The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  “Arisanne,” Narak said. “The tales of your beauty are not adequate. They do not capture a tenth part.”

  “What you see is a lie,” Arisanne said. “I have no fair deeds to match this skin.”

  “What you are is the truth, Arisanne. The past is what you have been. Your mind is bloated with regret.”

  “You see true, man wolf. Are you what they say you are?”

  Narak shrugged. “It is for you to say.”

  Arisanne did not approach. He stayed half crouched in the position he had landed.

  “I desire redemption as much as the others,” he said. “Perhaps more. In my heart I paint myself black each day. I am more Torgaris that Torgaris. But what makes you think that we deserve redemption? What makes you think that we will accept it?”

  “It is not your place to accept or deny, Arisanne. The gift is given. The promise is made. If you believe that it is so, then it is so. That is your only choice.”

  Narak was once again unaware of thinking the words before he spoke them. They came from that part of him that was dragon made. Arisanne did not lie. He felt the pull of the magic strongly, even standing apart from the dragon.

  Arisanne stepped forwards, and the power of the magic flooded him. He saw the great smooth head, the blood coloured eyes just before him. He saw his own hand reach out and lay upon the golden snout. Arisanne’s scales were so small that his hand covered many, and it looked as though he had dipped his hand in ink before touching the dragon. His hand made a shape, a hand shape in black.

  The red eyes glowed hot. Narak smelled oranges, he smelled sunshine and dry, baked stone.

  “Arisanne,” he said. “I am Adelir. The word is Adelir. The promise is Adelir. I am Adelir.”

  “The Awaited One,” Arisanne said.

  Narak said nothing. He could not have said anything even if he had wished to do so. He was in the grip of the magic, and the magic demanded that he should wait, that the next words should be Arisanne’s. The dragon continued to stare, and the red eyes grew almost orange with the heat of the stare.

  “We have not earned this,” Arisanne said. “But in spite of myself I do believe.”

  The black patch of scales grew, spreading down the dragon’s back like lacework, weaving an intricate pattern through the mass of gold and red. Arisanne raised his head and looked down at Narak. He felt the magic fade, going back to sleep until a time when it was needed once more. Arisanne turned away, as if troubled, and coiled tightly at the foot of a slope in the deep snow. As he did this Torgaris landed between them with a thump.

  “Three,” the black dragon said. “Three is better than two.”

  “And none is better than nine,” Arisanne replied.

  “You will see that it is not so,” Torgaris said.

  Narak left Arisanne behind in the snow and carried on walking. He had not forgotten his original purpose in coming north. Kirrith had called. This was a way to stop the Bren. In spite of the magic it was still the uppermost thought in his mind.

  It was always night now. Day had fled completely, and Narak walked in the dark, his steps crackling across the frozen ground. He knew the passage of time only by the wheeling of the stars above him and the brief false dawn that marked midday. The sky to the south lightened for about an hour, and sometimes blushed the palest pink before night solidified again.

  He was drawing closer to his goal. He knew by the images that he had dreamed, the path given to him by Kirrith.

  It was at midday that the fourth dragon came.

  Each time they came he was overwhelmed by their differences. He had thought that they would all look similar, or at least as men did with the same form, the same general colours. Kelcotel surprised him again.

  Narak had stopped briefly to wet his throat and eat a few morsels of dried meat and fruit in the brief ritual that now passed for his midday. His head was pulled up from his food by a sound much like a great wind. Kelcotel dropped from the sky and opened his vast wings with a concussion that shook the snow. From head to tail the dragon was covered in brown feathers.

  He had never imagined such a creature – a feathered snake with wings, a dragon head covered with down pierced by long spines, almost with the appearance of whiskers. There were four feet, like any other dragon, and yellow, cat eyes.

  The creature fixed him with a stare. “You are Wolf Narak,” it said. “Your history does not recommend you, wolf god.”

  “Does it not?”

  “Given your unimpressive size you are a monster as great as any of us.”

  “But it has taken me fifteen hundred years to accumulate the sins of your one,” Narak replied. “And my remorse was not forced upon me. Besides, should not the messenger of redemption be one who understands the need?”

  “So you are not entirely witless,” the dragon said.

  “And you are not entirely scrubbed free of arrogance, it seems.”

  “Do not mistake me for the others, Wolf Narak. I understand. We rightfully bear no more guilt that a sword, or even a stone. We were things used by others to kill. That we had minds at all was little more than an accident – a miscalculation. Pelion used what we had been given against us, and now we are crushed by the full knowledge of the pain and suffering that we unknowingly caused, the blood that stains us. I know that we were innocent, yet I cannot escape my share of the guilt laid upon us.”

  “The innocent have no guilt.”

  “Except by magic. We were made for evil ends. A sword cannot choose to be a pudding spoon.”

  “You think that a conscience would exempt you from blame? I can tell you with authority that it does not. A conscience is no more than a shadow of a thing. It comes after the event and haunts you. It is a judge that presides mostly over what is past. In the moment of the deed it is no more than a voice in the ear, and it is so easy to disregard.”

  “So you say.”

  Narak stared at the dragon. If their places were reversed he might have spoken the same words, but there was no way that he could describe the guilt that he felt. He had done things knowing that they were wrong. He had killed the innocent. He had spent his rage and frustration in places where it was not warranted. Conscience was a thing that hinted, and then complained as though it had spoken plainly at the time. It was not an honest councillor, Narak had found. It could be bribed with anger and grief.

  With Kelcotel so close he could feel the magic again. It was not as strong as in Torgaris or Arisanne, but it was there.

  “My worthiness aside…” he said, and raised his hand.

  The dragon paused. It was a pause that spoke volumes. It was resistance, disdain, disappointment, and in a way also shame and self hate. Whatever it signified it was futile. The magic drew his head down, placed it before Narak.

  The feathered head was soft and warm. His fingers sank into the downy mass and he felt the solid bone beneath. Narak spoke the word, the promise, and as different as Kelcotel was from the others, so the change was different, and quite wonderful.

  A blood red patch formed around his fingers. There was no hesitation now, it was all spent, and Kelcotel spoke almost at once.

  “I believe,” he said.

  Colour exploded all over his body. Brown feathers became green, yellow, blue and red, the hues spreading like fire until Kelcotel stood revealed as a creature even more spectacular that Arisanne, a feathered tapestry of unmatched beauty. The yellow eyes remained unchanged. They looked at Narak.

  “You are remarkably strong,” the dragon said. “But then you will have to be.”

  The next day four more dragons came.

  Forty Six – Cain

  Cain had led them into the mountains about as far as they could go. He had picked a broad valley between two low peaks and followed the stream that flowed out of it, always picking the branch with the greatest flow, guessing that it would have cut a wider gap.

  It had worked for a while. They had to ford the stream about twenty times as they followed it, staying on the most
level ground, walking with wet boots, which Cain didn’t enjoy, but they made good progress into the heart of the Dragon’s Back. It came to the end at a snow-choked spring surrounded by steep and icy slopes. Looking up he could see nothing put jagged peaks, the wind trailing thin clouds from their uncompromising spires like so many white banners.

  “We’ll have to climb,” he said.

  Fane was carrying a rope. He’d scavenged it in the Berashi camp: three hundred feet of best hemp, their stock of rope kept to repair the gates should it be needed.

  “I’ll go first,” he said. He pointed to a col between peaks, a saddle that must have been a thousand feet above them. “That one?” he asked.

  Cain looked at the slope. It was rock and snow. There looked to be a good number of handholds, but there was no way to tell how secure they might be. “Be careful,” he said.

  He needn’t have worried on Fane’s account. The former carpenter swarmed up the mountain as easily as if it was a ladder. Farheim strength and stamina, Cain guessed. He watched as Fane found a secure position and began to pay out the rope.

  “Sheshay?”

  He turned and looked at Sheyani. She was almost as white as the snow. Her eyes were wide and fixed on the distant Fane.

  “What is it, Sheyani?”

  “It is high places, Sheshay. They make be afraid.”

  “You cannot climb?”

  “Not this.”

  The rope reached them. Up above, a long way above, Fane was fixing it somehow, and now they should begin the climb. It was a thousand feet if it was one, and the laying of the rope would have to be done three or four times at least before they reached the col.

  He had not even thought to ask. Cain knew that some were fearful of heights. He’d seen it in men before, men who were no use on a high wall but deadly on flat ground. You had to know about men like that. You had to know how to use them.

  “I’m sorry, Sheshay,” she said. “I thought that we could walk, or maybe a small climb. I thought I might manage that.”

  Cain looked up. The rope was there, a few feet from his hand.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  “Of course I do, Sheshay, but I cannot…”

  “Then I will carry you,” he interrupted.

  “You cannot.”

  “I am Farheim. You are small and light. If I tie you onto my back I can climb the rope with ease. All you need to do is close your eyes and hold on. Can you do that?”

  Sheyani looked up again. The distant figure of Jerac Fane was waving to them, urging them to begin.

  “Tie it tight, Sheshay,” she said.

  Cain gathered the end of the rope. About twenty feet of it had coiled on the ground in the snow. He took out his knife and cut a sufficient length. A simple loop about them both would not do. She might slip through it as he climbed. He raised his hand to Fane, signalled him that there was a delay, and then tied the rope in a double loop. He threaded Sheyani’s legs, one through each loop and fashioned a rough harness around his arms and across his chest with the rest of it. It felt secure enough. Cain knew enough about knots to know that these would not fail.

  “Hold tight,” he said. He felt her arms lock about him, reminding him that she, too, had Farheim strength. He took the end of the rope and began to climb.

  Had he been moving from hold to hold as Fane had done it would have been very hard. Her weight, slight though she was, unbalanced him, and he was grateful for the security of the hempen rope. He went up hand over hand, walking his feet up the ice and rock so that in no more than a few minutes he approached Fane.

  Fane waited for them, but raised an eyebrow when he saw the manner of their being tied together. The place where the lieutenant had stopped was the smallest of ledges, perhaps nine inches wide and five feet long, tapering into nothing. There were a couple of good handholds above it, though, so that it was comfortable enough to wait here.

  “Short stages,” Cain said. “No more than a hundred feet, or the nearest safe place.”

  “Aye, colonel,” Fane said. To his credit he said nothing more, but set off again up the mountain.

  It took the best part of an hour to reach the col. Fane climbing short pitches and Cain following up the rope with Sheyani tied to his back. She didn’t speak a word. She didn’t cry out, and she probably didn’t open her eyes, Cain thought. Her fear was ever present in the ferocity of her embrace. Even with his own Farheim strength he found himself short of breath, so tightly did her arms lock about his chest.

  At the col he was astride two mountains, but the view was not entirely reassuring. He looked west and found himself looking into a white maze of twisted valleys and jagged peaks. The way forwards was not obvious, and the mountains seemed to stretch for miles before him.

  Fane hauled the rope up and threw it down the slope before them.

  “You go first,” he said. “I’ll brace the rope up here and come down after you. Find a good spot to wait and signal me.”

  Cain was surprised that Fane was giving orders – or making suggestions – but it made perfect sense. He and Sheyani would always have the rope for security.

  He began to climb. It was hardly climbing, truth be told. He allowed his feet to skate down the mountain and hardly touched it with his hands, trusting in Fane’s strength the lower them as a steady rate. He looked all the time for a ledge or crack big enough to support them both. The mountain slope was well weathered, and there were many, so he waited until he judged the rope was nearly paid out and then wedged his feet in an icy fissure and found a secure hold for his right hand. He leaned back a little – Sheyani’s grip tightened at this – and signalled the distant Fane.

  He waited until he heard Fane just above.

  “Can you secure there?” he called.

  “I can.”

  He waited again until Fane was set, and then began to descend once more. They went on like this many times, Cain using the rope and the lieutenant taking the strain until they finally reached the foot of the slope.

  Cain eased Sheyani free, unwinding her hands. She resisted.

  “We are at the bottom again,” he said. She did not seem to hear, clinging to him even more tightly. He did not try to force her arms, though he probably could. Instead he knelt in the snow and talked to her in a soft voice. It took a while, but in the end she relaxed. Her arms released him, but she did not open her eyes. She sat in the snow as though unconscious.

  “We must do it again,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he replied. “But not yet. We will wait a while if you like.”

  She nodded.

  Fane had arrived by now. He sat next to them in the snow, coiling the rope again, watching them.

  “Perhaps there is a way we can walk a while,” he said. “I will go and look.”

  He stamped away through the snow, which was quite deep in places, leaving the rope coiled beside Sheyani. Cain was grateful for his discretion. He sat by his wife in the snow with the mountains rearing all about them. No matter what Fane did there would have to be another climb, and another, and another. It could go on for days.

  “We can turn back,” he said.

  She opened her eyes for the first time since they had reached flat ground and looked at him. “No,” she said. “You must go on without me.”

  “That’s never going to happen,” Cain said.

  “I cannot do this,” she said. “Not again.”

  “You must. We will go back to Fal Verdan. There must be another way.”

  “You know there is not.”

  “Then we will not go to Wolfguard.”

  “You must,” she said.

  “Sheyani, I will not leave you. Where you go, I go.” The last time they had been separated they had both been targeted and both had been lucky to escape. Cain would not permit the same thing to happen. They would live or die together.

  “But it is our duty,” she insisted. “The Eran asked it of us.”

  “Burn duty,” he said.

 
An uneasy silence fell between them. Cain looked down the valley, but Fane had vanished from sight around a corner and he could see nothing but tracks. There was no birdsong here. There were no trees or grass, but it was far from silent. High above them the wind whistled and groaned around the peaks, and all around there was the sound of ice cracking and ticking as the day warmed it.

  “Do you want something to eat?” he asked.

  Sheyani nodded, and Cain took out some food, dried and cold. He was beginning to feel the cold, he realised. His hands were a little stiff, his fingers flexed awkwardly. Another climb might be difficult unless he could warm them. He wondered if Fane was feeling the same thing.