The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  The immortal should never rule. In the end they forgot what it was to be mortal.

  So what would she do in the world? What was her place?

  Now was not the best time to consider this. There were immediate concerns that forestalled all others. There were the Bren. They must be stopped. They could not be allowed to destroy mankind as they intended. They must be brought back to their place, taught once more the meaning of Pelion’s law, the code which governed them.

  There were dragons, too. Something would have to be done about the dragons. They represented a danger to everything. If they should be unleashed upon the world again Pascha knew that she could not do what the god mages of old had failed to do. She could not even repeat Pelion’s poor solution. Such skill was beyond her at present, and even if she possessed the knowledge and skill, she doubted that the dragons would be so contained a second time.

  She had tried to persuade Pelion to leave the Sirash intact. There were two reasons for this. She did not want her fellow gods of the Benetheon, particularly Narak, to be diminished. After so many of them had died it would be a final blow, a definite end to the Benetheon itself.

  More than that, however, it would enable her to best the dragons should they overcome the binding of the Pity Stone.

  But Pelion would not relent. It already worried him that she knew such a thing was possible. As a god mage she could use the Sirash to kill or control any creature, sparrows, wolves, men, even dragons. Her mastery would be greater than any mage who had ever lived – even Cobran would pale by comparison. Pelion would not permit such a thing.

  It would have made her invincible – at least for a while.

  Pelion had assured her that the Talent, the ability to use high magic, would rise again. Only killing those who had the aptitude would stop it, and finding them would be difficult if not impossible, and that, too, would be a kind of tyranny.

  Perhaps her role would be to protect men from her own kind.

  Thinking gave her no greater insights, so she abandoned it and decided to play instead. She returned to the grove of trees, the nascent woodland that she had been creating in her spare hours. It covered nearly two acres now. When she sat in the heart of it she felt something of the peace of the great forest. The light was the same tempered green, the leaves whispered the same, ancient song. It was comforting.

  Soon she would leave all this behind, and the pretending would be over. This playground of Pelion’s would be no more than a memory, and everything that she did from that moment would be real, have real consequences. People would live or die. The world would change.

  For a moment she was enveloped by a feeling of inadequacy. She was Pascha Lammeling, a shopkeeper’s daughter from Telas Alt. She still remembered her father chiding her, her mother teaching her to bake bread. The smells and sights, the memories of childhood had never deserted her. The imperfect, wilful child that she had been still lived within her. How could such a person be a god mage? How could a little girl become what she had become? She had already made so many mistakes, broken so many rules.

  She shook the feeling off. She was who she was. Fate had chosen her, or at least Pelion had. She had the Talent. It was a burden, and if it ceased to be a burden it would become a curse to every other living thing.

  Now she understood what it had meant to be Narak these last four hundred years. He was the one to whom they turned. Everything was expected of him, the courage, the skill, the strategy to defeat any enemy. Yet Narak was still Narak – not a god mage. He had his wolves, his two swords and the brains he was born with. He had made a legend out of those few things. She wished that she would do as well.

  She looked at the trees around her, tall and straight. Her trees. In every respect they were trees as fine as any in Narak’s forest, but they were not. They were not because she had made them, forced them to be what they were. Natural oaks grew from acorns. These had grown from almost nothing at all.

  The wonder was that she could feel the difference. Her eyes saw nothing, her hands felt nothing, but there was a bell within her that did not ring with a true tone when she looked at them. She examined the feeling, and knew that it was not her hands or her eyes that told her this. It was something else. She named it mage-sense.

  She closed her eyes, laid her hands in her lap and concentrated on the nearest tree. She became aware of it like a mist, wisps of being that coiled and knotted around each other, like a hundred miles of fine cotton thread made into the shape of a tree. She allowed herself to become aware of it all, to know the threads of her own magic in a way that she had never done before. She drifted into it, became part of it.

  It was a wonderful feeling, and as she absorbed the intricacy of the tree she saw how it had been built, saw each thread leading to another, and although it crossed and knotted and tangled she could fee the whole as a single line.

  She sat for an hour, perhaps more, allowing herself the luxury of enjoying her own creation. The more she dwelt within it, the more she grew aware of the structure, the importance of various twists and knots. Here, for example, was the place where she had changed the age, forcing it to grow, and here the fundamental lie where something that was not an oak had become one. It hung like a seed in the heart of the tree.

  How would it be if she reached out and plucked away that seed? What would happen to her magic tree?

  There was only one way to know. She reached out, but it was not with a hand, and she was clumsy. The threads scattered before her will as though it were a breeze, becoming a confused shimmer, and she lost sight of the seed, the thing she had reached for.

  It took her the best part of fifteen minutes until she found it again. It took almost that long for the threads to settle once more into their pattern.

  This time she moved gently, slow as honey falling from a spoon. It was not really as though she had a hand at all. It was more like she drew closer, other parts of the magic drifting away until the tiny seed was all that she was aware of, filling her mind.

  Be no more.

  There was a rumple in the air about her that snapped her from her trance in a moment. She looked about wide eyes, expecting to see Pelion nearby, or that goat that haunted the place, but there was nothing nearly. The trees still rustled, the light still flickered greenly about her.

  But the tree was gone.

  She looked again. There could be no doubt. The tree that she had been sitting in front of had vanished, its being unmade in an instant, and the only sign that it had ever existed was a pit of soil crumbling in upon itself where the roots had been.

  Pascha stared dumbly at the hole for some time. It had taken her hours to make that tree, to bind it to growth and age, to form the trunk and branches and myriad leaves. She had expected some change, a transformation of some kind, but not this.

  She was not stupid. The implications of what she had done were apparent to her at once. Her tree had not been a natural thing, and because of that she had been able to see, or at least become aware of, the magic that made it. The same, in theory, would apply to dragons and Bren alike. If she could become aware of them in the same way, if she could see the seed, or its equivalent, the thing that bound their being together, then she could defeat a dragon completely, could obliterate the Bren.

  It was not a solution. Dragons were more complicated than trees. They were not imitations of nature, but violations of it. They were stuffed with magic rather than painted with it, and she did not doubt that they would resent her poking around in their substance to discover a weakness, and such a resentment might be fatal, even for a god-mage. But it was a start, a beginning, a thread that could be followed, and that was better than nothing at all.

  So that was it. She could sense magic, could see it with some sort of inner eye, touch it with some sort of inner hand. That was the one weapon that she had that was not simple brute force.

  “Pascha?”

  Pelion was calling her from somewhere outside her wood. She stood up and walked in the direction f
rom which the voice had come. It seemed odd to her, but Pelion had never trespassed on the piece of his world that she had marked as her own.

  She emerged from the wood on the edge of the perfect lawn, close to the bridge over the stream. The sun was shining, but at once she noticed a difference. The light was tinged with red, and the sun stood low in the west.

  Pelion was standing on the grass, barefoot, clad only in the simplest white cotton shift. He looked old.

  “Time for one more lesson,” he said.

  Forty Eight – Skal

  It was a picture in his head, even in the dark. He could see every road, every hill, every copse of trees. His men were moving about him, easing into position. The horses’ hooves were wrapped, swords and mail muffled. In his mind’s eye he saw the right flank moving out, like a hand reaching to cup the Seth Yarra camp in its grip. His left flank would be hard against a steep slope, and nothing would slip past them. It helped to see it all.

  A few hours ago he had sketched the whole plan out in the dirt outside his tent, instructed all his captains as to their positions and purpose, and it was a good plan. They had all approved. There had been a few eyebrows raised when he had included the Wolfen officer in his council. There was little trust among his Avilians of the turncoats, but Skal thought it worth the risk. Jorgan listened intently to his words, studied the maps he drew, but made no comment.

  He put the Wolfen in the centre. It was a low risk position from Skal’s point of view. His reserves would be directly behind them, a hundred mounted men ready to ride them down if they should turn, but Skal did not think they would. His instincts told him that these men had genuinely changed sides, that their hearts were his for the taking. He saw that Jorgan understood why he had put them in the centre, and the significance of the reserve, and he saw that the man accepted it. Jorgan had been an officer, and he understood the necessity.

  Now the time for planning was past. He looked up at the sky. Through the leafless black fingers of the trees he could see the stars, and in the east there was a touch of colour. It was nearly time. He looked ahead again, but there was nothing left to see of last night’s camp fires, and the morning cook fires were not yet lit. The Seth Yarra camp was swallowed by the darkness before them. They needed just a little more light. If there had been a full moon he would have attacked hours ago.

  Waiting in the dark he thought of Passerina, and he wondered if she was still at Wolfguard, and what had happened there. He thought of Hestia, still holding the Chain he supposed. There was so much that he did not know. The other side of the Dragon’s Back could be a different world for all he knew of happenings there. He wondered about Tilian and Latter Fetch, and finally thought of Sarah. He had almost forgotten Sarah in the last few months. For some reason the realisation brought a sense of relief.

  A horse whickered somewhere in the dark, somewhere behind him. He doubted that the noise would carry as far as the enemy camp, but he watched keenly for a minute and listened to detect anything that might have stirred, but there was no sound of alarm.

  The sun was making its presence felt the other side of the Dragons Back. The mountains, now quite close, were little more than silhouettes, and the sky above them was paling rapidly. It was only minutes until the peaks would no longer shade them.

  “Now,” he said. His voice was no louder than a whisper, but he heard the word he had spoken spread through the ranks of his men like a wave rolling slantwise on a beach, a susurration fading away to left and right.

  His men began to move. It was traditional to begin at a walk, a slow walk, and the men around him did just that, the tempo picking up as they went. A slow walk became a quick one, and as they approached the enemy it transformed into a gentle trot, and then rapidly into an all out run.

  Now he could hear the hooves of horses to left and right, and over his head the hiss of arrows. One volley went over, then two. He had planned for three, and just before they broke the boundary of the camp it followed the others. Now there was chaos erupting among the Seth Yarra. Men stumbled from tents. Those that were already awake ran to meet the attack, but they were disorganised, and those first few were cut down in moments.

  So far, so good.

  They managed to get in among the tents before any resistance could be organised, and that made for more chaos. His men used the embers of last night’s camp fires to set the canvas ablaze, drowning the light of dawn with red and yellow flames. Now the battle dissolved into a melee, and Skal found himself fighting among his men, cutting down Seth Yarra as they came against him.

  This was the first time that he had fought, really fought, as Farheim. It shocked him how easy killing had become. He went through them almost without thought, cutting, stabbing, almost casually killing. He had time to look around, which was something he had not expected. He saw the right wing come thundering in, noted with approval that the Wolfen were fighting as well as any of his own men. It was almost as though the fighting happened at a slower pace.

  It was going well. The right flank was rolling up, the centre was driving them back, and the left flank was holding steady as a rock. They had numbers and surprise. It would all be over in minutes.

  But something wasn’t right. Almost as soon as he thought the battle was over he saw that his right flank was breaking. Something was happening over there that he couldn’t see, and it was splitting the cavalry, causing them to roll back, circling to come in again.

  Skal moved to his right, fighting through whatever was in his way. As he moved, the situation on the right grew worse. His cavalry seemed unable to make headway against whatever was holding them up, and he was afraid that they would withdraw, leaving the flank open, and the fight would spill out into the scattered woodland beyond.

  As he drew closer he saw that the problem was a knot of men that seemed unmovable. There were a dozen dead horses and thirty men already piled around them. He watched the fight as he approached. A trio of men on horseback attacked, and failed. One of the horses was beheaded with a single blow, its rider flung forward among the enemy and slain. The second man was cut from the saddle, and the third tried to avoid the same fate, but was knocked from his saddle by an arrow, his horse running back into the ranks of the fallen riders’ comrades who were gathering again at the limits of bowshot. Clearly there was something more here than just Seth Yarra, and he felt a chill down his spine, a sudden cold in the heat of battle.

  Skal had now worked behind the group of Seth Yarra, carving a path through the heart of the camp, and he came at them from the rear, cutting down five bowmen before they realised he was there. The man at the point of the group pivoted, and his sword nearly cut Skal in two. But Skal was quick enough to parry the blow, and strong enough, for the blow would have knocked aside a lesser man’s blade.

  There was a still moment. Skal and his adversary stood facing each other. Both of them surprised at the meeting, it seemed. Their blades locked together. Skal had a chance to see the man he faced, but could not. The man wore a smooth sliver helmet that concealed his face completely. Skal could see the eyes that met his own, but nothing else. Apart from that he saw black armour, a green cloak, a sword that glittered menacingly, and a dagger.

  The stillness passed. The silver headed man whipped his sword away and thrust directly at Skal’s heart. The blow was quicker than any Skal had seen, and accurate, but Skal parried it, stepped aside and replied with a cut at the shoulder. That blow was parried too, but his opponent seemed surprised by it, surprised in fact that Skal was still standing.

  “Who are you?” the silver head said.

  Skal answered with a thrust of his own, deflected, but quick enough to clang off an armoured shoulder.

  The duel began in earnest. Opening moves had shown each that the other was a formidable opponent, and they circled. A few more exchanges brought no blood on either side, but Skal now knew that he was facing an Avilian trained fencer better than anyone he had ever seen. If he had not been Farheim, blessed with great speed and
strength, he would not have survived the opening exchange.

  But this man in a silver helm was no man. Skal was sure of that. Their blades rang in lighting exchanges, and he could see that his enemy’s form was good, but there was a slight sloppiness, and Skal was convinced that he was the quicker, and probably the stronger of the two. Yet he could think of only one name that would fit.

  This must be Seth Yarra, the god.

  For a moment the thought made him doubt himself, and he got cut for it, saw the eyes behind the mask smile, then frown as the cut vanished. Skal in his turn used the pain and the other’s doubt to score a hit of his own, working his blade so that it raked across the back of a hand. It should have been enough. A cut hand would take away one weapon, open up one side, but his blade failed to penetrate the skin, sliding off as though he had struck armour.