Serpentine (The Beggar's Ride Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  “Of course not,” she said. “But I had not thought beyond it.”

  “I will take her home,” Sithmaree said. “She will need feeding and a good night.”

  She stood, and Sithmaree was at her side, ready to lend support if it was needed, but a moment of light-headedness passed and she felt all right.

  “I believe that I am tired after all,” she said.

  *

  The following day dawned in rain. It hammered down on the roof and made rivulets of the paths about Col Boran. There was a small pond in front of Sithmaree’s house where the threshold had been worn down over the years.

  Callista ate a late breakfast with Sithmaree. The snake seemed keen that she overeat, citing a concern about the rigors of the day ahead. It made her wonder what she had let herself in for. She suspected that the Snake knew as little as she.

  There was no set time for her lessons to begin, so she took her time. A part of her was reluctant to start down this path. However unpleasant the last few years had been she still had fond memories of her childhood in Afael, and those happy times were an anchor that held her back from a future that promised nothing familiar, nothing ordinary or comfortable. In truth she would rather have gone back than forwards. The life she desired was the one she had lost when her father and mother had died, not this bold new existence. She was immune to the heady perfume of power.

  It was already full day when she left, stepping carefully around the doorstep puddle, head covered with a cloak to keep the rain at bay. She almost tripped over him.

  Rodric was sitting on a low wall a few yards down the path. He had made a half hearted attempt to shield himself from the rain, but it was apparent that he had been there for some time. He was soaked through.

  “You shouldn’t be out here,” she said.

  Rodric looked at her, and in his eyes she saw that she should have told him, should have trusted him with the decision that she had made. He had heard from someone else, and that had hurt.

  “Eran,” he said.

  “I’m sorry. I should have told you, but I was afraid.”

  “I just wanted to see you. To see that you were all right.”

  “I am, as you can see.” She put a hand on his arm. The cloth was sodden. “You should go and change. Get out of the weather.”

  “I will,” he said. He stood up, water cascading off him.

  “Why didn’t you knock? You could have breakfasted with us.”

  Rodric shook his head as if the suggestion was somehow offensive. “I had to wait,” he said.

  “Nonsense,” Callista said, suddenly angry at the silliness of it. “You never have to wait for me. If you need me, just come to me and speak. I will always welcome you, always look forward to seeing you. You are a friend.”

  “I had hoped it was so,” Rodric said.

  “I will walk with you,” Callista told him. Pascha could wait. She would see Rodric back to his apartment and out of this mood and those wet clothes before she went to the upper terrace.

  They walked in silence along the wet paths and Callista was thankful for the stout boots that Sithmaree had provided, as well as the thick cloak. Rodric was still brooding when they reached his apartment, but she hurried inside and began pulling off his wet outer garments to reveal more sodden cloth beneath.

  He pulled away.

  “You’re not my mother,” he said.

  “You’re behaving like you need one,” she said. It was the first harsh thing she had said to him since Laya’s death, and she almost bit back the words as they came out.

  Rodric stared at her for a second, then shook his head again. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m being childish. I understand why you didn’t tell me – because of Laya – and you must have known that you would get through. But I wish you’d trusted me.”

  “It was a mistake not to,” Callista said. “A mistake I won’t make again. Now you should change and eat something, and try to stay dry. It can’t be good for you sitting out in the rain like that.”

  Rodric smiled. It was a small, slightly twisted smile, but it was the first she’d seen today.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said. “You should be somewhere else, I think.”

  He pulled off his shirt and began to rummage for another. She watched him.

  “I can stay a while if you like,” she said.

  Rodric found a towel and began to rub himself dry. He paused.

  “You would, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “You’d keep the god mage waiting, just to see that I was all right.”

  “She’s over a thousand years old. What’s another hour or two?”

  Rodric grinned, and she knew that he really was all right. He had forgiven her the lapse in trust.

  “You’re a peculiar woman, Callista,” he said. “But seriously, go. Don’t keep her waiting. You want to get off on the right foot with that one.”

  “I’ll see you this evening,” she said. “God mage permitting.”

  She left, throwing the cloak over her head again and trusting to her good boots. She headed back to the palace.

  *

  “How does it feel when you use your talent?” Pascha asked. She was sitting in a comfortable chair close to the fire. The rain still fell, a deluge just twenty feet away on the terrace, but inside it was warm and dry.

  “Like a door,” Callista said. “Or a window. I feel it open, and it shows me things, sort of. It’s difficult to describe.”

  Pascha nodded. “It always is. The important thing is that you recognise it when it happens. Some feel it as heat, others light, still others sense a tingling. You have to learn how to access the power at will, to summon it.”

  Callista tried to remember the sensation, to isolate the very beginning of it, that first spark of light within her.

  “It doesn’t seem like something I could command,” she said.

  “It just comes and goes. I know. That’s how it began with me, but you should master it in time.”

  “How?”

  Pascha shrugged. “I don’t imagine it will be the same for you. Your talent manifests itself differently. I would suggest pushing it in whatever direction it wants to go.”

  That meant she had to wait. She had an idea that she had to think intensely about something, like the test, for it to work, but sometimes it refused to come. She had tried to see if Laya could pass the test, but failed.

  “I’ll try that,” she said.

  “But now simpler things,” Pascha said. “Theory.”

  So it began. Pascha described to her the three sources of power. She called them owned, stolen, and infinite, the power of the body, the power you could take from other living things, and the power that drew on existence itself. Callista had been a good student when she was a child back in Afael by dint of her concentration, and she revelled in the knowledge. In childhood the lessons had been arid and dull, but what Pascha spoke of was vital and important. She drank down the details. It was the opening of a new world, and like any explorer she desired to travel every path she saw, to walk every byway, but she trusted her guide and followed impatiently where she led. There were wonders enough wherever she looked.

  Towards evening the rain ceased, and they went out onto the terrace which was quite dry through some magic that Callista had not even noticed. They stood and looked over Col Boran, which glittered in the evening sun, every wet wall and roof shining in the last rays of light that slipped over the Dragons Back.

  “There is one thing that I can do,” Pascha said. “I can show you how to use the power that you own, but you must be careful. It is no greater than your own strength. If you try to do things that are beyond you it may harm you, even kill you.”

  “Then I’ll wait,” Callista said. “I am in no hurry to change.”

  Pascha nodded.

  “Tomorrow then,” she said. “There is a lot to learn.”

  48 The Border

  “Why do we know nothing of their p
lans?” Alwain demanded. He pointed at the map. “There is only one bridge across the gorge, and they had plenty of time to cross before we got here in strength. Why did they wait? Why do they wait?”

  So many questions. Colonel Sandaray shrugged. He didn’t have the answers, but it seemed obvious to him that the Berashis had no intention of crossing the border. They had adopted effective defensive positions on their side, almost as though they were expecting an attack. But it was the Berashis who had arrived first. They had precipitated this entire crisis.

  “Perhaps they are telling the truth, my lord,” he said.

  “Don’t be an ass, Sandaray,” the duke said. “They’re up to something. The refugee story is thinner than paper.”

  The colonel would have argued if he felt there was some threat to the kingdom, but the Berashis were more or less stuck on their side and the Avilians on theirs. The gorge between was impassable but for a single bridge that might carry four men abreast, and such an advance from either side would be suicidal. Add to that the conviction that the bulk of the Berashi army was camped out the other side of the gorge and Sandaray couldn’t see any threat at all.

  “I’ve sent patrols up and down the river for three days’ ride in either direction, my lord,” he said. “They’ve found nothing.”

  “Which proves my point,” Alwain said. “You found nothing because they’re being careful. They’re hiding something.”

  The duke’s reasoning was quite beyond the colonel. He considered for a moment that his commander might be extraordinarily gifted, that he might see strategies that were invisible to a man like himself, and dismissed it. Alwain was a fool, but as long as he was not a dangerous fool it didn’t worry him.

  “We must arrange a parley,” Alwain went on. “We will demand to know their true reasons, and that they withdraw.”

  Sandaray could not resist. “And if they refuse?”

  “Then we shall teach them a lesson.”

  Sandaray concluded that Alwain was more given to rhetoric than military matters. The only lesson they were in a position to teach was how to lose a great many men to little effect. Starting a war with Berash was not something that Avilian needed anyway. There were enough domestic problems.

  “I will send an envoy across the bridge, my lord,” Sandaray said. “We will see what they say.”

  “Indeed.”

  The colonel considered himself dismissed, and left the tent. It was still cool outside, and he wrapped himself in his cloak as he made his way through the camp. He could see the smoke from Berashi camp fires less than half a mile away, but he knew that he had a thousand men on duty watching the bridge, so he wasn’t worried. Stalemates didn’t scare him.

  He strolled down to his own tent, set much closer to the bridge, within earshot of the sentries there. His staff were waiting for him.

  “Any news, colonel?” The man that asked was Willan, a major and nominally his second, though Sandaray listened to all his staff.

  “The duke wants to talk to them,” he said. But that was unlikely, he thought. “Or he wants somebody to talk to them. We have to request a parley.”

  “I volunteer for the duty,” Willan said.

  It wasn’t a surprise. Sandaray himself had considerable respect for Berashi honour. If they crossed the bridge under a flag of truce they would be guaranteed to return unless they broke the rules themselves.

  “Very well,” Sandaray said. “Take three men and cross the bridge under a flag about midday. You will ask them for a parley tomorrow. It can be on their side. Find out their commander’s name, try to get a feeling for their mood. Are they expecting to fight? Are they here for the long haul? You know the sort of thing.”

  Willan nodded. “I know the men to take,” he said.

  Several hours later Sandaray watched Willan cross the bridge. He walked slowly, his chosen men at his back, lightly armed so that it was apparent that they were no threat. They had a white flag tied to a lance. They stopped about ten paces short of the other side and were approached by a Berashi officer. The exchange seemed to go well enough, and after a while they moved off towards the Berashi camp, the bulk of which lay among the trees beyond the bridge.

  Sandaray waited. He had his midday meal brought to him and watched the bridge while he ate it. Willan was back at the bridge in about twenty minutes, escorted by the same Berashi officer, as far as the colonel could tell. They spoke a few words to each other and Willan and his men crossed the bridge back to the Avilian side. He dismissed his escort and walked to where Sandaray was waiting.

  “As expected,” the major said as he approached. “They’re happy to talk, happy to do so on their side of the river. Tomorrow at midday.”

  “Their commander?”

  “Tragil. Count Leon Tragil. He holds the rank of colonel.”

  “How do you judge him?”

  “Typical Berashi soldier, sensible, practical, no airs and graces. He’s not likely to do anything stupid.”

  “And the mood?”

  “Relaxed, as far as I could tell. I don’t think they’re here to fight. There’s no real tension like you see before a battle.”

  “So what are they doing here?” Sandaray asked, more to himself than the major.

  “If you ask me they’re here to draw us out,” Willen said.

  It was obvious once the major said it. Bas Erinor had no choice but to respond to a large Berashi force massing on the border. A force of equal or greater strength had to be sent.

  “Yes, but why?”

  The major shrugged. “Your guess is probably better than mine,” he said.

  Sandaray stood up. “I’ll have to tell the duke,” he said. “I doubt he’ll want to go over there himself. He’ll send me, I expect.” It was the reason he’d suggested the parley take place on the Berashi side. The last thing he wanted was an overheated duke starting something the Avilian army would have to finish. There was no reason for anyone to die here as far as Sandaray could tell.

  He tried to work it out. The Berashis had come here expecting a response, and they had come in massive force, although they seemed to have no intent to cross the border. It meant that more than half the standing Avilian army had been sent to meet them. The threat was so large that even the duke had come.

  If Afael hadn’t been in such a mess he might have suspected an alliance between Berash and Afael. This could be a ruse to draw the army to the west in preparation for a raid in the east, but Afael was deep in a civil war, its king was dead, its not particularly impressive army fragmented. He saw no advantage to either Afael or Berash in this.

  Perhaps the parley tomorrow would reveal more.

  49 Bas Erinor

  An extract from “The Eighth Tale of Karim”

  … On the third day Karim came across a great clearing in the forest, and he rode boldly forward to see what lay there.

  At the centre of the clearing stood a great chest of black wood, bound in brass, and the chest was so large that it might have contained anything, even a man. Before the chest stood a mighty warrior, no less than seven feet in height and dressed for war after the Sillish custom.

  Karim dismounted and approached the warrior in fair and open fashion.

  “Tell me what it is that lies in yonder box,” Karim said.

  “I can tell you nothing, but that it contains the heart’s desire of any man, and that I am sworn to guard it.”

  “How sworn?” Karim asked.

  “With my life’s blood,” the warrior replied.

  Karim wondered at the great chest, how one box could contain the heart’s desire of every man, and he wished with all his heart to know what it was that lay within. He was not averse to a fight, and indeed his fame with the blade was spread throughout the kingdom and the Sillish Empire, so he drew his blade and stepped forwards.

  “I would see what lies within,” he said.

  The mighty warrior drew his own blade and stepped out to meet Karim.

  “Then we must fight, for I am swor
n to deny you,” he said.

  They exchanged blow for blow for a while, and Karim marvelled at the giant warrior’s strength and speed, which was a match for his own, and after an hour he raised his blade and both of them stood back.

  “You are a worthy opponent,” Karim said. “Will you not simply tell me what lies within the box so that we may spare ourselves the rigour of this contest?”

  “I am sworn not to, other than it is your heart’s desire.”

  “It is a foolish thing to tell a man that his heart’s desire lies so close, and then deny him. It invites bloodshed.”

  The great warrior nodded. “It seems so,” he said.

  They fought again, and always Karim found the warrior was equal to his attacks, matched him blow for blow and for another hour they fought to and fro across the clearing around the box, the huge warrior always careful to keep himself between Karim and the brass bound chest. In this one thing Karim saw weakness, for if the warrior must keep his position before the chest then his step could be predicted, and such a flaw was enough for a man of Karim’s skill to exploit. He raised his blade again, and the battle paused.

  “I will ask you once more,” Karim said. “Speak the name of what lies within and I shall leave the box unopened, for I desire to know it greatly. You have acquitted yourself with honour, but do not doubt that I shall defeat you.”

  “Then defeat me you must,” the warrior said. “For I am sworn neither to speak of what lies there, nor to allow the chest to be opened, and sworn with my life’s blood.”

  Victory was certain, but Karim did not raise his blade again, for it seemed to him a great wrong that a man of such skill and honour should die to satisfy his own curiosity. Yet the desire to know what was hidden remained strong within him. What could it be, this heart’s desire? Some magical thing, perhaps, or a woman of extraordinary beauty, or wealth to make a king envious?

  “Tell me a riddle, then, that I might guess it.”

  The warrior shook his head. “I am not one for riddles,” he said.