by Tim Stead
“Any time now,” Caster said, a hint of friendly mockery in his voice at her lack of motion.
She lunged. Her blade twisted, her wrist working it so that it turned around Caster’s, avoiding his first attempt at a parry. She was so fast that it was his only attempt, but when her blade arrived his body was not there. She had been close, though. There was no counter stroke.
“Very good,” he said. His eyes sparkled with delight. He attacked at once, and she parried, but found that his blade was as elusive as his body, and he touched her on the shoulder. She pulled back, raised her sword.
“How is it that I never touch you and you can hit me at will, Caster?”
“I have been practicing for a thousand years and more, Deus. Allow me a little vanity if I think skill matters more that speed and strength. You are better today, but you are still a child with the blade. Here, let me show you.”
He attacked again, and this time her parry rang against his steel, and again, almost as quick as she might have done, and more accurate by far. Again she managed the parry. A third time, and exactly the same, he lunged, she parried. She was beginning to feel pleased with herself when she saw him pause and wink. He lunged, and the tip of his blade thumped into her breastbone, her own sword cutting empty air. She cursed. He stepped back.
“Did you see?” he asked.
“No, I did not see. If I had seen I would have parried.”
Caster shook his head. “I trained you,” he said. “The first thrust was slow, and you parried to the right. The second was a little faster, but also to the right, and you parried again. The third, the same. The final thrust switched to the left, and you had been conditioned to move your blade right.”
“You tricked me!”
“Yes. But that is what fencing is. When you have great skill and speed you may be able to fence with the eye, as Narak can. That is what makes him unbeatable. He can see and respond to every change his opponents make. No mortal man is quick enough to do this. Believe me when I say that there are few men who could have avoided that first thrust of yours. It was well made, and fast.”
“So if fencing is in the mind, how can you be certain always to win, even skilled as you are?”
“I cannot. But losing one time in a thousand is not so bad, and if your reputation is great enough your opponent will expect to lose, and so he will. Narak benefits greatly from this, even if he does not need it.”
“Is that what makes a great warrior?”
Caster shook his head. “Fencing is not war. It is a sport. We play to best of three or best of five hits. A good fencer may get one touch on me, but never two before I win. War is a more cautious game, for one hit alone will end it, often as not.”
“And Narak?”
“He is a supreme fencer, but on the battlefield he is death itself, for he eschews all elegance in a quest for efficiency. He always finds the killing blow, and never wastes a stroke. His style uses Ohas, but it is not what I taught him. It has a terrible beauty all of its own.”
“You will make me melancholy with all this talk of killing, Caster.”
“Then I am melancholy at the thought, Deus,” Caster bowed, raised his sword. “Attack me again,” he said.
* * * *
As entertaining and informative as Caster was, she could not make their lesson last the day, and soon she was back in her room, but with something to look forward to tomorrow. She had worked up quite a hunger, and sent down to the kitchens for food and wine.
When it came she sat on the bed a read some of the papers that Narak had left for her. She saw little merit in them; not in the writing and not in the matter written of. But she read them anyway for want of anything better to do. She finished eating and sipped at a glass of wine, but the ancient writings began to bore her. They were less vivid than her private memories of Afael, and only served to remind her of the terrible events of those days.
Her eye fell upon her sword, sheathed and propped in a corner. She thought about blood silver and all the strange things that she had experienced when using her powers with the blade close to hand. She was afraid to try again because she had done something that was forbidden, and yet it called to her. It was like the first days when she was newly a god. Then it had delighted her to pick up heavy things, simply to run and feel her breath stolen by the speed of her passage, to exercise her powers. Now she had new powers, though she did not know them, and like a child in a new house she was eager to explore, even the shadowy places.
She picked up the sword and sat back down on the bed, pushing the papers aside. She drew the blade and looked at it. Mostly it was plain steel, but the edge and tip glittered with an unnatural brightness, as though stars had somehow been captured and painted upon them. Blood silver: the metal of death.
She laid the blade across her arms so that the glittering edge touched her skin, then she closed her eyes and dropped without effort into the Sirash. She flew, glided, moved without effort. A city would be good. She thought of Telas Alt, the great city of the kingdom of Telas, their traitorous enemy. She was there as soon as the thought was formed. She could feel the press of people, like a fire below her, a sort of deep warmth. Sparrows, too, were plentiful here. She could feel their bright candle minds flitting and flickering all about her.
She became the flock, a hundred birds swirling about the trees of the city. She looked and saw with two hundred eyes.
Pascha had seen Telas Alt as recently as a year ago, and this was not the same city. Then the streets had been thronged with men and women going about their business, parading their finery and wealth in the streets, the air alive with voices, scents, all of it dancing to the rhythm of prosperity.
Now the streets were mostly empty. She saw people hurrying from place to place, no time to stop and talk. All seemed eager to be off the streets and out of sight. She flew down through the city, one tree at a time, looking everywhere. Towards the river, close to the city gates she heard the sound of shouting and many feet.
Seth Yarra. About a hundred of them, and not cleansers, but the simple levy kind of soldiers. They were marching with good discipline, an officer walking before them and a sergeant calling out a rhythm from the front of the ranks. She watched them for a moment. They did not look so different from those she had fought at Fal Verdan, nor indeed from the soldiers of the Seventh Friend alongside whom she had stood.
Yet there was no doubt that their presence had soured the city. It was full of fear and suspicion.
Pascha flew up the streets again, sweeping the flock over walls, up alleys, through gates, until she came to the walls of the citadel itself. This was the home of King Terresh and his queen, Hestia. She saw that the gates were guarded by Seth Yarra, and not Telan men.
So it has begun, she thought.
The walls that might have stopped an army of ten thousand were no obstacle to sparrows, and she flew over the top, swirling around the central tower, studying the ground below. She saw a small gathering of people in a courtyard. There was colour there, and signs of order.
Pascha descended, her scattered being perched on the branches of ivy, on the sills of windows, and in the low bushes. She saw everything. She heard everything.
A woman of considerable beauty seemed to be at the centre of the gathering. She stood towards the edge of the courtyard where the wall was pierced by many arches, allowing her a clear view across many terraces to the city below. She stood and looked and did not speak. A man, more poorly clad and yet still clearly of noble blood stood a pace behind her. He was many years her senior, quite iron grey and roughed up by time.
“Will you not come inside, my queen?” the older man asked. “This cold air cannot be kind to your health.”
It was Hestia. Hestia the fair, she was called by some, Hestia of the crooked path by others. Pascha could see that even the queen was not untouched by age. Her dark hair bore a streak of grey above her right ear. There were lines about her eyes.
“If you wish it, father,” she said. He
r voice, too, was worn by time, but her back was straight, and when she walked she paced regally across the court and out of the chill air. None of them seemed to notice that a few sparrows flew down to the step and looked after them. There were seven of them altogether. Hestia and her father had four Telan guards, and there was another man that Pascha picked as a secretary or personal servant of some kind.
She followed them, keeping to the edges of corridors, perching her eyes high up above a man’s eye line. Sparrows had almost perfect camouflage against the grey stone, and it was only when they moved that a man might see them.
Hestia went to her private chambers.
Pascha did not enter, but instead brought more eyes around the walls of the keep and found the windows through which she could see what happened within. A sparrow perched on the sill of each of three windows that let light into the rooms.
Hestia’s father talked with her, but did not receive many words in reply. Pascha could not hear what passed between them, but it was clear that the old man was trying to persuade her to some course of action that she found unacceptable. She abandoned the sparrows are tried her luck with the servant. It was what she was here for, after all, to test her powers.
She was surprised that it was so easy. She dropped behind his eyes and at once she could hear and see everything. The servant stood by the door, next to a table. On the table there stood a flask of wine and several glasses of exquisite design. They were long stemmed, and the stem was somehow shaped as a grape vine with bunches of fruit, and the leaves folded around to form the bowl in which the wine would be poured. The glass of the leaves had a faint green tint.
The father, the duke of Eran, if memory served, had his back to her, and she had a clear view of Hestia’s face.
“…I will not abandon Terresh,” she was saying. “You know that he is with them, and if I flee he will be in greater danger than ever. Any escape must be for the both of us, or neither.”
“You do not know if he is still alive, my queen. You have not had word for ten days.”
Hestia closed her eyes for a moment. “He still lives,” she said. “I must believe that. How could it be that they have no use for a king?”
Pascha felt a bolt of sympathy pierce her. For a moment Terresh was Alaran and Hestia was Pascha. It was Afael again, a shadow of what had passed four hundred years ago. She brushed pity aside. The west had fallen to Seth Yarra because of this woman. She had let Seth Yarra in, and an attempt had been made to kill Pascha herself.
“How long will you wait?” the old man demanded. “They will come for you, too, my queen, and you have not the power to stop them.”
“I cannot say,” she replied. “What limit should I put on loyalty, on love itself? What would I be without Terresh?”
“You would be Queen of Telas,” he replied. “The people need their queen to live, or all hope will be lost.”
“I will not give you a day, a time, when I will betray Terresh. Bring me proof that he is dead and I will flee, until then come to me every day, father, for it eases my mind to see you.”
She dismissed him. The old duke bowed and retreated to the door. “Keep well, my queen,” he said, and it closed behind him leaving Hestia alone with her servant.
“Bring me wine, Derdan,” she said. “I have need of a little numbing.”
Pascha watched as the man’s hands poured wine into the cup, as he carried it across the room.
Now, she thought. If I am to do anything, to try anything, it should be now. She reached into the man’s mind, just as she would reach into a sparrow’s. She reached and took hold. The wine spilled. Pascha saw it leave the cup and splash on the carpet, the red stain sinking into the fine weave and red droplets touching the hem of Hestia’s dress.
“Clumsy!” Hestia cried. “Do not be clumsy today, Derdan, I could not stand it.”
But Derdan did not move. His mind was in thrall, though it struggled to be free. For Pascha it was like a huge forkful of Afaeli noodles that slid and wriggled through the tines as she tried to scoop it back under control again and again. This was far harder than anything she had done before. She was contending with another will.
It was only moments until she succeeded, though. She felt the thrill of victory, of something entirely new. She had done the impossible, the forbidden. She had used a man as an instrument of her will. In one way, at least, it was so much easier than a sparrow. She knew how to use everything at once. There was no adjustment for the eyes, the limbs. Even the voice was her to command.
“Derdan, are you well?”
Pascha turned her eyes on Hestia, and there must have been something in her face, for the queen to a step back.
“I am no longer Derdan,” she said. It was odd he hear a man’s voice speak her words.
“Not Derdan?” the queen was quick enough, she had to grant that. In a moment a small knife appeared in her hand and she stood ready to defend herself. “Who are you if not Derdan?”
“Look to the window, Queen of lies,” she said.
Hestia looked. There were sparrows there now, seven of them lined up on the sill.
“Passerina? It is not possible.”
“Who are you to say what is possible for the gods of the Benetheon?” Pascha demanded. “Who are you to speak at all, who betrayed the Wolf, sold your own people to Seth Yarra?” She could hear the anger in her man’s voice.
“I have a knife and you are unarmed,” the queen said.
“And if you kill this man he will die, but I will not, and I can be anyone, Hestia. I can be the guard who stands at your back. I can be the cook who prepares your food. I can be your father. I can be you.”
“You have come to kill me?”
“I do not know. Perhaps. Your crimes demand it.”
Hestia lowered her knife. “You are not my judge, sparrow god,” she said. “My judges are out there, the people of Telas, and today they may judge me more harshly than you can, for I have gambled with their freedom, and I have lost.”
“You have gambled with more than that. They mean to kill us all, and I do not think they will spare Telas, not you, not its king, not its people.”
“All?” Hestia’s eyes widened for a moment, but assurance came back. “This is a tale. How can you know their intent?”
“The Wolf says that it is so, and he does not lie. You know this.”
Hestia laughed. “What Narak knows and what he believes to be true may differ, Sparrow.” She threw her knife to one side. “You will not kill me,” she said.
“I am glad that you are certain, for my mind is not yet settled on the matter,” Pascha said. “What would you give to know the fate of the king?”
Hestia sat down abruptly, her face now pale. “You could discover it, could you not? Of course you could. You are the sparrow, your eyes and ears are everywhere. Do you already know? Oh, please do not hold back if you know.”
Pascha was startled by the outburst. The woman was reduced from pride to pleading in a moment, just at the thought of her husband. Like Alaran, she thought. I would have been the same.
“I do not know,” she said. “I have not cared to discover it, nor shall I unless there is some inducement.”
“What can I offer you? I have nothing. A few jewels, a dozen men at my beck is all that I have been allowed to keep. I am stripped of power and wealth.”
“Will you renounce Seth Yarra, tell Telas to rise against them?”
“In a moment, Passerina, but there are none to hear but those who already know my heart.”
“There are two thousand men at the Green Road gate who, I am sure, are loyal Telans.”
“And two thousand Seth Yarra with them. Not one body of men exists in the kingdom that is not matched or overmatched by their watchers. These Seth Yarra do not trust. Besides, how could I send a message that they could believe. If I could, I would do so. Indeed I would already have done so.”
“Your father spoke of escape. Does he have a way?”
“He does.
The Seth Yarra guard the gates, but there are other ways, and they think that I will not run while they hold the king. In that they are correct.”
“Then I will find your king,” Pascha said. “If he can be saved I will save him. If he is dead, well you will have to take my word for the truth.” She wondered at what she was saying. She had no idea how she might find the king, nor how she would rescue him if he was alive. “Your part of the bargain is that you will escape, take word to your men, as many as you can reach, and raise them against Seth Yarra. If you reach the gate I will try to bring the Berashi out to help you. Then you must face the Wolf’s justice.”
“All that just to die, then?”
“If Narak stood here you would be dead. This war has cost him much. But he is fair, and your deeds between now and when you face him may be enough to save you. I cannot offer more.”