The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  “Jackan,” he said, “and you, Edwin, you’re made up to sergeant, both. Pick your squads this evening. We need to ride to Berrit Bay as quick as we can.” He turned his mount to the road and urged it forwards. They would not get to Berrit Bay by nightfall, but if they pushed they would pass through the town before midday on the morrow, always presuming that they reached the town before Seth Yarra. He had no idea where the enemy were, nor what he would do when he met them. Tilian could only hope.

  Seventeen – Skal & Morianna

  If they had been anyone else, he would have pitied them. But Skal still remembered the cause of Henfray. He remembered the burned bodies of villagers piled in the squares of their own settlements, the looted houses, the dead animals. Seth Yarra had done that. Now he looked out at their camp and smiled.

  He had been right. This was a terrible place to lay siege to. Each day Seth Yarra had to send over a hundred men with wagons to cut wood and bring it back, and they could never gather enough. The fires ate everything they could gather by midnight, and for the rest of the dark the enemy froze, and the dark was getting longer, colder. In addition to that they had to send men to find wood to build ladders. He thought that more than one ladder had ended up on the fire in the night when the men grew desperate in the cold.

  If he’d had a way of getting a thousand horses out of the forts without alerting the enemy it would have been the ideal time to attack. The Seth Yarra army was disorganised and their morale must have been all worn away. But the gates were too small. By the time he could get even two hundred out on the heath the enemy would have had time to draw up their lines, fall into their wet ditches and slaughter him with arrows.

  It rankled that so obvious a ploy was unavailable to him. He had to sit and wait.

  Skal was also aware that he was being watched from the other side of the River Gayle. There was nothing to see, of course, but when the mood took him he would walk the northern walls of the fort and look out across the river to Durandar. It looked bleak. He could see no sign of habitation, but he would have been surprised if any of the occult kingdom’s subjects had dwelled so close to Telas. The record of hatred and warfare between the two nations would have made so proximate an existence a precarious one.

  Yet he felt that when he looked north someone looked back. There had been a visitor to his private room – he had seen the fleeting evidence – and he thought it must be because of the Avilian banner that flew above the rugged keep. Skal knew that the Duranders would be, for once, allied to his cause. They had as much to fear from Seth Yarra as any – probably more. Yet the traditional hatreds between Durandar and Telas would permit no alliance, and he felt that he and his men were tolerated among the Telans not just because they were needed, but also because they were neither Berashi nor Durander.

  But for days there was no attempt to contact him, and he came to believe that either the visit had been prompted by mere curiosity, or that the Durander mage could not summon the degree of trust required to meet him in person.

  He did not think that there was another way. He was wrong.

  That night as he slept he was visited by a dream. It would be false to say that he dreamed it, for it was clear at once that the dream was not a thing of his own making. He knew dreams, and they were a melange of memories and desires, fears and experience. This was quite different.

  It seemed that he awoke, but he was not in his room. He was sitting in a chair before a fire. There were rugs, animal skins on the floor and the walls were plain, unadorned stone. There were candles set about the room that had been settled in their own wax. It was a primitive scene, but agreeable for all that.

  “You are Skal Hebberd, son of the Marquis of Bel Arac.”

  He turned his head. There was a robed figure sitting nearby. The hood was raised so that he could not see the figure’s face, but the voice was that of a woman, mature and accented in a way that reminded him of Cain’s Sheyani. Skal was alert enough to remember his manners. That alone proved to him that this was no dream.

  “Areshi, I am Skal Hebberd, Lord of Latter Fetch. I have no father.”

  The figure appeared to brush his reply aside. “Your father was a traitor,” she said. “He sided with Seth Yarra.”

  Skal shook his head. “He sided against the world,” he replied.

  “You repudiate your own blood?”

  “My blood is true enough, Areshi. I am a loyal Avilian. I fought at Fal Verdan, I walk with the Sparrow.”

  “I knew there was something,” the hooded woman said, a slight hint of emotion in her voice – excitement… satisfaction… maybe both. “I felt it. You have Passerina’s favour?”

  “So she said.”

  “Maybe that is it, then. Yet you march with the Queen of Lies.”

  “Hestia has allied herself with the Benetheon. Terresh is dead.”

  “Some good news, then,” the woman said, and Skal was sure she meant the death rather than the alliance. So it is with hatred.

  “You have my name, Areshi. May I have yours?”

  She laughed. Her voice smiled. “Not yet, Lord Skal. When we meet, if we meet, then you may know who I am. It is no small risk that I take, speaking to an outlander lord. I would not have my name spoken where it can be heard, and you would be best advised not to speak of me at all, not in the hearing of any that might talk to Telan ears.”

  The dream dissolved, and Skal found himself lying on his back in his private chamber in the easternmost fort of the Western Chain. Not a dream at all. It had been a sending by some Durander mage, and no minor talent. He remembered everything. The image was so clearly etched in his brain that he could still count the candles in the mage’s room.

  She was right, of course. If he confessed to having spoken with a Durander mage on civil terms they would immediately distrust him in Telas. If they spoke in person they could even account him an enemy. It was not so with all Telans, but enough to make his life here uncomfortable, and even put it in jeopardy.

  That day he spent time watching Seth Yarra again. He saw the wagons leave for the wood, saw men digging in the frozen mud with picks. It was easier to dig ice that what it turned into when the sun had warmed it. It was the lowest point of their day and the ideal time for a destructive sally from the forts. He wondered if it would be possible to somehow get the horses out on the north side so that Seth Yarra could not see them.

  He examined the walls, but couldn’t see a way. It was like being a fox trapped on the wrong side of the fence from a bunch of fat rabbits.

  Towards evening he went to the north side again and looked over the river. The landscape was certainly bleak. The heath continued for about a mile, but slowly climbed and dried into a series of low hills clothed with yellow and brown grass. A few scrubby trees clung to the slopes, but there was not enough wood for any useful purpose, neither fires nor ladders.

  There was a fire, though. He could see a thin column of white smoke rising up, faintly to be sure, but he was certain it was there, and below it was a group of three of the small trees, and below the trees there was a figure. For a moment he was sure that it was a hooded figure, but then not. It could have been a shrub, a tree stump, anything.

  Yet if there was a fire, there was someone there. Fires did not ignite of their own accord in this land. Some peasant perhaps, or a hunter far from home, pausing at a discrete distance from the forts for a night’s rest before heading home.

  When darkness came he could no longer see the fire. There was no red glow, no distant spark of flame to mark it.

  He ate with his officers again that night, and he did not mention his dream to them, nor the distant fire, nor even his frustration. He made polite conversation and talked to them about Seth Yarra, how they must be suffering in the cold of the night with fires that burned low if at all. Some of his officers waxed quite witty on the matter, and by the end of the meal their general mood was quite lightened by the imagined suffering of their foes.

  Skal shared in the general mirth i
n spite of his misgivings about their position, and he drank a glass or two more than he might have otherwise done. So it was that he went to bed and promptly fell asleep.

  He woke in the dark of the night to a voice calling his name. He struggled up from the depths of sleep, feeling that there must be some alarm for his men to wake him, but when he finally rolled himself into a sitting position on the edge of the bed and reached for the lamp to light it he realised that he didn’t need a light.

  Someone had made a hole in the wall of the keep. That’s what he thought, but the hole was on the side that faced inwards, and light was flooding through it. He rubbed his eyes and looked.

  It was like a door, but there was no frame, no dressed stone at the edges. It was almost as though someone had painted a door on the wall, and yet light shone through it. He could see a floor of stone flags beyond, a candle burning on a shelf, its flame dancing slowly. There was a flickering glow of fire.

  “Step through, Lord Skal.”

  He recognised the voice. It was the Durander mage. So she had decided to speak to him after all, and this was how she chose to do it. She would not step into the dangers of his world, so he must step into hers. He had heard of this before – magical doors that opened between quite separate places – but he had never seen such a thing.

  He stood. His sword lay beside his bed, his dagger next to it, and after a moment’s thought he left them where they lay. It would look better if he trusted her. She was an ally, after all, and though he did not trust her it was more important that she thought so, and that she trusted him.

  He stepped through the door.

  On the other side all was exactly as he remembered it from his dream. There was a fire, candles, two chairs. She sat in one of them, her hood still raised so that he could not see her face. Her hands were folded in her lap so that he could not see them, and she leaned forwards slightly in the chair, the better to gather the shadows around her face. She was little more than a blue robe and shadows.

  Skal decided to play the game. He crossed to the empty chair and sat.

  “Areshi, I have accepted your invitation. Will you now tell me your name?”

  The figure did not move, but a voice spoke from behind him. “You are welcome here, Lord Skal.” He turned, and found that she was standing beside where the door had been. The robe was not blue, but brown, and it was thrown back to reveal a broad, pleasant face, not in the first flush of youth, but still with considerable charm. Her hair was dark, and cut short in the Durander style. She was smiling at him. “Forgive the small deception, Lord Skal, but if you or another had meant me harm it would have been in the first moment you stepped through. Now the door is closed, and we may speak freely without fear of being overheard.”

  “As you see I mean no harm, and I have come unarmed.” He noted that the robed figure in the chair had gone. It had been no more than an illusion.

  “I see it. I am Morianna, holder of the Brown seat on the council of mages at the heart of the world. I do not act alone, but I will not reveal the names of those for whom I speak. Let me just state that Hammerdan is not one of them, and you will appreciate my position.”

  “You go against your king?”

  “In this we do. The interests of our realm coincide with yours, but Hammerdan is blinded by his anger at Narak for shielding Esh Baradan, and he will not take a part in this war.”

  “That is a mistake,” Skal said. “Redemption is an easy path with the Wolf. One need only take his side without reservation and he will forgive almost anything.”

  “So we believe.”

  Skal looked around the room again. Now that he had time he saw things that he had not seen before. On a table there was a bowl of water and a candle, and a knife laid beside them, also a rounded piece of chalk. There was a staff leaning against the wall. It was made of some dark wood, highly polished, and probably very old. A stringed musical instrument was propped in a corner, and a shelf held several dozen books and pots with scrawled annotations on the clay in a language he did not know. It all hinted at magic and a life that went far beyond what he was seeing.

  “Why am I here?” he asked.

  “I believe it may be possible to help you,” she said.

  “In what way?”

  “Many ways. First I should warn you. Do not trust the Queen of lies. She will deceive you and use you if she can. She has her own ends.”

  “I am not a stranger to deception myself, Areshi.”

  “Yet even now you do not see it.”

  “See what?”

  “How many of your men do you post on the walls of the three forts that fly your banner?”

  “No more than twenty. It is cold, and that number is enough to raise the alarm. The rest of the men remain below where they can stay warm and preserve their strength.”

  “Wise indeed,” Morianna said. “But do you know how many men Hestia posts to her walls?”

  “No. About the same I should think. She is no fool.”

  Morianna smiled. “There are never less than two hundred on her walls, two hundred in each of the four Telan held forts.”

  “Two hundred?” It didn’t make sense. To put so many men out in the cold when it was not necessary was a waste. It would harm morale and weaken them if an assault came. Ah. “I see,” he said. “She means to deflect an assault from her end of the chain to mine.”

  “And she has not told you this?”

  “Your point is well made, Areshi. I will need to act.” He had not even thought to look. His own men were his primary concern, and the walls they guarded. He had to admire it, though. It was so subtle a trick. She made him look weak, even at the cost of her own strength, so that he would bear the brunt of any attack. “I thank you for this,” he added.

  “We can do more. I am an Abbadonist. Do you know what that means?”

  Skal searched his memory. He had been told the Durander disciplines, taught then and been tested as part of his noble education, but now they slipped away like childhood dreams. “I am sorry,” he said. “As a child I knew these things, but Durandar is a long way from Bas Erinor, and my childhood has recently become less familiar to me.”

  She smiled again. He liked her smile. She was what he imagined a favourite aunt might be like, if he’d had one. “You have already seen my work, Lord Skal. You stepped through it.”

  “The door?” It came back to him. Abbadon was the lord of the ways. She was a door maker, a journey mage. “How far did you bring me?” he asked.

  “We are in Durandar,” she said. “This is a secret place no more than ten miles from the heart of the world.”

  Just one step and he had moved five hundred miles. That was power indeed. “I am impressed,” he said.

  “I have been watching you, Lord Skal, and you bend your eye fondly upon your horses every day, and pace on your walls. It seems that you are impatient to meet the enemy, but not so much on foot.”

  “Well, yes…” How could he be so slow, so stupid. “You can open a door for the cavalry,” he said. “A wide door. We can take them out twenty abreast.” It was the answer he had been seeking, even without knowing where to find it.

  “There is a problem, of course.”

  “Can you not hold it long enough for us to return?”

  “I can, of course,” she seemed slightly scornful, slightly amused by his doubt. “The problem is Hestia.”

  “Hestia?”

  “I cannot do this magic from here. I will have to come to you, in your fort. She knows our ways better than you, and as soon as she sees what you have done she will know that I am there. She will exercise all her power to capture or kill me.”

  “Surely not. Our enemy is Seth Yarra. It is the one thing on which we all agree.”

  “I am one of the Seven,” Morianna said. “No monarch of Telas has ever captured or killed one of the Seven. I assure you that she will do all that she can to ensure that she is the first. Can you protect me?”

  Skal thought about it. He could
collapse the tunnel between his three forts and her four. That would bar them well enough. But with Morianna’s door open they could ride around the forts and enter through that. If Morianna were taken while his cavalry were engaging Seth Yarra then they would be trapped outside, and eventually shot down. If there was to be a raid it must be quick, brutal, and there must be a line of retreat. There was one way he could be sure, but the cost was high.

  “I can, and it would break the alliance between Telas and Avilian, but I will not speak of it,” he said.

  “Well, at least you are honest, Lord Skal. I am still eager to know how you would achieve it.”