The Pity Stone (Book 3)

by Tim Stead

  These were the other two, then, the Eagle and the Snake. Skal found his feet and executed a deep bow, saw that the others, too were following Caster’s lead.

  “Will you not name our visitors?” Sithmaree asked, her eyes roving the four men.

  Caster did so, briefly outlining who they were and where from. The two Benetheon gods joined them at the table, much to their discomfort. Skal had just become comfortable with Caster, thought he had some measure of the man, and now there were two gods to deal with. Still, gods were not so terrifying. Had he not nearly killed one the previous week?

  He noted that Caster did not repeat the message that he must have heard when Sheyani used the calling ring. These gods would be somewhat diminished when Passerina returned.

  “So did you come to wake Pascha?” Jidian asked.

  “As if they had such power…” Sithmaree said. Her voice was dismissive, and although she was quite correct her tone stung Skal. He recognised the culprit as pride, however, and did not speak.

  “She will wake in her own time,” Cain said. He too, failed to mention the destruction of the Sirash and the end of the Benetheon.

  “You said that she summoned them, Caster,” Jidian said. “But she has not woken.”

  “A Durander rite, Deus,” Caster said. “This lady is Sheyani Esh Baradan.”

  “Daughter of the king,” Sithmaree said. “The former king, is it not? It is Hammerdan now.”

  Sheyani assented with a nod of her head, but Skal could see that she was quite taken aback. The great tragedies of her life, even her kingdom, were footnotes to these gods. Benetheon they might be, but they were not Narak, not even Passerina. They were detached from the common run of humanity. Skal doubted that they had even heard his name before, let alone that of his traitor father. His respect for them dwindled a little more.

  “Can you speak to her again?” Sithmaree asked.

  “The Eran said that I should not, Deus” Sheyani replied.

  “And must you do as she says? There are things that we need to know.”

  “I will do as she says,” Sheyani said.

  Sithmaree smiled. “Even if I command otherwise?” she asked.

  “She is not yours to command, Deus,” Caster said.

  Sithmaree shrugged and turned away, picking a piece of smoked meat off the table. Apparently she was unwilling to face down Caster. Skal thought this odd, but perhaps there had been some sort of confrontation before they arrived, some matching of skills. Skal knew that Caster had been a legend in his own time, and doubly so as a confidant of Narak, and now that he was Farheim, and the last Ohas master in Terras he would be doubly formidable.

  There was a cry in the corridor outside. It sounded like surprise, and Caster was on his feet and through the door in a moment.

  “If it’s that cursed metal head again…” was all they heard before he was gone. They all followed, abandoning the table and rushing out into the passage, swords drawn, but they had gone now further than the first bend when they found Caster again.

  He was on his knees, and in front of him stood Passerina, red hair in disarray, green eyes blazing like emeralds before a candle flame. Her eyes flickered to them, and back to Caster. Skal imitated the sword master yet again and knelt.

  “Stop this,” she said. “Stand.”

  They stood, and Skal was amazed to note that in the seconds that his eyes had been averted her hair had tamed itself, wound like a living thing into a neat plait down her back, and even as he watched her clothes transformed from a soft cotton shift into something more practical: stout trousers, a cotton shirt and leather jerkin.

  She caught his eye and smiled at him. “Lord Skal, I am glad that you are here. We have some hunting to do. He is here.”

  “He…”

  “Metal head,” she said. “This time he will not escape.”

  Fifty One – Narak

  Narak slept. For the first time in weeks he slept and was free of dragon dreams. His mind wandered its own paths, and as was often its habit it became a morbid tourist through his past, stopping at moments that he would rather forget, passing by the things he most desperately wanted to remember.

  He saw Afael burning. It was something he saw often in his dreams: the great ships in the bay roaring with flame, the waterfront ghastly in the red light of the fire, and everywhere men were smiling at him, saluting with a fierce sincerity, calling his name. And all Narak could think of was the blood. He was covered in blood. It dripped from his blades, ran in rivulets from his armour and stained the ground.

  In his dream he threw himself into the sea to be free of it, but the cool, cleansing water vanished as soon as he touched it and he was standing once more, but this time over Perlaine’s body, her perfect white skin stained with blood, her fine hair matted with dead leaves and twigs.

  He fell to his knees, knowing that it was his error that had killed her, that he should have been the one in this place at this time. But she turned into mist before him and he found himself kneeling in the palisade of the King of Blood and Fire, watching himself kill everything that moved, and he wanted to tell himself to stop, but could not speak.

  He watched every step, every cut, every tear and plea for mercy.

  Then he was elsewhere, standing on a high mountain top, and he could see all of the kingdoms near and far, and in his hand he held a great sword, a blade that could reach and destroy anyone or any thing from the spot on which he stood.

  The message was obvious, even for a dream. The new Narak could not be the capricious, destructive Narak of old. He could not afford a temper, could not submit to the demands of rage. It made him think that this was not, after all, an entirely natural dream.

  A voice came into his head, a clear, plain voice.

  Wolf Narak, Deus, the voice said. I am Sheyani Esh Baradan whom you rescued from Lord Hesham at High Stone. I speak to you know through Passerina’s calling ring, bidden to do so by the Sparrow. She is with Pelion. She will return. When she returns the Sirash will be no more, and the Benetheon will end.

  He recognised her voice. He trusted the message. Sheyani was one of his own and would not speak a falsehood. He wondered why she had not simply used the dream magic that she had used before. It was distance, he supposed. Durander magic was notoriously susceptible to distance.

  So the Benetheon was to fall. Well, it was news, he supposed, but it was all but dissolved in death, and that was a strong enough solution. He did not feel its loss himself. He had changed. He was no longer just a man, just a Benetheon god. He was something that he could not name.

  He awoke.

  At first he thought he was dreaming yet. The sky was a hard, brittle black, studded with stars that blazed like a congregation of one eyed gods staring down on him, watching him. He could see everything by their light. The land about him was thick and white with snow, the sharpness of everything but the highest peaks gentled beneath its blanket. There was no moon.

  The dragons were no longer in the air. They stood in two lines, a bizarre living processional avenue leading towards the shouldered mountain of Kirrith’s dream. It was clear that he was meant to pass between them.

  He stood and walked as far as the first pair of dragons. Torgaris was on his left, Hesterion on his right. He could see that their eyes were open, that they were breathing still, but apart from that they did not move or speak to him. Statues, he thought. They are playing statues that mark my road.

  He touched each of them, felt the magic within them rise in response, but even then they did not move. Narak walked on to the second pair. Arisanne and Kelcotel were flower gardens in the desert, a riot of colours against the bleak white, grey and black of the frozen land. He touched them, felt the power, and they did not move.

  He went on. There were many paces between each pair, and he passed Tanifay and Daran, Hajani and Bane, touching each, and none of them spoke.

  He reached open ground beyond the dragons, and there was nothing. No door opened, no tower or cave invi
ted him to enter. He stood in the naked starlight and looked across the empty snow. There was nothing before him but emptiness.

  He looked back.

  The dragons were still as stone. Their eyes looked elsewhere. But Narak heard the slightest sound, a whisper below the ringing of silence in his ears.

  Do not surrender.

  His eyes were drawn to Bane. There was no sign that the dragon had spoken, but Narak thought he recognised the timbre of Bane’s voice in the words. All of them remained motionless.

  He turned and looked across the snow towards the mountain again. This was the end of his journey. Somewhere out there was what he had been summoned to see. He resettled the sled’s harness and began to trudge in a straight line, extending the road that the dragons had made for him, making a single track in the pristine snow.

  The plain before the mountain was wider than he had expected. It took him the best part of three hours to cross it. The dragons were distant specks on the snow by the time he paused at the foot of the mountain. There was no path that he could see. There seemed to be no ridge line by which he could ascend, just a simple steepening slope.

  “You want me to climb?” he asked the mountain. Kirrith was here somewhere, inside, in the dark. There was no answer. He had not expected one.

  He took off the harness. If he was going to climb he couldn’t do it with so much weight on his shoulders. He placed a foot on the slope, sinking up to his calves in the soft snow. It was scree underneath, the worst possible footing.

  This was ridiculous. If it was a test of some kind it was certainly not a test of his climbing skills. Neither would it be any test related to his recently acquired role as the bearer of dragon magic. Kirrith had summoned him in dreams, and because of what the Bren were planning. Why any kind of test? Did they not want the same thing?

  He walked fifty paces back and looked up at the mountain again. It would not be a difficult climb if he were to attempt it; at least not once he had got past the loose stuff. There were plenty of hand and footholds, almost as though it had been made for climbing. Even so, he was reluctant to ascend, because there was no guarantee that the entrance he sought was at the summit.

  He thought of the Bren Ashet, the messenger. It was with Kirrith, and he was certain that it had not climbed up the mountain. If there was an entrance it would be below. Yet the dragon itself would not have crawled through a Bren tunnel. It would have flown, and so again, there would be a way in at the top. But Narak could not fly, and he had no idea how suited to an approach on foot Kirrith’s door might be.

  He had to think again. He could not fly and he could not dig. He sat in the snow and looked at the mountain. Kirrith had shown him every step of the way, but for this. It must be easy. There was no point in anything else.

  “Kirrith,” he called. “You showed me the way and I have come. Now open the door.”

  For a moment he thought that this simple approach had also failed, but the earth began to shake beneath him, rocks broke away from the mountain’s face and bounded down in a shroud of cascading snow and ice. The air shook with the sound it made, deep and heavy. He felt it in his gut. The snow swirled about him, but none of the great rocks that fell came close, and he felt that was deliberate. He sat still and waited.

  When his view had all but cleared, and just a glittering curtain of ice crystals remained in the air, he saw the entrance. It was a cave, a dark crack in the rock barely wider than his shoulders. It looked as though it had simply been torn open.

  Narak stood.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He walked to the dark maw and looked inside. It was as it had seemed from a distance: a raw split in the stone. There was no flat path to walk on, no torches to light his way. He stepped inside and began to scramble down, and down it went, plunging into the roots of the mountain.

  Narak’s eyes could pick up the slightest trace of light, but a few twists from the entrance and he was lost in darkness. The rocks about him were sharp and uneven, and he had to progress by touch, using both hands to brace himself as he eased his way forwards.

  It took a long time. In the dark Narak had no way to mark it and more than once he wondered whether he had not entered a maze. For all he knew there were hundreds of tunnels down here, but he had found no obvious junctions. It could have been three hours, or it could have been a day, and he had begun to doubt that he would ever reach the end when the walls disappeared from his hands, the floor flattened out, and he found himself standing within a vast chamber, lit by the embers of starlight that filtered through from high above.

  He looked about him, but could see nothing but looming shapes in the darkness. It was silent and cold and yet there was a great sense of space.

  “Kirrith, I have come,” he said.

  The dark shapes all stirred together, the whole floor of the vast chamber lifting up above him and looking down. Narak had not believed a creature could be so large. Kirrith was a dragon like the others, but he was much bigger. His head was the size of a horse, his body thick as a wind ship, his wings reached out so that it seemed they would scrape the horizon.

  Narak looked up into huge green eyes that glowed in the faint light.

  “Now,” Kirrith said. “Now you must fight for your life.”

  Fifty Two – Pascha

  Pascha summoned her bow, and it appeared in her hand. It was so easy now. Anything she wished to happen simply happened. Now that she truly understood how the deeper magics functioned they came at her beck, did what she wanted. She had been stumbling around in the dark before the battle for Wolfguard, and now she was all purpose and light.

  “Caster, Skal, take your blades, but I want him alive. I want to know why.”

  “Alive?” Skal said. “If what our prisoners said is true then this creature was responsible for what happened before Henfray, for the slaughter of innocent men women and children.”

  “Never the less,” Pascha said. “You will not kill him.”

  “As you wish, Eran,” Skal said, but Pascha could tell that he was reluctant to accept the command. He wanted the kill for himself.

  But Pascha was serious. Pelion’s last act had been to show her everything, to let her grasp the entirety of the world through the Sirash as only a god mage could. She knew everything that was being done, where every player in the great war stood and what they were up to. What she did not know was why. She could see, but not understand, and she wanted to understand.

  “I will have him alive, Skal,” she said. “If he is killed he will not be the only one who dies today. Do you understand?”

  She was not sure how such a naked threat would be received, and now that she thought about it, it was not something that she would ever do. Skal was an asset greater than even Skal knew. But she saw surprise in his eyes, and knew that he would not kill the metal headed man. Skal fully grasped how badly she wanted him alive.

  Jerac stepped forwards.

  “Eran, may I also be of service in the hunt?” he asked.

  She examined him. She knew who he was, of course, and why he had come into being as a Farheim, though for the life of her she could not comprehend why Narak had chosen to bestow his favour on an elderly carpenter on their first acquaintance. She thought the change wrought in him was remarkable. The old man had become young, and the carpenter a soldier, but that was mere surface detail. Jerac Fane was quite different from Alos Stebbar on a much more fundamental level, and he was still changing. She found him interesting.

  “Why?” she asked.

  Jerac smiled. “Why not?” he said. “It’s what I’m for, and besides that, I’m getting bored.”

  “As fair an answer as any,” Pascha said. “Yes, come with us, but the same applies to you. I want him alive and able to speak.”

  “He’ll just run again,” Sithmaree said. “As soon as you step out of the gate he’ll loose an arrow and as soon as he sees he is pursued he’ll vanish.”

  “Not this time,” Pascha replied. She watched Sithmaree
and Jidian now, knowing the effect that her next words might have on them, but she was only speaking the truth, and they would realise it themselves soon enough. “The Sirash is gone,” she said. “The Benetheon is dissolved by Pelion. Do you not feel it?”

  She could see that Caster understood at once. Centuries in the company of a Benetheon god meant that he was as aware as any man of what it meant to them. Without the Sirash they were greatly diminished.

  There was a moment when Sithmaree might have been able to fool herself into thinking it was a joke, but that moment passed. The Sirash was as close to any god as their own skin, and it was the work of a second to verify Pascha’s words.