascinating account from the First Reign of the Sister Queens to transcribe.” She turned another corner, causing me to collide with a stone buttress as I attempted to follow.

  I swallowed a curse, rubbing a bruised arm and calling after her rapidly retreating shadow, “There’s something else.” Berrine slowed a little but only consented to halt when I added, “Something even more fascinating
, I think you’ll find.”

  Berrine’s footsteps were slow and her face drawn in a sceptical grimace as she emerged from the shadow. “What something might that be?”

  I found I had to quell a spasm of reluctance as I reached into my jerkin. Revealing it to another felt like a betrayal, also a danger. But what choice was there?

  A soft hiss escaped her lips as I drew the book free of the fabric binding it to my side, smothering the urge to snatch it back when she took it from my hand. Her fingers traced over the swirling abstract pattern of the binding before opening it, her sibilant breath becoming a soft laugh of delight as her eyes grew wide, drinking in the revealed text.

  “Caerith script,” she murmured. “The archaic form, no less.” Her eyes flicked up at me. “Where did you get this?”

  “From a witch,” I said, seeing little point in deceit now. “Can you read it?”

  “A few symbols, a couple of phrases. See here.” She proffered the book, her finger tracing along a particular line of text. “‘And in a grain of sand may you find a world entire.’”

  I frowned. “What does it mean?”

  “It’s one of the more commonly inscribed phrases to be found in old Caerith. As to its meaning, no one has ever been entirely sure, except the Caerith themselves, of course, and they have always displayed a violent dislike of visiting scholars. Those who travel beyond the borders of their wastes are a tight-lipped bunch to be sure, unless you have coin to trade for enchanted trinkets.”

  Berrine closed the book with a snap, placing it back into my hands, her smile fully returned. It was far warmer now, less amused but lit with something I hadn’t seen in a woman’s face for a very long time. “Why seek treasure when you already have one?” she asked, finger tracing over the book’s cover before finding my hand, where it lingered.

  “It may surprise you to hear,” I said, “that my recruitment into Covenant Company was not exactly willing. I’ve seen one battle and will be glad to never see another. Lachlan’s hoard, if it can be found, will be my passage to a far more peaceful life.”