by Tim Stead
“And this is the same man?” The duke seemed reluctant to believe it.
Cain looked at Jerac. It was Jerac’s turn to speak.
“I am. My Lord,” he said. “I awoke one morning like this, young and strong again, yet stronger and better than I had ever been in my natural youth.”
“You are more intelligent, also,” Sheyani said.
“I cannot say,” Jerac said. Why would she say that?
“I think it so,” Cain said. “It is part of the tradition, Sheyani says.”
Jerac looked around the wall of faces. They were all still looking at him, and he was certain that they knew something which he did not.
“He certainly has a remarkable grasp of strategy for a sixty year old carpenter,” the major said. “And he learns quickly. All of his instructors have said so.”
Cain turned to the duke. “He must come with us, My Lord,” he said.
“I have not yet agreed to let you go,” the duke said. “And now you want to take away the hero of the hour as well.”
“You cannot deny us,” Cain said. “It is the Wolf’s business, and all three of us owe allegiance to the Wolf above that to Avilian, and besides, do you think the Wolf’s cause less than our own?”
The duke studied Cain. Jerac did not understand what was going on, but he had picked up the suggestion that he would be going away from Bas Erinor with colonel Arbak and Sheyani. The thought lifted his heart. It was what he had always wanted. These two were of the few in this age that cut the track for history to follow.
“It is true that the Wolf has always been a friend of Avilian,” the duke conceded. “He has never abandoned us in time of need.”
“Nor will he now. We will be back with the army before spring breaks.”
“Very well, I will permit it,” the duke said. “But you know it is a grievous cost to us. You are our most reliable commander, our most trusted. You know Esh Baradan’s value better than I, and without the lieutenant here I should have lost my wife and my city.”
“I will leave you with Captain Henn, My Lord,” Cain said. “You may trust to his instincts.”
“Be that as it may, he is very young, and his men do not inspire.”
“We shall see,” the duke said. He stood up and glanced around the company. “And now I have a more pleasant duty to perform. It heartens me to reward those who have served Avilian well, and there cannot be a better company than those who are gathered here in this room.
“Yet there is one here whose rewards have been trivial compared to the service he has performed, and another whose reward is long overdue. Major Bessant, will you kneel before me?”
“My Lord” The major seemed surprised, but he got out of his chair and knelt before Duke Quinnial. Quinnial picked up an ornate sword that was lying on the desk and drew it from its sheath.
“Major Karel Bessant, for your long service in command of the castle and city guard, for your loyalty to the house and city of Bas Erinor, and not least for your defence of the city in the recent crisis, I raise you up.” He tapped the major once on each shoulder. “You are here named a knight of Avilian, and granted the sigil of Bas Erinor.”
Jerac watched. He had not even known that the major had a given name, and had only heard the family name once. He had always been just The Major. Now he was Sir Major – he had no idea what they should call him. Sir Karel? He had never been taught these things, never having much to do with titled folk. But Cain Arbak was just called colonel, so perhaps the major would still be just the major.
The major stood and bowed. Jerac could see tears in his daughter’s eyes.
“And now Jerac Fane – or is it Alos Stebbar? We may have a small legal problem with the name.”
Jerac was suddenly the centre of attention again. “I do not know,” he said.
“Surely it is a man’s right to take a new name, My Lord?” Sheyani said. “Among my people a new name is chosen on the day of ascension, the day upon which one becomes a mage. This man’s change is as great if not greater.”
“And there is no deception in it,” Cain added. “You know both names.”
The duke shrugged. “It is unusual, but there is no harm in it, I suppose. Jerac Fane,” he turned to Jerac. “Will you kneel before me?”
“Me?” He was startled. He had not connected their conversation with this. They were going to knight him? “But…”
“Just kneel,” Cain said.
Jerac knelt. He was unprepared for this, had never considered the possibility, nor dreamed of it. He had chosen a soldier’s life the second time around to see great things. He had not thought to be an officer. He had seen himself as a mere cog in the great machine of the Avilian army, one sword among many.
“Lieutenant Jerac Fane, also called Alos Stebbar, you have done great service to the house of Bas Erinor, and to the city of that name. The Benetheon itself owes you thanks. I am personally indebted to you. In acknowledgement of your courage and prowess I raise you up. You are here named a knight of Avilian and granted the sigil of Bas Erinor.”
The sword tapped him on the left shoulder and then the right. He felt dizzy. It was like a dream. What would Bisalt and the others say, he wondered? Would he awaken and find himself asleep in the guardhouse hammock? No. This was no dream. He stood. He bowed deeply to the duke.
“Duty done,” the duke said. “Now I must spend some time with the blood out there,” he nodded to the door. “They are drinking my wine and eating my food, yet they will not be satisfied if Maryal and I are not among them. When will you leave, Cain?”
“In the morning,” Cain said. “We have tarried here long enough.”
Quinnial nodded and Maryal stood and moved to his side, taking his hand in hers. “You too,” he said to Cain. “Be among them for a while, shake some hands, be kind. They need their heroes.”
“As you wish,” Cain said. “But first we must speak with Sir Jerac a little.”
Jerac felt another rush when Cain pronounced the words. Sir Jerac. That was what he was now, what he would always be until he died.
The duke and duchess left. The major followed them and Jerac was left alone with Cain and Sheyani. Almost at once the mood changed. It was as though the two of them had been waiting for the others to leave.
“Give me your hand,” Cain said.
Jerac did as he was told, stretching out his arm, and Cain took his wrist and turned his hand palm upwards. He drew his dagger.
“What are you doing?” Jerac asked, a little alarmed, though he did not try to pull his hand away.
“It is a little test, something that we must see before we speak freely. There is nothing to fear, Jerac.” Then, as if he had second thoughts he turned his knife and cut the back of his own hand, the one that held Jerac’s. The wound was gone as soon as the knife left it. A single drop of blood hung at the tip of the blade before falling to the carpet.
“It is the same,” Jerac said. It was like his own flesh that knitted at once.
Cain cut him. It was the same. The wound closed at once and there was no sign of it.
“True then,” the colonel said, putting his knife away.
“You know what this means?” Jerac asked.
“We do.” He glanced at the door. “You are Farheim,” he said.
Jerac was puzzled. The word meant nothing to him. “What is that?” he asked. He had never heard the word, though from the way the colonel spoke it he knew it to be significant. He saw them exchange looks.
“There’s no substitute for an education,” Sheyani said.
“Well, there’s no time to explain it tonight,” Cain replied. He turned to Jerac. “Just keep it to yourself, don’t say the word to anyone but us, nor in the hearing of anyone but us. Do you understand?”
“I do,” Jerac said.
“And be ready to leave Bas Erinor at first light.”
“I will. Where are we bound?”
Cain smiled. “Wolfguard,” he said.
Forty One – Narak
He c
ould not tell whether Avatar had been surprised, angry, horrified or amazed. As usual there was no physical display of emotion on the creature’s face, but he had learned that when it hesitated, when it did not move or speak, these were the signs that in another creature would be significant. He just didn’t know how to read them.
He had walked out of Cobran’s palace without a scratch upon him. That alone should have been triumph enough to raise an eyebrow, if Avatar had possessed them. When Torgaris had followed him out of the palace, huge and back and infinitely dangerous, most creatures would have fled.
Avatar watched it all in stony, immobile silence.
He reacted only when Torgaris crossed the boundary between the artificial summer of the palace and the frozen, snow clad land around it. Even then it was only a single step, and a single word.
“No.”
Torgaris paused, half in and half out of summer, his great tail lashing bright lawns and his forelegs planted in snow. The dragon peered for a moment at Avatar, then snorted a blizzard. “No?”
“You are kept here by the will of the others,” Avatar said.
“What do you know, you claw clipping?” Torgaris said. “You can see that it is not so.”
“How?”
“It was never Torgaris that was imprisoned here, but Torgaris’s despair. That is now banished, and so I am free.”
Avatar turned to Narak. “What have you done?” he asked. It was not a reproach, not angled at all, but simply a question.
Narak’s body still vibrated with the magic that had been released within the palace. “I answered the call,” he said. “I made a promise.”
“There was more than a promise,” Avatar said. “There was a word.”
“Yes.”
Avatar looked at him for a long while without speaking. Narak was aware of the looming bulk of Torgaris behind him, warm as the embers of a huge fire.
“This complicates things,” Avatar said. “I did not expect this. Kirrith did not expect this.”
Narak turned to the dragon. “If we continue to travel north they will still find us?”
“They will find you,” Torgaris said. Something in the way the dragon said it made Narak shiver in spite of the wolves, in spite of the furnace presence of Torgaris himself, melting the snow all around him.
“Then we will continue to move north,” he said. “We will follow the path that Kirrith has made for us.”
“It is the only thing you can do,” Torgaris said. “Kirrith will not move from his lair, and you must stand in his presence for the promise to be given.”
So they went on. Torgaris did not walk. Walking was not a dragon thing, it seemed. Dragons flew. While it was still light he was aware of the black dragon’s presence high above them, sweeping forwards, falling back, engaged in a joyous dance with the winds of the frozen land. It seemed to him that not only the avatars of dragons, but dragons themselves were quite immune to both heat and cold.
That night it was well after dark when the dragon joined them again, drifting silently over the barren landscape. Narak knew him more by his star shadow than by the noise he made. It was a marvel that such a huge beast could be so stealthy. Torgaris set down with barely a ruffle of snow not ten paces from where Narak had wrapped himself in his coat and furs.
“Are you sleeping?” he asked.
“No.”
“Will you answer questions?”
“That depends on the questions.”
Torgaris settled into the snow, coiling like a winged whip. The sound of his scales riding upon each other as he sought comfort reminded Narak of a vast snake, and Torgaris was not so far from that, he supposed. There was the addition of four legs, broad wings reminiscent of a bat, and the head, which was larger than it should be, but apart from that he was very like a snake.
“You have been abroad in the world?” the dragon asked.
“Recently I have, but not so much before that.”
“Can you tell me how men dwell upon the earth?”
“I do not understand the question.”
Torgaris did not rephrase his words at once, but shuffled a little in the snow. Narak felt the movement through the rock against which he rested.
“Have their numbers increased?” the dragon asked.
Narak saw the concern. “Since the war? Yes. The kingdoms are full again. Men are everywhere. Everywhere except the forest and the plain.”
“And you keep the forest?” he asked.
“I and others,” he replied, but then realised that this was a falsehood. Narak was the only one of five lords of the forest who remained. Pascha and Jidian were of the air and Sithmaree of the plain. He did not bother to correct his statement.
“There is war, yes?”
“Yes.”
“And it is your wish to end the war?”
“To stop it,” Narak replied. He was sensible to the difference. One could end a war by winning it, by wiping out every man, woman and child of the enemy. “Too many people have died already, and the cause is false.”
“Yet you are a warrior, a fabled killer of men.”
Narak rolled upright and looked the dragon in the eye as best he could. Here was a creature that could destroy him in an instant, a monster of legend, a fire breather against whom no sword or lance, no bow or missile was worth a damn. Yet Narak was not afraid. The magic, or perhaps his own brand of despair, lent him inexhaustible courage.
“What is it that you want to know?” he asked. “Am I happy to have killed so many? No, I am not. Do I regret each and every one? No, I do not. There are some whose killing left the world a better place. There are others that I should not have killed, and many who died because they gave me a choice of their death or mine, and I am still fond enough of life to wish to keep it.”
“How do you know?”
“How do I know what?”
“If a man deserves to die?”
Narak laughed. “That is a vexed question,” he replied. “Wise men have ever mulled that particular puzzle. There are even some who hold that no man deserves to die, but only be restrained from harming others. Myself, I am a creature of impulse, and I am often wrong, but, I believe, more often right.”
“And it does not trouble you, the times when you are wrong?”
“Aye, it does, but you will not fathom my conscience by questioning me, Torgaris. It goes deeper than words, and the skill of living with guilt is a common one among men, and grows, it seems, with our misdeeds.”
“It grows not at all with us,” Torgaris said. “Is there no rule that defines how one should live, who you should kill and who leave alive?”
“There are laws,” Narak said. It was true. In every nation of Terras there were laws and courts and judges and men with weapons to enforce their judgements. Yet in each nation the laws differed. Narak could not claim to have obeyed them. He had never permitted their words to restrict his actions. He was above the law, and his conscience was his only judge. And he knew why it was that he thought this way. “Laws are the tools of powerful men,” he said. “They offer justice in some cases, but in many they do not.”
“Then there is no guidance?”
“There is too much. Hundreds of books have been written by wise men, or men who think themselves to be wise, discussing and dissecting right and wrong and all the shades between, but there is no stone in them – it is all ash and feathers.”
“Yet I would like to read them, never the less,” Torgaris said.
“In time, perhaps,” Narak said. He carried no books, and he could not think that any gentleman of Avilian would allow a fire-breather anywhere near his precious library, so the chances of Torgaris satisfying his thirst for words was slim. Yet Narak did carry one volume with him. He had thought, in those last days back at Wolfguard, that he would be spending time sitting by a camp fire alone with nothing to pass the time, and so he had brought one book – The Tales of Karim. It was exactly what the dragon required. It was an allegorical treatise on morality and h
onour like nothing else that the kingdoms possessed. It was ancient, and it was, if Narak was honest, the yardstick against which he measured his own behaviour. It was years – centuries – since he had last opened it, and he had thought to re-read the familiar tales.
Narak rolled out of his furs and went to his sled. It took a few moments before he located the slim volume and carried it back to his bed. Torgaris watched this all with interest.
“What is that?” he asked.
“It is what you asked for,” Narak said. “It is a guide to how you should behave.”