‘You’re handy with a knife,’ Talemaker said as he sat beside A Ahmud Ki, and when A Ahmud Ki didn’t answer he added, ‘You know I know you understand.’ A Ahmud Ki gazed at him in the cool, clear light coming from the rock that Meg had made into a glow stone so that she could see to heal Cutter, and the steady gaze unnerved Talemaker. ‘What is your problem?’ he muttered, his irritation rising.
‘I learned once that it is wise never to show what you know until you are certain there is no threat to you,’ said A Ahmud Ki slowly.
Talemaker’s eyebrow rose. ‘Threat? From us?’ He snorted and shook his head. ‘We’ve travelled and fought side by side for how long now? And you still don’t trust us?’
‘The nature of humans is to be untrustworthy,’ A Ahmud Ki replied calmly.
‘You talk as if you aren’t human,’ said Talemaker. ‘You look different, but you’re still human.’
‘Am I?’ A Ahmud Ki asked.
‘What sort of question is that?’ Talemaker queried.
‘Just a question,’ said A Ahmud Ki diffidently. He rose and headed into the darkness among the rocks, leaving Talemaker to stare after him, wondering whether or not the stranger who didn’t seem to belong anywhere was a madman.
Away from the others, A Ahmud Ki wandered, immersed in his thoughts, until he found a large rock which he nimbly scaled. He sat on the peak of the rock and gazed at the stars, studying their positions and patterns. The sky had changed. He knew the positions and names of stars from his formative Aelendyell years and later from his time of learning in the land of the Ranu Ka Shehaala, but the sky above him was alien and while he thought that a cluster of stars sitting low in the south-western sky looked familiar they should have been to the north and much higher. Yet he knew for certain that Andrakis was somewhere in this world. The tapestries in the Shessian palace proved it existed—or at least that it had existed—and it was close enough to this place for the people to retrieve the tapestries. How far was he from the lands he knew? How much time had he lost locked away in Se’Treya? How would he find Andrakis again even if it did exist?
The northerly wind dropped to a gentle breeze in the night, but he was bitterly cold perched high on the rock so he wrapped his arms around his knees. Apart from the days of hunting and harassing the enemy of his companions in the strange forest, since the woman released him he’d spent most of the time running and hiding. He wasn’t used to that feeling—at least not since his time of growing up among the Aelendyell—and this fugitive lifestyle didn’t suit him. He was used to those around him treating him with respect out of fear for his awesome power and if he could find the way back to Andrakis he might be able to re-establish his status. ‘Why have you abandoned me, Berak N’eth?’ he whispered, and automatically touched the point at his neck where he’d worn the religious Ranu symbol of the goddess, Fareeka. Then he was conscious of his missing finger, where he’d worn the ceremonial amber Aelendyell ring given by the Ithosen to those who were training to become Lore Bearers. Why did Mareg take that from me? he wondered. How did he know it was there?
He shivered again, but this time from the memory of his final encounter with the Dragonlord on the grey plains of Se’Treya. He underestimated everything in his endplay to rule Andrakis—Mareg’s warrior skills, Dylan’s willingness to sacrifice him to defeat the Dragonlord, the inability of Dylan’s magic sword to work in Se’Treya—so Dylan abandoned him and Mareg nearly killed him in the aftermath. As close to death as Mareg was himself, the Dragonlord dragged A Ahmud Ki’s battered body into his lair and consigned him to suffer eternally, pinned with battleaxes to the dragon statue and locked within a glyph designed to sustain him in the moment between life and death. He could still recall his tormentor’s deep, resonating, raspy voice as Mareg dragged him into the chamber. ‘You wanted immortality as a Dragonlord, Ki? Let me give it to you. You’ll live forever in this place, pinned not just by these axes but with knowing that you will never leave. Here’s immortality, Ki. Welcome to the brotherhood of Dragonlords.’ Mareg was dying. A Ahmud Ki saw it in the Dragonlord’s eyes and if he hadn’t died after sealing A Ahmud Ki in the glyph he was inevitably doomed to perish at King Dylan’s hands. Dylan had Abreotan’s sword and it was prophesied that with it Dylan would slay the last Dragonlord. Mareg’s time was at an end. That knowledge had given A Ahmud Ki one tiny fragment of enduring satisfaction as he lay locked in eternity.
The memories were bitter and strong. Long after A Ahmud Ki returned and the men were asleep under the shelter of the rocks, Meg stood at the edge of the cliff staring at the stars and the sliver of moon, tears streaming down her cheeks, her fists clenched and white from the tension. Jon died here—her firstborn—the child from Treasure Overbrook, grandson of Queen Sunset, murdered by Seer Truth. The image of the burning bundle tumbling out of sight over the lip of the cliff replayed in her memory, each time searing into her mind like molten metal through flesh, until she was shaking with anger and grief. I summoned the Demon Horsemen, she remembered. I crushed Truth’s skull between my hands and let the Horsemen destroy the others, friend and foe. I killed them all. She’d shielded herself from those memories for a long time, hiding them beneath the new life she created with Button Tailor in Summerbrook, using her children to bury the past in the happiness of the future. ‘Jon,’ she sobbed to the night. ‘Jon.’
Though it was certain that they’d been sold into slavery at a western port, she knew in her heart that her two youngest children were still alive. She saw them in her dreams and her dreams, as twisted as they sometimes were in meaning, never lied about who was involved. Emma and Treasure were alive. She’d seen them. Whatever else happened after this point, she was determined to find them. The Seers murdered her firstborn, Jon, and the Kerwyn slew her secondborn, named Jon after the firstborn, but she would save her surviving daughter and son. She would have her children again.
Their first day of travel north from Whiterocks Bluff proved harrowing as they walked through the burnt-out ruins of three coastal villages and passed a dozen isolated and guttered farms, proof of the Kerwyn extermination policy. ‘They came here last year,’ Talemaker said, studying the green grass rising through the ashes of a former building in the first village. ‘This was Dunk Oarmaster’s tavern, The Fisherman’s Rest. I stayed here a couple of times. He was a generous host.’
They also hid twice to avoid Kerwyn war parties, but the Kerwyn seemed uninterested in searching for anyone. ‘They probably think they’ve already killed everyone,’ Talemaker said.
‘The war was over when Port of Joy fell,’ Cutter reminded him. ‘There’s no point continuing the slaughter.’
‘Unless they want to get rid of every Shessian,’ Meg remarked, at which the group fell silent and continued on.
‘Where do we go?’ Talemaker asked when they woke at sunrise the morning after leaving Whiterocks Bluff. ‘The Kerwyn are everywhere.’
‘We find a port,’ Meg said calmly.
‘Why?’ Talemaker asked.
Cutter answered, looking at Meg in understanding. ‘We can buy or sneak passage to somewhere safer. There’ll be shipmasters willing to make money taking refugees south or west.’
‘But the Kerwyn will stop us,’ Talemaker argued.
‘If they find us,’ Meg told him. ‘How far is it to the next port?’
‘Four more days north,’ Cutter replied. ‘Westport. It’s a trading centre. It used to be the best harbour in Western Shess—if the Kerwyn haven’t ruined it.’
‘Then we go to Westport,’ Meg decided.
‘Can you make a portal to it like you’ve done before?’ Talemaker asked.
Meg shook her head and glanced at A Ahmud Ki, who was sitting near the cliff stroking Whisper on his lap and staring out to sea. ‘I can only make a portal to a place I can clearly remember. I’ve never been to Westport.’
Talemaker cursed but grinned, lamenting, ‘It was worth a try.’
As they traversed the undulating coastal landscape, climb
ing sandhills and shadowing the tops of limestone cliffs, Cutter related what had transpired in the wider kingdom during the year of the Kerwyn invasion. Talemaker sang ballads when he found the energy and it was certain they weren’t likely to be overheard by passing Kerwyn. Cutter was also curious about what Meg did after she disappeared as Lady Amber, so she quietly shared the story of the ten years in Summerbrook with Button Tailor and her children, fighting the sorrow that formed a lump in her throat as she spoke. Through all of the journey, A Ahmud Ki stayed aloof, even when Talemaker reminded him that they knew he was capable of speaking and understanding them, choosing only to converse with Meg in the evening.
‘Your friend is not all that he seems,’ Cutter observed on the third evening.
‘What do you mean?’ Meg asked.
‘He’s hiding something from us as if he has a plan of his own.’
She dismissed Cutter’s disquiet as the comment of someone who doesn’t trust a person different to themselves, but she was increasingly aware of A Ahmud Ki’s self-imposed distance. ‘Cutter and Talemaker are good men,’ she told A Ahmud Ki when she sat to talk about magic and continue his lessons in the Shessian language.
‘As far as humans go,’ he retorted with an unmistakable undertone of distaste. ‘What do you mean by that?’
He ignored her question, but when she repeated it he met her gaze and said, ‘Humans always have another motive for friendship.’ When she pressed him to explain why he held that view he smiled grimly and asked, ‘How much further is it to this port?’
She shrugged, disappointed that he wouldn’t elaborate. ‘A day. Perhaps two.’
‘And you’ve never been to this place?’
‘No.’
He thrust out his right hand. ‘Give me your hand.’
‘Why?’ she asked warily.
‘I want to show you something. Give me your hand.’
As she held out her hand and let him enfold it in his own, she was conscious of how delicate and long his fingers were and the softness of his palm. He smiled, her spine tingled, and a sphere of light suddenly appeared in the air above his left hand. She tried to wrench her hand free of his, but he held her in a vice-like grip and his smile widened. He flicked his fingers, the light sphere vanished and a spout of red flame leapt into the evening. ‘Stop it!’ she cried, wriggling her hand.
He released her, laughing with delight, and told her hurriedly, ‘I had to show you.’
She glared at him with angry green eyes. ‘You showed me before. You had no right to do that.’
‘But I had to show you how strong it is.’
‘You should have told me first.’
Cutter and Talemaker joined the pair at the edge of the tiny campsite. ‘Are you all right?’ Cutter asked of Meg.
She rose from the ground and said, ‘Yes. I’m fine.’ Cutter met A Ahmud Ki’s gaze. ‘I thought there was a problem.’
Meg grabbed his arm. ‘No. Really. He—I—was just startled.’
‘What by?’ Talemaker asked.
Meg looked at A Ahmud Ki whose face had resumed the stern, aloof expression reserved for the men. ‘A Ahmud Ki was teaching me a spell and it worked better than I expected.’
‘What was it?’ Talemaker asked, his curiosity aroused.
‘I showed her a fire spell,’ A Ahmud Ki explained in fluent Shessian.
‘So you can talk,’ Cutter said, an eyebrow raised.
‘I told you he could,’ Talemaker confirmed. ‘Now you believe me.’
‘Speaking without saying anything of consequence is wasted energy,’ A Ahmud Ki replied.
‘Not speaking when others want to hear you is rude,’ Talemaker quipped.
‘Perhaps now you might tell us who you really are,’ Cutter suggested.
‘Meg knows the truth,’ A Ahmud Ki said. ‘There’s nothing more for you to know.’
Cutter’s gaze stayed fixed on A Ahmud Ki and an uncomfortable silence descended until Talemaker broke it with, ‘Well, now you can speak there’s no need to keep to yourself. I think we should eat.’
Cutter broke his eye contact with A Ahmud Ki and to Meg he said, ‘He’s right. Come and eat. We need to plan what to do when we get to Westport.’ He looked back at A Ahmud Ki and added, ‘Now that you’ve found your voice you should join us.’
A Ahmud Ki looked at Meg before he responded to Cutter with, ‘I’m not hungry, but I will join you in your planning.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Vision stared at the space between the bedposts for a long time, unaware of Onyx entering the chamber until the older Seer coughed, and asked, ‘Is it possible?’
Vision’s grave expression gave Onyx his answer. ‘The only question is how,’ Vision said.
‘How what? How she vanished for more than ten years?’ Onyx queried.
‘That,’ Vision agreed, ‘but I also want to know why she vanished.’
‘Can we be sure it’s the Abomination?’
Vision hesitated, before saying, ‘The descriptions fit. Red-haired woman, young. She even had a black rat. The Abomination could vanish at will. My father told me how she vanished from the island where she was imprisoned.’ He waved his hand through the space between the bedposts as if he expected to discover something tangible.
‘When the Kerwyn Warlord ordered me here three days ago to explain the magic while the portal was still live, I was told by him that troops in the east reported encountering what they called a witch several times in the past year. Broadback was sceptical, although he admitted that his war party encountered a red-haired witch when they first came into Shess, but he said she was killed by thundermakers,’ said Onyx.
‘Where was that?’ Vision asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Onyx replied. ‘Why?’
‘Arrange a meeting with the Warlord. I need to ask him what he knows.’
‘What about the Abomination?’ Onyx asked.
Vision shook his head. ‘We have no way of following her with her magical doorway closed. All we can hope for is news of where she’s gone. But I need to know her identity for certain. Logic tells me it can’t be the same woman who killed my father. If it is her, Jarudha Himself will offer her up to me.’
Broadback was not a religious man and if it wasn’t for the King’s orders he would have put all of the barbarian priests—these Seers as they insisted on being called—to the sword when the city fell, along with the wretches his soldiers found hiding in the rubble and abandoned buildings. The Seer accompanying his army did give him useful information that helped to bring about the city’s surrender, and the priests were responsible for the magic of the thundermakers and thunderclaps that gave the Kerwyn the upper hand throughout much of the war, which only reinforced his view that they were treacherous creatures better eliminated than allowed to live. He reluctantly agreed to meet the Seer leader—a man who gave himself the laughable title of His Eminence—but he was determined not to be embroiled in any political deviousness the Seers might be engineering. Accompanied by his entourage of bodyguards and his half-brother, Lance Shortarms, he waited outside the temple, growing impatient that he, the conqueror, the man who held their fate in his hands, was being made to wait in the afternoon sun like a common messenger. ‘The wheel will turn,’ he muttered to Shortarms, ‘and the King will see what fools these priests are.’
Three acolytes led the Warlord and his men into the temple hallway and they followed the curve until they stopped outside a grey wooden door where the acolytes gestured for Broadback to enter. Broadback ordered his guards to take position outside the door and then he and Shortarms went into the windowless chamber. The plan had been for two Seers to meet with the Warlord and his second, so Broadback was immediately suspicious to find six Seers at the table, their light blue robes glowing in the lanternlight. ‘This wasn’t the agreement!’ he snapped, his hand wrapping around his sword hilt.
Onyx rose, palms extended upward, saying in Kerwyn, ‘Welcome, Warlord Broadback. We are gathered to honour your
victory. My brothers wanted to share in this moment.’
Broadback glared at Vision before acknowledging the nodding heads at the table. ‘The Kerwyn are blunt people,’ he said brusquely. ‘An agreement is followed to the letter. We don’t play tricks.’
Onyx smiled warmly. ‘This I explained to my brothers, but they insisted on being allowed to honour you,’ he offered diplomatically. ‘They mean no harm in gathering here.’
‘I don’t see any weapons,’ Shortarms whispered.
‘You can’t see magic,’ Broadback replied in a level voice, meant to carry to the Seers. He studied the assembled Seers again. ‘Which one of you is called Vision?’
‘I am Vision,’ Vision replied and stood.
The man was younger than Broadback expected, especially as the rest of the Seers were clearly old men. ‘I agreed to speak to you and one other,’ Broadback said.
Vision nodded. He turned to the four still seated and said quietly, ‘It’s best that you should leave us.’
The four Seers rose without protest, bowing to Vision and then to Broadback before they withdrew. After the door closed, Broadback and Shortarms sat without invitation. ‘I have a great deal to do before the King arrives,’ Broadback told the Seers as they resumed their seats. ‘Make this brief.’
Onyx looked at Vision, whose face was expressionless as he asked, ‘What do you know of the witch you saw in Summerbrook?’
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