The Bloodstained God (Book 2)

by Tim Stead

  Yet Aidon was dead. His Aidon. His brother. The Duke of Bas Erinor was dead. It means that I am the duke, he thought, and that thought brought with it another grief. He had never wanted the burden.

  “I need to be with the army,” he said. That was his duty now. In time of war the duke led the army. It was tradition and duty.

  Gerant stood silently by. The man had been his father’s secretary, loaned to him, then his brother’s and loaned again. Now he was all Quin’s.

  “What do you think, Gerant? Should I hasten to the army or should I sit in judgement on these traitors first?”

  “Judgement can wait, my lord. The war may not.” He was right of course. It would not harm the kingdom or the alliance if these men spent time locked away, but his blood called for blood. He would have felt better to see these men hanged before he rode to war. Had it really been about blood? Carillon and Kaylis and the gods only knew how many others plotting to kill him and Aidon because they thought he showed too much favour to the low born?

  It was a lunatic motive, yet he could see how it might be shaped into a bait for such fools as these. Hesham, then, would be the shaper.

  “I will ride to join the army,” he said. “But first you will put out an order for the arrest and detention of Lord Hesham of Lorrimal. He is to be charged with treason.”

  “I will make out the warrant at once, my lord.”

  Done then. There was no more to be said or done, but he had to see Maryal before he left. He stood and left the room without another word, dimly aware of the guards who followed him – something that Harad had insisted upon since the attempt to kill him. Harad had become more than an armourer now. He had always been a friend, and now he was a councillor, a trusted voice in Quin’s ear.

  It was all his now, all the lands and houses, all the soldiers and the wine cellars, all the servants, all the power. It did not matter that he had not wanted it. He was the duke.

  He arrived at the door of his apartments. Not his for long, though. Or rather his - it was all his - but not a fitting place for the duke to stay. He opened the door and the guards took up positions either side. He had been gone from here less than half an hour, and in that brief time since a lackey pounding at his door had said that he must come at once, his entire word had changed.

  He stepped inside. Maryal was dressed, and someone had delivered food which lay untouched on a tray close to the table. She saw it in his face at once and came to him.

  “Quin?”

  “It’s Aidon. They killed him.” They had discussed it, of course. After the attempt on Quin’s life they had talked about what it might portend, and an attempt on Aidon’s life had seemed likely, yet less probable to succeed because Aidon was a formidable warrior and surrounded by thousands of loyal soldiers.

  Maryal said nothing. She stepped closer to her husband and took his hand in hers, then changed her mind and dropped it, throwing her arms about him. He accepted the gesture, allowed himself to take comfort from the strength of her embrace. He felt the warmth of her body, and the force of her own grief in the pressure of her head against his shoulder, as though she were trying to hide herself within him. The thought came to him that he could do almost anything if she were beside him.

  The moment passed and he sighed, disengaged himself and sat at the table.

  “I have to go,” he said. She nodded, understanding everything. She was Avilian, after all. She knew what the duke was, what his duties were.

  “You must go to the army,” she said. “I will miss you.”

  Quin knew that she was right, that it was the sensible, loyal, Avilian thing to say, but he had hoped for a moment that she would ask him not to go, to stay here at Bas Erinor, even though he knew it could not be so.

  “I will leave tomorrow morning,” he said. “That will give them enough time to put together an honour guard, to pack what might be needed.” He knew that Harad would be doing those things even as he spoke, and this time he would take Harad with him because he trusted the old soldier’s judgement, and because he needed someone at his side to whom he could show doubt, a friend whose advice did not seek to mirror his own thoughts.

  “I will pack some things for you,” Maryal said. She looked strong, but he knew that there were tears in there somewhere. They had been destined for a quiet life, a small estate, a comfortable house, and children. Now he was riding to war, and he might not come back. It was something that had to be faced, and if he did not come back then there was no heir. Aidon had been unmarried, though promised, and he doubted that he and Maryal would yet have produced an heir though there had been no lack of trying on their part. If he died there would be chaos.

  “There is one thing,” he said.

  Maryal turned, she was already beginning to look around the room for things that he might need, things that would comfort him when he was hundreds of miles to the north and surrounded by death and duty. She was being busy, he knew, using busyness to take the place of sadness.

  “What is it, Quin?”

  “You will rule Bas Erinor while I am at war.”

  “Me?”

  He smiled at her surprise. But why not? He trusted her as much as any other person living here, she was clever – sometimes he was surprised just how clever she could be – and she had the interests of the people at heart.

  “Yes, you. Who else?”

  “Anyone,” she said. He could see that she was afraid to rule, but he remembered how he had been when his father had burdened him in the same way. Had that only been a few months ago? It seemed like years.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “You’ll be fine. Just listen to your advisers and follow your heart. You are the duchess of Bas Erinor. I am the duke. Who is going to argue? And if anyone gives you a hard time I’ll have them strung up when I get back – and you can tell them I said that. On second thoughts better not.” He smiled a pale smile.

  “I can’t rule Bas Erinor, Quin,” she said.

  “You can. Trust me. It will seem hard at first, but you’ll get used to it. I need to know that someone is keeping the place safe, and nobody will see you as a threat.”

  Maryal looked him in the eye. She was looking to see if he was serious, and she saw that he was because she nodded. “If you say that I can do it, then I can,” she said. “I will.”

  Quin stood again and embraced her.

  “Good. Now shall we go and have a proper breakfast? After that I’ll show you how everything works and tell you just how to listen to each of your wise councillors. They all speak in code, you know. They say one thing and mean another, but once you know what it is that they hold dear it’s all quite easy.”

  “Are you sure you want me to do this?” she asked.

  “Yes. Quite certain.”

  They left their chambers and for the first time that day Quin felt the warmth of a tiny flame of hope within him. Aidon was dead, and there would be a time to mourn him, but Quin was alive, and Cain Arbak was alive, and the Wolf was with them. It was still all possible.

  44. The White Road

  “I need you to climb,” Narak said. “The wolf will show you the way.” They were standing at the foot of what looked to be a sheer cliff, or at best a scree slope below a sheer cliff. The Durander mages looked doubtful. The slopes and the ground about them were piebald with snow which clung on in every hollow and behind every rock.

  “I do not see a path,” Fadim said.

  “It is there,” Narak assured him. “Just follow the wolf.”

  He did not need to take the path himself, but had done so to make sure that it was safe for a man. He would not have expected the Duranders to walk something if he had not already walked it himself, seeing that it might be passable only to a wolf. He had done it once. He was not going to walk it with them now.

  A moment later he was there, at the other end of the path, and he knew that the mages were eyeing their sudden guide down below. He wanted this time alone. From here he could see so much more. He was three hundred f
eet above them, and the air was colder, the wind brisker, and the noise of the work in the pass below reduced to a murmur.

  The place where he stood was a great ledge, almost a plateau, which wrapped around a low, domed peak on the west side. It was more or less flat, and extended several hundred yards, curving and dipping towards the edge. He had caused men to climb up here with tents and food, and now there was a little camp here that lay empty and waiting for the mages. He stood at the top of the path and looked down into the pass.

  It was extraordinary what Cain and his men had already achieved. From here he could see lines and crowds of men. Some were cutting brush and carrying it forwards to the western neck of the White Road, the first narrowing of the pass. That was where Cain had planned his first surprise for the Seth Yarra army. Other men were crowded into the scree slopes, filling baskets and passing them back to others who formed a slow procession up to the line of the wall.

  The wall, a child of a thing though it was, filled Narak with wonder. Already they had stretched a line of Cain’s cages across the valley and filled them. It was a wall that a sheep could jump for sure, but it was barely two days old. From here he could see Cain. The colonel had not left his saddle during the day. He sat in the middle of the pass just twenty or so paces behind the line of the wall where he could see everything. From time to time he rode up the valley to where the other men were working, then came back again, watching each cage assembled, filled and tied up with wire. He had other men walking on top of the cages, testing them.

  In a few more days it would be a defensible line, and shortly after that a formidable one. By the time Seth Yarra arrived it would be sufficient to the task. If they arrived.

  He turned and looked to the west. From this high point he could see the Great Forest stretching away, mile after mile of green, an unsteady ocean of trees tossed by the wind. This far north the trees were evergreen, they did not shed their leaves in winter, and Narak had always thought that a peculiar thing. Yet this green was important.

  He sat on a flat rock and drank in the view. In his mind’s eye he could see the tree trunks, the intense darkness of the pine forest. He could smell the trees. This was a part of the forest that he rarely visited. Game was less common here, and wolves equally so. He preferred to run beneath the oak and beech where there was more light and life. Wolfguard was further south. He had built it in a favoured part of the forest.

  The trees hid everything. From here he could not have seen the entire Seth Yarra army if it lay there, safe and secret beneath the trees. He knew that it was not, of course. His wolves were there, testing the air, crossing the tracks too and fro, and Captain Henn was there, too, somewhere in the green darkness beneath the heavy boughs, the captain and his men, moving south.

  He wondered if Pascha had sprung her trap yet. She should have done it by now if everything was going according to plan. He had spoken with her briefly through the Sirash, and she had seemed tense, worried. He supposed it natural. She had not led an action before, not planned one and seen that plan bear fruit, sweet or bitter. It was hard the first time, though he barely remembered it himself.

  After a while he could no longer look at the forest. It seemed to accuse him, and he looked away, walking over to the head of the path again to look down upon the struggling mages. He watched them for a time. They were picking their way carefully along the narrow way, and the wolf was waiting for them, stepping as slow as they.

  The men did not look up. They were too busy with the placement of their feet.

  Narak looked north. On the other side of the pass the mountains of the Dragon’s Back climbed to new heights, white and jagged and bright against the blue sky. Looking at them made him feel better, soothed the anger that coiled within him. He breathed deeply of the clean air and pulled in the smell of pines and snow. Even as a man he could smell the men in the valley below, like a few leaves of herb in a strong tea.

  If I close my eyes will I dream of the mountain again, he wondered. Will I dream of the road that starts at the valley?

  It seemed to him that he had seen nothing else in his dreams of late. The dragon had not spoken again, but he saw the way, the valley, the mountain. If he saw them with his waking eyes he would know them at once.

  The mages were almost here now. He would keep them here on this high place while they did their work. He faced the path and waited to greet them once more. The wind tugged at him. It was a west wind. It was a kind wind.

  Fadim was the first to step out after the wolf, having led his fellows reluctantly up the perilous path. He shuffled away from the drop and stood looking out at the view, head raised to the wind.

  “It is a good wind,” Narak said to him.

  “I do not like it,” Fadim said.

  “But it is the prevailing direction,” Narak said, unsettled a little by Fadim’s tone. “The wind blows from the west. It is what I desire and it is the habit of the wind: a happy conjunction.”

  The mage glanced at Narak. “We will see,” he said.

  Narak turned away. Everything depended on the west wind. What he had said was quite true. West was the prevailing habit of the wind, especially in spring. Yet Fadim was a mage of the path of Karesh, and weather was his art. He was as attuned to the ways of wind and rain as Narak was to his wolves. If Fadim was concerned, then so should he be.

  He stood back and watched as the other mages topped the path and gathered around their leader. Fadim spoke to them in a low voice, and they unpacked a few things, bowls and stones and fragments of wood. These were the tools of their art.

  “It is a good place, God of Wolves,” Fadim said. “A good place to do our work.”

  There were only four of them. Fadim the mage had brought with him three others. Two were Karesh adepts, and one something less than that, but all were mages of their chosen path, and so there was considerable ability there. They sat in a small group facing outwards from the centre so that one faced north, one west, one south and one east. Four bowls were placed one between each in the ring and filled with water. Fadim bound a white stone to his forehead with a leather thong, and the other did the same with their assorted talismans. They dipped their hands in the bowls either side so that they formed a ring that was man and water four times, and then began to chant.

  Narak had seen Durander magic performed before, and in general it was a subject that fascinated him. It was an artifice, completely unlike Pelion’s way. The old man had simply wished things to be, and they were. There had been no closing of eyes, no sacred words, sacred objects or magic circles. Pelion’s magic had been like his own, a simple act of will. Whence it came he did not know.

  Now, however, his interest was focussed on the outcome, and it was not long before they broke the circle and looked at each other.

  “Well?” Narak was impatient.

  Fadim stood and approached him. He wore a frown. “A change is coming,” he said, gesturing to the west. “A great wheel of air spins down from the north, and in a short while the wind will move to the north, and then to the east before it moves back to the west again.”

  “Can you prevent it?”

  Fadim shook his head. “I think it is too strong, God of Wolves,” he said. “If we resist we shall be overcome, and we will not hold it back by more than a day or two.”

  “Then we are lost?”

  “There is still a way,” the mage said. “If we join with it we may drive it more quickly, and perhaps it will have passed by the time you need the wind. Once it has passed we can hold the wind in the west for ten days or more with ease.”

  “How long will it take to pass?”

  “Of its own accord, perhaps ten days. If we hurry it through, perhaps five or seven. It is difficult to be precise.”

  The Seth Yarra army was now no more than twelve days from the White Road, no less than ten, so it could be done. It could be done. He looked out at the forest.

  “Push for all you are worth, Mage Fadim,” he said. “If there is anything that
you need it will be brought to you. I will see to it that they understand. But I must be elsewhere for a while.”

  “We will do what we can,” Fadim said.

  Narak put a hand on the mage’s shoulder and gripped it. “I trust that you shall, for the sake of us all.” He turned, and was gone with a sound like a cork leaving a bottle and a small twist of displaced air, his place taken by another wolf.

  45. The Great Forest

  He had never known that men could be so afraid of nothing. The Great Forest was a frightening place, to be sure, and at this time of day when a thin mist crept through the dense pines, deadening sound and making sinister half shapes of the shadows, it put a shiver down Tilian’s spine and he too, had to admit that he was afraid.

  It was nothing, though. The ghosts were no more than tales of ghosts. They had Narak’s permission to be here, indeed his command to be here, and they were escorted by a company of wolves. They were the most un-wolf-like wolves Tilian had ever seen – not that he had seen a great number. These creatures loped silently beside the men during the day and slept silently just beyond the circle of sleeping men at night. The number of wolves changed constantly, but there were never less than twelve. He supposed they went to hunt when they grew hungry and were replaced by others.