Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong

by Greg Hamerton

  “As do we all, Mystery,” said the Senior. “As do we all.”

  Tabitha slipped into her seat beside Twardy Zarost. “Why was the Cosmologer so angry?” she asked. “Is that normal?”

  Zarost laughed, and made to say something, then seemed to think better of it. But when nobody else filled the silence, he bent his head to the side, to whisper to her. “A long time ago, the Warlock took her to his bed. She’s been hoping he’ll cast his roving eye toward her again, even though he has made it clear that his tastes lie in other directions. He has her enthralled, and she did not like hearing that her tittilator is a traitor.”

  He’d spoken in a low voice, but not low enough to escape the senses of the wizards. The Spiritist shot him a disapproving glance. “Riddler! That’s scandalous! You cannot know that.”

  “Ah, but I can puzzle it out, not so? We know our balance always skews if we place them too close in a joint spell, and it always skews in the Warlock’s favour.”

  The Mystery grinned and looked away, as if she found the idea of the Warlock having anything to do with the Cosmologer very amusing.

  “Nonetheless, it seems the Warlock’s roving eye has roved too far of late,” said the Lorewarden. “We shall have to find him, and if the Riddler’s guess is true, we shall have to end his treachery.”

  “Wait! We must capture him, we cannot kill him!” exclaimed the Senior.

  “Why?” asked the Lorewarden and the Mentalist at once.

  “We cannot risk that crown being loose!” exclaimed the Spiritist. “Ametheus will turn us inside out! With the seven strands of our blood twisted through the gold, it is the most powerful weapon in the hands of our enemy. Only the Riddler is spared from that weave. He could pull us to pieces. We must blast the Warlock from the face of Oldenworld.”

  “No! Think, and think as the Gyre!” commanded the Senior. “We cannot harm the Warlock. The ninth member of our circle is essential. If we cannot expand, we are too weak to resist Ametheus at his peak. His last spell was an eighth-level weave of Chaos. That we know. We need a Gyre of nine wizards to beat such magnitude. We need the balance point in the cube to perfect order. We have the Lifesinger now, or so we hope, but we need the Warlock too. If we kill him, we lose our chance at gaining the upper hand. Nine is the number; it is infinitely more powerful than eight.”

  “Oh, this will be most tricky,” said Zarost. “He knows we will come for him, he knows we won’t wish to harm him, but he might not have the same restraint in return. It is not wise to stop a man armed with a sword if you face him with empty hands.”

  “Indeed, Riddler, indeed,” said the Senior. “Except in this case, it will be a damned big battleaxe he carries, and we know that’s not the worst of his weapons.”

  The wizards brooded on that, and the Chamber seemed to darken.

  “I have an idea! Oh, this will be a good surprise!” said Zarost.

  “I don’t like your surprises,” the Mentalist muttered. “Last time I was stuck here on the roof for weeks, before I could break the bond you placed upon me.”

  Zarost looked at him blankly then his eyebrows hooked upward. “Aah! My trick with the Transference. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad skill to have found, to know how to vanish before you’ve hit the ground. You will need that talent if things run foul with the Warlock.” Zarost turned to face the Mystery. “Cast a seeing spell for us, Mysterious-Miss. We must find the Warlock, and we must find him fast. Let us begin where the Hunters hide at Bradach.”

  The Mystery didn’t leave her chair. “Will we be able to see the Warlock at all, if he’s so near to the crown? It is the best shield-core we’ve ever made. Once beyond its holding pattern in Eyri it would be impossible to track.”

  “Oh, we’ll not be looking for him,” said the Riddler. “We’ll be looking for a special kind of spy. We might not be able to sense the thieves through the cover of the Kingsrim, but they’re still visible to the eyes of those whom they pass. I think it’s time to commission the aid of a sha-lin, to take a challenge to the travellers.”

  “Why don’t we just transfer there ourselves?” said the Mentalist. “We could go to Bradach Hide right now, and search the different trails. We’d find him soon enough.”

  “What, split up?” Zarost asked. “That’s precisely what he wants us to do! Think about it. He will take us down, one at a time. Our only hope is to be unified when we face him.”

  “But if he does have the Kingsrim we must not dally about!”

  “How do you rate your chances then, if you caught the Warlock in a dark corner of the forest?” Zarost asked.

  “I would have a chance!” replied the Mentalist.

  “How much of a chance?”

  “Oh tosh, Riddler! What if we were in twos?”

  Zarost just left that question resting gently in the silence. They all knew how dangerous the Warlock was in open combat.

  “No, the Riddler is right,” said the Senior. “We must know where he is first, so we might trap him together.”

  “Mystery, would you at least do us the honours of scrying before seeing?” the Mentalist asked. “We should have some idea if this is a likely path, or a right royal balls-up.”

  “It will work, I’m telling you!” Zarost objected. “The sha-lin is all we need.”

  The Mentalist bared his teeth at him, like a warning from a wolf. “I’m happy for you to riddle us out of a problem, but I’d rather you didn’t riddle us into one.”

  “Very well.” The Mystery rose from her chair and approached the pool. Her elegant green garments glistened as she moved. “I will pull what I can from the future.” She shivered, like a cat flicking rain off its coat, and the surface of the pool was distressed with ripples. Light danced in the water. It calmed as the Mystery spread her hands with fingers splayed. Then she explored the air with her fingers, and the threads of light moved, forming networks, forking, branching and rejoining, pathways of possibility in the restless fluid of reality.

  “I sense a parting in the future,” she said. “You see, we shall meet again here.” She pointed to a conjunction of threads. “It would be quicker for us to take this path that the Riddler has chosen, leading through to that meeting, than to go separated like this, and end up there.”

  Tabitha didn’t understand what they were looking at or how the Mystery could be certain. How could one take a short-cut to an event in the future? “Can you see if you will find the Warlock?”

  “Our future would not be so bright upon that path if we were likely to fail.”

  “What is that massive cluster up ahead, Mystery?” asked the Lorewarden.

  “That? That’s something I cannot see beyond, a knot of futures clustered on an improbability.”

  “Is that the Warlock’s thread?” asked the Spiritist.

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Ametheus then?”

  “Or the Riddler, making a bungle-up?” said the Mentalist hopefully.

  “Or the Lifesinger,” offered the Mystery, holding Tabitha with steady green gaze. “I can’t tell.”

  “Looks like a hell of a mess,” said the Lorewarden.

  “Improbabilities always look that way. It will resolve itself, in time. Now, let us find our herald of woe.”

  28. THE INHERITANCE SAGA

  “The present is the slave of the past

  And the master of the future.”—Zarost

  Prince Bevn staggered along the forest trail. His feet were unbelievably sore, hot, blistered and raw. The wizard Black Saladon had collected them in the morning from the smelly Hunter-tent in Willower, and they hadn’t slackened their pace since then, except to sleep in a hollowed-out tree-trunk for a few hours. The ordeal was made worse by the way his pack dug into his back. It was loaded with supplies. Saladon had said that they wouldn’t be stopping at anymore settlements until a place called Slipper, which was many days ahead. The wizard didn’t want to risk further contact with the Hunters.

  “This is so unfair,” Bevn moaned.
“Why don’t we use magic?”

  “What, and light up a beacon for the others?”

  “What…others?”

  “The Sorcerer is not the only one who has power in this world.”

  “But why can’t you just magic us—to—somewhere else? Like the way you get our food. The way you go somewhere else and then come back.”

  “You can not come with me the way I travel. You would lose what little mind you have.”

  Black Saladon squatted in the path, his battleaxe resting casually across his knees. Bevn gulped and tried not to run. “I can not take the crown you wear through transference. It is bonded to your bloodline. It is becoming attuned to you, young Bevn Mellar. That must be allowed to develop and to strengthen. Its aura has already doubled, since Bradach. Surely you want to be strong when you are presented to the Sorcerer. Neh? So here on these trails you get strong. We must reach Turmodin. Nobody can do this but you.”

  Bevn didn’t know what an aura was, but he wouldn’t be fooled.

  “Why aren’t we using horses then?”

  “Did you bring one with you?”

  “No! You know we don’t have horses!”

  Saladon shook his head. “I don’t know how you expect to ride, if you don’t have a horse.”

  “Can’t we get any?”

  “Have you seen any around to buy? Horses are plains animals. They do badly in such a forest. And a horse is too good a target for a Nephilim or a dragon. They both like horsemeat very much. Nobody would be stupid enough to stay close to a horse. If you see one, I suggest you run the other way.”

  “Why is everything so bloody primitive out here? Don’t these Hunters have any means to travel faster?”

  Saladon gave him a hard look. “You can thank the Sorcerer for that. Civilisation is built on the foundations of Order, but it does not take much Chaos to break it down. Remove the rules of governance, and men begin to take instead of make. They are easily driven by greed. Soon there is no wealth, and without wealth, there is often hunger. Desperation sets in, and desperate people will pillage with little regard for others, until in the end all the wealth is squandered, and all the systems are broken down. People forget how to be civilised when Chaos is in their midst, when they hate, when they are fighting for survival.”

  “But the Hunters had some things,” objected Gabrielle. “Bread, mead, perfume.”

  Saladon snorted. “They cling to the eroding remnants of their culture, but it will not last. Nothing lasts against Chaos. You’ll understand that, when you see the Lowlands.” Saladon turned to look up at Gabrielle. She stood, poised as always, her hands in the small of her back, her breasts outlined against the morning sun. Posing to be screwed, Bevn thought. “You might have noticed the change in this Chaos-tainted world,” Saladon continued. “The way your body feels. Ya? There is no greater force of Chaos than the surge of sexual tension. Lust is a great force of anarchy. It breaks through rules of marriage, tribal intolerances, family values, common sense and even pride and dignity, in the end. You will feel things will get—hotter—the closer you get to the Lowlands. It’s why the things have survived so well in the Lowlands, despite their unbelievable violence. They are wild with lust, and their progeny is rampant.”

  “I feel nothing,” Gabrielle replied, but Bevn suspected she was lying.

  “You will, soon enough. You’ll feel it in your sex…” He turned back to Bevn as he stood. “…if you have anything more potent than two peas and a carrot.”

  “Well do you feel it?” Gabrielle demanded.

  Saladon didn’t answer and he didn’t take any more questions after that.

  They walked, over crumbling mossy ridges, over stray roots, past cold-mouthed caves that smelled of lurking danger, around thickets of oozing thorn-weed that tore at his trousers and plucked at his shins, and all the time the weight of the pack grew worse and worse, biting into his shoulders, pressing him into the ground.

  It wasn’t fair. Gabrielle didn’t have to carry as much as he did, so Gabrielle could keep pace with Saladon. He watched the muscles tensing in her leather-clad butt as she sauntered ahead. Bevn stumped along behind them, always just too far behind to be able to hear what they talked about, but he could guess, from the way the wizard began to look at her—those quick sideways glances that took in the shape of her body as she moved.

  Saladon didn’t have anything at all to carry, except his tall battleaxe. That was unfair too, but Bevn hadn’t pointed it out to the wizard—Saladon’s expression was still too dark when he looked at Bevn. He sucked on his loose tooth as he walked, and pushed his tongue through the bitter hole of the one he’d lost when he’d spied on Saladon talking to the Sorcerer.

  Black Saladon was just too scary, too ruthless. Bevn began to wish he’d never become involved with him. The wizard led them with a fanatical urgency and he seemed to become more driven with every hour that passed. He kept them under the cover of the trees. They seldom walked across open wolds or on the hardpacked trails that Bevn noticed from time to time, trails that slipped over exposed ridges and vanished into the deep foliage on either side.

  Bevn wondered if he could complete the quest, after all. He was tired, he was so ready to stop, but it sounded as if they had a long way to go to reach the Sorcerer and that their journey would get harder and harder the farther north they travelled. He was certain all this rushing onward was unnecessary. The wizard was doing it just to punish them. Gabrielle was pretending to be unaffected, but he’d noticed her favouring her left foot, so she must have grown some blisters too. Well, if she could pretend to be strong, he would be stronger. They wouldn’t make him whimper, they wouldn’t get him to cry. Not again.

  But it was still unfair. He was a king, and his crown should be giving him power. Saladon was too mighty to be affected, and Gabrielle was just too stubborn. Bevn longed for some common Eyrian peasants to command. He imagined them bowing and scraping their faces upon the bare earth at his feet. The Kingsrim would work on them. Once the Sorcerer had shown him how to do magic, he would return to Eyri and be king. He’d get them to carry him everywhere on a bier, and he’d never have to walk again.

  He reached a steep hill where the others waited for him on the crest, standing beneath a lone white tree whose bare branches extended like arms pointing to the four horizons. Gabrielle turned to look down at him. Was that a twist of approval upon her lips? Surely it was. Bevn gave her a sugary smile.

  She looked through him, as if pretending he did not exist at all.

  Sourpuss, he thought, as he laboured up the hill. As he came close he noticed that she had applied an alluring scent, one he recognised from Willower, a perfume they had called myrrh. She said that she’d acquired it in ‘trade’, but Bevn thought she must have stolen it, because what did she have to trade that the Hunters could have wanted?

  He groaned his way to the crest, and released his pack. It dropped hard onto the ground. There was fruit in there, but he didn’t care, he needed a rest. “Get me an apple out the bag,” he commanded Gabrielle, without thinking. He was too tired to care what she thought. She bent to the bag and produced a hard green fruit, then rubbed it on her thigh to clean it before tossing it down to him. Bevn was delighted. Saladon pretended not to notice him; he continued talking to Gabrielle instead. “The whitened creature is a Ludertree. His kind are rare this far from the Lowlands, but my guess is we’ll see more of them as we progress. This is what happens when wildfire gets into the groundwater. This tree has altered slowly and so it has survived in its new form. Don’t ever touch it, for that will alert it to your presence and the bark will burst and the tree will spew a hideous sap upon you. They hunger for flesh as they used to hunger for sunlight, for a Ludertree has no leaves to gather energy. This is a carnivorous creature now. The resin will bind you where you stand, and the roots will search you out within a day. Once you are thus held, it will grow into your body, entering you at your toes.”

  The tree made a stark contrast against the deep blu
e sky, but it was still just a stupid dead tree. The wizard was talking nonsense, just to make them scared. Bevn scowled and looked outward instead. The mottled canopy of trees stretched away to the north and west. Some river or lake glistened far to the east, where the land was a paler colour. Bordering most of the northern lands were mountains, ragged ranges of fading purples, capped with a crust of white, the highest peaks lost in cloud. Streaks of feathered clouds crossed the massive sky, and once again he noticed those disconcerting crack-lines in the air that split the sky into panes of slightly varied hue. To the west he could see no end to the landscape. The vastness of it pounded against his sanity—this was nothing like Eyri. The world here was just too big. The horizon turned to a blue haze so far away he could have ridden a horse for a month and still not have reached it.

  “You can tell much from a Ludertree,” Black Saladon told Gabrielle. “A sign of the times, indeed it is, though few folk care to read their fate in its arms. Their branches mark the comings and goings of men. See how most of the limbs point to Rek in the east, or to Willower behind us?” He laughed. “Bitter few toward Murkermark, or Slipper. Nay, none at all. The people retreat across their own heartlands to escape the growing threat of the north.”

  “How can the branches move?” Bevn asked, despite himself.

  “It senses things it shouldn’t be able to. It senses life. We shall bend a few boughs. Look again once we have passed.”

  They moved on, but Bevn wasn’t ready to go yet. He had just put his pack down. He refused to go on until he was ready. Gabrielle was sweet-talking her way into the wizard’s black heart, he could tell. They walked on, talking as if they were old friends.

  Something moved above him, and he jerked his head back, grasping at the air in fright.

  There was nothing there, just two white branches pointing away down the hill, in the direction Saladon and Gabrielle had gone. North! There had been no branches pointing that way before!