by Tom Lloyd
‘How you’ll act?’ Carel prompted at last, looking at him. The Menin’s face was an open book now, his thoughts writ clear.
Amber ducked his head as though Carel had swung at it. ‘How I’ll act, yes. He – he broke my mind. He tore out a part of me.’
‘None of us are whole, friend,’ Carel said softly. To emphasise his point the veteran raised his good arm and the stump of his left. ‘That’s what war does to us. That’s what we do to each other.’
‘For a time, all that kept me alive was the hatred I felt. Nai gave me a—’ He cast around for the right word in Farlan. His command of the dialect was impressive, reinforced by magery, no doubt, but Carel could see his thoughts were still a jumble. ‘The necromancer gave me point of reference,’ he went on, ‘but it was either pain or hatred. I chose the one that would keep me alive.’
‘I understand.’ Now it was Carel’s turn to feel the hurt of memories, but his were as much shame as grief. ‘I blamed a friend for Isak’s death. The boy was a white-eye, for pity’s sake – he was supposed to outlive the grandchildren of anyone I knew, not die before an old wreck like me. I couldn’t deal with the loss, I realise that now, so I heaped it on another. I’m just glad Vesna was strong enough to survive it – though he wouldn’t even return the favour when he lost his betrothed, just took it all on his own shoulders.’
‘Vesna? The Mortal-Aspect?’
Carel nodded sadly. ‘Cruel blessing, that, I think. He’s the sort to take on the burdens of the whole Land, thinking it’s his duty, but the Gods’ strength can’t do much for a man’s soul. He’ll feel it all in a way no God was supposed to.’
‘That’s what we do to each other,’ Amber echoed with a haunted expression. ‘I can’t be sure what I will do when I meet your lord. I can’t be sure how strong the hatred is – so I ask you to be there when it happens. We are . . . we have come to understand each other, I think. Seeing you beside him may keep my mind clear.’
‘I’ll be there,’ Carel said fervently, ‘for more sakes than yours. He’s as damaged as you, King Emin says, and carrying a burden that dwarfs anything we could imagine. The boy’ll need me, even if he don’t know me.’
Amber bowed his head in understanding. ‘Good. After all this loss, we cannot afford to waste what remains.’
He turned to head back to his troops, the Menin bodyguards surrounding him. Carel watched the man leave with sadness in his heart. All this loss, aye. What will be left even in victory? Will we envy the dead?
When Ardela found him, Carel was taking a beating from a woman half his size. When Dashain stepped back abruptly and lowered the training stick, it took him a while to work out it wasn’t a ruse. Gasping for breath, he touched his fingers to the welt on his cheek and winced. The sticks were lighter than swords, of course, but they still hurt when swung with force.
‘I knew punishments were different in the Brotherhood,’ Ardela called, laughing, ‘but it seems silly to give them a stick of their own!’
Dashain bowed to the newcomer. ‘It makes them more willing,’ she countered. ‘They think it’s foreplay more often than not.’
‘Eh?’ Carel huffed, trying to catch his breath long enough to join in with the banter. ‘I’d be trying harder if that was the case. I ain’t that old!’
In response Dashain hopped forward and cracked her stick across the veteran’s buttocks before he could move to defend himself. ‘At least your brain’s not as slow as your feet, old man – but don’t pretend you could keep up anyways.’
Carel raised his hand in surrender and let the stick fall to the ground. He grabbed the cloth lying next to his sword and brigandine to wipe the sweat from his face. By contrast Dashain looked barely ruffled, with little more than an attractive flush on her dimpled cheeks and a rogue strand of hair that was quickly pushed back.
‘So how goes you today?’ Carel said once he’d dried his face. ‘Busy with Daughters business?’
Ardela shook her head. ‘Don’t call us that – the Lady’s dead.’
He noted the change in her demeanour. ‘As you wish,’ he said, ‘but no one knows what to call you now, ’less you’d want “Sisterhood” to catch on.’
‘That’s Legana’s decision.’ She shifted uncomfortably. ‘And it’s why I came to find you.’
‘She wants me to come up with a name?’ Carel asked before his brain caught up with his mouth. ‘Legana? She’s here?’
‘At the compound,’ Ardela confirmed. She indicated her torso with a slight look of discomfort. ‘Got my scar and everything – and no, you can’t see it.’
The attempt at humour didn’t diminish Carel’s tension; he’d been waiting too long for this moment. ‘They’re all here?’ he asked, his voice strained.
She shook her head. ‘I was waiting for them at a village I thought they’d have to pass. We came on ahead, but the rest are only an hour out.’
Carel grabbed his possessions, sheathed the sword and started off towards the compound where the former Hands of Fate lived, then stopped abruptly.
‘You met them at the village?’
‘Gods, Dashain really did beat the sense out of you, didn’t she? That’s what I said.’
‘I’m tired, is all,’ Carel growled. He caught his breath, then asked, ‘So how’d he look?’
‘Isak?’ Ardela’s lips tightened. ‘Tsatach’s balls, Carel, he’s a sight. You’d best prepare yourself.’
‘How?’ he demanded, then shook his head. ‘Sorry, not meaning to be angry with you.’ They set off again and he asked, ‘So how do I prepare myself for seeing him? I know his body’s a mess, that he’s less pretty than me these days – but that’s not what scares me. I got used to that snow-white arm of his, and I stopped noticing much else about him – it was like Lord Bahl: you didn’t see the face so much as the presence.’
‘Well, he’s balanced out the arm, for a start,’ Ardela muttered. ‘His right’s as black as a charred log now.’ She couldn’t keep the tinge of horror from her voice. ‘I didn’t hear why, but that dog o’ his was keeping well away from that side of him.’
Despite everything, Carel smiled. ‘Little bugger always did want a dog,’ he said sadly. ‘His father never let him, though; I’ll bet Horman was scared it’d go for him when he smacked Isak about.’
‘Looking at the size of Hulf the man might’ve had a point.’
The veteran didn’t speak again until they reached the compound and came face to face with Legana – and found words failed him. Carel had always been told that she was as beautiful as she was savage, and he’d still been expecting someone a little like Dashain or Ardela. But Legana the Mortal-Aspect was neither: her beauty was far from the knowing elegance of Dashain or Ardela’s lithe athleticism. Legana was divinely exquisite; not merely enticing but heart-stopping, with a glamour that surpassed physical attraction. From beneath a shawl that shaded her face, Legana’s emerald eyes shone, and the strange image of a beautiful young woman resting on a walking stick served only to enhance her arresting presence somehow.
– Carel? Legana scribbled on the piece of slate hanging from her neck.
‘I— Aye, that’s me.’ He found himself ducking his head to her.
– Your hand?
He showed her his palm. ‘I didn’t give ’em much of a choice,’ he said, feeling the need to explain himself in the face of Legana’s unblinking scrutiny.
The Mortal-Aspect cocked her head at Ardela, who had come to stand between them. She touched a finger to the former devotee’s arm and nodded.
‘Legana says the choice is hers. The tattoos are nothing alone.’
‘I know that, but I had to hope I could persuade you.’
‘Then do so,’ Ardela repeated, her face tight with conflicted emotion. ‘You’re not Brotherhood, nor serving Ghost who’ll need every edge behind enemy lines. After the ritual on Tairen Moor, she’d not planned on sharing the power with anyone but those sisters who accompany her.’
‘Call me a sister if you lik
e,’ Carel said dismissively. ‘My link to Isak got severed by something that witch did – now, I ain’t blaming her, but the boy’s pretty much all I got in this life. I want that connection back, and I want to be at his side, come whatever may.’
‘He does not remember you,’ Ardela continued as if he hadn’t spoken, ‘and meeting you might cause him more hurt – you’re not the only one he’s forgotten, but you’re the most important. Seeing you might only make things worse.’
Carel said angrily, ‘If it got cut from his mind, he remembers nothing, but we were like family once and he learned to trust me. I ain’t going to abandon the boy. There’s no man nor woman alive knows him as well as me. I’ll be there to clip his ear ’til the day I die.’
His shoulders sagged. ‘All I’m asking for is for him to feel something when he sees me again. I know he won’t know me, I ain’t kidding myself about that, but this link you’ve got might make me something less than a stranger and you know I’d die for him before any o’ your sisters.’
Legana was perfectly still as she observed Carel, who lowered his own gaze, unable to bear the weight of her scrutiny; he could feel it as the warmth of a fire on his cheeks. The moment stretched out: half-a-dozen heartbeats, a dozen, and Carel felt helplessness wash over him. He looked up, preparing to say something he knew he’d regret, when Legana moved with blinding speed: he caught the glint of a knife, his shirt was slashed open and she slammed her palm against his sternum with enough force that he should have been knocked from his feet.
Carel rocked backwards, but he was anchored by a sudden surge of magic that wrapped tendrils of fire around his ribcage. Black stars burst before his eyes as the energies raced out over his body and sparks crackled from his fingertips. The hand on his chest became searing hot. Distantly he heard himself cry out in pain and smelled the sizzle and stink of burning flesh. He watched dark shapes writhe over his raised hand, frozen in the act of reaching for Legana’s, the inked skin of his palm reshaped by her magic. Dancing faster than he could follow, black worms of magic slipped down his arm, leaving behind a wet-looking trail of thinner rowan leaves twisted around the original ragged hazel. On his palm the magic writhed in a tight circle until suddenly all that was left behind were the circles and owl’s head tattoo, now alive and bright with magic.
Carel sagged as the energies flowing through him broke off, unable to bear his own weight. Without Ardela slipping her arm around him, he’d have dropped to his knees. For a while all he could do was pant like an exhausted dog.
‘It is done,’ said Legana’s voice in his mind. ‘You are one of us, bound to us.’
‘Thank you,’ Carel gasped.
‘It is not a gift. There will be a price,’ she warned.
‘I understand,’ he whispered. ‘I’m here to help Isak in whatever way I can.’
‘Even if that is by leaving his side and never returning.’
Carel found the strength to stand again. Gods, maybe Commander Jachen was right: she’s a pitiless bitch to the end.
‘I told you,’ he repeated angrily, ‘I’m here for Isak. If he needs me to go, I’ll go.’
At last she smiled at him. ‘Then I’ll call you brother,’ she said, ‘or perhaps sister, since you were so insistent about that.’
Carel was too drained even to smile. He nodded vaguely. ‘My thanks,’ he managed. ‘Time to go and see what Isak thinks now.’ He wobbled a moment before righting himself, waving off Ardela’s assistance and heading back towards the gate.
Legana put her hand on Ardela’s arm and squeezed it. ‘Go with him. He might need a friend. There are still some novices who require the ritual; our reunion would have had to wait, even without Marshal Carelfolden’s urgent need.’
Ardela caught up with Carel just outside the gate. ‘Easy there,’ she told him. ‘Take a moment, Carel.’
‘Wait?’ he demanded.
She planted herself in front of him. ‘Yes, wait – and breathe, will you? You look about ready to pitch on your face.’
‘I can catch my breath on the way,’ he huffed, but when he tried to push past her, Ardela easily held him back.
‘Do it for me, then,’ she said. She pointed to his tattooed palm. ‘That might be just be a means to an end for you, but it’s more than that to the rest of us. Take a moment and really look at what she’s done. You’re linked to us for ever, but you’ve not even bloody looked at the scar on your chest!’
Carel scowled. ‘Seen it before,’ he mumbled, but he stopped and lifted his shirt to see the raised scar. The shape was familiar enough, a circle bearing the heart rune, just as Isak and Mihn had borne. ‘Strange though,’ he murmured, ‘I barely knew Xeliath, and now her name’s on my chest.’
‘I never even met the girl,’ Ardela said with surprising gentleness, ‘but Legana still told me to think of her once the ritual was done.’ She touched her fingers to the stump of his left arm and moved the pinned-up sleeve covering it. Underneath, though distorted by the uneven scar tissue, was another tattoo, still identifiable as the concentric circles on Carel’s palm despite looking as though viewed through a sheet of ice. Ardela didn’t appear surprised at the sight, but Carel gaped, for the priestess hadn’t put a tattoo on his hand-less arm.
‘The magic is all about balance,’ she explained, seeing his face. ‘These tattoos are what we are now. The course of the rest of our lives is mapped out in these lines, whether they’re but few short days or decades from now. There’s a purpose to the link between us all. It might be you’re destined for different things, but it’s all I’m likely to have, so don’t go treating it lightly, hear me?’
Carel sighed. ‘Aye, you’re right, Ardela. I’m sorry – can’t help but rush, these days, it’s either that or stop and think about things I don’t want to.’ He smiled weakly. ‘Come on, you can tell me about this purpose we share on the way.’
Like a pair of mismatched lovers, the two walked through the muddy streets of Kamfer’s Ford until they reached the edge of town, the boundary marked by rune-carved stones set there by the king’s mages. Beyond that was a forest of tents set in ordered lines, the pale autumn sunlight glinting from a thousand metal objects, almost like a river at sunset.
And working its way through that river they could see a knot of soldiers wearing the green-and-gold of the Kingsguard, and the slow confusion of the troops in its path parting neatly before it.
‘Looks like the king has gone to meet them too,’ Ardela said. ‘You want to wait?’
‘We can follow on behind. Isak won’t want a grand welcome and the king’s got work to do. He’ll be leaving them to rest soon enough.’
They wound through the army camp into a field of well-trampled grass that ran alongside the stony highway leading north. Carel felt a jolt in his gut as he saw a stooping figure wearing a ragged cloak, taller than those around him and unmistakeable as a white-eye, facing King Emin and his scarlet-coated bodyguard.
‘Gods,’ he whispered, ‘it really is him.’ He squinted to try and make out more, but the distance was too great for his ageing eyes.
‘Seems so,’ Ardela said.
Carel glanced down at the scar on his chest again. ‘To come out of Ghenna – for Mihn to creep in there in the first place . . . the man was a Harlequin, I know, but merciful Gods, I’d have thought that beyond even him.’ At his side Ardela tensed unexpectedly, and he looked at her. ‘What? What is it?’ he demanded.
‘Ah – bad news. Isak’ll need you at his side more’n ever now.’
He shivered. ‘Something to do with Mihn?’
She said gravely, ‘Legana told me he died – in Vanach. They didn’t say much about it, not in front of Isak, just that he died to cover their escape.’
Carel gaped. That was the last thing he’d expected to hear. Even as he struggled to find words, it felt ridiculous to even consider such a thing. At last he stammered, ‘Mihn covered their escape? Not the Mortal-Aspect of Karkarn? Not the Mad Axe? A small man with a wooden staff decided to t
ake on the entire Vanach Army to let the rest escape? What sort of sense does that make?’
Ardela raised a hand; the other hovered over the hilt of her knife and Carel realised he’d taken a step towards her. He deliberately moved backwards a pace.
‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ she explained patiently. ‘All Legana told me was that he saw something that made him stay behind, and they don’t know what. She thinks it was a Harlequin – which makes sense, I guess, but either way, that’s all I know. Best you ask Count Vesna for the rest of the story.’
Carel fumbled silently for his tobacco pouch. When he pulled it out Ardela took it from his hands, also without saying a word, filled the bowl of his pipe and struck an alchemist’s match to light it.
‘Thanks,’ he muttered, pointing with the pipe towards the meeting up ahead. ‘Looks like we’ve got time for a smoke before I get my turn.’ He offered her the pipe, but she waved it away.
At last they saw the reception breaking up. King Emin headed back to the castle, leaving half of his Kingsguard behind to clear a path for Isak. Carel realised he needed only to stay where he was, for Isak’s party was being led across the field towards him. As soon as he caught sight of Carel, Vesna went ahead, waving away the soldiers who’d been about to drive the veteran out of the way.
Carel watched the emotions flicker on Vesna’s ruby-studded face: the pleasure of friendship replaced swiftly by the pain of grief, then hope mixed with wariness. ‘No greeting for an old friend?’ Carel asked at last, approaching the Mortal-Aspect.
‘Given I failed to find fitting words of parting,’ Vesna said, ‘that’s probably no great surprise. It is good to see you though, Carel – and you’re not so old as that.’
That broke the tension between them, and Carel reached out to embrace the Farlan hero. Vesna wrapped his arms around Carel with a fierce relief, almost squeezing the breath from him.
‘Careful, boy – I’d expect that from him, not you!’ Carel gasped.
Vesna looked behind, and saw Isak was watching them with a frown on his face, and said carefully, ‘Carel, you do know it’s not simply—?’