The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  “Victory, sir,” the man said. “Captain Henn had us remove the bridge on the path and wait on this side. He got them all, sir. We saw him on the path after the battle. He told us to wait, and said he would be in Berrit Bay again in a day and a half, or two at the most. By tonight, colonel.”

  Done then. One problem solved and one yet to be mastered. There was another force, Cain knew, to the east of here. It still nagged at him. He was troubled by the idea that each of these forces was a sacrifice, a thorn big and irritating enough to draw hundreds of men out of position, but to what end? Jidian had scoured the country through eagle eyes, and he had found nothing. The only threat came from the Seth Yarra ships still at sea.

  He rode back to the town, slowly so that the two men on foot could keep pace running alongside. He rode through the town, and caught sight of the mayor again, standing to one side with the rest. He stopped his mount opposite the man.

  “Mayor Greyash,” he called out. “Will you join me tonight in my tent? You may bring your council with you, if you wish, and dine at my expense. We have something to celebrate.”

  The Mayor bowed and nodded. “Aye, I shall,” he said. “And thanks to you for the invitation, my lord. It will be an honour.”

  Cain rode on. He didn’t particularly look forward to the mayor’s company, nor that of his council, but he would make sure that they heard the tale of Tilian’s victory from the mouths of Tilian’s own men, and that they knew they had been saved. He had always believed that men should know when others had fought and died on their behalf. With luck Tilian himself might be there to lend credence.

  When he got back to the camp he sent a hundred men to each of the cliff paths and a hundred more to guard the road from the north. Victory or no, he was not in a mood for surprises.

  Twenty Eight - Narak

  It was night, but the sky was not dark. It was not the moon. That orb was far below the horizon, and although the stars blazed away in all their winter glory it was not they that lit up the sky. Some god mightier than any he had known had draped green curtains across the darkness. They shone with a light of their own, like fireflies do, and almost the same cold hue.

  Narak had never seen anything like it. He could see the brighter stars through the curtains of light, and they moved. They moved as though some celestial breeze ruffled them with ponderous airs, so slow was the motion.

  Avatar was keen to keep moving, it seemed. He stood and waited while Narak marvelled at the spectacle. Narak did not care. There were so few wonders left in the world that had not become commonplace to a god of fifteen hundred years that he was determined to enjoy it, to take his time and admire every moment.

  “We will stay here for the night,” Narak said.

  “There is danger,” Avatar said.

  Narak tore his eyes away from the sky. As usual there was nothing to be gleaned from Avatar’s appearance, his expressionless face and burning eyes.

  “A new danger?” the Wolf’s confidence had grown since Sithmaree had shown him the trick with heat, drawing it from all the wolves. He once again felt that anything was possible, that he might actually succeed on this ill favoured quest.

  “This land is the place where the Brael dwell.”

  “The Brael?” The name meant nothing to Narak. How could it be that there were so many things in the world of which he had no knowledge? The mysteries of this journey were making him feel alive again, young again. “What are the Brael?”

  “The Brael are many things,” Avatar replied. “And they are dangerous.”

  It was a typical Avatar speech: short, pithy, pointless.

  “Well, I have you here to protect me,” he said. He had learned over the many days of their sharing of the road that the way to get more information out of Avatar was to play this game.

  Avatar stared at him, as though evaluating what answer he must make to elicit the desired response from Narak. Narak stared back.

  “You wish to know more?”

  “You are perceptive.”

  Avatar cast about once, as if checking that what he said would not be overheard, but it was a gesture that made Narak think that perhaps the danger was real. He looked about himself, but there was only snow and ice and rock.

  “The Brael are ancient,” Avatar began. “They have been in this world longer than men. They are hunters. They draw their life from the warmth of the snow, from the spark of the sun.”

  “What do they hunt?” It seemed to Narak a poor thing to interrupt now that he had got Avatar started, but a hunter? In this waste?

  “They hunt each other, which is to say they hunt everything that moves. To them you move, and therefore you are Brael.”

  “And so are you.”

  “The avatars of dragons are not palatable,” Avatar said.

  Narak laughed. He could not help himself. His mood was light enough, and the dragon’s humour, intended or not, tickled him.

  “Tell me more,” he said. “What do the terrible Brael look like?”

  “Heart of stone, claws of ice,” Avatar said.

  Not much of a description. “How large are they? Do they have eyes? How fast do they move?” He was determined to prise more information from Avatar. The creature was astonishingly reluctant to let anything out.

  “Small as a pebble, large as a house, they have no eyes, but see by vibration, by movement, and they will know you by the beating of your heart. The stone is slow, but the ice is fast.”

  Again every question was answered, but Narak was none the wiser. Avatar was speaking in riddles, as near as he could tell, as though he were forbidden from plain speech altogether.

  “You’ll be sure to point one out if we should see it,” Narak said.

  Again the stare, the blue fire eyes unmoving on him. Avatar had a faintly unnerving stare, there being no pupils in his eyes it was impossible to tell exactly what he was looking at. He did not know if those eyes could look to the side as a man’s might, or if they stared always in the direction of the head. Also they never blinked.

  Narak was determined to enjoy the lights in the sky, however, and he declined to move from his vantage point on an outcrop of rock above a shallow valley. He had good visibility in all directions but one, and he felt it a secure spot, Brael or no, and he leaned back on his elbows and enjoyed the sky.

  Avatar stood nearby, and never turned his face up. He was looking only at Narak, but after a while he spoke.

  “I can show you a greater wonder than this,” he said.

  Narak sighed. Avatar was not subtle. Even Narak would have disguised a lure better than that, and he counted himself clumsy at this sort of thing.

  “What wonder is that?” he asked, not taking his eyes from the slow waltz of lights in the sky.

  “The palace of Cobran,” Avatar said, and as Narak glanced down he thought he detected a sparkle of red in the creature’s eyes.

  “Cobran lived at Hellaree,” Narak replied. “I have seen Hellaree. It is a broken ruin.”

  “His fortress was at Hellaree,” Avatar said. “It was at Hellaree that he died, but his palace was where he lived and took his pleasure, far beyond the reach of mortal men.”

  “And that palace is nearby?”

  “Two days walk.”

  “And it is worth seeing – a greater wonder than the lights in the sky?”

  “Even the dragons, at the height of their folly, did not destroy it.”

  Folly. It was a mild word to describe the carnage that the dragons had wrought before they were brought low, but he was wiling to forgive the diminishment of their crimes, given the burden of guilt they had borne over so many centuries.

  “Tell me what it is like.”

  “Words cannot capture it,” Avatar said. “The eyes may do so for a while, but the memory cannot hold it, such is the wonder of the place.”

  He should have a market stall, Narak thought. Nowhere is what he claims.

  “Very well,” Narak conceded. “I will eat, and they we will go to Cobra
n’s palace.”

  * * * *

  It was night, and they were still walking.

  Looking back on it, Narak could never decide when it began. It was quick. It was very quick. He felt something, a stillness, a quiet moment that should not have been quiet, but he had already noticed Avatar beginning to pause, a slowing of the step he was taking, a tension in his own arms, as though they had received the warning before his brain could grasp it.

  A second later the ground around them had erupted. The snow swirled about him, creating a fog through which it was difficult to see what was happening.

  Narak was quick, too. His hands flew to his blades and had them out in the air in that same second, but there was nothing to strike at, and then everything. Ice seized him. Fingers of ice reached out of the snow and seized his legs, his waist, tried for his arms, but he was already hacking at them. Ice shattered against the fine steel, making another fog about him.

  But the ice did not stop, it came again and again, and while he managed to keep his arms free, the thickness about his legs grew and began to squeeze.

  Brael. It had to be. Heart of stone, claws of ice. He spun himself around, testing the grip on his legs with all his strength, and he felt it crack. For a moment the was a slackening of the pressure, but that moment of inattention almost cost him the freedom of his right arm, and he had to hack even more viciously to escape.

  With a sense of shock he realised he was losing.

  Every moment that he fought the ice around him became thicker and higher. Soon he would be walled up, trapped in the tiny space that his blades could keep open, working harder and harder to stay alive, and in the end he could not win.

  Avatar had called the Brael dangerous, but he had not said how fast they were, or perhaps he had. The memories would not come clearly. He thought perhaps it was the cold affecting his mind, but he shouldn’t be cold any more. He had the wolves now, the trick that Sithmaree had taught him to draw heat from the wolves.

  Something nagged at his mind, but his sword caught in the ice, and for a moment he thought that it was stuck fast, but a great blow from his other hand shattered the trap and freed it. Next time he might not be so lucky.

  He struck again and again, with all his strength, but steel is only steel, no matter how cunningly made by Telan artificers, and ice is only ice. The shattered pieces bound together and reached for him again and again.

  He had to stop. He had to do something else. But soon after he stopped the ice would close and he would be bound up, unable to breath, unable to see, dead.

  Narak folded his arms across his chest, blades outwards, and drew in a deep breath. He could hold his breath for a long time – that was another Benetheon talent, and one that he had used many times. He retreated from the fight, reaching back into the Sirash, reaching for the wolves.

  They could not come to him, but they could give him what he needed.

  Head south. Seek out the sun. Be warm.

  He felt them respond, running out from under the trees into sunshine, racing down the sides of hills into warmer air, seeking heat, and Narak allowed the heat to flow into him, to infuse his body, to gather in his blades. Narak’s flesh could not withstand the heat he needed, but his steel blades could. Ten thousand wolves gave him a trivial portion of their body heat, and he felt himself begin to sweat within the ice. His hands burned, and deep within his frozen prison he felt the glow.

  Narak opened his eyes. The ice was retreating. His blades shone the colour of tangerines and flames licked along their length. Ice flashed into steam wherever they touched, and what was left of the ice fled before them. His body hurt again, suffering from a surfeit of heat, but he welcomed it, kicking his feet out of the ice, delighting fiercely in their release. He roared out in pain and anger, and in joy to be free again. His swords chased the last of the ice back down to the ground, and there at its source was a stone. It was black, veined with yellow, the size of a man’s head, and as he watched it moved. It rolled impossibly across the naked mud where the heat of his blades had melted the snow. A stone should not roll on flat ground.

  This thing had been concealed beneath the snow. Heart of stone. Brael. He followed it. As Avatar had promised it was slow, as slow as the ice had been quick. He struck at it with his sword, and it shattered violently, fragments flying past his head. They buzzed as they flew, one scrap clipping his head and knocking him backwards.

  He sat in the snow, stunned for a few seconds by the violence of the impact, and putting a hand to his head found that it came away smeared with blood, though he could feel no wound.

  He stood again. Where was Avatar?

  There was a column of ice nearby, like a child’s snow soldier built on a winter’s day, but no eyes, no arms, and far, far too tall. It glittered and moved in the starlight, writhing like so many ice white snakes. He walked towards it, relishing his power, feeling each step crunch deep into the snow, the fresh wind cool on his hot skin, the pain in his hands and arms begging him to release the burning blades.

  He reached out with his blades and placed the flats of them on each side of the column. He dare not cut at it lest he damage Avatar in some way. Steam leapt out, boiling away into the sky, and the ice withered. It cracked and fell, melting and deforming. The shape that was Avatar emerged from its midst, his white blades drawn, his eyes burning red, fire red.

  Avatar’s stance relaxed, and the threat of fire went from his eyes. He looked at Narak and the glowing swords.

  “I did not know that you could do that,” he said. “It is not a Benetheon skill.”

  “Believe your eyes,” Narak told him. “I am Benetheon. I can do it.” He shrugged. He had expected thanks, but he remembered the fire that Avatar had created to distract the snow wraiths. The creature was never in any danger from the Brael, he guessed, but had taken longer to free himself than Narak.

  Narak let go of the heat, his blades ticking as they cooled. The pain left his hands and arms. He took a deep breath of the cold, dark air.

  “You killed it,” Avatar said.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It attacked me. They attacked us.”

  “The Brael are not warriors. There was no intent. It was harmless. You could not eat it.”

  Harmless? Yes, he supposed it had been. The Brael had been fleeing when he had struck it, but it had seemed the right thing to do, the Narak thing to do. Justice dispensed without thought. And was that justice at all?

  “The things you say are true,” he admitted.

  “It is in your nature to kill,” the avatar said.

  “As I understand it,” Narak said, “I am an amateur beside yourself.”

  Avatar looked away, and Narak felt a pang of guilt. It was unfair to tax a chastened creature so brutally with its past, especially when that past was so far away. Yet for all that distance through time he felt a kinship with those ancient dragons at the moment of their defeat. He knew guilt. It pursued him all the way from Afael, from the island of the king of blood and fire, from a thousand places and times when he had acted in haste and repented of it with a cooler head.

  “What you say is true,” Avatar said. “But we are all changed.”

  “True but unkind,” Narak replied. “I am sorry to have said the words. My fault, as always, is impatience, haste, speed.”

  “You have that which we lacked,” the creature turned and looked once more to the north.

  A conscience. He had a conscience, and it gnawed at him. His memory fed it with faces and blood, and it lived fat on his deeds.

  “You promised to show me a palace,” he said, driving his guilt down once more. It did not do to dwell on those things he could not justify. It was a lesson he had learned in the forests, or the wolf had learned them even if the man had been slower to understand the lesson. The wolf was a simpler creature. Now he needed to be the wolf, to imitate the wolf for a while at least. There would be a time for doubts, but it was not now, and not in this company.


  “I will show it to you,” Avatar said. “But you will not understand it.”

  Twenty Nine - Skal

  When he saw the pyres the first time he knew that the time was right. There were three, just three, but three men dead of cold and hunger meant the rest of them were weak and ready to break. But if he took the opportunity it could all unravel very quickly. The Telans could turn on him in the moment of his victory, and then it would transmute into defeat as surely as stones fall.

  Skal knew that he would have to talk to Hestia.

  He stood on the walls and watched the pyres burn, and he understood that the Seth Yarra leader would also be at a crisis point. The man could not sit by and watch his soldiers die, three by three, ten by ten, fifty by fifty. Skal knew that it could only get worse for them. It would be only a matter of days before they attacked. For Skal it was obvious. However strong the chain was, the Seth Yarra army would only get weaker from this point, relatively weaker. Their commander would be picking his point of attack even now, or maybe it was already chosen.