“He always hated that,” Celestaine said.
“It fit him.”
“It didn’t,” she insisted, at least partly in case the magician was eavesdropping. “Just because he didn’t show it doesn’t mean he didn’t care.”
Ralas walked round the tower’s circumference a little, in case a tradesman’s entrance had appeared for the delivery of tulips. “I saw him at the field at Touremal, when we arrived late. That was the day the north was lost, you remember, the Kinslayer’s armies at the gates of Ilkand the first time. They were his people, left for the crows on that battlefield. And he just walked through the bodies like they were… well, not even tulips. He liked tulips.”
“I won’t believe he didn’t care,” Celestaine insisted. “He found it hard to show it, that was all. He was different from most people, in his head, but he wouldn’t have fought if he didn’t care.” She faced the tower again, knowing that whatever magical lock Roherich had put on it, she would never guess the key. “Roherich, I hope you can hear me. It’s Celestaine. I need to speak with you. I’m still trying to help, Ro. Just like always. I know you’ve said you don’t want to talk to anyone, but I need your help.”
Overlapping with her last words, a voice chimed from the tower. “I recognise Celestaine of Fernreame and grant access.” It sounded so much younger, so uncharacteristically cheery, that she barely knew it as Roherich.
Between blinks, a doorway opened in the shifting wall, showing the way to spiralling steps lit by a directionless argent light.
“He couldn’t have put us at the top of the stairs,” Ralas observed sourly.
Celestaine entered, with Ralas hard on her heels, and even then he sat down suddenly as the door became solid wall. Celestaine glanced at him and flinched to see he’d left a foot on the far side of the door, the stump of his ankle ending in a bloodness nub of bone. He didn’t seem overly bothered.
“I’ve had worse. Literally.” He stared at the amputation, and the flesh began to crawl and ooze, as though moulded by invisible, unskilled hands, until a new foot was kneaded into shape, grimy and dotted with raw patches of skin. One of the toes was missing, another folded back on itself. “It’s the boot I’m going to miss,” Ralas added sadly.
“Can you even walk on that?” Celestaine asked him, horrified.
“I’ve been walking on it all the way from Bleakmairn, haven’t I?” he pointed out. “Always grows back the same, no matter what, remember?”
“But… then, it doesn’t hurt?”
He gave her a frank look. “Of course it hurts. It all hurts, and I never get used to it. I’d love to say different just to make you feel better about it, but as a bard I’m sworn to be honest and true in all things, you know?” He gave her a weak smile and then slapped her hand away when she tried to help him up the stairs. “I can manage.”
She never knew if that staircase represented anything other than Roherich’s vanity. Perhaps there were notional doors off every turn, that they just didn’t have permission to go through. Perhaps they just trudged up the same loop of steps sufficient times to appreciate what a great mage Roherich was, before he let them into his chambers. Either way, neither of them were feeling particularly charitable when the space above opened out, and they entered a suite of white-walled rooms too large to fit within the tower’s visible confines.
“Welcome, Celestaine of Fernreame,” that same happy voice said, Roherich the Younger speaking invisibly from thin air.
“What about me?” Ralas demanded, but apparently the magician had made no provision for him, nor would acknowledge his existence.
“Hello?” The chamber they had finally climbed to was windowless, but at some point Roherich had tried to make it seem homely. The rug on the floor came from some huge woolly animal she didn’t recognise. The stone effigy of a batwinged demon looked like the sort of thing she’d have to fight to get through the next doorway. She recognised the black shield painted over with red daggers as a trophy Roherich had taken after one of their battles, when everyone else had been doing it and he hadn’t wanted to be left out. There was a thick layer of dust over everything.
“Roherich!” she called. “Celestaine here. Come on out!” But he didn’t, and nor did the young voice speak again.
The room beyond was his study, and just standing there started a churn of worry in Celestaine, because surely he wouldn’t just let the pair of them saunter in. The stone demon stubbornly failed to come alive, though, and no curse flashed from the ceiling to incinerate them.
Roherich had lined this room with shelves, and just about everything he valued had to be there, neatly arranged by some arcane filing system of his own. There were books here, scrolls stacked in pigeonholes there, stones, figurines, racks of herbs now mostly gone to dust. And in the centre of the room was a portal.
It was formed from interleaved vines that had sprouted somehow from the lambent floor, climbed upwards unsupported and then met in a knot at the point. Within their curtilage was another place.
It was lush and overgrown, far more so than anywhere within miles of chill Ilkand. She didn’t recognise any of the trees, and many of them seemed barely related to any plant of the world she knew, with great plate-like leaves of umber and purple and blue. The ground was rich with flowers, and if they were not precisely tulips, they were very close, in a riot of spring colours bright enough that Celestaine had to squint at them.
Roherich stood amongst the blooms, his back to his visitors, perhaps ten feet within the portal. She knew him: the gold headband binding back his long dark hair, his broad shoulders, the russet robe he always wore, that had not a hole or darn or stain to it, for all that he’d been wearing the same thing all the years she’d known him.
She called his name but nothing came of it. He was staring off into the forested shade of his otherworld. Perhaps her words could not fight clear of the portal to reach him.
Ralas had stepped cautiously round the outside of the vine arch and then stopped. After a moment he called for her to join him.
She did so, startled to find herself facing Roherich, again ten feet into the world beyond but from the front this time. His hands were clasped before him, the three red-stoned rings she remembered still on his fingers. His green eyes stared past or through her from his long face. She looked into them for a long time, but never felt that she had met his gaze.
Ralas waved tentatively, but there was no suggestion the movement was seen. He tried a shaky caper, part of the fool’s routine he’d once used to supplement his singing in the early days. Still nothing; in fact, no motion at all from that verdant world. No wind touched the alien leaves, no bee circled the flowers.
The bard went and found a paperweight, some many-legged thing caught in amber, and made to lob it at the magician’s chest, but Celestaine stopped him. There were tears pricking at the corners of her eyes.
“What?” Ralas asked her, mystified.
“Don’t you see it?” she asked him, but he didn’t. He hadn’t known Roherich well enough, or else the message in the man’s face was just for her. “He’s gone, Ralas. He’s gone away.”
“I can see that. How do we make him come back?”
“We don’t. We can’t. Don’t you see it?”
Ralas’s eyes widened and he stared into the portal, at that eternal calm sad face.
“Oh,” he said at last, understanding. It was no definite sign, nothing Celestaine could ever describe, but it was as if they had come in to find him hanging from the rafters. Magicians did not do things the same way as others, not even the manner of their self-chosen exit. Roherich had found a place to go, and left them all behind.
“Maybe it’s just an image, a memorial,” Ralas suggested. “Maybe he’s having a high old time through there, fresh fields and pastures new.”
“That’s a nice thought,” Celestaine said, hoping but not believing. Then she turned away from the frozen shadow of her old friend and called out, “And is anything still here that will talk
to me? Come on, voice. We’re here, we’ve found it.” A sudden thought struck her. “It’s a big secret, isn’t it? It’s what the Governor doesn’t want anyone to know, that Ilkand’s precious Silver Mage isn’t just brooding in his tower.”
“Governor Adondra is aware of my absence,” Roherich the Younger’s voice informed her. “Hello, Celestaine.”
She flinched. “What am I talking with? It’s not you, is it?”
“I am a figment only, a snakeskin of my creator, shed to watch over his tower and follow certain instructions. Including to admit you.”
“Then tell me,” and her voice shook, “is he still alive somewhere? Alive and happy?”
“I don’t know,” the figment told her. “But I don’t think he is happy. I was never very good at being happy. I’m sorry, Celestaine. I didn’t want him to go, but he could not live with the world any more. He—I—we saw so many years come and go, so many autumns strip the trees. He forgot how to connect to people, even to you, but he could never forget that he wanted to. He could never cut himself free so we could just be ourself. And in the end it was too much for me. I would have held on, if I could. For you.”
The last two words fell into the silence between them. Celestaine was trembling. Not what I came here for, but then I came here for easy answers, and when has that ever worked? “Can you… can I see you?”
“I don’t know.” And the figment’s voice was so maddeningly polite, no emotion behind it at all, but then that had always been the way with him; not that he hadn’t felt, but that he hadn’t known how to show it.
There was a shimmer in the room, like the air over a fire. For a moment she could almost convince herself she saw him there, alive, well, but it was her mind more than her eyes. There was nothing of substance to him.
“He doesn’t know anything about the crown, though?” Ralas prompted her. “I ask you because it’s obvious he’s not interested in talking to me.”
“The Kinslayer was making a crown,” she explained. Taking refuge in duty, because it was easier that way. “We need it, to right a great wrong. The Aethani.”
“I don’t remember the Aethani,” the figment said in a small voice. “But I feel the touch of magic beyond these walls. A great artefact was brought to the Temple recently, but it is gone now, I don’t know where.”
“The Temple,” Celestaine acknowledged heavily. “Thank you.” She had somehow known her path would take her to the new bully of Ilkand. And did they look on the crown and see, not an instrument of healing, but a rod of vengeance? And against whom, and where would that vengeance stop?
They went back down the stairs, despite Ralas’s complaints, and again the silvery doorway gaped for them, and nearly claimed another foot as it closed. The lost boot and its grisly contents had been taken from outside, to Ralas’s incredulous disgust, and he was halfway through swearing to hunt down every one-legged man in Low Ilkand when Amkulyah practically sprang out at them.
“Celestaine! You need to go to the Temple!”
“I… know.” She frowned at him. “What’s going on? Where are the others?”
“At the Temple. They’re going to burn them! I’ve been waiting here for you. Doctor Catt said you’d gone to the tower. You have to hurry!”
“Doctor Catt, what…? Burn them?” Celestaine goggled. “How did things go that wrong, that fast? Never mind. We go to the Temple, right now.”
IT TURNED OUT that crashing into the Temple demanding to see the Archmandrill was not a recipe for success, but in Celestaine’s defence it was an honest mistake and she couldn’t remember the proper title. That entrance certainly got the three of them before both the bald, scowling priest and Governor Adondra, although as they were up at a high bench and Celestaine and company were decidedly below and under guard, the interview felt more like a trial than she was happy with.
Behind them was a single statue, the Guardian that the Ilkand Temple had always looked to, the Just Watcher’s most trusted servant: Lord Wall, depicted as an armoured titan, ten feet from sabatons to the crown of his crested helm, holding a hammer Nedlam would never have been able to lift. Wall’s devotion to the sort of justice that came at that hammer’s end had sustained the Temple through the generations, especially after the Kinslayer’s murder of his brother the Custodian. He had been foremost in the hunt that drove the enemy underground before leaving Ilkand to patronise ever more fervent seekers of vengeance. Until the war came and he had wasted ten years planning a great resurgence that had never come. Where he was now, she had no idea. Even his presence in effigy was oppressive.
“You’ve arrested two of my companions,” she accused.
Adondra waited for the Archimandrite to speak, but the priest was busy glowering and so she took up the slack. “You’d be referring to the two servants of the enemy who attacked a Templar squad at the Sign of the Marching Bear earlier today. Along, I note, with your Aethani confederate.”
“Prince Amkulyah of Aethan,” Celestaine said, leaning on the title for all the weight it would bear, “has explained to me that he was attacked by your people, and our companions came from the inn to aid him, seeing only an act of brigandage.” The Forinthi had little patience for legal niceties, but Celestaine had seen how it was done in her day.
“His Most Royal Highness was engaged in purchasing contraband from smugglers at the time,” Adondra stated. “So sorry to shoot that high horse you were climbing up.”
“It doesn’t matter what they’ve done,” the Archimandrite said, not the fist-banging bellow she had expected, but just a no-nonsense statement. “They’re Yoggs. They’re the enemy. We’ll burn them. Throw open the doors of the Temple to let people see. It’ll remind them.”
“They’re not the enemy,” Celestaine said. “They got us to the Kinslayer, to kill him. Without them, we’d still be fighting the war.”
The Archimandrite looked as though he’d be quite happy to still be fighting the war. “Their hands are steeped in the blood of the innocent, as are all their kind. There is only one fate reserved for them. The dead demand vengeance.”
“All right, listen to me,” Celestaine tried, though she’d sworn she wouldn’t. “I am Celestaine the Slayer. I cut the hand off the Kinslayer with a sword the Wanderer gave me. I bore him down and saw him destroyed as even the Guardians themselves could not do. I say these Yorughan are my friends and allies, and I will say it at every street corner, and rally an army to my banner if I need to. Or you will release my friends to me.”
Adondra’s face had hardened through her words, and she exchanged glances with the priest. “And you have been in the tower, of course,” she mused. “I thought that he would leave loose threads, when he made his exit.” She stared at Celestaine without love. “I have no use for live heroes, Celestaine the Slayer. I have no use for personality cults that will fracture my poor city further. There are enough gangs and sects and tribes and embassies trying to pull everything apart as it is. I don’t need you cutting things loose with your magic sword.”
“Then release them. They’ve done nothing.”
“They don’t need to do anything,” the Archimandrite told her, almost pleading. “The Just Watcher demands vengeance against all who have done wrong. We must turn that wrath against the servants of the enemy, each and every one of them, or what are we? How can we expect Him to speak to us again, if we turn from His path?” To her surprise he seemed quite genuine, not the politician at all, but a man clinging to his faith with both hands.
“And so,” Adondra said, and nodded, and abruptly all those Templars who had just been around to provide a bit of pomp and circumstance turned out to be far more hands-on than Celestaine had expected. She went for her sword-hilt, but they bundled her before she could draw and forced her to the ground. She heard the furious skirmish as Amkulyah leapt up on the bench and tried to get out past the priest and the Governor, and the audible snap of bone as a Templar landed on Ralas. His yell of pain was drowned out by her own furious shouting.
Adondra and the Archimandrite stared at him. Eventually the Governor said, “I’m assuming you’re nor Hakrond Reavaxe here to talk about the lumber concession.”
“Master Reavaxe was kind enough to delay his presence before Your Graces in return for certain remunerations, the details of which are confidential,” the Cheriveni explained to them happily. “However, in his momentary absence, I present myself as Doctor Catt of Cinquetann Riverport, advocate, physician and scholar, at your service; and desirous, if it be in your power to grant, of a trifling favour.”
“What is this?” the priest demanded, after wading through all those words. “Is this some manner of clown?”
“No indeed, but a very sagacious individual with a proposal for you, should you see your way to releasing certain ne’er-do-wells currently within your custody—”
“This is the Slayer woman and her zoo,” Adondra broke in. “You’re one of them, are you?”
“By no means, my noble Governor, and yet merely one who has some residual gratitude towards one who struck so creditable a blow against the erstwhile tyrant, to which end I would ask that you free them and allow them to carry on their heroics somewhere outside your city walls, and in return your Temple’s fame shall be forever enriched.”
“What is he talking about?” the Archimandrite demanded. “There is a lack of respect in your voice when you talk about the Temple, Cheriveni.”
“Alas, it is my customary register on any topic, Your Holiness,” Doctor Catt swept an elaborate bow for good measure. “But before my welcome is outstayed permit, me to remind you of the narrative of Cinnabran.” Before their baffled looks could coalesce into a shout for the guards, he barrelled on. “As you may know, there once was a young woman of that name whose time upon this earth was centuries before the Kinslayer ever slew his kin. In that far-off time the gods spoke mostly to their servants the Guardians, such as the imposing Lord Wall who looms so magnificently behind you. Much was lost, alas, between the lips of the gods and the ears of mortals, try as the Guardians might to bridge the gap. But then came Cinnabran—”
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