Some years before, he had been born again, to Princess Helayna, the woman who found him. She had been out with a patrol of her men, searching for survivors who might have crawled from the battle field far below. She had not expected to find a Magravandian among the narrow paths that burrowed through the crags of the Rhye. For some time, she didn’t know she had, because Tayven was insensible, incapable of communicating. Later, when he was whole again, she’d told him how, on that terrible morning, she’d thought she’d found one of her own people, violated and broken.
‘Would you have killed me if you’d known the truth?’ Tayven had asked her.
She hadn’t answered. He knew it anyway. Helayna hated Magravandians.
The patrol had carried Tayven, along with other survivors, to a hidden camp, high among the peaks of the Rhye. Tayven remembered opening his eyes for the first time, and how his vision had been filled with the image of Helayna’s stern hawk-like face. She’d spoken to him in a foreign tongue, her tone harsh and guttural. He could not understand a word of it. Men had appeared around her. One of them had poked him gently with the butt of his spear. He hadn’t been able to remember who he was, or where he was, or what had happened to him. He had simply come out of a darkness into the world, shorn of the human faculties that stem from learning. He was primal instinct made flesh.
In one of the huts of the camp, where the wounded were taken, Tayven found the most comfortable spot and curled up like a homeless cat. Cossic physicians attended to his hurts and it was only a few days later, when he muttered some words in Magravandian, that Helayna was summoned once more. She arrived, accompanied by two male officers, suspicion oozing from every one of them. Now, she spoke to Tayven in his own tongue. ‘Who are you? What were you doing on the crag path? What happened to you?’
Tayven knew that, during that first significant conversation, his beauty - his curse and his blessing - had probably contributed towards saving his life. ‘I don’t know,’ he’d answered, honestly, to every question they put to him.
They spoke together afterwards, and although Tayven’s memory had recorded it for him, he wondered how he’d known what they’d said. They wouldn’t have spoken in Magravandian. Yet he had known. Perhaps he remembered the feelings conjured by the words.
‘It’s clear to see what he is,’ one of Helayna’s companions said. ‘Look at him. Shall we dispose of him?’
‘No,’ said Helayna. ‘He may be useful.’
‘He’s lost his mind.’
‘It could return.’
Tayven lived in a cocoon of ignorance for several weeks, enjoying life at its most basic level. The other wounded men and women in the makeshift hospital – those who could talk – were fascinated by him. They began to teach him their language, and from those who knew Magravandian, he learned that he was privileged, because a princess had taken an interest in him. He learned she was a great rebel leader, but that meant little. He’d lost his image of the world. Every day, Helayna would come to question him, accompanied by her seeress, an old woman named Mab. They both tried to make him remember things, to no avail.
‘Well, no one’s looking for him, that’s for sure,’ said Old Mab dryly.
‘He’s high born,’ Helayna said. ‘Look at his hands. He’s not a soldier.’
‘He’s one of their playthings,’ Mab decided. ‘Perhaps he upset someone.’
Helayna shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. It seems strange, finding him there, so soon after the battle. I wonder what’s meant by it.’ She was not a conventionally beautiful woman. Her face was too hard. She wore her hair tied up on her head with rags, and affected the garb of a man. But there was something compelling about her; her presence, her confidence, her movements. It was easy to imagine her in splendid robes, gliding down a staircase into a hushed hall full of people, gazing down her nose at them. ‘What happened to you, boy?’ she asked. ‘Who did this?’ Clearly, she did not, for one moment, consider one of her own people might be responsible.
‘I can’t remember anything,’ Tayven said, adding, ‘only your face.’ Even in his confused condition, he knew how to please.
Then, one night, he woke up in darkness, full of recall. It had come back to him in a dream. He remembered the blows, the scorn, the sureness that death was imminent. He remembered who he was, and his history. He remembered Bayard. Panicking, Tayven uttered strange guttural cries and attempted to escape from the hospital, disorientated, clawing at the walls in desperation. His fellow patients tried ineffectively to calm him down, but then Helayna came running, and she was able to constrain his flailing limbs. All he could do was scream in her face. She held him close. ‘You are safe,’ she said. ‘You are safe.’
He did not tell her everything, because that was his way. He told what he knew she wanted to hear, things that would fire up her anger against the Magravandians. ‘They are beasts,’ she said. ‘Their own people aren’t safe from them.’
Tayven still could not remember how he’d got onto the mountain path. He’d lost consciousness while in Bayard’s pavilion, but Helayna thought he must have been flung out onto the battle field and left for dead. His will to survive must have enabled him to make the impossible crawl to find sanctuary. ‘You’d have died if I hadn’t found you,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘I know.’
‘My brother will be with us again shortly,’ Helayna said. ‘He has been on a mission in the south. He will want to speak with you.’
‘What can I tell him? That Valraven Palindrake is invincible? I think he already knows that. I was a squire, nothing more. I don’t know anything that could help you rout him.’
‘Palindrake is not invincible,’ Helayna said. ‘Whatever legends he’s created around himself, he’s still only a man.’
She believed the Cossics could win, if they could only kill Valraven. Tayven knew this was a delusion, but he was happy to live in the camp and become part of the rebel community. A quick student, he swiftly learned their language and was able to think like they did. They weren’t racist towards him, which surprised him. They didn’t consider he might be part of an elaborate espionage plot, which certainly wouldn’t be beyond the Magravandians. He mentioned this to Helayna, who only snorted. ‘I can see your soul,’ she said, ‘and it shines. It is not the soul of a spy.’
So much for her perspicacity.
When Ashalan returned to the camp, he’d been badly wounded in the leg. Tayven, astute to possibilities that might enhance his position and make life more comfortable, accompanied Helayna on her visits to the exiled king, who was recuperating in his dwelling. Tayven was able to turn on his ‘shine’ as Helayna referred to it, and quickly charmed Ashalan into submission. I am like a serpent, Tayven thought. I can hypnotise people. Almorante had told him this long ago, and had also taught him how to make the most of his talent.
It did not take Tayven long to realise that Ashalan was close to giving up. His wound took a long time to heal. He was exhausted. Helayna, ever the optimist, refused to be broken by the staggering defeat the Cossic forces had suffered at the Magravandians’ hands. The same could not be said for Ashalan. He wasn’t stupid. He knew that Valraven’s army had cut down the flower of the Cossic resistance in that misty mountain valley. It would take a long time to recoup and by then more of Cos would be under Magravandian control. Within the rebellion itself were many factions, some of which had been infiltrated by Magravandian agents or seduced by promises of power from Almorante. Tayven knew this but didn’t tell Ashalan or Helayna. His business, as he saw it, was to survive, and the rebel headquarters seemed fairly safe for now. He had no intention of returning to Magrast.
One night, Tayven managed to engineer a visit to Ashalan without Helayna’s presence, and seduced him. It was not much of a challenge. Ashalan, tired and hopeless, was sodden with romantic and melancholic thoughts. He spoke of an ancient legend, in which a Cossic king had taken as a lover a boy belonging to a conquered Mewtish emperor, which had caused all manner of unpleasantness. Tay
ven was impatient with this. He’d lost his own romantic inclinations. He realised that he must help Ashalan recapture the man he’d once been. The rebels might not be able to win their war, but they could survive in the wilderness undetected, perhaps forever. For that, they needed strong leaders. Helayna was an inspiration to them, but they had a spiritual link to Ashalan. To the Cossics, he was the life of their land. If he withered and failed, so did they, and it was not in Tayven’s personal interests for this to happen. He became Ashalan’s inspiration, and used every ancient legend he could think of, and several that he made up, to help drag Ashalan out of his pit of despair. The bloom came back into Ashalan’s eyes. His body became straighter, his limp less pronounced.
Helayna was almost tearful in her gratitude for what Tayven had done for her brother. ‘You have brought him back to us,’ she said. ‘It is your shine. You are so special.’ She was stroking his face as she did this.
I am actually hateful, Tayven thought. Whatever was good in me has been beaten out. I don’t care about anything except myself.
One night, Ashalan questioned him in detail about his relationships in Magrast. All Tayven had told the Cossics about what Bayard had done to him was that the prince hated him because he was a favourite of Almorante’s, but that night, perhaps because the moon was full and the air heady with the scent of cedar, Tayven shuddered and remembered Recolletine. ‘I loved a man named Khaster,’ he said.
‘A Magravandian?’ Ashalan asked, and for once Tayven could give him an answer he would like.
‘No, Caradorean.’
‘Ah, Caradore,’ said Ashalan sighing. ‘I went there once. It is the crown of the world. What was he like, your Khaster? What happened to him?’
‘He was a melancholic dreamer who was broken into a thousand pieces by Magrast and her scheming princes,’ Tayven said curtly.
‘Is he alive or dead?’
‘I don’t know. I hope he’s dead, because I hate to think of what he’s like if he lives.’ Tayven shook his head. ‘No, he can’t live. Not after what happened.’
‘Tell me,’ Ashalan said.
Tayven did so, from Khaster’s perspective.
Afterwards, Ashalan frowned. ‘He was not how I’d expect a Caradorean to be, exactly.’
‘No, he wasn’t. He’d already been mauled throughout his childhood by Valraven Palindrake, and later by the Dragon Lord’s infamous sister, Pharinet. They destroyed him long before he came to me. The Khaster that should have been had disappeared deep inside him. I tried to bring him backc’
‘cAs you did for mec’
‘But it didn’t work. I didn’t have time.’
Ashalan was silent for a moment, then said, ‘You will have your revenge, Tayven.’
‘I know,’ Tayven answered simply, but he also knew it would not be expedited by Ashalan or his Cossic forces. One day, Tayven would be given the opportunity to do it alone. He would not rest until he had Bayard begging for mercy at his feet. The prince would not die quickly. Tayven had already invented enough tortures to last considerable weeks.
Sometimes, he looked at himself and disliked what he saw, what he had become. Almorante’s fey mystic was gone for good. He remembered how he was that time in Recolletine with Khaster and it seemed as if that boy had never lived. He’d believed he was clever enough to guide Khaster and himself through dangerous waters to safety, but he’d been careless, too confident. He still had his shine, but it was the radiance of a black sun now, full of poison.
Several years after Tayven joined the Cossics, a Mewtish man named Surekh found their hidden retreat. He astounded everyone with the information that he had been searching for Tayven, so Mab had been wrong after all. But Surekh was not employed by Almorante, Valraven, Bayard or any other faction Tayven would have expected. He was an agent of someone else, who was looking for Khaster too. Helayna wanted to kill the Mewt straight away, being traditionally suspicious of his race, but Ashalan, more measured, listened to what he had to say.
‘I will not say you have friends,’ said Surekh, ‘but there are other powerful men in this world who oppose the empire. You need not expect an alliance from them, but you can trade information. This you will need when the world changes, when Leonid dies and his sons fight over the crown. Survive out here if you can and wait to see what happens. I ask for only one thing.’
‘And that is?’ said Ashalan.
‘Allow me to take Tayven Hirantel back to Mewt with me.’
Tayven and Ashalan exchanged a glance, and Tayven’s heart sank, because he knew Ashalan was thinking of the old legends, and how this circumstance had painful resonance with them. But Ashalan only smiled at him. ‘Do you want to go?’
Tayven paused, then said, ‘I’ve always wanted to visit Mewt.’
‘Then go,’ Ashalan said.
‘It will be only for a short time,’ said Surekh. ‘My employer wishes to meet him, that’s all. We will send funds back with him, which may help you.’
‘What use have I for funds out here?’ Ashalan said, laughing.
‘Not yet perhaps,’ said Surekh, ‘but circumstances change.’
‘I never refuse a gift,’ Ashalan said.
So Tayven travelled to Akahana, the capitol of Mewt, and there met with the Magravandian governor of the city, Lord Maycarpe. They had met before, of course, in Magrast, but only briefly. Maycarpe wanted Tayven to find Khaster for him, but would not reveal why. Khaster’s younger brother worked for Maycarpe, so perhaps it was just a personal favour.
‘I want you as my agent,’ Maycarpe said. ‘Will you work for me?’
‘Against my people?’
Maycarpe frowned. ‘What?’
‘The Cossics.’
‘Great Madragore, no!’ said Maycarpe. ‘I have no interest in them, pathetic remnants that they are. I want you on my side, Tayven. I have looked for you for a long time.’
‘Do you know what will happen? Is Leonid going to die soon?’
Maycarpe smiled. ‘I only know that certain of our aims are in accord.’
‘Will you tell Almorante you have seen me?’
Maycarpe shrugged. ‘I don’t know. He comes here often. Do you want him to know?’
‘I don’t care,’ Tayven said. ‘He’d never find me. I won’t return to Magrast.’
Maycarpe narrowed his eyes. ‘I like the danger in you. It is an improvement.’
‘Useful to you, maybe.’
‘I admire survivors. It is why I want Khaster Leckery too.’
‘You are optimistic,’ Tayven said. ‘He was never much of a survivor. Why are you so interested in him?’
Maycarpe leaned forward in his seat. ‘Don’t you know why? Didn’t you sense it yourself?’
Tayven was silent for a moment. ‘I doubt you and I sense the same things,’ he said at last.’
Maycarpe made an expansive hand gesture. ‘Find him, Tayven.’
When Tayven saw the image of his younger self in a piece of glass lodged in a tree, he had not long returned from a visit to Akahana. Before that, he’d been scouring the countryside of Cos, as he’d done many times before, for any evidence of Khaster. As usual, he’d had to report to Maycarpe he’d found nothing, but now, being presented with this unexpected phenomenon in the tree, he found himself thinking of Khaster again. He reached out and touched the clouded glass. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ he said aloud. ‘Are you reaching out through time, lost Tayven, to reach me?’
No answers came to him. Not then.
Chapter Eleven: The Path of the Student
Shan presented himself at Master Thremius’ abode at the appointed time. He looked forward to a day of revelations and surprises, conscious that becoming aware of Taropat’s history had been an unusual form of initiation. But all he found at the old tree was Nip alone, dressed in travelling clothes, stout boots and a hooded cloak. She carried a tall staff. ‘I thought you weren’t coming,’ she said. ‘I’m to take you to the Lady.’
‘What Lady?’
/> ‘She lives in the northern part of the forest. It’s a bit of a hike.’
‘I thought Thremius was going to teach me now.’
Nip raised her eyebrows. ‘Did you? The Lady’s been waiting to meet you. Taropat has kept her away. Thremius must have argued hard with him to get him to agree to this.’
Shan thought about these words. He’d never seen Taropat and Thremius together, but then he wasn’t aware of all of Taropat’s movements. ‘How do the magi communicate?’ he asked. ‘Does Taropat come here?’
‘Sometimes,’ Nip said, ‘but they have other methods too. They meet in dreams and in the voids beyond the worlds. Also, they like to meet from time to time in the real world, to get drunk and argue, but your presence has made Taropat’s house off-limits. I’ve been to gatherings there, when there have been over twenty people in Taropat’s kitchen, magi and apprentices alike.’
‘Why doesn’t he want me to meet them?’
‘More the other way round,’ Nip said. ‘He doesn’t want your head filled with too many opposing views as yet.’ She thumped her staff on the ground. ‘Well, we’d better get going. We want to be there before the day is over.’
Shan hesitated. ‘Will we be staying the night?’
Nip laughed. ‘I’m leaving you there,’ she said. ‘You’ll have a new home for a while.’
Shan was shocked. Why hadn’t Taropat told him? He hoped his mentor knew about this plan. ‘I’m not sure about this,’ he said. ‘Taropat’s mentioned nothing about it to me.’
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Nip said. ‘You will enjoy the Lady’s company, and what she’ll teach you. It’ll open up a whole new universe for you.’ With these words, she swung round in a practised swirl of her cloak and began to march towards one of the forest paths. Shan sighed, shook his head, then followed her.
They travelled a few paths Shan was already familiar with, then branched off into unknown territory, following the course of a narrow rushing stream. Nip said that the water flowed both ways at once, which Shan took to be a joke. When he looked over the banks, he saw that the water roiled and curled around the many sharp rocks protruding from beneath its surface, which perhaps gave the illusion of a contradictory flow.
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