To Ride Hell's Chasm

by Janny Wurts

  The wounded retainer drew a laboured breath. ‘Foremost. Trust Mykkael. Follow Jussoud’s directions.’

  ‘He has asked a retreat to Dedorth’s tower,’ the nomad supplied in saving intervention.

  ‘All of us go. Now.’ Taskin’s pale forehead glittered with sweat as he reached the end of his strength. ‘Don’t trust Devall. Keep Kailen away. Bind Shaillon’s mouth, if you have to.’

  ‘Not necessary!’ snapped the Duchess of Phail. As the seneschal surged forward to vent his stunned outrage, she banged her cane in his path at an angle that threatened to rap shins. ‘I shall see that Lord Shaillon keeps himself in hand.’

  The Fane Street physician froze in the act of buffing his spectacles. ‘This talk of moving is utter madness! If the effort doesn’t kill your man with the wound, the sorcerer who’s marked this kingdom for conquest has planted his minion among you. That creature could seize every one of those confused men-at-arms, twist their minds, and use them to attack us. If we stir outside bearing an unconscious king, we risk being ripped up like crow bait!’

  Captain Bennent stood erect, his competence restored by the gift of subordinate command. ‘Stay here, we’ll go down like trapped rats in a barrel. The stairs are in flames. So are the floor beams that shore up the corridor. That leaves us a stand-down that we can’t escape. We’re going to be vulnerable the moment the watch sergeant recalls his recruit drill with the scaling ladders.’

  ‘That leaves us the sewers,’ said Vensic, his manic face underlit by the glow of the cedar he was methodically reducing to ashes. ‘That stairwell is stone. If we can mount a side foray to the laundry, a few wash tubs might serve us as boats.’

  ‘Better,’ gritted Taskin, his eyelids clamped shut. ‘The king’s private wine cellar. Below us. Get casks. Use bed slats or tear up the floor planks.’

  ‘Make a raft?’ Jussoud’s snarled frown unravelled at last. ‘He’s right. We can float our two invalids.’ An easy, soft ride for the one gravely wounded, with six able-bodied left free to wield weapons, or assist the aged duchess and the seneschal. ‘We can slip out through the cut where the spill meets the moat.’

  Bennent’s face cleared. ‘That might save us.’ Two ancient sallygates pierced the wall, there. He could pull rank, appropriate the sentry, and send him with orders to the acting watch officer posted at the Highgate. ‘We’ll commandeer an armed task squad to help us reach Dedorth’s tower, and stock it with food and supplies.’

  Jussoud sucked a deep breath, glanced towards Vensic, then plunged straight away into planning. ‘Defences, first. We’re going to need ashes, lots of them. Water. Salt. Torches can be made from the bed linens. Just make sure they’re well laced with cedar.’

  ‘On it,’ said Vensic, grim as stamped bronze as he tipped another load of glowing embers into the king’s porcelain chamber pot. Skirts rustled, beside him. He glanced up to discover the Duchess of Phail standing over him, arms laden with bundles of cedar, and her slender back straight as a post.

  ‘Show me what’s needed, young fellow,’ she said.

  Vensic’s smudged features brightened with provocative delight. ‘Can you bear it? Someone’s got to tear up the linens for rags, and soak them in the melted wax of your mightily expensive white candles. Do you think your seneschal could unbend and help? Birch kindling is nice, but will burn much too fast. I’m afraid it’s no use. We might have to unroll a shelf load of book scrolls for torch grips.’

  Lady Phail choked, then rebounded with a snort of laughter. ‘Captain Mysh kael should be proud. If the crown of Sessalie survives this crisis intact, remind me to commend his barbaric ingenuity. He’s served us with a first-rate field officer.’

  ‘Ah, Duchess,’ Vensic murmured, ‘you have sorely misapprised him. If my captain had to choose to spoil a book to save a king, the necessity would as likely make him weep.’

  That struck tone of grief, couched in country-bred accents, caught the elegant duchess off guard. She regarded the farmboy turned swordsman who sat with head bent to his work, surprised to impulsive, mad hope. ‘You truly believe that your desert-bred is hardy enough to prevail?’

  Vensic’s hands paused. His grave gaze encompassed the activity as Sessalie’s frail king was bundled up and transferred to a litter. ‘Mykkael must, don’t you think? Without Princess Anja, alive and free, what resource will you have left in hand to steer the kingdom through Isendon’s succession?’

  A sparkle of gems scored the dark as the duchess laced her prim fingers over the bundles of cedar. ‘You don’t set much store by Prince Kailen, do you?’

  ‘I was born on a pig farm.’ Vensic set his jaw, well braced to resist. ‘Ask me anything you want about a hog farrow.’

  Yet the old lady’s imperious patience could have stung the silence out of a corpse.

  Vensic hissed a vexed sigh through his teeth. ‘Duchess, I don’t know his Highness’s character as you do.’ The garrison sergeant accepted her disconsolate offering of greens, his good-natured face sorely troubled. ‘But Mykkael was blunt, the one time he mentioned the crown prince. Since the royal sister fled, he said the tactical question still rankled. Why did Prince Kailen stay?’

  The wind swept with cruel force over the barren heights above the timberline. Stopped in a stony cleft to ease the winded horses, Mykkael took grim stock of his salvaged assets. The bow slung alongside his sword was still with him, likewise the quiver attached to his belt. The tightly packed arrows had not jostled out. He still had the grain bag strung over his arm, and Benj’s game dog, who lay chewing the bruised pad of a forepaw. The horses had kept all their shoes, which turn of luck bespoke divine blessing, considering how recklessly he had run them.

  Sessalie’s princess had come through, unharmed. She presently crouched, capturing a trickle run down off the ice packs, and sipping from her cupped hands. The melt water would set an ache to bone. Despite this, her Grace raised no murmur of complaint. Said nothing at all, though she surely believed the loss of the pack with the food posed a disastrous setback.

  Mykkael weighed the greater threat, while the wind hissed down, and the black sky glittered with starlight. Though at present both of his wardings had calmed, the sorcerer had tested their measure. The demon that bound the fell creature would know where to aim his next search. This moment of snatched respite could never last. Pursuit would resume, a relentless joined contest that would kill a fugitive far faster than any depletion caused by starvation. Mykkael still carried flint and steel with the kit in his scrip. If a safe refuge could be secured in these heights, he could forage and trap to gain sustenance.

  The horses’ needs were less easily satisfied. No meadows grew amid the high peaks. The mixed grain he had left was a pittance, once the ration was divided six ways. To let these magnificent animals starve was too dismal a sacrifice to contemplate. Nor could Mykkael slaughter them for their meat. The brave heart they had shown in their dash up the slope had displayed their breathtaking generosity. These animals freely gave of themselves with a trust that overruled natural instinct. Because their human riders had asked, they had galloped, unstinting, at breakneck speed, over rocks where a misplaced step could have shattered their slender legs.

  Anja rinsed her flushed face. Still without speaking, she sat on a rock, and blotted her dripping fingers. Tucked in her dark cloak, her pale hair wisped like floss in the wind, she measured Mykkael’s tensioned stance.

  When the quiet extended, and he volunteered nothing, she broke her reserve and asked outright, ‘How long do you think we have?’

  Mykkael weighed her resilience, and told her the truth. ‘I can’t say for certain, not knowing which sorcerer covets Sessalie, or what style of conjury he spins to align his attacks. Expect this much. He will strike fast, now his plot is unmasked. You have become a detail he must eliminate, your Grace. No sorcerer I’ve seen ever leaves a blood claim that could rally an outside invasion. Your enemy must make certain no foothold remains to upset his chosen conquest.’

  Tha
t condensed explanation withheld the bare worst: that Kailen was already bound as a full-fledged minion. If Sessalie fell, and his sister remained living, her blood ties of kinship would see her hunted down by the minions of other demons who stood as her first enemy’s rivals. Outside Sessalie, she became the contested weak link, a tool through which the invading sorcerer could be counterattacked and made vulnerable.

  Unaware of the hideous gravity of her peril, Anja clawed fallen hair from her eyes, jerked her chin in annoyance, then tugged the frayed tie from her braid. ‘We’ll have to escape. Do you have a plan?’ Head tipped aslant, she shook out her long hair, finger-combed the strayed wisps, then began to rebind its luxurious length. That she handled the task without help from a maid showed the quality of her self-reliance.

  Encouraged to encounter such cool practicality, Mykkael scrambled down from his vantage. ‘Your first assessment was sound thinking, Princess. Sessalie requires the protection of an accomplished vizier, or a shaman. We’ll have to seek elsewhere to petition for help.’ He knelt by the cleft, his game leg extended, and assumed her place at the small stream. ‘The unpleasant difficulties have to be faced. The valley’s no option. Even if we slipped past the armed company that’s bound to ride in pursuit, we cannot try the road, or win through the bottleneck pass to reach the eastern lowlands. If we try, we’ll run into armed cordons, at strength. I can’t fight such numbers. No foray by stealth can see us across the cataracts at Stone Bridge.’

  ‘But that’s nonsense!’ Anja whipped off the end of her plait, and securely knotted the tassel. ‘Sessalie’s guardsmen should answer to me.’

  ‘Should,’ Mykkael said, ‘does not mean they will.’ He plunged his slashed knuckles under the chill water, and sucked a fast breath at the sting. While the cold slowly numbed his outraged flesh, he outlined the pernicious difficulties. ‘This sorcerer’s intrigues have swayed your high council. The lure of the sea trade is driving the politics. Suppose, at Stone Bridge, you met Devall’s marshal? Or troops that are Sessalie’s, but under the command of your brother, invested as lawful regent?’

  ‘Save us!’ gasped Anja. Her terror resurged. ‘If Sire’s incoherent, the council’s sealed writ could overrule even Taskin.’

  Mykkael was blunt. ‘That’s already happened.’ How to tell her? The crown’s first commander fell to my sword, in defence of my charge to protect you? He strangled that thought, along with the resurgent ache of his grief. What use, to lament his false arraignment and defamed character, if Princess Anja did not survive? He could die beside her. His failure would make him Taskin’s murderer in more than an empty name. The straits that entangled him framed the harsh quandary: how could any lamed, disowned swordsman protect a northern-born princess if she was shown cause to doubt his integrity?

  His rough curse in dialect did nothing to ease the ragged edge from his nerves. Nor did Anja’s awareness of Sessalie’s geography offer the kindness of ambiguity. Since crossing Stone Bridge was not going to be possible, only two passable routes remained to secure their flight over Sessalie’s border: to scale the Great Divide by way of Scatton’s Pass, which demanded a skilled climber’s strength, perfect weather, and weeks spent at high altitude to enable the body to withstand the thin air. Or by trying the long and arduous loop through the southern ranges, which began with the harrowing perils of traversing a moving ice fall, risking the séracs and unstable fissures of the glacier at Howduin Gulch, and ended months later at Fingarra, a land whose location was still too far north to possess the requisite knowledge to repel an invasion by sorcery.

  Anja sounded diminished as the harsh choices sank in. ‘Do you think we could try to hide in the hills, then slip through when the fervour dies down?’

  ‘Against shape-changers?’ Mykkael splashed his face, then perched on a boulder and kneaded the knots in his calf. ‘Time’s a critical problem. Your sire can’t die. He’ll just be replaced by an heir who’s suborned as a minion. That would leave you, your Grace, as the sole voice denouncing your brother’s coronation. How long do you think a conquering sorcerer will suffer you to live in informed independence?’

  The princess saw clearly; had already fled before the self-evident reason. If she tried to expose the truth to the court, she would face a creature who was not Crown Prince Kailen. Her false brother’s ally would be the shape-changed thing who wore the semblance of Devall’s heir apparent. Her royal suitor would stay tenderly insistent upon a state wedding. The will of the merchants would back him. For the greater weal of Sessalie, the marriage would prevail. The princess would find herself helplessly captive, or else hideously enslaved, with her own chancellors ruling against her.

  ‘Howduin Gulch,’ Anja stated, her resolute dismay all but lost in the gusting wind. ‘By the glory of the trinity, I never imagined the hour I might actually freeze to death.’

  ‘Your Grace, I won’t let such a harsh fate befall you.’ But the dread all but threatened to stop Mykkael’s heart, that the oath of protection sworn to her sire might demand its own savage reckoning. Before the end, he might be forced to kill her cherished horses for their skins to keep her sheltered and living.

  At that moment, Dedorth’s glass lay trained on the ranges, focused on the progress of the scrub fire that crowned the flank of the hidden ravine. ‘There,’ murmured the High Prince of Devall amid the pitch dark of the cupola. Replete with satisfaction, he qualified using the voiceless communion exchanged between entities whose spirits shared obligation to the same demon. ‘That’s the place where Gorgenvain’s long curse was thwarted from taking our prey.’ Aloud, he added, ‘The search parties you plan to send out tomorrow should begin their sweep on that slope.’

  Jewelled clothes stirred in the gloom as Devall’s heir apparent straightened up to pass the glass to Sessalie’s crown prince.

  Kailen stepped over the sprawled corpse at his feet, scuffed a smear of spilled blood from his shoe, then bent in turn and peered through the instrument that Dedorth had been murdered for. ‘Katmin Cut. That’s rough country, up there. A desperate stretch of rock, scarred with slides.’ Daily, the creature who wore the crown prince’s flesh became more accustomed to human form. Soon he would not require the pretence of strong drink to mask his imperfect balance. He also grew more adept with the silent speech. ‘Anja will have nowhere to go. The only route over the Great Divide kills even the hardiest travellers. She’s unused to privation. An experienced search party ought to be able to overtake her and strike down her protector without undue trouble.’

  The high prince hissed, no human sound. ‘Fool!’ He kicked the killed body in a fit of balked rage. ‘This garrison captain you so lightly dismiss—Gorgenvain has fully tasted his scent. The report came back ugly. He’s desert-bred stock from a powerful lineage, and he carries a terrible history.’

  ‘As a vagabond mercenary?’ Kailen abandoned the glass. ‘He’s one man, alone, with a half-crippled leg. A guard with a steady crossbow can drop him.’

  ‘Is this so?’ The high prince blinked eyes that flared sulphur yellow in the dark. ‘I won’t applaud till you drag in his carcass. This man, as you say, caused the Sushagos’ demise. He helped destroy Quidjen. His command was the mercenary company hired by Prince Al-Syn and Perincar, who nearly defeated Rathtet. Gorgenvain said that this desert-bred all but delivered the victory into their grasp. The prince and his vizier would have prevailed had the royal family swallowed their vanity and heeded his plan for defence.’

  Kailen shrugged. ‘Why belabour close calls? Defeat sealed the conquest. The Efandi capitol fell to demonic forces.’

  ‘Yes. But the capture nearly expended Rathtet’s supply of bound sorcerers. Most of his minions were destroyed as well. The original lineage that anchored the creche escaped final consumption, just barely. Do you think Rathtet himself would dare rest if he realized this “vagabond” captain of yours still survived?’ The high prince rubbed his hands in agitation. ‘Others would hunt in revenge, if they knew. Mykkael’s close forebears made implaca
ble enemies. The family your fighting cock captain descends from bred the shamans that Tocoquadi wasted three bonded sorcerers to eradicate. Until tonight, that bloodline was thought to be struck from the face of the world.’

  ‘Then we claim last glory.’ Kailen’s feral smile gleamed through the dark. He savoured the damp air, thick with fresh blood smell, and the sickly sweet odour of marzipan from the spilled plate of cakes the cook had sent up to tempt the scholar’s finicky appetite. ‘Gorgenvain will score the honour of closure, and Tocoquadi will owe him a debt. Mykkael’s spirit will languish in perpetual torment. Or better, Gorgenvain could make use of the seed of his ancestry. Such get could found a creche of new sorcerers. Why not bind the bothersome creature as minion? An exquisite masterpiece of human anguish, to hold Anja captive and make her bear demonic children.’

  ‘The princess, I reserve for myself!’ hissed the high prince in livid offence. ‘I have anchored Gorgenvain’s spell line through Devall. It’s now up to you to extend his reach and his feeding ground, and secure his desire to claim Sessalie.’

  ‘We should go down at once. Or else take to the rooftop and devour your kill at our leisure.’ The demonic spirit who played Crown Prince Kailen paced to the casement. He leaned into the mist, impatient to be gone, until his keen senses picked up movement and voices crossing the courtyard below. ‘Someone comes.’

  The Fane Street physician knelt on the damp chill of the cobbles, an unlit torch braced between his knees. He answered Bennent’s question without looking up from his effort with flint and striker. ‘Well, the texts that exist are remarkably contradictory, not to mention scant unto rarity.’ His second spark caught. He cupped his soft hands to the wavering flame, still expounding on his unpleasant subject. ‘Kingdoms with sanctuaries have laws or decrees that consign proscribed texts to the fire. Tribal cultures with shamans have functional knowledge, but their initiates won’t set that lore into writing.’