by David Hair
Her personal blessing might not mean that Mother Church as an entity was onside, but her approval won over the rest of the taproom.
Dash raised a hand in thanks. ‘In token of your trust, I will reveal something that is not known to many. You know me as Dash Cowley, but my real name is Raythe Dashryn Vyre. Some of you might have heard of me.’
The low murmur that greeted this admission told him they did indeed know of Raythe Vyre, who’d been one of Colfar’s commanders in the bloodiest insurrection against the Bolgravian conquest. Raythe Vyre was a name synonymous with rebellion and resistance to the Bolgravian empire.
‘So whadda we call ye, then?’ someone asked.
‘I’ll be “Dash Cowley” in front of the governor and his men, but otherwise, you can call me Raythe. So now you know my darkest secret,’ he drawled, ‘and just in case anyone’s wondering whether it’s easier to let the governor know about me and my crazy plan, well, let me just point out that a few argents for snitching won’t bring you much, and it risks a knife in the back from someone who really wants to do this.’
Sir Elgus Rhamp hammered the nearest table. ‘There ain’t no one like that here,’ he shouted, glaring about him as if his will could make it so. ‘What’s life for, if it ain’t for chances like this?’
With that, his men shouted their approval, banging on tables, hooting and whistling, and the last objections were swept away amidst the resultant back-pounding and cheering.
Jesco was whooping along with the best of them, while Vidar was taking it more calmly, quietly supping on his ale and surveying the riotous drinkers. And Zarelda was also staring around the room, probably remembering similar scenes when Dash had recruited for Colfar . . .
And those folk who hearkened to me then are mostly dead . . .
*
An hour later, in the upper room of the tavern, it was as Raythe Vyre that he convened the first meeting of those he considered his captains. Sir Elgus Rhamp probably didn’t see it that way, but that was just tough. The others were Jesco Duretto, Vidar Vidarsson, Mater Varahana, Kemara Solus, Gravis Tavernier – and at Rhamp’s insistence, three of his people: his woman, Tami, and his eldest sons Osvard and Banno. Zar sat quietly in the corner, almost overlooked, but she was listening attentively.
Keep our connection secret, he signed to Tami, before clearing his throat to begin – but before he could start, Kemara stood.
‘Get that pig out of here,’ she snarled, jabbing a finger at Osvard Rhamp.
‘What’s the problem?’ Raythe asked, as the belligerent-looking Osvard faced the healer, then he remembered: a month ago, she had broken Osvard’s nose in the taproom after he’d groped her. The young thug had come to him to get his nose straightened. He’d not done a perfect job, but at least Osvard could breathe through it.
‘Peace,’ Sir Elgus growled. ‘He’s learned his lesson, Healer.’
‘He’s apologised – and we gave money in reparation,’ the younger son, Banno, added. In contrast to his elder brother, he was a fresh-faced, earnest lad. ‘It’s all bygones.’
‘Really?’ Kemara sneered.
Osvard didn’t look like he thought anything was bygone, but he lowered his head under his father’s fierce gaze. ‘I was drunk an’ I got my dues,’ he said sullenly, touching his crooked nose.
‘It’s all fine,’ Tami put in, her hand on Rhamp’s arm. ‘Ossi will do what he’s told.’
So that’s the way of it, Raythe thought, keeping his face straight. Tami’s made her own bed – quite literally. But I guess she needed protection from somewhere after the rebellion failed.
Noticeably, she hadn’t come to him for that protection and for a moment, he missed her fiercely, though it’d been two years since they’d been lovers.
‘Healer,’ he said, turning to Kemara, ‘are you content?’
‘No, but I’ll put up with him,’ she replied.
‘Forgiveness is divine,’ Mater Varahana remarked. ‘Need I remind you that Novate Kemara has taken her vows as a lay sister – which means she enjoys the full protection of the Church.’
‘Noted,’ Sir Elgus growled. ‘Can we move on?’
‘Excellent,’ Raythe said, turning back to Varahana. ‘What about you, Mater? I know you’ve given your blessing, but will you accompany us?’
‘Well, Mother Church sent me here to shepherd my flock and here they are, about to gambol off the map. I must consider whether it’s my duty to follow, or to continue my mission here.’
‘Stay or go, there’s also the matter of what you tell your superiors,’ he reminded her.
‘Aye, that’s also my duty.’ Varahana made a show of thinking deeply, then said, ‘Let’s not beat around the bush. I was banished from academia and my studies because I was outspoken about the Bolgravian Empire and its annexation of the Church. Deo is God, not any emperor sitting a throne in Reka-Dovoi. My heart and mind speak clearly on this. I will accompany your expedition and I won’t betray it.’ She swirled the remaining wine in her goblet, musing, ‘Besides, it’s when wealth and danger are present that men most need their god.’
‘Indeed,’ Sir Elgus put in, ‘then, more than ever. I too know this from experience.’ He looked suspiciously from the shaven-headed priestess to Raythe, and asked, ‘I must ask: what is your history together, Dashr—ah, Raythe?’
No point trying to keep this quiet, Raythe thought. They’ll work it out soon enough. ‘Varahana, my friend Jesco and I all served in Colfar’s rebellion. We all got out, as you see, and kept in touch since.’
‘Colfar was a brave fool.’
‘I don’t disagree, but let’s not speak ill of the dead.’ Raythe lifted the journal. ‘In any case, we’ve got more important things to discuss. If we’re going to do this, we’ll need to move fast. Most of the folk invited were selected because they’re itinerants, hunters and trappers. They don’t set down roots and they know how to move fast and effectively. So I reckon we should be able to vanish pretty quickly, but even so, the authorities are going to notice when some fifty families go missing, which means even if they don’t know why we’ve gone, they won’t like it. We’ll certainly be hunted.’
‘My men travel light too,’ Elgus declared.
‘But I’ve got my still and brewery,’ Gravis pointed out. ‘I can’t just drop all that. I’m a brewer, not a miner.’
Elgus slapped him on the back. ‘Don’t worry, Tavernier: we’ll not be going anywhere without you: your beer don’t go, we don’t go.’
‘This won’t be a jolly camping trip,’ Raythe warned them. ‘We’re going to disappear off the face of the world. The cartomancer found the istariol traces in a river flowing out of the Iceheart, which means we’ll have to subsist entirely on our own for a year or more. We’re going to need wagons, horses, oxen, water-carriers and grain wagons, spare cloth and blankets, weapons, you name it – not to mention healers, smiths, craftsmen, bowyers, ropers, wheelwrights – all the key skills a village needs to survive and prosper.’
‘How are we going to excavate the istariol once we find it?’ Osvard demanded. ‘We can’t dig through solid rock and ice.’
Raythe went to answer, but Mater Varahana waved him to silence and her voice crisp and clear, an Academia lecturer to her core, she explained, ‘The fact that such high istariol quantities are leeching into the river says that it’s near the surface, possibly in natural caves. One of the properties of istariol is that its presence lends itself to geothermal activity that keeps the ground unusually warm.’
‘What does that mean, practically?’ Vidar asked.
‘It means that where there is istariol, the region is warmer, wetter and more fertile,’ Varahana replied. ‘Explorers have found patches of lush, temperate land even hundreds of miles into the Iceheart, and that’s due to the presence of istariol.’
Banno Rhamp gave a low whistle. ‘So you’re saying we’ll follow a river through the Iceheart and come to a warm place in the middle of the ice? That’d be a sight to see.’
<
br /> ‘There may even be rock islands floating hundreds of feet above the ground,’ Varahana told them. ‘Under certain conditions, istariol is lighter than air – in the old days, before the empire dug up all the istariol on this continent, floating rocks were commonplace. Some were as large as a hundred feet across.’
‘Imagine,’ Zar breathed.
Banno Rhamp looked at Zar as if seeing her for the first time and smiled.
Raythe pursed his lips when his daughter smiled shyly back, but right now he had more pressing concerns. ‘So I’ve roughed out a plan of sorts. We’ll spend two weeks getting ready to move, so the day after Hawkstone and his Borderers finish their monthly patrol at this end of the province, we’ll vanish. We’ll take the old coast road north.’
‘The Ghost Road,’ Banno murmured. ‘Sounds appropriate.’
The Ghost Road was one of the lost and unlamented Magnian Empire’s unfinished projects, before the Bolgravian Empire dominated the western continent; it amounted to miles of hard-pack winding north through the forest. No one knew quite where it ended, but there was no doubt it would provide them with the swiftest and least-suspected path out of Teshveld.
‘We shall vanish like wraiths,’ Raythe quipped.
‘Or end up just as dead,’ Kemara grumbled.
‘Are you in or out?’ Tami asked her bluntly.
‘Oh, I’m in,’ Kemara told her. ‘I’m just not going to blindly accept everything I’m told.’
‘That’s up to you, of course, but my hand on it: I’ll deal honestly with you all,’ Raythe told them. He rose to his feet and facing Sir Elgus, said, ‘And just so we’re clear on this point: this is my initiative and I’m in charge.’
The knight stood to face him. ‘I’m bringing five dozen trained warriors to this venture – that’s pretty much the only muscle you’ve got. I acknowledge that it’s your idea, but I should be an equal partner.’
Their eyes locked.
Sorcery required time and energy, words and gestures. In any fight, the vital seconds needed to conjure were the seconds in which sorcerers died: battlefields were for guns, not magic, unless you were well-protected and had plenty of warning. But not all sorcery was battlefield magic and Raythe had had Cognatus hovering unseen in the rafters above from the moment he convened the meeting. He made a gesture and the familiar dropped onto his shoulder, which opened up just enough of the Sight for him to see into the knight’s soul.
He saw a man haunted by failure, pushed to the edge of the world by the ghosts of men he’d led to defeat against Bolgravia, battles lost and precious lives gone, trampled into the mud. He was a blusterer, presenting an iron mask to the world, but cowering behind it.
Raythe’s voice took on the cadence of imperium: control, ‘I think we know that to lead this group will require knowledge as well as muscle. I know what we seek and how to use it. I’m a praxis-sorcerer and a noble of Otravia. I’m born to lead, and you should believe me when I tell you I have the wherewithal to do so. This is my expedition. We’ll all share the spoils equally – and I mean equally, right down to the smallest family or lone trapper – but we leaders will make the decisions, and the deciding voice when we’re not unanimous will be mine.’
He saw Elgus seek inside himself for defiance, but in the face of Raythe’s declaration, that resistance collapsed unvoiced.
‘Aye,’ the knight mumbled, ‘it’s your idea. We’ll work with you.’
‘Thank you,’ Raythe said gravely. He glanced round the room, measuring reactions. Osvard and Banno Rhamp were looking puzzled at their father’s unexpected capitulation, while the rest were visibly relieved that the moment of tension had passed . . . except for Kemara. Only another sorcerer would have been able to spot such a subtle use of sorcery, but she was watching him with a strange expression: he was sure she’d glimpsed something of Cognatus’ presence.
Perhaps she’s a latent talent? he wondered. If she was, that could be a boon. He made a mental note to speak to her when the opportunity presented itself.
But for now, he had what he wanted. ‘So, we’re agreed,’ he said. ‘We have two weeks to pack up our lives – and if anyone breathes a word to Hawkstone and his Borderers, you’d better believe me when I say the Pit will be too good for them.’
3
Hawkstone
Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine . . .
Kemara Solus tugged the hairbrush through her long scarlet ringlets, wondering if she was doing the right thing in joining this mad expedition. In the distance, the half a dozen women of this tiny Gerda Convent chanted hymns; as a lay sister, she had only to take part in Matins and Vespers, the morning and evening prayers. And thankfully, she didn’t have to shave her skull like the priestesses.
I thought this convent would hide me a while longer . . . But no, whether she liked it or not, the road was calling again.
‘Dash Cowley’, now apparently known as Raythe Vyre, clearly wasn’t to be trusted, despite Mater Varahana’s obvious affection for him. Otravian exiles wanted only one thing: to restart the rebellion, and Vyre was one of those who played the pipes and led the dance to hopeless war. And his eyes were unnerving: she didn’t want those sorcerer’s eyes pinned on her.
He’s the last person I should be anywhere near . . .
But his mad plan did offer her hope. Only money could buy security, and istariol, the magical powder that fuelled big magic, was worth more than gold. If she let this opportunity pass, there’d never be another.
So while the hymns died away and the old sanctuary fell asleep, she packed up her herbs, readying herself for the road. ‘Istariol,’ she whispered, testing the word on her tongue. ‘Blood-dust. Gerda’s Tears. Moonfire.’
‘Aye,’ said a soft voice from the door. ‘It’s a dangerous quest, I fear.’
Mater Varahana had a soft tread.
‘Mater, I didn’t hear you,’ Kemara said, as her superior entered and sat.
‘You have lovely hair,’ Varahana complimented, examining herself in the mirror. ‘You know, I think I’ll keep shaving mine. My hair was never more than a messy nuisance and this look accentuates all my best features.’
‘I don’t think it’s supposed to be a fashion choice, Mater.’
‘Everything is a fashion choice, darling.’
That was such an un-holy woman thing to say that Kemara blurted, ‘Whyever did you take vows?’
‘It wasn’t my choice,’ Varahana replied. ‘My family didn’t want a woman as the head, especially not a Nyostian scholar with Liberali views, so when my elder brother died they forced me into the Church so that my younger brother could take over as paterfamilias.’
‘Not uncommon, sadly,’ Kemara said, with grim sympathy.
‘Oh, it got worse: I dared criticise the Church’s accommodation with the Bolgravian emperor and was banished to here,’ Varahana said, with brittle cheer. ‘I had a library – now I have just one book, full of “divine truth”. I’m a pig in mud, darling. But what about you? Will you take full vows yourself?’
Kemara snorted. ‘I’m only a novate to get my healer’s licence. And I like my hair.’
‘As do I.’ Varahana lifted one of Kemara’s scarlet tresses and sighed. ‘How are your preparations going?’
True to her word, Varahana hadn’t told her superiors in Falcombe of Raythe’s mission, or her convent’s imminent departure – for the past few days, the nuns had been busy preparing to take the Ghost Road and vanish.
‘I’m ready,’ Kemara reported. ‘The garden has been harvested, the roots, seeds and leaves are drying. The cart is oiled and ready and my mule is already eating like a horse.’
‘But you don’t trust Raythe, clearly?’
‘I . . . well, he’s a praxis-sorcerer.’
‘And therefore blessed by Deo, according to the Dictate of Elymas,’ Varahana chuckled.
‘I don’t believe in that.’
‘That a sorcerer’s gifts come from Deo? A dictate from the Archmater has the status of s
cripture, you know.’ But Varahana’s tone of voice suggested that they were on the same page, and it wasn’t the one Archmater Elymas had written.
‘I’ve met sorcerers before,’ Kemara replied. ‘They’re some of the least godly people I’ve ever met.’
‘Nonetheless, this is not ours to question,’ Varahana noted with gentle sarcasm. ‘In any case, Raythe was one of the better commanders during the rebellion. I trust him with my life.’
She spoke with such affection that Kemara wondered if the priestess was in love with Vyre. ‘I had heard of him before now,’ she admitted, ‘but people spoke of him as a servant of evil.’
‘Only his enemies,’ Varahana said sharply. ‘He led his division well, united men of at least seven nations into a fighting force and got us through some truly awful situations. I was his chaplain. His men loved him.’
‘Well, I’m immune to his charm, but I’ll take your word on the matter, Mater.’
‘Scepticism can be healthy too,’ Varahana observed. ‘There’s too little of it in this Church, even though we were all given brains as well as knees. But I’ll leave you in peace now.’ She made the sign of blessing over Kemara’s head and left as silently as she’d arrived.
When she was gone, Kemara pulled up her right sleeve and studied the Rod and Crescent tattoo of a trainee sorceress, etched in faded ink on the underside of her forearm. For an instant, the roar of flames and the screams of someone she’d loved filled her ears. She whispered prayers until the suppressed hatred faded away, leaving her panting and sweaty.
I shouldn’t join this expedition, she thought, worried. It’s going to drag back into the light all that should remain in shadow. But to walk away now would be to invite other questions.
And where could I go? We’re already on the edge of the map.
*
The two weeks flew by in a feverish rush. Teshveld was not so much a community, more a motley collection of hunters, trappers, fishermen, smallholders and refugees, all of them taciturn and wary of each other, but so far, no one had broken ranks and gone to the governor in Sommaport, at least as far as Raythe could tell. The imperial patrols came through on a regular and well-known cycle, which made secrecy easier.