The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  “To begin, I shall be vague. It is what you are used to.” He scratched the back of his head and pulled a face. “Well, a simple description will suffice. Farheim are like men. Some are strong, some are weak, some may live thousands of years, and some as little as a hundred. They are in every way as subject to degree and variation as the material from which they are fashioned. Different abilities manifest themselves in different individuals. Some are capable of empathetic bonds with animals, and it is this that I used for the foundation of the Benetheon. Others are physically adept far above the others of their kind, though most can better a mortal man in any task.

  “It is a calculation that begins with their innate abilities and draws on whatever Amal they have been gifted. In your case I will point to three of those that you made. Hestia first. She received all the Amal that you drew from the guards in Telas Alt, though some of that had faded, and also all that you drew from the Seth Yarra commanders. That is a lot, but not unusual for one of her kind.

  “When you failed to control your power in Wolfguard the Amal you had gathered from six hundred and twenty-three men was distributed according to the laws of propinquity and flow. I will acquaint you with these later, but the essence was that a third of all that power went to those you held in your favour. Because you were so niggardly with your kindness there was only one such. Lord Skal Hebberd.”

  “A third?” Pascha was astounded. “He took the Amal from over two hundred men?”

  “Aye. A monster indeed. And twice that quantity went into Narak.”

  “But what of Caster? And you said the others were Farheim, too.”

  “So I did. A quantity of the Amal will have flowed through Narak to those he held in his favour, certainly enough to heal the swordmaster.” Pelion chuckled. “Well again, that is irony enough. Did you know that the Ohas style was developed for the Farheim? Aye. Who needs a shield then your body shrugs off the insults of steel and iron?”

  “But what has it done to Narak?” Pascha asked. What indeed? If creating Farheim from mere mortals was so terrible, what if you began with a god?

  “I do not know,” Pelion replied. “It is axiomatic that you cannot have a twice made Farheim. It does not work. But Narak was not Farheim – there were elements of the type in him, as there are in you, and even me, but it may take months to calculate the effect.” He paused. “And so we come to numbers.”

  He sat on the grass, and a sandbox appeared beside him filled with damp sand. He drew a circle and divided it into four. “When you kill a person in the way that you did, by snatching the Amal Hanas from them, you keep that within you. It degrades, but for many days – even weeks and months, there will remain within you some of the strength that you took. You cannot use it, but it is there. What I have not told you is that Amal Hanas is not a single thing, but a blend of four elements. These you might call Life, Strength, Wit, and Talent.

  “When I said that you cannot use these qualities, that is true in three parts. When I say that you can pass on the Amal, then that is true in three parts.

  “Firstly the quarter that is life may be passed on in seven parts of eight. Life is the vitality of a man, so that a young man possesses more life than an old one – are you following this?”

  “So far,” Pascha said. She would never remember it all, but in her own mind she was trying to build a picture.

  “Very well. The part that is strength may be passed on in two parts out of eight, and again the amount depends on the strength of the man killed. The part that is wit may be passed on in one part in sixteen, but this is in a different manner, and I will explain it later. It is enough to say now that it does not accumulate in the same way, but may in some degree enhance the wit of the recipient.”

  Pelion had enlarged his diagram in the sand, placing dots in each of three quarters to illustrate his words.

  “When you give the other three away, the talent comes back to you one part in eight. Talent is the ability to use magic, what used to be called mage-hand.”

  Pascha looked at the diagram. So if any of the men she had killed in this way had possessed any mage-hand, then her own ability would be enhanced. The more men she killed and the more Farheim she created the more powerful she was likely to become.

  “I understand why you did not want to tell me this,” she said.

  “Better that I do. You would have discovered it again, or another would have. It is the thing that undid us all, the first time.”

  “Once one of you started to do it the rest must follow, or be subjugated, and the Farheim must be used, so there was war, and the war must go on for ever.”

  “I thought a thousand times that I should seek out the talent and kill wherever I might find it, but it cannot be done. It is mankind’s curse. As long as men live it will rise again.”

  “So what am I?” Pascha asked.

  “You are old. You have seen men come and go. It is my hope that you have already discovered what is important.”

  “You stopped it once before. Dragons and mages all, you stopped them.”

  “I did,” Pelion smiled, but it was a weak smile. He picked up a pinch of wet sand and rubbed it between his fingers. “But now I am here,” he said.

  It was not until now that Pascha realised the truth. For all Pelion’s power, for all his years and knowledge, for all the Farheim he had created and the talent he had harvested, this, this shadow life, was all that he could be.

  “You did something terrible,” she said.

  “Yes. Many things. We all did. But it was doing something noble that ended it. I created Ethcat am Teral, the soul of the world.”

  “The soul of the world?”

  “Aye. The soul of the world.” He smiled again, and this time she could see the twist in his smile, the pain it brought to his lips. “A beautiful thing. But even I did not know what I had made.”

  “Tell me,” Pascha said.

  “Another time. I am not yet ready to speak of it.”

  Pelion had always been a mighty figure in Pascha’s personal pantheon. He was the one true power she had known in her life. Nothing was impossible for him. He could raze mountains. He could make gardens in the ice. He could catch the sun in his hand. Yet now she was filled with pity, for the first time seeing the shell that he had become. Indeed he had been little more than this when she had known him fifteen centuries before. The power remained, but the rest of him was all boiled away.

  “Numbers, then,” she said. Pelion looked up sharply, but she hid the pity. “If I’m to avoid your mistakes I need to know about numbers.”

  He looked at her face for a long time, and then he seemed to relax again, becoming once more the Pelion she knew.

  “Aye, numbers,” he said. “So now I will tell you how distance and linkage work against each other in determining how Amal might be transferred.”

  Twelve – The Siege Begins

  Skal picked himself up from the floor and dusted off his tunic. A quick check revealed that he was unharmed, and the only damage he could find was a tear down the left hand side of the garment, about seven inches in length. He would have to find a new one.

  “My Lord, are you all right?” It was Lissman, his alarmed face suddenly at Skal’s elbow.

  “I’m fine, Captain,” he said. “Just tripped over my own feet.”

  Lissman cast an uncertain glance around the room, but there was nothing threatening to be seen, just a large, dressed block of stone to one side and a few boxes of stores.

  “You’re not harmed at all, My Lord?”

  “No. I’m fine.”

  Lissman nodded and left. They all had their tasks and even Lissman didn’t have the leisure to watch over Skal. Skal walked back over to the stone and laid a hand on it.

  Well, that hadn’t worked.

  He examined the block, and could tell by the shadowing on the floor that it had moved an inch. Just an inch. He had been testing his Farheim strength, and thought that if he gave the block a sharp push he could move it the
nine inches or so in to the wall, and be able to pack a little more around it. Instead he had propelled himself across the room at a considerable speed smacking into the far wall with a force that would have killed another man, and the block had moved an inch.

  There was no doubting his strength, but apparently he was much easier to shift than a block of stone. He guessed that it weighed a couple of tons. Stupid to think he could push it, really.

  He was reluctant to give up the task, and walked round the three sides of the stone that allowed it. The block was quite finished, and nicely squared at the corners. There were no rough places where he could grip it, but it was only half a yard wide on its lesser dimension, and that was little enough that he could put a hand either side of it. He did so, bracing his legs as wide as he could, pressed his hands against the stone and lifted.

  Almost at once he tipped forwards.

  It seemed there was more skill to picking something up than he’d ever realised. He reset himself, trying to centre the weight of the stone by tipping his body backwards. He heaved, and the stone left the ground.

  It seemed surprisingly light. He had no trouble at all with the weight, but he worried that if he moved his feet he would simply tip over again. He managed a shuffle, moving his right foot forwards six inches and compensating by shifting the weight of the stone. Then the same with his left foot. Again and again, and the block touched the wall. He lowered it carefully, then stood back and looked at it. He found that he had wedged it neatly in the corner.

  He examined it again. It was half a pace by one by two, so yes, perhaps two tons. He wondered how much he could lift, given the right balance.

  He went back into the outer room. It was large, but gradually filling with stores. For a week the loyal people of Telas – the few that there were this far north at this time of year – had been doing their best to supply their queen with anything they could spare, and much that they could not, Skal suspected. He admired their spirit, but thought it foolish. What would it serve their queen if they starved over winter? He did not doubt that Seth Yarra would take what was left if they could find it.

  He had urged Hestia to send them south before the enemy arrived, but she had not done so. She said that they needed every last bushel of grain they could pack in before the siege began. He did not disagree with that.

  Skal had been helping to pack the stores away. The work was beneath him, but he reasoned that he could not stand on his blood when the need was so urgent, and besides, the men seemed to admire him for taking his part in the work. It was what Cain would have done, and that was a familiar yardstick now.

  He lifted a sack of grain, trying to make it look as though it was an effort, and carried it through to the room with the block. He began stacking the sacks neatly beside the stone. This room alone would hold enough to feed his men for two months, he guessed.

  He’d moved about thirty sacks when Lissman appeared at his elbow.

  “My Lord, the scouts are coming in,” he said.

  Skal had expected this. He had thought it would be today or tomorrow, but it still sent a shiver down his spine. The enemy were approaching, and after today Skal and his allies would be boxed up inside their fortress. This was the point of no return.

  “I’ll come,” he said. He carried a last sack into the store room and placed it carefully alongside its fellows, then allowed the captain to lead him up onto the walls. He was deliberately calm, radiating confidence, knowing that his apparent mood would transfer itself to the men. At the other end of the chain he knew that Hestia would be doing the same thing, making her way to a vantage point to watch the enemy arrive.

  On the walls he took up a position beneath his standard. He had raised the standard of Avilian over the three forts that his men controlled, and Hestia had raised Telas over the others. The banner made a brave show of it, snapping and billowing in the cold wind, but Skal’s eyes were on the plain before them.

  He could see the scouts. The last of them were riding hard for the gates, already two thirds of the way across the open ground. He watched as they made the wall, drummed across the bridge and came in through the gates. He turned from the view to call down.

  “What sign?” he shouted.

  “Clear sight,” one of the scouts shouted back. “Thousands of them. About two mile off.”

  It would be a while yet, then. He sat on the wall and called for his cloak and a cup of wine. There wasn’t much wine stored down below, and he was saving it for special occasions, but this seemed to be one. It would do his men a world of good to see him relaxing while the enemy laid siege to them.

  He wrapped the cloak around him when it came, and wedged himself into one of the crenels where he remained, sipping his wine from time to time, waiting.

  He tried to guess what they would do. He thought his own position moderate, but if the Seth Yarra behaved as he hoped it would be stronger. He expected them to lay their force across the whole of the plain, from one bank of the Gayle to the other. This would stretch them very thin. It would make them vulnerable, and any assault on the chain would weaken them further.

  He saw them.

  They came streaming from of one of the valleys that gave out onto the plain. They marched in good order, coming across the plain directly towards the forts. From this distance they were no more than ants. He could see no faces, no hands, just the dark bulk, the flashes of green among the brown and black. They looked like some dark stain flowing across the heather.

  Skal had read a dozen books on Seth Yarra, and they did not disappoint him. He knew that they would form their camp at about a bowshot and a half from the walls, and they did. As he had hoped, they spread themselves across the plain, making use of the natural barrier of the Gayle to complete the encirclement of the forts, but where they camped it was two miles across. They began to prepare positions all across the plain while concentrating their tents in the centre.

  He tried a rough count in his head and confirmed the intelligence he’d had from Passerina before she’d vanished. There were about ten thousand of them. It was not enough to take the chain, especially as they had the concealed ability to move men between the forts.

  “Do you think it’s cold out there?” he asked Lissman.

  “Aye, My Lord, and a bitter night to come,” the captain replied.

  “And them with no wood to burn,” he said. As if on cue the wind snatched at their banner again and made the ropes of the flagpole whine. Skal saw smiles on his men’s faces, and knew that his job was done.

  “I’ve got some reading to catch up on,” he told Lissman, standing. “Call me if they try anything stupid. I could do with the entertainment.”

  He walked down from the wall and crossed to the keep, climbing again to the room that he had chosen as his own. It wasn’t large. Like the rest of the chain it was simple and functional. There was a bed, double shuttered windows to keep out the chill, and a good fire. Odd as it might seem there was no shortage of wood in the chain. Each fort had a copious wood store laid in against winter. They had been designed for winter, and not for a siege from the supposedly friendly south.

  Apart from that there was a table and a hard chair. A single worn rug on the floor was the only concession to comfort. He threw himself onto the bed and closed his eyes. The Seth Yarra would do nothing more today. They would camp, they would dig a ditch as part of it and they would find that the ditch filled with water. They would gather the heather to burn and find that it flared fiercely and was gone. There was nothing here that would give them comfort. They would be wet and cold. When the snow came it would be worse.

  Skal slept. He was tired and nothing weighed on his mind enough to keep him awake.

  Skal dreamed. They were the usual dreams – confused, nonsensical ramblings – but there was a feeing of being observed that pervaded everything, and leant an uneasy flavour to it all.

  He woke two hours later when Lissman banged on his door. He opened his eyes and stared for a moment at the low vaulted
ceiling. The door banged again.

  “Wait!” he called. He swung his legs over the side of his bed and gathered himself, rubbing his face. “What is it?”

  “Pardon me, My Lord, but the officers will eat in ten minutes and wondered if you would be joining them.”

  He was tempted to say no. He didn’t want to make the effort, but duty won. “I’ll be there,” he said. Lissman went away. He heard footsteps retreating, then nothing. He levered himself upright. He was still dressed, so all he had to do was walk down to their mess hall. He rubbed his face again and yawned.

  Half way through the yawn he stopped moving. There was a footprint on the floor, a wet footprint. He knelt next to it and touched it with a finger. Wet and cold. His eye was caught by something else. Where the leg of the table touched the floor there was something white. He touched it and lifted a pinch with his fingers. Snow. Even as he held it the flakes melted and were gone. He jumped to the window and opened both sets of shutters, allowing the cold wind to sweep into the room.