by Andy Roberts
‘Jopha?’ Doss asked staring at a face that possessed all the correct features for it to be human but somehow had him imagining something that was canine.
Gendrick formed a small, brown pellet and pressed it into the bowl of his bong. ‘And that brings us back to our friends outside.’ He lay a wick in the flame of a candle and rolled it between finger and thumb until it caught. ‘I’ve lost six men in only a few short days,’ he said. ‘Four disappeared without a trace, and two haven’t been seen since I sent them to collect the dream-keeper.’
Sly sniggered, unable to contain himself. ‘Cut them up bad.’ He drew a spoon along his belly to demonstrate. ‘Hang them slow and they don’t die quick.’ He laughed at the morbid memory. ‘Legs were kicking about the whole time—especially the one with the bad skin.’
Gendrick held his temper and gave the hireling his moment. ‘Have you ever been to the Rat?’ he asked. Doss shook his head. ‘You’re right not to. Awful people,’ he said theatrically. ‘The doorman claimed to have not seen my men.’ Gendrick leaned closer. ‘I always know when someone isn’t speaking the truth.’
‘So we took him, and the landlord and a pair of dwarfs,’ Sly said with a wide grin. Gendrick drove a fork into the tabletop, just inches from the hireling’s hand, silencing him immediately. He lit his bong and took a deep toke before blowing smoke at the custodian.
‘And the dream-keeper?’ Doss asked.
‘Nowhere to be found.’ Gendrick glowered at his bodyguard. ‘Most of her jars were opened before I caught him.’
‘She won’t be seen for months,’ Snake said. ‘And it’ll take longer than another winter to catch them all.’ Sly shrugged and rightly kept quiet.
Gendrick nodded and took another toke, this time more deeply. He saw a kaleidoscope of the most vibrant colours spinning before him with increasing speed, blending on the palette of his mind’s eye. He heard laughter, music and song. He got up and raised both arms at his sides, dancing a merry jig to the silent tune. Elba Doss didn’t dare take his eyes off him as he approached. Gendrick was floating, flying, then stood on a mountaintop surveying all that was. He could see everything, hear everything—he was everything.
And then so quickly came the fall. He toppled from the mountain and grabbed at it in a mad panic. It hit out at him and he hit back—felt it give under his knuckles. He saw nothing, heard nothing—was nothing. He opened his eyes and saw Doss bent with his face bloodied in his hands. ‘What happened to you?’
They ate guinea fowl and wild boar with peaches in sweet syrup, followed by blue cheese and black grapes with biscuits. Cooked food wasn’t Taenon’s first choice but he ate it all the same.
Sly slurped his wine and poured himself another. ‘Keep up,’ he called to Doss and pointed towards a nearly-full decanter at the other end of the table. The custodian forced himself to take a sip, tiring of pushing his food around the plate. He wasn’t hungry, the throbbing pain at the centre of his face and forehead making him nauseated.
Gendrick tore a wing from the body of a skewered guinea fowl and sucked at its dripping flesh. He licked his fingers and reached to a basket of bread rolls. Taking two, he threw one to the other end of the table. Doss caught it and lay it next to his plate. The minister belched loudly and picked at his teeth with the skewer. He wiped his hands clean on a napkin and rinsed his mouth with a gulp of wine. ‘You’re still whimpering,’ he said getting to his feet.
The custodian cupped a protective hand over his nose. ‘I think it’s broken.’ His voice was muffled and made the minister laugh—though only for a moment.
‘Show me.’ Gendrick stood over him, hands on hips.
‘I’d rather not.’ Doss applied a second hand, fearful that one wasn’t anywhere near enough.
Gendrick slapped both away and twisted the misshapen appendage with a rough hand. ‘I think you’re probably right,’ he said when the screaming had finally subsided. He took a lace handkerchief from the depths of his trouser pocket and pressed it into the worst of the blood. ‘Hold still until it stops.’
With the others gone, they sat alone in the dining room, Gendrick tossing grapes high into the air—catching them in his mouth—Doss not daring to draw attention to his nose. ‘What do you know of bindings?’ Gendrick asked, clearly fed up of playing with his food.
Doss retracted a few inches and used the delay to give the matter some thought. ‘I’m not sure that I quite understand you, My Lord?’
‘Come now, an intelligent man like you? Don’t play games with me.’
Doss recognised the warning. ‘Well there’s a sympathetic binding,’ he said slowly.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning that a mental connection can be made between two or more people, or even a person and an object. By linking them together, manipulation of one allows influence over the other.’
‘Exactly.’ Gendrick clapped. ‘And the Second Law of all such things deems that an established link is never perfectly efficient.’ He pulled his hands apart quickly. ‘Some energy will always be lost.’
Doss nodded. ‘The weaker the link, the greater that energy loss.’
‘Very good,’ Gendrick took a sip of the custodian’s wine. ‘And the strongest link for a binding is …?’
Doss sat up straight in his chair as Gendrick waved the soiled handkerchief in triumph. ‘Blood.’
The minister closed his fist around it. ‘And so if the Second Law is to be believed, then I quite literally have you in the palm of my hand.’
Chapter
— 15 —
‘How long do we have before they come after us?’ Philly stood beneath the rope and held it still while Griff picked bits of blistered skin from his forearms.
Tamulan eased Windsong from his shoulder and loaded the first quarrel. ‘The guards won’t enter the forest at night.’
Philly watched as he stepped beyond the tree-line, and crouched to keep him in sight. ‘Then what aren’t you telling me?’
Griff grinned at her and pushed past. ‘He’s huntin’ for monsters.’ Tamulan sniffed the air, a waft of sulphur catching in his throat like a cheap fragrance.
‘Trouble?’ Philly wanted to know. She stayed close and kept low.
Tamulan nodded. ‘The boy’s being hunted.’
‘Night-dwellers?’ Griff asked, all sign of his earlier grin now gone without trace.
Tamulan went deeper still. ‘Those and the odd beyroth.’
Brae pushed his head free of the hiding-hole and checked in all directions. He couldn’t see them but the air was thick with a familiar, yet unpleasant odour. He knew what it meant, that to stay was to die. A bush rustled nearby and unsettled him, the sound coming again, only this time louder. He wished he hadn’t left the scraper in the tunnel, the feel of its cold iron in his hand had somehow empowered him and made him feel safe. He lifted a short stick, swung it and then tossed it aside.
Griff saw four dark silhouettes charging through the undergrowth towards them. ‘Chasin’ Brae, so they are.’ He positioned himself and raised the crutch in readiness to strike.
Tamulan pulled him to the floor, Philly letting out a loud squeal as her legs were taken from beneath her just as swiftly. ‘Prey not predator,’ the druid said rolling onto his front to take aim.
‘You won’t get a shot through those trees,’ Griff told him. ‘There’s no straight line-of-sight.’ Tamulan set the first quarrel free and loaded a second without a moment’s delay. He whispered to Windsong in a language that was old and mysterious, the leading night-dweller clutching at her chest as she fell to the forest floor, dead.
Griff slapped his thigh. ‘You’ve got yourself a poldron, so you have. No wonder you take such good care of it.’
Philly lay on the ground, wide-eyed. ‘He told the arrow where to go.’
Griff shook his head. ‘That’s no ordinary crossbow.’
Tamulan moved an inch to the right, squeezed the trigger and a second creature landed hard on its back, the remaining two splittin
g up and making off in opposite directions. ‘Stay close,’ he told them, ‘it’s only just beginning.’
Brae had lost all sense of his bearings in the dark forest, something menacing now stalking him off to his right-hand side. He pulled left and heard a crashing sound in the trees to his rear. He lengthened his stride and struck his toes on a rock. He fell and cried out—then stayed where he was and just cried.
‘Brae.’
He rubbed his throbbing toes and listened to the sounds of the forest—noises that were now as close as the night-dwellers at the greystones had been. They were calling his name again, preparing to deliver him to the Dragon Lord. He wasn’t going this time, wouldn’t play along with their cruel game. He screamed into the night and rolled onto his side with his knees folded under his chin.
‘Settle down boy, it’s Griff.’ Brae opened his eyes and waved his arms at them. The innkeeper beat hard at a branch that refused to let him pass, oblivious to the mounting danger closing around him.
‘Keep still,’ Tamulan said. ‘All of you.’
Brae felt a terrible cold grab him and knew immediately that he’d never before stood any closer to death. He looked towards Griff and found himself incapable of uttering a word of any kind.
‘He’s in a beyroth nest.’ The druid squatted and took stock of the situation.
Griff tugged so hard on his beard that he almost pulled himself over. ‘Sweet Amaethon, help him.’
Tamulan rested Windsong on his left arm and handed two iron shims each to Philly and the innkeeper. ‘Stand back-to-back and don’t move from this spot,’ he warned. He saw the tell-tale shimmer all around Brae, the beyroths no longer having to blend perfectly with their leafy environment. The air pulsed as the widening energy field spewed lengths of orange silk into the surrounding darkness, the wind-riders using the hunting prowess of the beyroths to find the one who can summon the wind. Tamulan tossed a shim at the epicentre of the ripples and moved further towards them.
Several of the orange-clad figures approached Griff and Philly, some on foot, others hovering just a few inches above ground on a soft cushion of air. Philly lowered her defensive pose and took a step closer, drawn to them like metal to a lodestone. She longed to join them in their dance and travel to wherever it was they wished to take her. She opened her left hand and let the shim fall to the floor.
The innkeeper rotated as best he could and saw her reach for the creature’s hand. ‘No, Philly.’ He thrust one of his shims and made the thing back away. ‘Pick it up,’ he told her. But Philly couldn’t hear him, her attention taken now by the wind-rider that hung upside down in front of her, its face just inches from her own, its breath smelling like meat gone bad.
‘What shall I do?’ Brae could hear the clicking sounds of invisible blades drawn and ready to strike. Metal scraped against metal, death just a few short moments away.
‘Retreat within yourself,’ Tamulan told him, though Brae had no idea what that meant. He felt something tear at his trouser leg and saw a thin, pink line show itself on his pale skin. They’d started cutting him already and he was now about to die.
‘Be what you are,’ the druid said.
Brae closed his eyes and called—not knowing if it would answer—but answer it did and arrived with a force that flattened all in its way. Griff took Philly to ground and used his body to shield her from the debris that cut through the air with the ferocity of lead gunshot. He’d dropped both shims but needn’t have worried, for the wind took hold of the faceless creatures and hurled them off through the forest against their will.
Brae had called the name of the wind—not the cold and devious kind that had offered all manner of riches in exchange for “one small thing,” but one that obeyed his every command and now moved in synchrony with the motion of his swaying arms. Faster and faster he had it spin, whipping it into a frenzy until the entire forest shook as though Lodan himself had come to lay claim upon it. He unleashed the tornado at the beyroth nest, a fusion of matter and antimatter cancelling each other out, annihilating the squealing creatures within an imploding funnel of absolute nothingness.
It ended as abruptly as it had first begun, silence embracing the land as completely as a winter’s snow. Philly tried to speak but for once, couldn’t find the words. And Griff, he sat in quiet contemplation.
Things had changed.
‘You don’t recognise me.’ It wasn’t a question.
Brae gave the girl little more than a cursory glance. ‘Should I?’
‘I never got to eat that apple,’ she said. ‘Someone ruined it before I could.’
He stopped and looked harder, the gloom fighting to mute her colouring and hide the sweeping curves of her figure. He felt himself blush and was glad it was dark. ‘You were rude,’ he said setting off again before she noticed.
‘I wasn’t at my best,’ Philly admitted.
Brae pursed his lips and lifted a branch for her to pass under. ‘So how did you come by my brother?’
‘He came by me really.’ Philly spent the next few minutes explaining the heroic episode at the dock.
‘Sounds like the sort of thing he’d do,’ Brae said when she’d finished.
She turned and watched the innkeeper smash his way through the brush, swearing at every last bit of forest that dared get in his way. ‘I owe him my life.’
‘He won’t thank you for sayin’ so.’
‘I’ll be there for him all the same.’
There wasn’t time to stop and offer explanations on the way home, much to Griff’s annoyance. Tamulan wanted them back at the inn well before sunup—something about prying eyes fuelling loose tongues.
They broke into the clearing as daylight crawled over the distant hills, the early morning sky sagging with unfallen snow. The air was brittle-crisp, their breath coming in swirls of condensation that followed across the open field. Brae slowed and looked towards the circle of greystones, their majesty, as always, evoking a reaction from deep within. Each pair of towering uprights was capped with a huge lintel-stone—twenty or so such trilithons comprising a perfect circle raised on a mound of earth in an otherwise level field. Brae reached into his pocket and handed something small and tarnished to Tamulan. ‘Cleaned it as best I could with a buffing wheel at the forge.’
Griff came close, grimacing more deeply with every painful step he took. ‘What you got, boy?’
Tamulan took the amulet and shut it away in his clenched fist. He saw a hooded man stood at a crossroads, a book in his hand and a chip on his shoulder. Lodan stood opposite, his arm reaching between the two of them as they spoke.
‘It’s just a small coin.’ Philly leaned across the innkeeper’s shoulder. The metal was rust-spotted, thin and curled at its edges.
Tamulan ran his thumb over the raised image of an oak tree. ‘It belonged to a druid once.’ He turned the coin over and saw the sign of the flame. ‘Where did you get this?’
Brae shifted a fair distance from his brother before answering. ‘At the stones.’
Griff shook his head. ‘So it was you who found somethin’, not the nobles?’
‘That’s when the hirelings first saw you,’ Tamulan said. ‘And they’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since.’
‘Saw me at the stones is all.’ Brae kicked at a sod of earth. ‘Didn’t see me find anythin’ though.’
‘But it had them come to the inn to find out more.’ Tamulan held the amulet in an open palm. ‘Keep it safe until the time.’ Brae had no idea what he meant but took it all the same.
‘You can’t give him that.’ Griff said.
Tamulan didn’t see the need to answer and started across the field.
Chapter
— 16 —
Chancellor Gelfroy strode across a marble entrance hall that was as shiny as polished silver and echoed like the deepest of caves. On the other side of the cavernous space stood the hunched figure of Bishop Tarunkeep. The elderly clergyman clutched the staff of his heavy crosier, a severe scoliosis cau
sing him to stoop deeply towards his right. ‘All present?’ Gelfroy’s mood was sour and he had little time for small talk.
The bishop nodded just once. ‘Terrible business,’ he said with an air of genuine melancholy. ‘The Threskans will accept nothing but the harshest of punishments.’ Gelfroy didn’t stop to answer and marched straight past, clearing twelve marble steps in half that number of purposeful strides. At the top, he headed for a pair of tall, oak doors that were themselves dwarfed by the statue of a dragon carved from charred, black rock. Two Senate guards wearing red tunics and matching trousers stepped aside as the first minister approached, and removed bearskin hats that bristled with white plumage. Both men carried lightning-staffs and regulation, stern demeanours. The doors opened of their own volition, Gelfroy marching into the Law Room without so much as a backward glance.
The chancellor didn’t much care for the Law Room, it was claustrophobic and full of self-important old men, busying themselves with the broader details of the case. He searched for a window in the thick walls but had to satisfy himself with over-sized portraits of even older, self-important men. He took his seat on the front row and rubbed at the ends of the worn armrests. ‘The Threskans?' he asked when the bishop finally caught up and joined him.
‘Here by tomorrow’s first light, My Lord.’
Gelfroy sighed. ‘Winter’s Day.’
Tarunkeep fought with his seat, trying to make himself comfortable. ‘I fear the festival will have to be cancelled.’
The chancellor turned his head quickly and glowered. ‘Are you mad? The people would surely riot.’