Nothing but Tombs

by Tim Stead

  “It’s over,” he said. “Surrender.” He had to spit the blood out of his mouth. “Surrender and I will have saved ten thousand lives. What other Avilian can claim that?”

  Haliman’s eyes grew calm. He nodded. “I understand,” he said. He turned away for a moment. “Raise a flag of truce,” he shouted. “We will talk to them again.”

  And then the world went mad.

  *

  Cain looked at Alwain’s corpse. The rebel duke looked surprised, his face frozen in disbelief as he had realised, finally, that he’d been killed.

  “And this man did it?” Cain asked.

  The body of a one-legged man lay next to the duke’s. He was dressed in peasant clothes.

  “Yes,” Haliman said. “He was working as a waggoner, but I think he was always a soldier – one of Colonel Tamarak’s. His name was Dunst, Captain Dunst.”

  Cain looked about him. The tension had vanished. This wasn’t a battlefield any more. It was just a place that people wanted to leave.

  “Well,” he said. “They didn’t need us after all.”

  “This isn’t over,” Caster said. “Every officer needs to swear allegiance to the king, and to you as Duke of Bas Erinor, and the lords must pay for their folly, but that will be in the hands of the king.”

  “The men will swear,” Haliman said. “I will set the example.”

  “But if we send them home will they not obey their lords?” Cain said. “They have a prior oath.” He turned round and looked back towards the castle. It was the first time he’d allowed his attention to wander from the battlefield, and he was horrified by what he saw.

  The castle was gone.

  Even Pascha’s new walls were fractured and tipped to and fro. He stared, open-mouthed.

  “Cain?”

  “Sheyani,” he said, and ran.

  In Narak’s armour he could almost fly. His strides covered eight yards, men leaped aside as he passed, both Alwain’s and his own. It took him a minute to reach the outer wall and another to reach the remains of the castle. He stopped abruptly, shattering a good-sized stone with his foot.

  “Sheyani!”

  There was no reply. People were picking through the rubble, and some distance away he saw massive rocks being lifted into the air and set aside. That must be Pascha. He ran again. Just a few strides carried him there and he saw Catto sitting on a broken stone.

  “Catto, where is she?”

  Catto shook his head. He was evidently distressed.

  “I tried,” he said. “I was too slow.”

  “Catto, where is Sheyani?” She was Farheim. Surely she could survive just about anything. He just needed to find her. But Cain was rapidly filling up with dread. “Where’s Spans?”

  Catto pointed. “The castle fell. They were over there. Spans tried to pull her away, but they went under it.”

  But the place he was pointing to was empty, just a patch of rough ground.

  “You’re not making sense, Catto.”

  Pascha was walking towards him. She looked grim and, remarkably, rather soiled. She would have the answers.

  “Pascha, where’s Sheyani?”

  “Gone,” Pascha said.

  “Gone?”

  “She was here, standing at the foot of the tower talking to one of the cooks. The tower fell. When I removed the stones there was no sign of her. We found the cook’s body, but Spans and Sheyani were gone.”

  “They escaped.”

  “No. Catto was feet away when the stonework fell. He was injured. I healed him after we’d cleared the stone away. But there’s no doubt she was underneath.”

  “So where is she?”

  “I don’t know. Narak might be able to find her. There was a link between them. He’s on the way.”

  “Like Sithmaree,” Cain said.

  “Maybe.”

  Cain looked around at the devastation. She was gone. He felt he’d been cut in two. Jidian must have felt like this when Sithmaree disappeared. But if she was gone like Sithmaree, then she was still alive. That was the important thing, and he would find her, no matter how long it took. With an effort he pushed away his fear, his longing, his gut-wrenching uncertainty.

  He had duties to perform. The sooner he was done with them the sooner he could cut himself free from this mess. He turned and found Jerac Fane standing behind him.

  “Cain, I’m sorry,” he said.

  Cain nodded. He didn’t quite trust himself to speak.

  “You have a problem with Alwain’s army,” Fane said. “I think I have a solution.”

  Cain pointed to the gate. “We’ll walk,” he said. “Tell me.”

  *

  High above the castle Narak watched. He had seen everything. He’d seen Alwain killed, the tower fall, the ambush at the river bend. He rode the wind close to Bane.

  “Did you feel her die?” Bane asked.

  “No.”

  “Then she lives.”

  Narak examined that statement with his dragon mind.

  “No,” he said. “But neither has she died. If she was alive, I would feel her presence, but she is not here.”

  “How can that be?” Bane asked.

  “There are places that are not of this world, Bane,” Narak said. “Like the Sirash.”

  “But there is no Sirash. Pelion destroyed it.”

  “The point remains valid,” Narak said.

  “So she has been taken somewhere else.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “You are more enigmatic as a dragon than you ever were as a man,” Bane complained.

  Narak didn’t reply, but continued to ride the wind, his head bent down, watching everything. He dismissed the problem of Sheyani. He was certain, somehow, that she was safe. Now he had the final problem to deal with. Avilian would never be the same, not after this. Jerac Fane had woken the people’s spirit, just as he had done in the homeland. It would not go back to sleep. He knew what Fane wanted, but it had to be agreed by all, or the war would go on beyond this remarkable victory.

  “It is time I was a man again,” he said, and folded his wings, dropping like a stone and shrinking as he did so, becoming Wolf Narak again.

  The ground rushed up to meet him.

  96 The Chairman

  Francis Gayne was not untroubled. It could not be said that the transformation of Afael was perfect, and to that extent Johan’s vision had not been realised, but it was mostly the fault of the people themselves. The city was soaked in corruption, rife with double dealing and self-interest.

  Mordo, too, was a mixed blessing. His knowledge had been essential for Francis to gain control of his burgeoning power, but he was a blunt instrument. In essence, though, Mordo was right. If he wanted to face Col Boran at some point, and that was inevitable, then he had to be strong, and the only path to strength was through death, through taking the lives of others.

  But these worries aside, he was pleased.

  Sacrifices had not been unexpected, and he had seen off Kenton for the time being. The city regiments, now firmly under the control of the council, were recruiting and training. Eventually they would have ten thousand men. The guilds were beginning to function and the taxes were rolling in. It had almost reached the point where they were no longer reliant on Falini’s treasury to fund the city.

  It was true that the schools program was behind schedule, but Francis would push that at the next council meeting, and when Francis pushed, mountains moved. That, he had to admit, was largely due to Mordo.

  He had been elected chairman by an overwhelming majority – more than he had expected – and Mordo had smiled when he’d asked him about that.

  “Best that you leave the details of such things to me,” he’d said, and Francis, a little reluctantly, had acquiesced.

  Francis walked into the grounds of the old Falini estate, now the administrative hub of Afael City, and took the quieter paths that led to Mordo’s lair.

  Mordo was building a small army of Farheim. They were separate from the
city regiments and mostly operated out of sight, watching for criminals and traitors. Those they caught were brought here to Mordo’s dungeons. It was the last that anybody would see of them.

  He opened the door and went in.

  The young man at the desk facing the door rose and greeted him.

  “Good morning, Chairman Gayne. Controller Tregaris is waiting for you. I’ll show you down.”

  Francis knew the way, but Mordo, it seemed, liked this formality. He wondered at the title the man had chosen for himself. He’d expected Commander, or Captain, or General. Controller seemed so prosaic, almost weak, but he supposed that was the point. Mordo was a thug with impeccable manners. What he did was brutal and frightening, but it was papered over with this please-and-thankyou veneer. His men were polite right up to the moment they grabbed you.

  He followed the young man down the stairs into the basement that always seemed to smell of jasmine and vanilla. The cells were often full, but Mordo insisted that his captives bathe, that they dress in clean clothes.

  Mordo greeted him with enthusiasm.

  “My Lord, you honour us,” he said. He even bowed a little. Francis had learned to put up with this from Mordo. He looked at the two men waiting behind the Controller. They were of a type – clean looking young men dressed in sober colours, their eyes firmly fixed on the ground. These were Mordo’s candidates. Francis wasn’t particularly interested in them.

  “How many?” he asked.

  “Eight,” Mordo said.

  That meant the cells were full again. Mordo kept his prisoners in isolation, one to a cell.

  “Show me.”

  Mordo led the way to the cells and opened the first door. The man inside was someone Francis had never seen. He had no idea what crime the man was accused of, and didn’t care to know. He just wanted this over with. It was odd, but he found it harder if he couldn’t see the condemned man’s face. He could have just stood in the hallway outside and killed them all, but that felt wrong.

  The man folded up, dead. Francis felt all of his strength and power flow into his own body. In a way it was very like stealing a man’s soul. At least it was a painless end. When Falini had owned this cellar, it would have been a place of pain and suffering.

  The next cell door opened and its occupant looked up.

  “Gayne? What are you doing here?”

  “Carillo?” It was Carillo, one of the original members of Johan’s group in Dock Ward. Francis had lost sight of him months ago.

  “Can you get me out of here?”

  “Give me a minute.”

  He stepped out of the cell and signalled that they should lock the door again. He walked back to the guard room with Mordo.

  “What did he do?” he asked.

  Mordo seemed taken aback. Probably because it was a question he’d never been asked before. He flicked through some papers on the table.

  “Here it is,” he said. “He spoke treason.”

  “Treason?”

  “Yes, My Lord.”

  “And what, exactly, did he say?”

  Mordo looked confused for a moment. Francis had never asked him questions before – not like this. He studied the paper.

  “Well?”

  Mordo found what he was looking for. “He spoke against the Declaration, My Lord. He said that it could be questioned, that it might be changed.”

  Francis raised an eyebrow. “Have you read the Declaration, Mordo?”

  “It is the founding document of our new nation,” Mordo replied, but he looked at his feet. He hadn’t read it. Francis knew the whole thing off by heart.

  “I write this not as law, but as a point from which we may begin to build a better life for all.” Francis quoted from the last part. “That’s what it says. The man you have in that cell knew Johan Paritti. He heard him speak. The Declaration was not meant to be dogma.”

  Mordo glanced around at his two candidates. Their eyes were now desperately fixed on the floor. Fear was coming off them in waves. They were, Francis guessed, properly afraid of Mordo, and now Mordo was afraid. It was a good lesson.

  “You want me to let him go?” Mordo asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

  Francis stretched the moment. He walked over to the table. There was a bottle of wine there. Mordo always had good wine to hand. He picked up the bottle and raised an eyebrow. Mordo nodded. Francis poured himself a cup and sipped it.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t want to expose what you’re doing down here to the public gaze. Col Boran might get to hear of it and draw their own conclusions.” He sipped the wine again. “But this has been awkward for me. Carillo was an ally, and now, because of your incompetence I have to kill someone that Johan himself trusted.”

  He gestured and Mordo gasped, reached for the table and missed. He fell to the floor clutching at his knee.

  “The pain will remind you not to make such an error again. I will remove it when I am satisfied you have learned that lesson. Now, somebody get him a stick and let’s get on with this.”

  He watched while the two candidates helped Mordo to his feet. One of them found a stick and the Controller managed to stand.

  There had to be sacrifices, Francis thought. Carillo’s life, the lives of the others, even Mordo’s pain – they were all insignificant when weighed against the fate of Afael, and that was now so tied to his own success that he no longer bothered to distinguish between the two.