“Bring me a small wad—save the rest, we’ll need it.”
Jair rolled a coin-sized wad of the gum between thumb and forefinger and brought it to Mihei, who placed it under his tongue. “That should help. When I trained with the mages, there were all-night workings where we didn’t dare fall asleep. The muttar gum will keep me wide awake, although I’ll pay for it tomorrow.”
“Anything else we can do?” Emil asked.
Mihei nodded. “The dimonns will try to reach my mind. They’ll send visions and nightmares. If I begin to lose my focus, you have to bring me back. All our lives depend on it.”
“How should we wake you?’
Mihei shrugged. “Douse me with water. Pinch my arms. If you have to, slap me across the face. Better a few bruises than to be sucked dry by the dimonns.”
Grimly, Jair and Emil took seats next to Mihei. Jair fingered his amulets, but his connection to Talwyn was gone. Just on the other side of the coruscating light, the dimonns stretched their shadows over the domed warding, mouths full of dark teeth snapping against the barrier. Talons scratched against the ground and cries like tortured birds of prey broke the silence of the night.
A motion caught Jair’s eye. Something solid moved through the tall grass, and to his horror, the face of a young girl, no more than six or seven seasons old, pale and wide-eyed, rose above the mist. The image wavered, and as Jair ran his fingers over the amulets at his throat, the girl seemed to flicker and shift.
Emil started toward her, and Jair blocked his way. “She’s not real.”
Emil struggled against Jair, his eyes on the child. “They’ll kill her.”
“She’s not really here.”
“Let me go!” Emil broke away from Jair and stepped through the warding. Immediately, the shadows massed and the image of the girl winked out. Emil’s scream echoed in the night. With a curse, Jair dove after him, making sure to keep one foot within the warding as Mihei began to chant loudly. Jair caught the back of Emil’s great cloak and pulled with all his might. Claws tore at him, slicing into his forearm and shoulder. He twisted out of the way of snapping jaws and he pulled again. This time, he succeeded, landing hard on his back as Emil tumbled through the warding.
Emil’s skin was pale, as if in the few seconds beyond the warding he’d been nearly drained of blood. Long, deep gashes had sliced through his vambraces, down his right arm. Razor-sharp teeth left their imprint on his left thigh. Emil was trembling and jerking, groaning in pain.
Jair glanced up at Mihei, but the land mage’s full concentration was fixed on the battle beyond the warding. The ghostly child was gone. Jair had seen enough of battle to have a rudimentary idea of how to lessen Emil’s pain, and he rifled through Mihei’s bag until he found the flask of vass, mixing a few fingers’ depth of vass in his tankard with cohash and poppy. Jair pinned Emil with the weight of his body and forced his jaws apart until he could drip the mixture between Emil’s teeth. Emil’s eyes were dilated with pain, and his blood stained the dry grass red. Little by little, Emil’s breathing slowed and the thrashing ceased. Jair slid his fingers along Emil’s wrist.
“He’s got a pulse, thank the Lady.”
“Cleanse the wounds,” Mihei said in a distracted tone. “Use the vass. It’ll sting but it’s the best we have. Dimonns don’t carry plague like the ashtenerath, but their wounds fester.”
Jair did as Mihei said, gritting his teeth as he drizzled Emil’s wounds with alcohol, and Emil flinched, gasping with the pain. Jair tore strips from Emil’s ruined shirt to make bandages and bound up the wounds as best he could. When he had done all he could for Emil, Jair applied the vass to his own torn arm and shoulder, then returned to Mihei’s side.
Outside the warding, the dimonns struck with increased fury.
“They’ve tasted blood,” Mihei murmured. “They’re hungry.”
“Wonderful,” Jair said drily. “Now what?”
“Just keep me awake. It’s taking a lot out of me to keep the wardings up. You could sing.”
Jair looked sideways at him. “I can’t sing, even for Talwyn. You know that.”
Mihei managed a tired half smile. “Pain is an effective way to stay awake. It’s that or step on my foot. ”
In reply, Jair trod on Mihei’s toes. “Ouch!”
“Awake now?”
“Yes, thanks. You can save the other foot for later.”
As the candlemarks wore on, Jair paced the warded circle. For a time, he drummed on the empty water bucket with the pestle, playing a rhythm that kept both of them awake. When Mihei began to waver, Jair brought him more of the muttar gum and fanned his face. But as the stars overhead reached their zenith, Mihei was tiring. The golden glow of the warding dimmed, and the dimonns, sensing victory, massed against the shielding.
Alarmed, Jair started to his feet, one hand on his stelian and one hand touching his amulet in a gesture of protection. Beyond the warded circle, the phosphorescent glow had gone dark. Mihei’s eyes were bleary and his lips were dry and cracked as he struggled to reinforce the magical barrier. And although Jair had treated his own wounds, the gashes where the dimonns had cut him burned. He was sweating, although the night was cool, and his heart was racing from more than mortal fear. Emil lay still and pale on the grass. Whatever poison was rapidly coursing through Jair’s blood, Emil had received a larger dose.
I’m going to die, Talwyn, Jair thought, fingering the metal charm. Forgive me.
The metal tingled under his touch and Talwyn’s image formed clear in his mind for the first time since the dimonn attack had begun. Hang on. Rescue… The voice faded, but hope was enough to shake off Jair’s fatigue. He ran to Mihei and shook him by the shoulders, rousing him as the glow of the warded dome dimmed nearly to darkness. The shrieks of the dimonns were louder now, and just beyond the thin golden glow, Jair could hear the snap of teeth.
“They’re coming for us,” Jair whispered, afraid that the dimonns might hear. “Try, Mihei. Try to hold the barrier until help comes.”
Mihei nodded. His eyes widened, and he slammed them shut, squeezing them tightly as his head jerked back and forth. Alarmed, Jair reached toward him.
“No. Visions. I see… our deaths. All dead.”
Acting on instinct, Jair gripped Mihei’s shoulder with his right hand and tightened the fingers of his left hand around the amulets that hung at his throat. He willed his breathing to slow, picturing a river of golden light flowing between his amulets and Mihei, warm and powerful energy to reinforce the mage’s failing magic. Mihei drew a long, shuddering breath and seemed to relax.
In the distance, Jair heard hoofbeats.
A crack like thunder split the night, and a wall of flame burst into light at the edges of Mihei’s wardings. A streak of light burned through the darkness, and the dimonns scattered, howling in anger as strong magic crackled through the cool night air. Mihei collapsed to his knees, and the last glow of his warding faded.
The fire flared, and in its light, Jair could see five shapes approaching. By their outlines, all had swords at hand. As they stepped closer, Jair could see that the five were Sworn, and leading the group was Talwyn, clad in leather armor, dressed for battle. As Talwyn and the others reached the stone circle, the ring of flames disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving only blackened grass behind.
“Open the circle,” Talwyn said, and Jair rushed to move stones out of the way to welcome the others into the warded space.
“How did you know?” Jair asked, as Talwyn knelt beside Emil.
“When I touched your dream, I sensed evil near you. Something was strong enough to keep me from reaching your dreams again to warn you. Janeth knew the route Emil and Mihei were going to take. We’d had to backtrack from where they left us because flooding had taken out the bridge on the river, so we weren’t as far away as Emil and Mihei would have expected. Even so, we had to ride hard to get here in time.”
Jair glanced at their sweat-soaked horses, then looked back to Emil. “
The dimonns tricked him. They showed us a child beyond the wardings. She looked like Emil’s daughter.”
Talwyn nodded. “That’s hard to resist, even if you know better.” Jair looked away, not at all certain he could have resisted the bait had it been Kenver’s image the dimonns had projected.
“Can you heal them?”
Talwyn checked over both Emil and Mihei carefully before she nodded. “Yes, but not here. I’d like to be somewhere less exposed.” She looked up at Jair and cast a worried glance at his wounds. “I’ll need to look at that arm, as well.”
“Gladly,” Jair replied. The warmth of the wound had grown to a low fever, and he didn’t want to imagine how Emil was feeling.
At Talwyn’s command, the Sworn warriors lifted Emil and Mihei and carried them to their horses, draping each man over his saddle and securing them in place. Jair waved off assistance and swung up to his saddle, favoring his damaged arm but able to ride. They rode in silence, on high alert, for a candlemark until they came to an inn.
“We stop here,” Talwyn said, and the others slowed beside her.
“Is it safe?” Jair asked warily.
Talwyn smiled and raised a hand. On the upper doorpost, a rune suddenly began to glow, fading again into invisibility. “One of our people marked this place. It’s safe.”
The inn was quiet, empty of the usual travelers. Jair had no doubt that plague had dampened business, and if the locals suspected that the road ahead held horrors, then it was no surprise that few ventured this way in the dark. The innkeeper’s eyes widened as he saw the company of Sworn enter, but he gestured them upstairs at the sight of the injured men, and he promised to send up food and ale. Jair took a deep breath to steady himself as he climbed the stairs. His fever had worsened during the ride, and his head had grown light. He stumbled near the top, and one of the warriors caught him by the shoulder. Talwyn glanced sharply toward him, but Jair shook his head.
“Emil’s worse, and Mihei’s completely spent. I’ll be all right.” As he spoke, his voice seemed distant, and the upstairs corridor of the inn tilted as he fell, and blackness took him.
introducing
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SHADOW AND FLAME
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THE LASCAR’S DAGGER
The Forsaken Lands: Book One
by Glenda Larke
Faith will not save him.
Saker appears to be a simple priest, but in truth he’s a spy for the head of his faith. Wounded in the line of duty by a Lascar sailor’s blade, Saker finds that the weapon seems to follow him home. Unable to discard it, nor the sense of responsibility it brings, Saker can only follow its lead.
The dagger puts Saker on a journey to distant shores, on a path that will reveal terrible secrets about the empire and about the people he serves, and destroy the life he knows. The Lascar’s dagger demands a price, and that price will be paid in blood.
1
THE TOUCH OF SPICE
Saker paused, nose twitching. Good Va above, the smell.
No, not smell: aroma. The intense, rich aroma of spices saturating his nasal passages and tickling the back of his throat. Gorgeously pervasive fragrances, conjuring up images of faraway lands. Perfumes powerful enough to scent his clothes and seep into the pores of his skin.
He recognised some of them. The sharp tang of cloves, the woody snippiness of cinnamon, the delicious intensity of nutmeg. Saker Rampion, witan priest of the Faith, was privileged enough to have inhaled such fragrances wafting up from manor kitchens, but never had he smelled spices as pungent as these. Never had he been so tantalised by scents redolent of a world he’d never visited.
Crouching on the beam under the slate shingles of the warehouse roof, he inhaled, enjoying the richness of an olfactory decadence. Any one of the bales beneath him could make him a rich man, for life.
Enough of the daydreaming, Saker. Witans are never wealthy…
His early-morning breaking and entering into merchant Uthen Kesleer’s main warehouse did have a purpose, but it wasn’t theft. He’d come not as a thief, but as a spy for his employer, the Pontifect of Va-Faith.
Several hours remained before the city of Ustgrind would waken to another summer’s day, but slanting sunbeams already filtered through the ill-fitting ventilation shutters to illuminate the interior. In one corner, ledgers were neatly aligned on shelving behind the counting clerks’ desks. The rest of the warehouse was stacked high with sacks and casks from the holds of the thousand-ton carrack Spice Dragon, recently docked with a cargo purchased halfway around the world. Narrow aisles separated the rows of goods. Seen from his perch on the beam, it was as confusing as a hedge maze.
He had already seen–or rather, smelled–enough to glean some of the information he’d been sent to obtain, but he wasn’t about to leave without proof.
Tying one end of his rope to the beam, he lowered the other end onto the burlap of the bales. He rappelled down the wall until his feet hit the top bale. Leaving the rope where it was, he crouched to examine the sacking beneath his feet.
He peeled off his leather gloves and tucked them into his belt, then used the tip of his dagger to tease apart the strands of burlap. The hole he made was just large enough to insert the tips of two fingers and pull out a sample. In the dim light he wasn’t sure what he had. It felt like wood and was shaped like a star, no larger than his thumbnail. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled. A tantalising smell similar to aniseed, but stronger and subtly mixed with a hint of… what? Fennel? A spice obviously, but not one he knew. He slipped several of the wooden stars into his pouch, smoothed over the hole in the sacking and moved on to another bale.
After a quarter of an hour he’d extracted samples of eight different spices and done a rough count of sacks, bales and casks. In the interests of secrecy, he’d resisted the temptation to break the seal around the bungs on the casks to see what they contained. His instructions had been explicit.
“Just for once, no one is to know what you are doing, Saker,” the Pontifect had said with weary sternness after giving him his instructions. “No adventuring, no brawling, no sword fights, no hair’s-breadth escapes. You’re supposed to gather intelligence, not be a one-man army.”
“Not so much as a bloody nose,” he’d replied cheerfully. “I swear it, your reverence. I find out if Lowmeer’s merchant traders have found the Spicerie and, if they have, what their intentions are, then I return with the information. No one will know the Pontifect’s witan spy was even in Ustgrind. Simple.”
“Somehow nothing is ever simple if you’re involved.” As this was said with a sigh that spoke of a long-suffering patience not far from being shattered, he’d had the wit to stay silent.
Now, however, he smiled wryly at the thought of Saker Rampion keeping out of trouble. He seemed to attract trouble, swinging towards it like a compass needle pointing north.
A moment later, right on cue, he knew he wasn’t alone in the warehouse.
He wasn’t sure what had alerted him. A faint inhalation of a breath? The almost inaudible scrape of a shoe against the rim of a cask? Something. While counting the cargo, he’d circled the whole warehouse, walked down every narrow alley between the stacks. I didn’t see or hear anybody. The hair on the back of his neck prickled.
He eased himself down into a crouch, holding his breath. No one shouted an alarm. The silence remained as intact as the aromas saturating the air, yet every instinct told him he was being stalked. It wasn’t a mouse or a warehouse cat. It wasn’t the creak of timber warming up as the sun rose. Someone was there, in the building, following him.
Va rot him, he’s good, whoever he is.
The warehouse doors were barred on the outside, and the street was patrolled by arquebus-toting guards of the Kesleer Trading Company. His only escape route was the way he’d come in, over the roofs.
Edging down a narrow canyon between stacked casks on one side and layers of bulging sacks on the other, he headed back to the rope. Each step he
took was measured, silent, slow. As he moved, he ran through possibilities. A thief? A spy for another trading company? A warehouse guard? The thought of someone skilled enough to stay hidden and quiet all this time sent a shiver tingling up his spine. His hand dropped to the hilt of the dagger at his belt. Confound his decision to leave his sword back in his rented room! He’d feared it would hamper his climb to the roof; now he feared its lack.
He’d almost reached the rope when a soft slithering sound gave him a sliver of warning. Too late, he threw himself sideways. A man dropped on him from the top of a stack of sacks, his momentum sufficient to send them both sprawling. His heart skidded sickly as he tried to roll away, but there was no escaping the grip on his shoulder. Facedown, his nose ground into the floor hard enough to start it bleeding, his dagger inaccessible under his hip, he was in trouble.
So much for his promises…
He relaxed momentarily, allowing his muscles to go soft. The hand jamming him down to the floor was powerful, yet the body on top of his felt surprisingly slight.
A woman? Surely not. His assailant had the muscles of an ox. A strong smell of salt, though. A sailor, perhaps. Yes, there was the confirmation–a whiff of tar from his clothes.
He arched his body up and over, reaching backwards with his free arm. Clutching a handful of hair, he wrenched hard. The fellow grunted and punched him on the side of his face. He let go of the hair and they separated, rolling away from each other and springing to their feet.
The young man facing him was at least a head shorter than he was, but the real surprise lay in his colouring. Black eyes stared at him out of a brown face, framed by black hair long enough to be tied at the neck. Not Lowmian, then. Pashali? A Pashali trader from the Va-forsaken Hemisphere? He was dark enough, but his clothes were all wrong. He was dressed in the typical garb of a tar straight off a Lowmian ship. In the dim light it was hard to guess his age, but Saker thought him a few years younger than himself. Nineteen? Twenty?
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