by Tom Lloyd
‘My Lord,’ broke in Cardinal Certinse, ‘I have had word that a company of dark monks even now inhabits my ancestral home, thieving and arresting as they please.’
Isak leaned forward, a flash of controlled fury in his white eyes. ‘Do you really wish to argue with me over the meaning of good citizenry?’ he growled. ‘The Brethren were not the only soldiers riding in Saroc that day. Did you not read that in your reports? The reason they are in your family home, Cardinal Certinse, is because a number of your family have proved themselves traitors, and the Brethren provide escort to those I have charged with rooting out those others also involved. Surely you cannot object, as it is one of your fellow cardinals conducting this investigation?’
‘Disten?’ spluttered Cardinal Certinse. ‘The man is a maniac, a delusional monster. His hatred of my family is well known. He is a disgrace to the office. His appointment was nothing more than an indulgence.’
Isak breathed deeply, determined his temper would not boil over. He could see beads of sweat on the cardinal’s brow, unsurprising, since he himself had been accused of consorting with daemons by that very same Cardinal Disten. Though Disten might find something in Tildek Manor, Cardinal Certinse would have been far more careful than the rest of his family. Even Lesarl was less than confident of finding evidence against him. In his usual style, the Chief Steward was forming alternative plans to deal with the cardinal.
‘What I know about Cardinal Disten,’ Isak replied in a measured voice, ‘is that he did not strike me as mad in any way, and whatever accusations he has made against your family were revealed to be true that day. I saw the evidence myself, for Suzerain Tildek and Duke Certinse led troops under banner into the Saroc suzerainty without invitation, that a crime in itself, and then attacked my person. They would have succeeded in killing me, had the Brethren of the Sacred Teachings not anticipated the act.’
‘How can you be sure the Brethren themselves did not engineer this - had my brother attacked you by the time they themselves were under assault?’
‘Yes. I had lost one man by then.’
‘Which could very well have been a mistake, a stray arrow by a nervous scout,’ urged the cardinal, sensing a thread to pull.
‘Perhaps,’ said Isak, ‘but unlikely - by the time the Brethren had appeared, the mages in your brother’s company had already reached me with sorcery, sorcery with a particular stink about it, unmistakable even to a man like me, not long schooled in the magical arts. Your brother consorted with necromancers, Cardinal Certinse. The Suzerain of Tildek and the Duke of Lomin rode under arms with necromancers. Go consult your laws, if you will, but I made sure of the point myself. The penalty is death and their assets are forfeit.’ Isak leaned back. ‘Currently I am disinclined to completely destroy your family, but that may change.’
‘Necromancers?’ said Jopel Bern, the High Priest of Death, sharply. ‘If that is true, then Duke Certinse has violated religious law and should be turned over to the Synod for trial.’
Isak shrugged. ‘Currently he is not charged with that. If you wish to prepare a case, by all means do so, but I will try Duke Certinse before his peers for the attempted murder of a peer, and for treason.’
‘Treason? You are not Lord of the Farlan yet,’ Cardinal Veck said pointedly.
‘That is technically true.’ Isak gave the Synod a cold smile. ‘We will surely be debating that point. I will be very interested to note all dissenting views from the suzerains assembled.’ He rose and straightened his tunic with a sharp tug, noting with grim satisfaction that more than just the High Priest of Nartis recoiled at the sudden movement.
He cast a hard look down the length of the table. ‘Now, honoured members of the Synod, list your other suggestions.’
The High Priest of Death turned slightly to Veck, raising a hand slightly to dissuade him from speaking further. The cardinal nodded and eased back in his chair, arms flat against the thick armrests.
Bern sat up straighter and cleared his throat. ‘Lord Isak, our goal here today is not to cast accusations, nor to provoke conflict. We mentioned the dark monks to ask you to declare them unwelcome in Farlan lands, unless they submit to the scrutiny of the proper authorities.’
‘The matter is in hand. I have already made it clear to them that I will not tolerate unknown armies marching through these lands.’
‘Your wisdom precedes ours then,’ Bern replied, bowing slightly. ‘Furthermore, we ask permission to create a force to work in conjunction with your own men, to root out heretics and daemon-worshippers so past conflicts are not repeated.’
Isak took a step forward until his thighs were touching the curved edge of the table. He leant forward slightly and said softly, ‘My orders to the Brethren were that I would not tolerate any organised bands of soldiers in these lands if they do not answer to me. There will be no exceptions to this law.’ And I’m buggered if I’m going to let an army of religious fanatics run around burning anyone they take a dislike to, he added in the privacy of his own head. For some reason, that struck him as amusing. The Synod wanted proof of my suitability to rule. I didn’t say that aloud - I must have learned something after all.
‘While we’re on the subject,’ Isak continued, ‘the same can be said for the Devoted - just in case you were about to ask for them to be welcomed back into Farlan lands.’
There is a rumour that you had allied yourself with the Knights of the Temples already,’ said the high priest.
One of my men has a big mouth, he thought, a little crossly. ‘I have made such no alliance,’ he snapped, ‘and Lord Bahl’s edicts on that organisation stand.’
He stopped as a prickling sensation ran through his head. The whole room seemed to shudder before his eyes and from the corner of the room, he heard a whisper: ‘Isak.’
He whirled around, but saw nothing out of the ordinary except Tila, staring at him, wide-eyed and a little confused.
Isak frowned as the voice came again: ‘Isak.’ Blinking, he turned back to the Synod, who were watching him uncertainly. He took a moment to steady himself and reached out with his mind to the Skull fused around Eolis’ hilt, relieved when he touched the power there to recognise that whatever was going on, he wasn’t under attack. He suddenly realised that the voice was Xeliath. For her to reach him like that, awake and defended, it must have cost her dearly. Panic began to stir. Had someone found her before Morghien and Mihn could get to her?
He took a deep breath and looked around the table. ‘Esteemed members of the Synod, I have urgent matters to attend to. Please send word to Chief Steward Lesarl when you have reached your decision, I have no more time to waste playing games.’ He put both hands on the table and leaned forward, looking at each of the Synod in turn, then said, quietly, dangerously, ‘If you intend to oppose me, think very carefully before you act. I am not a naive boy, however many summers I may lack in your eyes. I know full well that if a majority of court-ranked men declare for me, your own approval is not necessary. My patience is limited, as you will see tomorrow when my men start building a gallows outside Duke Certinse’s cell, in case we might find a use for it. Good day to you all.’
He didn’t wait for a reply but swept out of the chamber, drawing Jachen and Tila in his wake. He left the mighty Synod, a collection of shocked, frail old men and women, silently wondering how their world had changed.
Voss Aftal, the High Priest of Nartis, gripped the armrest of his chair and tried to control the fear he felt. He had lived for sixty-four summers; most of those had been taken up with the gentle routine of ritual at the Temple of Nartis, a majestic building of pillars and sharp-peaked roofs where only the high altar had walls. The wind rushed through constantly, and during storms, as the God brushed his soul, it was a humbling place to be.
The strength of Nartis was beyond Aftal’s understanding; it was a force that took away his breath and drained his body of the strength to move. It had always frightened him, this gulf between man and God too palpable to ignore. And yet ther
e was a familiarity in the soaring power of the God of Storms, rooted as it was in the patterns of the Land.
Aftal’s heart had grown cold at Isak’s mere presence, because there was, no familiarity there. The youth’s power waxed with every day, cold and wild, tied to nothing, controlled by nothing, and it ruled his entire being. The high priest trembled as he wondered what this snarling youth with wild eyes was not capable of. Folk were whispering a new name in the streets now, even his priests: they were calling him Isak Stormcaller. The burgeoning terror in Aftal’s heart told him they were wrong.
This boy did not call storms. Isak was the storm. And they were all caught in his wake.
CHAPTER 13
Isak stomped his way up the stair to the ducal personal chambers in the main wing of Tirah Palace, ignoring Tila’s questions and storming past the guards who snapped to attention. He smashed his fist against the oak door and felt the latch on the inside give way. The door flew open and crashed against the inside wall, causing the elderly man tending the fire to give a yelp of alarm. He jumped up with poker in hand, knocking a log from the hearth in a cloud of soot and sparks, then turned to apologise for crying out - suddenly realising that he still held the poker as a weapon, and it was pointed at Isak’s heart.
‘My Lord, I-I do apologise,’ he stammered, dropping the poker as though it had scalded him.
Isak jabbed a thumb towards the door and growled, ‘out.’
Hard on the servant’s heels, he was about to slam the door shut alter him when he saw Tila hurrying up the stair, skirts bunched in her list so she didn’t trip.
‘No one comes in,’ Isak announced, and the guard on his right gave a jerk of the head. Not waiting to hear Tila’s complaint, he dragged the door closed and roughly twisted the bent latch back into place again, then stalked over to the window, a wide aperture as tall as he was, framed with solid wooden shutters. A balcony ran around that corner of the building, opening onto each of his rooms. He stood looking out at nothing, the breeze ruffling his clothes and calming the angry tangle within his mind. Finally, his tense shoulders dropped a little in relief: Xeliath had only called his name. There had been no fear in her voice. Perhaps he shouldn’t have stormed out of the meeting … Then he shook his head. No, she may not be in danger, but for her to have reached him like that meant it was a matter of importance.
Isak lay clown on his huge bed and looked up at the painted beams on the ceiling, thick hands of red that ran the length of the room. He closed his eyes and tried to clear his thoughts, but it didn’t take long for his fingers to start twitching in irritation at the stillness. With a sigh he sat up again.
‘Perhaps I can do this without being asleep,’ he said out loud. ‘How about it, spirit?’
Lamentable wretch, spat Aryn Bwr in reply, blind and ignorant creature!
‘Fine, be like that,’ Isak said, determined not to let himself get wound up by the dead king’s insults. ‘It can’t be so difficult - she said we shared a connection, so I’ll find her if she wants me to.’
He sat cross-legged and, running his fingers around the Crystal Skull as if he were stroking a woman’s cheek, pulled it loose from Eolis. It was warm to the touch, and so silky-smooth he could hardly feel the surface. Isak had discovered from his tentative experiments that the Skull responded better when it was in contact with the flesh that had had its colour burned from it by his God’s lightning. He had wondered about asking Dermeness Chirialt, the mage who’d helped him make Carel’s sword, but decided he probably didn’t want to know the answer. He was afraid of finding out something fundamental had changed, that his mortal flesh had been replaced by something else, something less than human. Isak had never expected frailty to possess its own attractions.
Isak raised the Skull and watched it slowly return to shape. The line of the jaw came first, then the dome, followed swiftly by the angled planes of the cheeks. For a brief moment it was a disconcerting blind face before the sockets sank down. Once the Skull was solid again, Isak cupped it in his hands. It looked oddly bifurcated, bright white on one side and a dull pink on the other.
He raised it to his chest and touched it to the scar there. Burned into his skin on his first night in the palace, the runic form of her name was his closest link to Xeliath. That would be the path he’d follow.
The witch of Llehden waited on a rolling plain of shivering wheat; it was a place of bland nothingness. A handful of trees stood nearby, but there was nothing beyond. Xeliath had not seen the need to go further than that. There was no sunlight, nor sound, and the plain was an uncomfortable, disconcerting place to pass an hour. For someone inextricably woven into the fabric of the Land, the witch felt it a terrible loss to be in this slate-sky place of dead memories. She pulled her shawl tighter as the breeze picked up. It felt like the ghostly wind was able to draw the warmth from the living, despite knowing that the cold wasn’t real.
Xeliath was a little way off, delighting in her restored grace and making the most of her time in these dreams, turning cartwheels, letting her skirts fall about shamefully, swinging from the branches of the trees. She knew well that soon she would have to return to her twisted and damaged true body, but until then she sang with pleasure at the sensation of strong limbs being once again fully under her control.
At this moment she was hanging upside-down with her legs wrapped around a bough, crooning softly to herself in the strange language of her people.
‘Are you sure he heard you?’
‘I’m sure.’ Xeliath didn’t turn her head. Her soft chestnut hair hung loose and free. It still struck the witch as strange that the girl’s hair was almost exactly the same shade as her skin. It seemed unnatural somehow, in some ways as disturbing as an albino’s lack of colour. It made Xeliath’s eyes even more striking. A curl of a smile on her lips could be electrifying. Though the girl was normally all youthful innocence, she possessed the arresting presence of a white-eye.
The Gods have chosen this one well,’ murmured the witch. As Isak’s queen, Xeliath would have been able to bewitch men with a glance; those didn’t find themselves hanging off Isak’s every word would tremble when his lady spared them the briefest of moments.
Xeliath stretched out her arms as far as they could go, turning her wrists in circles. The witch blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, Isak was standing directly in front of the brown-skinned girl. Xeliath squealed with delight and wrapped her arms around the massive scarlet and gold-clad apparition. Isak started, he’d appeared just a few inches from Xeliath’s face, and was immediately grabbed, but his struggles ceased almost at once as the girl locked lips with his.
Her slender fingers gripped a handful of his thick black hair to hold him close.
His passion reflected hers and the massive white-eye lost no time in swinging Xeliath down from the branch and enveloping her in his arms.
‘Where’s a bucket of water when I need one?’ wondered the witch aloud, Isak jumped and tore himself from Xeliath’s arms. Eolis was half drawn before he recognised the speaker.
‘You! What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for your raging hormones to calm down.’
‘Well, if I’d known there was a queue …’ He smirked.
The witch had no intention of giving him the satisfaction of a reaction, but Xeliath was quick to offence, and though significantly smaller than Isak, the Yeetatchen girl showed no hesitation in reaching up and jabbing him hard.
The witch managed not to smile at Isak’s yelp. The flash of anger faded quickly when he turned back to Xeliath.
The witch made a note of that small detail, tucking it away in a corner of her mind. She would decide later if it was worrying. Xeliath’s charms held Isak in thrall, as they would any other man, but she was cut off from a real life. Outside her excursions into dreams, she was nothing more than an imprisoned, frustrated child. The only thing she might be able to control in her life was Isak … The witch wondered if he were the one who would end up determining the c
ourse of history.
She shook her head to clear her thoughts. ‘We brought you here for a reason,’ she said. ‘There are matters that need your attention.’
‘Matters that need my attention?’ Isak took a step towards her. ‘I’ll tell you what needs my attention: the largest nation in the Land. My investiture ceremony, so that I am legally recognised, and the trial of a daemon-worshipping traitor, and once I’ve got those out of the way, I have a war to prepare for. You’ll forgive me if I don’t feel like sorting out anyone else’s problems, especially when ordered to by someone I’ve hardly met - I don’t even know your name.’
‘Her name?’ Xeliath walked around him and stood next to the witch, her eyes flashing. ‘Don’t you know anything about witches? They give up their names when they stop being apprentices. To give you her name would be as dangerous as you handing cuttings of your hair to any passing mage. As for giving you orders - she’s trying to warn you, that’s all. She’s an ally. You might at least let her finish speaking before you bite her head off.’
‘How do I know she’s an ally?’ Isak said, a little grumpily. He felt like he was being ganged up on.
‘You need proof?’ the witch cut in. ‘If I were an enemy, do you think you would so easily have left my domain bearing those gifts from the Knights of the Temples? To be a witch is to be able to feel the heartbeat of the very Land itself, to be part of the patterns and rhythms that bind it. It does not tell me the future, but I can sense something of what that pattern might result in - just as I can sense when there is something wrong in that pattern.’ She shuddered. ‘What I feel right now is a danger to us all, and it grows with every day. I know this because of what I am, because of what I have sacrificed to become what I am.’
She broke off. There was no easy way to explain what it meant to be a witch. The scent of warm earth and blood, the wind through the trees, the touch of sun and shade upon the skin: these things explained her as much as anything. The people of Llehden knew that. They treated her like a local Aspect, with fearful respect, understanding that she was nothing like them. At times she lived like a noblewoman, with children bringing food and clothes for her, sent to her to see and to know their local witch, to understand what a witch was, as their parents had done, and their parents’ parents. They grew up knowing the witch was beyond normal cares, yet still she cared for them. Like the animals of the forest, the deer and the wolves, she watched over the people who were part of Llehden’s fabric. If the Coldhand folk stole a baby, it was she who would stride off into the night to fetch it back, no matter what the cost. She would face down vengeful spectres and ease difficult births, whichever way they had to go. In some ways she was more similar to Isak than the young man would ever realise; in others, more opposite than seemed possible for allies.