by Tim Stead
“Janno Dalini, did you kill my father?” she asked.
“I did. I killed him with my own hands because it was what he wanted. He was a shadow after his wife died and desired nothing more than to join her in oblivion. He didn’t care a bent copper about you.”
Callista looked across at Kelcotel. The dragon drew a deep breath.
“He killed your father. That much was true.”
“And the rest?”
“Opinion. He might even believe it.”
“Of course I do,” the cousin said “It was true. Your mage girl here lacks the courage to face it. She might have power, but she’s as weak as she ever was. Gutless.”
Callista wanted to crush him, to flatten him against the grass, to grind his bones to powder and obliterate his smiling face. But bizarrely she realised that it was what he wanted. Janno knew there was no escape and his last victory would be to goad her into a rash act, to execute him before sentence was passed. None of this had shown on her face, so now she smiled.
“Did he tell you he wanted to die?” she asked.
Janno shrugged. “Not in so many words, but a fish doesn’t have to tell you it’s a fish, does it?”
“So he didn’t ask for your help?”
“I expect he was too depressed being around you all the time. You know what we use to call you? Little grey mop. I reckon you enjoyed being miserable.”
Callista looked at the dragon again. “Go on,” he said.
“So.” She turned back to her cousin. “Did your father suggest that you should kill mine?”
“He shared my opinion that the old man needed to die.”
“Did he order it? Yes or no.”
“I’m not sure that I remember it that well.”
“Now that’s a lie,” Kelcotel said.
Callista looked from the father to the son. They both hated her. She knew that. “Torture is permitted in a dragon court if the accused prove evasive. Did you know that?” she said. For the first time Janno looked away. Perhaps his skin paled a little.
“You wouldn’t torture me, little grey mop,” he said. “You want to torture yourself.”
“Did your father order you to kill my father?” she asked.
He shrugged.
Callista reached inside him and twisted, a quick, nasty little twist. Janno shrieked with pain and fell to his knees. He glared up at her.
“You fucked up little whore bitch,” he said. He drew a knife from his belt and leaped at her. It was almost funny. He was doing exactly what she would have expected him to do in the first place. This was the real Janno Dalini, her father’s brother’s son. She stopped him in mid-air, the knife a few inches from her throat and watched him squirm and snarl as he tried to complete his jump, kicking his feet in empty air.
“Did your father order you to kill my father?” she asked again.
“He told me to, but I wanted to do it,” Janno shouted. “Power and money are wasted on people like you. You’re the watered wine of humanity, the chickens that never lay. Life is wasted on your kind.”
“Both are guilty,” Kelcotel said. “It is beyond doubt.”
Callista stopped Janno’s voice and pushed him away so that he fell to the ground beside his father and was immediately seized and held by the grass. She turned her attention to Janno’s mother.
She had been waiting patiently and now came forward. She was leaning on the constable’s arm and limping, her face partially covered by a veil.
“You are Alette Dalini?” Callista asked.
“I am.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper, and she looked down at the ground. So far it looked as though the servants’ gossip might be true, but with this family it would pay to be cautious.
“Show me your face,” she said.
Alette Dalini pulled back the veil and met Callista’s stare for the first time. The left side of her face was a yellowing bruise. A scar disfigured the right corner of her mouth.
“Who did this to you?”
“Sylvan. It was always Sylvan,” Alette said.
The dragon remained silent, so Callista assumed it was the truth.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “Because it was day or night, because I spoke, because I stayed silent. Because the sun rose.”
“Because he enjoyed it,” Callista offered.
“Perhaps.”
“Did you know that your son had killed my father?”
“Yes.”
“Yet you did nothing.”
Alette smiled with her mouth. The scar gave the expression a twisted look. “I have no dragons or magic. Sylvan would have killed me.”
“You knew that he planned to kill me?”
“No. I was never in his confidence. I thought he might, after he married you to Janno. Otherwise what was the point?”
“So you were never part of his plans?”
“No, I never was.”
“Alette, do you hate your husband?”
“More than you can imagine. He is an evil man. My son was a good boy before Sylvan took him from me and twisted him into his own vicious shape. I hope you kill him.”
“And your son?”
Alette looked Callista in the eye again. “Spare him,” she said. “I know that he can be saved. He can be a good man.”
“He killed my father. He has confessed to it. I cannot save him.”
“You are a god-mage. You can do as you please. Spare him.”
“I do not want to spare him,” Callista said.
“Of course. I understand,” Alette said. “But if I beg it of you? He killed your father. Surely killing his is revenge enough?”
Callista understood. This woman still loved her son. To Alette he was still the smiling infant that Sylvan had taken from her. He could, even now, be restored. But one glance at Janno’s snarling face, the dagger he still clutched and the memory of his laughing voice saying those cold words: wed, bed and dead. Those were enough to convince her that he was beyond rescue. If she relented then he would kill again. He would strike at those innocents who had helped Callista – even his own mother.
She tried to be gentle. She put a hand on the battered mother’s arm.
“Alette, there are some things that are so broken that they cannot be fixed.”
“He is my son.”
“He is Sylvan’s son. Do you not see? He has become a monster.”
To this point Alette’s eyes had been dry, her bruised face unaffected by her desperation to retrieve something from this day, but now she began to weep, her face and body folding so that the constable had to sink to his knees to keep her from the ground. Callista followed them down.
The woman was nodding. “You are right,” she whispered. “Of course you are right, but I wish it was not so.”
“I promise there will be no pain,” Callista said. “And you may continue to live in the house. You will have a pension. You were as much wronged as I.”
She stood and looked across at Sylvan and Janno Dalini, her own flesh and blood.
“You are guilty of murder, both of you, and I find no redeeming circumstance. Does anyone here wish to speak in their defence? You all heard the words that were spoken, the lies and the truth. Does anyone wish to speak?”
They waited, but nobody spoke. The dragon looked at Callista. “There was one more question you wished to ask,” he said.
Callista took a few steps towards Sylvan. “I am curious,” she said. “Did you kill my mother?”
Her uncle glared at her, but now he knew what she was and that his guilt had been placed beyond doubt.
“No,” he said. “She died of a fever.”
“It is the truth,” the dragon said. “So now you have all your answers. As the injured party you have the power of sentence, as the rightful baron you have the right of sentence and pardon. What say you?”
She looked at them again. Pardon? Neither of them had shown an iota of remorse. Neither had attempted to apologise. There were no reasons for what they ha
d done but greed and ambition. If these men were pardoned then so should every murderer and bandit in Afael.
“Death,” she said. “Both of them.”
“And the manner?”
“That is my affair. They will go to the cells in the constable’s office. In the morning they will be dead.”
It was as easy as that. Callista felt no remorse. There was pity, of course, for Alette, but the woman would be better off on her own than with these two creatures. It would take time. But in the end Alette would thank her.
“Alette Dalini is free of blame in this matter,” she said, making sure her voice carried to the crowd. She stepped to the weeping woman’s side. “Walk with me. I will take you back to the house.”
She linked arms with the woman and allowed strength to flow across to her. She would fix what she could. The scars and bruises would be gone by the time they reached the door of the great house. There would be no more pain. What was in Alette’s heart and head was something else. She could not help her with that.
There was still one more thing to do. In the middle of the night she would wake. Somewhere her uncle and cousin would be trying to escape. They would have tried to bribe the constable, to break the doors and bars of their imprisonment, but those were an illusion. Callista had marked them both. She would wake and in the silence of the night she would reach out and they would die, candles blown to darkness by the irresistible wind of her will.
46 The King
Narak had never seen King Degoran truly angry before, so this was a new experience. Gone were the pouting, the irritable gestures that had attended his frustration. Now he was still, white faced, focussed. He reminded Narak of the frozen north. There was something cold and dead about the king’s anger. Narak was impressed.
He was less impressed with the cause. Some of Alwain’s men had attacked the king’s country estate at Wester Beck. They had killed his men and taken his wife prisoner, holding her as hostage. The reason was obvious to both Narak and the king. They wanted to draw him out of Golt. The king’s men had barely finished burying the dead from the failed attack on the city when the news arrived.
“You should not go,” Narak said, but he already knew that it was a lost cause. Some men could master their love, put it aside in their pursuit of a cause, but Degoran was a puppet to his. He could no more stay in Golt than he could fly.
“How many men will we need to hold the city?” he asked.
“If they attack, five hundred,” Narak replied. “And that will only do if Alwain sends a single regiment.”
“If I am not here there is nothing in Golt worthy of an attack,” Degoran said.
“It is your refuge. If you lose it you are vulnerable.”
“Annalise is more important,” the king said. “We leave tomorrow.”
Narak said nothing. He sipped the tea that was on the table before him. It was hot and sweet.
“Narak, I appreciate what you have done for me, but I look to you for advice and guidance, not orders.”
“I advise you not to go.”
“Nevertheless, we… I will go. What you do is, as always, up to you. I have eight hundred and fifty men. If I leave five hundred, I can take only three hundred and fifty with me.”
“You have a plan?”
“I will think of one on the way.”
“They will probably have more men than you and they will be expecting you so they will have the advantage of the ground, and if their commander is not stupid, he will also make use of surprise. I suspect an ambush.”
“So I need more men.”
“You need a plan. This was a calculated move and it is having the desired effect. You are not thinking straight.”
“Then help me, damn it!”
“Will you delay by one day?”
“That depends what it will buy me.”
“Perhaps two hundred men.”
“How?”
“There are lords here who are loyal to you. They have men. They can be pressed into service.” Narak sipped his tea again. He wasn’t a great tea drinker these days. He preferred wine, but it still seemed barbarous to drink wine at breakfast. “Leave your own men here – five hundred of them – and take the rest with whatever your vassals will provide to Wester Beck.”
Degoran looked at his plate. “You really think they will support me in this?”
“Alwain’s men have broken a sacred custom, King Degoran. Every lord knows what that means. Now all their families are fair game. They will want this punished swiftly and decisively. If they have not realised this, I will point it out to them.”
Degoran rubbed his face with both hands.
“Inaction chafes. You know it does. But I will wait one day and then we will go with all haste to Wester Beck.”
“With all haste,” Narak said.
He left the king poking his congealed breakfast with a knife and set about his task. It would be easy enough to gather a couple of hundred men from the lords who had remained in Golt. They had already made their allegiance clear. But a plan was going to be more difficult. Narak had no cards to play. He could not choose the ground, he didn’t know the enemy’s numbers, and he was certain that they meant to attack at their first opportunity.
He needed spies, but since Pelion had destroyed the Sirash that had become infinitely more difficult. The only creatures he could speak to over distance were the first pack, his personal family of wolves, and all but one of them patrolled the Great Forest around Wolfguard.
Narak delayed. Instead of going out into the city to drum up a small army he climbed one of Golt Castle’s many towers and sat on the wall, his legs dangling, overlooking the city.
How had it come to this? Months ago he had decided that he would defend the king, be his bodyguard, but it had become more than that. He would have confessed it to nobody, not even Pascha, but Wolf Narak was afraid. He was afraid of Wolf Narak.
When the dragon Kirrith had changed him, given him a single drop of dragon blood, neither of them had understood what it would do to him. Ever since that day there had been something growing inside him, a sort of wild power that he could neither control nor understand. That had been the power that had created the first pack. He had been self-exiled to the forest and the wolves had come to worship him, as was their habit. He was, after all, their god. For many years they had been his only company and he had given them names and spoken to them. Eventually they had spoken back.
He did not think that he would ever understand how it had happened, but he thought it was similar to the way he had become the deliverance of the dragons. They had wished for it, and so he had become it. By wanting them to be more than wolves he had made them so.
This was the power that was growing in him.
He had no illusions about himself. He was an intemperate man, prone to rages. He had spent years trying to change that, and for a while he had thought the deed done, but on the fields outside Golt he had discovered otherwise.
Narak had a secret. It was something that he had never shared – not even with Pascha. It was both a simple and a terrible thing. The truth was that he enjoyed killing people. It was like a wild dance. He revelled in the blazing surge of strength through his body, the precision of each step, each stroke. The only time that he felt like a god was in the midst of the enemy with steel whirling around him.
But killing was like any drug. When the battle was over the world came back again and he was ashamed. He looked at the blood and the broken bodies and he regretted what he had done.
Kirrith had made him unstoppable. Now he was afraid that he would lose control of himself, that his anger itself would become a weapon, his wilder impulses more deadly than his blades, because in the heat of battle the new power had fed and grown. He had felt it writhe like a serpent within him.
The old Narak, the Narak without dragon blood, knew exactly what he should do now. The plan was simple. He would travel with Degoran and when they drew close to danger he would go ahead and rescue Queen Ann
alise himself. There would be no risk to Degoran and little risk to either himself or the queen. But now that plan filled him with unease. If he had to fight again, as he had done before Golt, who knew what might happen?
If he was going to tell anyone about this it would be Kirrith, but Kirrith was now in Telas and his only conduit there, the dragon judge Kelcotel, was on some errand in Afael.
There was an alternative.
Narak closed his eyes and thought of Swift Foot. The wolf was in Col Boran and could carry a message to Pascha. He became aware of the wolf at the same moment it became aware of him.
My Lord?
Swift Foot, will you carry a message for me?
To the corners of the earth.
To Pascha.
As you command. What is the message?
Tell her to come to me.
That is all?
Yes.
Then it is done.
Narak was aware of the wolf leaping away, and then the connection was broken.
He waited, looking out towards the sea. It was a grey, overcast day. The line where the sky touched the sea was indistinct, a blurring together of two greys. Increasingly he saw the line between right and wrong, between good and evil the same way. His world was becoming one in which better and worse were more appropriate words, or where you chose your actions based on past decisions – not on their true merits. It was almost as if, having chosen a road, he must follow it even if it led to catastrophe.
The air swirled about him – a sudden, unnatural breeze that smelled of the high mountains.
“Narak?”
She was standing a few feet away looking small and serious, her red hair blowing free for once. He liked it that way. He smiled at her.
“I need a favour,” he said.
Pascha frowned. “This is your adventure,” she said. “I’ll not be dragged into it.”
“It’s a small thing. You know what Alwain’s men have done?”
Her frown deepened. “The queen. Yes, I know.”
“Degoran insists on riding to the rescue. We leave tomorrow. It is a trap, of course. He will ambush us on the road.”