by Tim Stead
The standard of work was high. The tile maker was quite an artist and his depictions of dragons, wolves and the rest were almost alive in the flickering lamp light. Mordo turned the tile over and examined the plain bottom. It was rougher, not as polished as the top, but that was to be expected. Once laid this side would never be seen.
He took out the small knife that he always carried for sharpening quills, trimming wicks and the rest. He tried the blade on the clay underside, and found that it came away cleanly without shattering. He cut a small groove and ran his finger along its edge.
Maybe.
He measured the thickness of the tile and found that it was about as thick as his thumb was long. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. Was that enough?
Perhaps.
He wrapped two of the tiles in sacking and tucked them under his arm, snuffed the lamp out, and locked the store room door again. He walked back to his office. He’d have to find somewhere to accomplish the task but he thought it would work, and if it worked he would have everything that he needed. He could change the world.
Yes.
*
Callista had sat through the conference on the terrace in silence. She was so new here, so ignorant that she did not think it her place to speak. Even so she had been relieved when Caster had spoken. He voiced the doubts that had been troubling her. What was their purpose if not to help right overcome wrong, good fight evil? She was not foolish enough to think that right and wrong were always so obvious, but in this case they seemed plain enough. But even if she was a new minted god mage she was painfully aware that there was not one person on the terrace who did not have a century of experience more than she.
On the other hand she thought that her lessons with Pascha were going well. She was learning things of which she had not previously dreamed, and though the power of a god mage seemed almost infinite it was still governed by simple rules and by the limitations of the individual who wielded it.
Each evening she left Pascha’s apartments and made her way first to Rodric’s rooms where she spoke with him for a while, usually over a cup of tea, and then on to Sithmaree’s house for an evening meal, by which time she was tired enough to fall asleep as soon as she crawled into her comfortable bed.
The evening after Kirrith’s gathering she followed the same routine, but she avoided discussing with Rodric what they had spoken of on Pascha’s terrace. She had felt it wrong to involve him in the business of Col Boran which she herself could barely comprehend.
When she left it was dark, and she walked back along the paths she had walked so often before, and she thought of Shadow, the enigmatic creature that had appeared to her twice, and spoken to her twice, though apparently it had rarely spoken before. She had made very little of the words it had said. They made no more sense to her thinking than its faded shape made to her eyes.
She paused on the path between two lamps. It had been here, just here that it had shown itself. She turned to look, and for a moment it seemed that memory had usurped her vision. In the darkness behind the lamp she could see a shadowy figure, dark against the darkness. She held her breath involuntarily, waiting.
Shadow stepped out of the shadow.
“Danger,” it said.
Callista looked around her, but there was nobody else about. For a moment she was alone with the apparition.
“Who is in danger? From what?”
The shape pointed to the ground.
“Dig,” it said.
“Dig?”
Shadow apparently felt that the one word was enough and continued to point to the ground. From past experience Callista knew that it would only be a moment before others arrived and she knew, she knew that Shadow wanted this done before they came. She moved to the spot the arm indicated and scrabbled at the packed earth with her hands. How deep would she have to dig? It couldn’t be far.
Her fingers touched something. It was smooth and cold, and in a moment she had pulled it from the ground. It glinted for a moment in her hand like a silver coin, but it was bigger, about the size of a wine glass’s mouth.
“Protection,” shadow said, and a moment later she was alone and the darkness was just darkness. She had barely time to slip the thing into her pocket before the air around her was pulled about by the beating of wings and Kirrith landed no more than twenty paces away.
“It has gone,” the dragon said.
Pascha appeared a moment later. She looked at the darkness and at Callista. “What did it want this time?”
She was reluctant to tell them. Shadow had wanted this to be a thing between just the two of them, and she did not doubt that it had its reasons. But the dragon would know if she lied.
“It said there was danger,” she told them.
“What kind of danger?”
“It didn’t say. Just danger.”
“I sense nothing,” Pascha said.
“Nor I,” the dragon concurred. “But it has visited three times. It seems drawn to you, Callista.”
She frowned into the darkness. “I know no reason why it should be so. It speaks gibberish. It does nothing.”
Kirrith bent his neck and looked at her more closely, as if he could see a reason, and for all she knew he might. For all her talking with Bane and Kirrith she knew very little about them.
“Shadow has seen things that may come,” he said. “It can only be that it believes she will play a part, a greater part than you or I, and perhaps it may be so. You said that the light of Pelion’s crown was very bright.”
“I have not seen it brighter, but you know that it is only…”
“I know, and yet Shadow comes again and again.”
“And twice to this very spot. We shall have to examine it in daylight.”
They were talking as though she wasn’t there, but Callista didn’t mind. She took her chance to scuff the area where she had been digging with a foot, and then stood on it.
“Sithmaree is expecting me,” she said.
Pascha turned to her again. “You’re all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Callista replied.
“Very well, go to Sithmaree, and I will see you in the morning.”
Callista left them and hurried along the paths back to Sithmaree’s house. In truth she felt unharmed and unafraid. If anything Shadow was acting in her interests, providing her with protection from danger, or that was how she interpreted his cryptic utterances. She slipped her hand into her pocket and felt the thing she had retrieved from the ground. She had no idea what it was or how long it had remained hidden here, but she longed to examine it in more detail.
She was impatient through the whole of the evening meal, and even Sithmaree noticed. The Snake was satisfied with her tale of a third encounter with Shadow, and didn’t pursue the matter, and so Callista was allowed to retire to the privacy of her own room fairly soon after they had eaten.
Once secure behind her door she took a lamp, put it by the bed and pulled out the disc she had retrieved from the earth. It filled the palm of her hand, and she had hardly been aware of it before, but the thing was heavy. It was old, too, and made of the metal called blood silver. She could see the glittering in the metal. Someone had once told her that it contained thousands of tiny diamonds, but she was sure that was just a story.
There was writing on it, but nothing she had the wit to read. There was a clasp at the top. The object was almost a coin or a medallion, but the clasp made it something to wear. It was like a tiny carpenter’s vice clamped around a part of the coin’s rim with an eye through which a cord or thong was obviously intended to be threaded.
Callista borrowed a lace from one of the more outrageous boots that Sithmaree had gifted her and passed it through the eye. She tied it with a simple knot and hung the thing around her neck. The lace was long enough that the medal could not be seen unless she wore something uncharacteristically immodest.
Protection. She did not doubt that it was intended to protect her from something, or that Sha
dow was trying to help her. She could not guess why, or what the danger might be, but she trusted that it was real.
She was genuinely puzzled as to why she had concealed all this from Pascha and Kirrith. Neither of them seemed a danger, and neither of them had been anything but kind to her in their own way, but there was something about the medallion and Shadow that didn’t want to be seen by anyone else.
She put the lamp out and slept with the talisman around her neck.
56 The Duke of Bas Erinor
They arrived in Bas Erinor castle about three hours after Narak and the king had been stopped at the gates. They did not come, as Cain had always done, via the divine stair, but instead were whisked into the heart of the castle by Pascha’s magic. The only thing that compared was the magical gate they had found beneath the Dragon’s Back just north of Fal Verdan a hundred years ago.
It was not a comfortable arrival. They appeared in a courtyard close to the south side of the castle and almost at once were approached by nervous guards with drawn weapons.
Caster showed great restraint, Cain thought. He didn’t draw his own blades, but stood calmly by while Cain spoke to them. Cain was the familiar face, after all.
“Who is in command here?” Cain demanded.
“Lord Drassel, my lord,” one of them replied.
“Take us to him.”
There was a moment of hesitation. Cain could see that the guards knew this to be a pivotal moment, but there was nothing that they could do. They could refuse, but to refuse Col Boran would be almost unthinkable, and in the end it would achieve nothing. He could find Drassel himself.
“Follow me, my lord.”
The guards led them to the gate. Cain was surprised to find it still open, and even more surprised to find Narak and King Degoran standing just beyond it.
“She took her time,” Narak said. He offered Cain his hand and Cain took it. “You’ll have some work to do here,” he said. “Alwain has been over feeding his guards and starving his people. But I see you brought help.”
Narak stepped past Cain and embraced Caster. “It is good to see you out and about, old friend,” he said.
“I hope I can do what needs to be done,” Caster replied. “You will be elsewhere?”
“I must return to Golt with the king.” He turned and pointed to a nervous looking man seated on a horse some twenty paces beyond the gate. “This is Lord Dunsandel, who says his loyalty is to the Duke of Bas Erinor and commands the Seventh Friend.”
“And Lord Drassel?” Cain asked.
Drassel had moved himself well to one side, and had become so quiet and still that he had almost melted into the stonework.
“This one,” Narak said, pointing.
Cain recognised Drassel for what he was – an administrator. He was a paper man, and none the worse for that, but he was unaccustomed to dealing with gods and Farheim, and terrified.
“Lord Drassel,” he said. “Is the conference room behind the ducal reception area still in use?”
The man nodded. “It is, my lord.”
“Then we shall meet there, shall we say in half an hour?” He turned to Dunsandel. “You, too, Lord Dunsandel. Half an hour.” He turned back to Narak. “I have much to do, Deus, so if I may take my leave?”
Narak nodded. “Aye and we should be on our way.”
The king approached Cain. He seemed a little sheepish. “I apologise for the abrupt nature of this appointment, Lord Arbak, but surprise was necessary.”
“I understand,” Cain said.
“Do what you can for my people.”
Cain watched Narak and the king go back to their horses, mount and ride away. It was a wonder to him, more than a surprise, that King Degoran had entrusted his kingdom into Cain’s hands when he barely knew the man. They had exchanged a few words in Golt, and of course he had known the man’s grandfather briefly, but it was all on reputation, on stories passed down from the last Great War. To these people he was little more than a fictional character, a hero unsullied by personal knowledge of who or what he really might be. He turned to Sheyani.
“I’m not sure where to start,” he said.
She smiled. “Paper,” she said. “It always starts with paper.”
They walked together back into the castle, still strangers here, still watched by the guards, with Drassel trailing along behind them and Caster watching their rear like a caravan guard, alert for any danger.
“Lord Drassel, where might we find the secretary?”
Drassel looked puzzled for a moment, but quickly recovered himself. “I’ll fetch him,” he said. He seemed relieved, even happy, to have something to do. Cain watched him hurry away with a slight sense of unease. He would rather have kept the man close.
They walked up into the castle, seeking the guest quarters. Cain and Sheyani both knew their way around having stayed here on a dozen occasions in the past fifty years. Caster followed. They dropped their luggage, what there was of it, in a guest room and then made their way down to the conference chamber.
It was a small room, given the size of the castle – just ten chairs set about a heavy wooden table. It was placed just off the large reception area that the Dukes of Bas Erinor had used for centuries to receive important visitors, a substantial, well furnished room with soft chairs, wine, an assortment of foods placed there fresh every day.
The smaller room was not nearly so plush. The chairs were hard, the floor was cold stone and the windows looked out over the low city towards the sea. The only sign of luxury were the paper weights, made of solid silver. Cain remembered them, surely exactly the same pieces, being used by Duke Quinnial a century ago to hold down maps of the kingdoms while they discussed the war, but Quinnial had not been the duke on that day. His brother Aidon had owned the title. He picked one up and found it heavy, smooth, cool to the touch and oddly reassuring, as though it was welcoming him back.
Dunsandel joined them. He still looked nervous, but took a seat and did not speak.
“Did you see Drassel?” Cain asked.
Dunsandel shook his head. “No, but there are guards in the receiving room, so I expect he’ll be here in a minute.”
“How many guards?” Caster asked.
“Four or five.”
Caster looked out of the window. “He should be here by now. The time has passed.”
Cain walked to the door. If there were guards in the reception chamber he could ask them where Drassel was, what he was doing, and when they might expect him. Perhaps he had been right to think it unwise to let the man wander off on his own.
He pulled the door open.
He saw everything, but before he could grasp what it meant he was picked up and thrown backwards across the room, striking the table and knocking two of the chairs away. He heard Caster shouting and looked down at his chest to see three arrows protruding from his jacket.
Sheyani was there in a moment, ripping the barbs from his flesh. He barely had time for the pain of being shot to register before it was gone and he was lying on the floor, whole once more.
The chamber outside the door had been full of men, full of bows and drawn blades. Caster had drawn both blades and was standing close to the door with the intent, Cain guessed, of going through it.
“Stay,” Cain called. “There are over a hundred men out there.”
“I can kill a hundred men,” Caster said.
“Not like that,” Cain struggled to his feet. “You’ve no armour so you’ll have fifty arrows in you before you take five steps, and that’ll take you down long enough for them to take your head.”
It was a trap. Drassel had trapped them. He had to admit it was clever. Drassel knew what they were and had fashioned his snare accordingly.
“What then?” Caster demanded.
“Wait,” Cain said. “Think.”
Caster’s blades whirled, a sign of frustration, and went back into their sheaths.
“There is only one way in or out,” Sheyani observed.
Ca
in went to the window and looked out. It wasn’t comforting. There was a sheer drop below them. It might be climbable, but if Drassel had the sense to put bowmen in some of the overlooking windows it would be suicidal, perhaps. He didn’t know if a Farheim could survive a hundred foot fall onto rocks, but he didn’t like the odds. Apart from that the only way out was through the door into a waiting army.
“Sheyani, do you have your pipes with you?” he asked.
She brought the instrument out from under her coat. Polished wood and grass shone with the care lavished on them. Cain smiled.
“Well, then, things aren’t so bad after all.”
57 The Great Choosing
It had taken weeks to arrange. The uncertainty, the fear that had addled the city while the dukes fought over it made people reluctant to come out onto the streets, to heed Francis’s call, but now it was beginning to happen, just as he and Johan had dreamed it might. In truth he had never expected to see it.
Now they were beginning to believe. The taverns had come to life, the streets were filling with people who argued, discussed, questioned – it was exciting. Francis kept himself apart from it. Even though he was the elected leader of Dock Ward he knew that his place had to be behind the scenes. He would support and protect the changes, make sure that the will of Afael’s people was the law.
It meant that he had to stand down.
The city regiments had caught the mood, and were welcomed by the people. It was a happy time. Soldiers and citizens shared the city as allies who had shared a victory.
Francis pulled strings. Someone had to organise the choosing of representatives, and this was the task he set himself. The secret wards, as they had existed for the past year, were inadequate. They represented a tiny fraction of the people.
“Why?” Keron asked as they sat in a tavern bar. “Why let our enemies have a say?”