The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  “Of course.”

  “The Pity Stone was a curse. It was as much a curse for those of us who remained as it was for the dragons. Needless to say it is a curse that we all sought to break, but the stone was too well made, and none of us have been free of it for a moment.

  “The dragons, however, had something that we did not. In their making they were not given magic. They have no knowledge of it and cannot wield it. In this Cobran put his faith, and was wrong to do so. They were, however, made of magic. It was necessary to do this in order that they be impossible to kill, that such vast creatures be able to fly, breathe fire, do all the things that they are able to do. They are most unnatural.

  “This magic resides within them, and is not subject to their will. However, there is a part of a man’s mind, and so a dragon’s, that is also not entirely related to will, and dragons are inclined to dream, to hope, to long for what they do not have. The dragons long for innocence.

  “This longing, shared among them, grew into a belief – a religion if you like. They began to believe that they deserved salvation, that their deeds were not entirely damning, and they began to believe in hope. Some of us suspected that this hope might one day become manifest, that there could be such a thing as hope magic if it was the unconscious will of the whole convocation of dragons.

  “It has come to pass. The dragons believe that they have found their saviour, or they hope that it is so. It amounts to the same thing, I believe.

  “They have been called together, and from all the corners of the world they come, abandoning their exile because they hope they have found the one who may restore their innocence, who might make them again as they were on the day of their creation.

  “They believe that Narak is their saviour.”

  “Narak? That’s preposterous. Narak is a Benetheon god…”

  “It may be true. Narak is a robust creature, and more so since your escapade creating unintentional Farheim. Remember, he received a third of all that you took from the Seth Yarra that you fed on. I did not give him so much when I made him wolfgod.”

  “What will happen?”

  “I cannot begin to guess.”

  “But you fear some consequence?”

  Pelion was silent for a while. He would not meet her gaze, but studied his hands. “It was all hastily done,” he said. “The making of the stone, the using of it. There was very little time to act. I do not know what will happen if the stone is destroyed. It may be that the dragons will revert, become again what they were.”

  “Narak will not destroy the stone,” Pascha said.

  “He may. If he becomes a vessel for the wishes of dragons he may have no choice.”

  “Narak is stronger than that. He will not endanger what he loves.”

  “The forest? The wolves? You put your faith in that?”

  “More than that. I put my faith in Narak. He will do what is right.”

  “I thought so once,” Pelion said. “Well, I hope that you are right. It will make no difference to me, whatever happens.”

  “Do you know more? Is there anything that will help me?”

  “Much.” Pelion smiled. “It will take days to tell it all.”

  “Then let us begin.”

  39 – A Thing to Remember

  With Seth Yarra out of the way the new hostility of the Telans became more of a concern. He had done what he could for the injured men under his command, and the nearest thing they had to a physic, a horse doctor, told him that all would be well or dead in a fortnight – well enough to travel or dead enough to bury, at any rate.

  Skal wanted to be away. He sensed it all around him, too. His men considered their job done. They had supported an ally, been part of two victories, and now it was time to return home.

  He could manage the logistics. He had enough horses and they were well enough fed to make the journey to where more food and some winter grazing might be found, but he had no idea what had happened to the Seth Yarra. Had they fled south to rejoin their command, or had they merely moved south to re-provision? Would they return? If he left the Chain and marched south only to meet ten thousand of the enemy it could be a disaster. He needed to know.

  Morianna was his best bet. She had offered him such help at one point, and he wondered if she would be inclined to keep her word.

  He had time, though. He sent a handful of scouts riding south, leaving before dawn and returning after dusk. They could only manage two dozen miles out in this fashion, but he was reluctant to send them further afield because it would mean having them camp out in the bitter cold of night. As yet he did not require such sacrifice of them.

  They found nothing. Well, that was not strictly true. They found bodies. It seemed that the Seth Yarra army had been closer to succumbing to winters assault than he had believed. Now, deprived of their shelter and food, they had begun to die. His scouts reported bodies, dozens of them, marking a desperate trail through the country, heading due south.

  Under the circumstances he did not believe they would be in any state to turn around and come back to resume their siege of the Chain. Even so, it paid to be cautious. If he had been the commander in the south he would have sent a relieving force, and those would be fresh troops, well fed and fit for battle.

  He called Morianna.

  She was quick to respond this time. It was less than a minute before a door opened and she stepped through.

  “You have reconsidered?” she asked the question almost the moment her foot touched the ground in his room. Her expression was eager.

  “I have given it some thought,” he said. “But I am not yet ready.”

  “Then why have you called me here?”

  “When we first spoke you offered to provide me with intelligence, to scout the lie of the land so that I might know where the enemy was, and in what numbers. Will you honour your promise?”

  “The situation has changed.”

  Yes, Skal thought. There is something else you want from me.

  “That is true. With your help we have won a victory, the siege has been lifted. Yet my duty is still to Avilian. I must see my men safe before I will consider satisfying your curiosity.”

  “You offer me very little, Lord Skal.”

  Skal shrugged. “Should I offer more? We are allies, and in that spirit, I believe, your offer was made. Has that changed? We have banished Seth Yarra from your borders and the threat to Durandar has lessened. Does this end our alliance?”

  Morianna smiled, but it was a political smile. “You speak well, Lord Skal. Avilian has been a friend of Durandar if not of Hammerdan, and that is the path I tread. I will help you without condition, but I must ask you to earnestly consider my request. It would be a significant advantage to our alliance within Durandar if we knew the identity of the god mage before Hammerdan discovers it. We do not know what he knows. He may, even now, be closing on the answer.”

  “Not through any help of mine,” Skal reassured her. “I stand with Avilian, and Avilian stands with the Wolf.”

  “Yet there may be others with your especial gift who have no such loyalty.”

  Skal thought of Hestia. The possibility of her siding with Hammerdan on anything was about as remote as a cat learning to speak. Yet it might be true. There might be other Farheim whose loyalty was not so assured. It would be rash to assume that the queen of Telas was the only other.

  “Earnest consideration,” he promised. She had played his own card of alliance against him, he realised. That had been clever. He was bound now by his own sense of honour to eventually do as she asked. In truth he had thought a great deal about it, and he was almost certain that he knew the name that Morianna wanted, and that she would not be pleased to hear it. If there was indeed a god mage that had changed both Skal and Hestia into what they now were, it could only be Passerina.

  The deal having been struck, Morianna returned to Durandar, promising to provide help when it was needed. They arranged for that help to be available as close to two weeks from
this date as she could manage. Exactly what the help would be she did not say, only that it would provide the intelligence that Skal required.

  That business dealt with, Skal began to prepare for their departure. He needed to pack as much food and fodder as the men could carry. He set Lissman to organising the loads while he pored over maps. The lie of the land was simple enough. Skal wanted to get down off the plateau on which the Chain was built as quickly as possible. He knew it would be warmer lower down, and there would be farms, grazing, food.

  The map showed Skal that his quickest route to lower ground was east. If he headed directly for the Dragon’s Back he would drop down into the Heron Valley, and from there follow the valley south until he could head east again to reach the pass at Fal Verdan. The problem was that the main road followed the Heron River north. It was the place he was most likely to encounter the enemy.

  On the other hand, his scouts had told him that the besiegers had retreated due south, and due south was an evil road. The plateau extended southwards like a finger, pointing at Telas Alt. If they had held that course he had nothing to fear from them. They would be on hard ground a long time.

  Fourteen days he intended to wait. Hestia sent a message to him on the tenth day.

  He was eating. It seemed to Skal that important interruptions always happened when one was eating or sleeping, the two simple pleasures that a soldier could boast. A junior officer rushed into the warming room, face flushed, eyes worried, and quite out of breath.

  “Sir…”

  Skal waited for the man to gulp down more air.

  “Telans, sir…”

  “Where?”

  “At the gate.”

  Skal fed himself another mouthful of the stew and put down his spoon. He stood. “How many?”

  “Five, sir. One lord, four soldiers.”

  The man had answered his question before he asked it. Hestia had not come. She had sent a messenger. He followed the officer at a leisurely pace. He was certainly not going to run. For Hestia he might have quickened his stride, but not for some glorified herald.

  When he reached the bailey it seemed that his men were ready for a fight. They were gathered below the walls, waiting for him, faces grim. For five men?

  “Open the gate,” he said.

  They hauled on the ropes and the gate swung open. The narrow gap revealed the five sent from Hestia. Emmar was at their head. They walked in through the gates without a sideways glance at the Avilian soldiers all around them.

  Skal studied Emmar. The man has been his enthusiastic friend only a few weeks ago, and he was curious how things had changed between them. It was a good sign, he thought, that Emmar was frowning. He was clearly troubled by this duty, but at the same time Skal did not doubt that he had volunteered for it.

  “How do you fare, Captain Emmar?” he asked.

  Emmar nodded. “Well enough, Lord Skal” he said.

  “And the Queen?”

  “Healthy,” Emmar replied. “She wants to see you.”

  “That was her message?”

  Emmar coughed and looked away.

  “Not her exact words,” Emmar confessed.

  “And what were her exact words?” Skal asked.

  Emmar coughed. “She demands that you stand before her to be judged for the treason of consorting with the enemies of Telas while under her command.”

  Skal shook his head. It was all he could do to stop himself laughing out loud. There were so many things outrageously wrong with Hestia’s message that he did not know how to respond to it. Firstly he did not consider himself to be under her command. He was an Avilian Lord commanding an Avilian regiment. He had never ceded his authority. Secondly, he had not consorted with the enemies of Telas, but with the allies of Avilian. In addition to that she had no right to demand anything of him, nor to judge him for any action that did not materially harm her subjects of her lands.

  On top of all that, he was Farheim. None were fit to judge him, save one whose name he did not know with certainty, and did not wish to know at all.

  “Emmar, how am I to reply to that?”

  “I cannot say, Lord Skal.” Skal thought the captain was embarrassed by the message he bore. Yet for all that, he had delivered the essence of it in his first rendering. It was simply that she wanted to speak with him, and after his unconventional sally against the Seth Yarra besiegers, this was the only way she could do so and save face. But Skal had the same problem. He could not surrender his pride and authority before his men.

  “I am leaving in four days,” he told Emmar. “I will take all my men and supplies back to Avilian. Tell your queen that I am saddened that our victory did not meet with her approval, and that I wish her further victories over our common enemy.” He turned to Lissman.

  “Captain, the Telans will be leaving now,” he said, and with that he turned and walked back into the keep. He was not certain of Emmar. The man clearly had some sympathy with his position, but he was Telan. His first loyalty was to his nation, then his queen, and after that Skal could not have guessed if his hatred of Durandar ranked above his young friendship with an Avilian lordling. Whatever the case, his message would go back to Hestia, and Skal would go back to Avilian.

  He was sad. He could not deny it. There had been a moment when he would have given up everything for Hestia, but she had pushed him away, and after that tried to trick him. She was right, too. He saw that. There was nothing for them, no path that they could tread together.

  He poured himself a cup of wine. He would have liked to get roaring drunk, to ride out and indulge himself in a little senseless slaughter. There was a lot of anger in him as well, and anger and sadness do not make wise drinking companions. He envied lesser men, men who had no family, no patent duty that bound them as surely as poverty ground down the poor. He envied Cain. Cain had somehow managed to rise in a charmed life where duty and desire had marched hand in hand.

  He drained the cup and looked long and hard at the bottle. Four days and he would be rid of this place. He rammed the cork back into the bottle’s neck and left it where it stood. Duty won again.

  Two days after that Morianna returned. He had not called her, but it seemed that she had returned via his own chamber, for she sauntered out of the keep as though it was the most natural thing for her to been here in a Telan fortress.

  She was not alone. The young man at her side was half a head taller than her, but really little more than a boy. His chin had yet to acquire the roughness of manhood and his skin was a child’s. He was dressed in a simple robe of dark red wool.

  “Areshi, what is this you have brought me?” Skal asked as she approached. The young man’s eyes flickered to him with the slightest hint of resentment.

  “Lord Skal, I present to you the Mage Urgonial, a Thalisterine.”

  “Thalisterine? A healer?”

  “Urgonial has many skills, Lord Skal. He is my student, and an adept of the Abadanon path. He is also one of the most skilful practitioners of the scrying art that we have. He can scout for you where others cannot.”

  Skal looked at the boy. Well, he was not a deal younger than Tilian when he’d first met him, and that stripling had already become a legend to Avilians. He stuck out his hand.

  “I am glad to have your service, Areshi,” he said. For a moment the boy seemed taken aback that Skal had addressed him directly, but then he took Skal’s hand and shook it. It was not the firmest grip that Skal had ever known. The boy was no warrior, but then Skal would have been a fool to expect it.

  “I will do my best, Lord Skal,” he said.

  “Can you ride?” Skal asked him.

  “Of course,” Urgonial replied, as if to say that any fool could ride. There was a touch of arrogance about him that Skal might have recognised in himself as a youth. It did not make him dislike Urgonial, but rather the opposite.

  “I’m glad to hear you say it, Areshi. We ride in two days, and the going will not be easy. We are bound for the Green Road and Avilian.�
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  “That is a long way,” the boy said.

  “It is, and we will rely on you to see us on a clear road.”

  “I can do that,” Urgonial said. “As long as you do not expect me to wave a sword about.”

  Skal grinned. “We have plenty of sword wavers, Areshi. We shall not need you for that.” He saw a slightly disapproving look on Morianna’s face. She perhaps thought her apprentice a little fresh in such grand company, but Skal did quite like the challenge. He turned to her. “We will do well enough together, I think,” he said.