by Tim Stead
“Please forgive me for a moment; I have things to attend to. Return to the tent and carry on until I join you.”
Borbonil stepped out.
They recognised him at once, knew what he was. Both the king and Calaine went for their swords, a futile gesture at best when faced with the Faer Karan, but instinct, none the less. The trader delegation stared, dumbstruck. The men of Gulltown fell on their knees.
Cabersky followed.
“What is this?” the king demanded.
“Put your swords up,” Serhan said. “And you, why do you kneel before my servants? It is not required of you.”
The king of Sarata and his two escorts were still wrapped up in green parcels like so much spider food. Serhan stood before them for a moment and studied their faces. They had been facing away from the plain, had not seen what had become of the army, but they had heard.
He gestured and the men were released, the plants shrinking back into the ground until it was as if they had never sprung forth. The three men staggered free.
“Sarata, you are free to return to your kingdom. Go by way of Pek and collect what men you left there. You will find them camped outside the city, if you find them at all. Go home, make no war and you will be allowed to live in peace within your own domain.”
Darius watched the king carefully. The man was still armed, and there was a dangerous mixture of despair and rage on his face. He turned to look at the plain and saw the emptiness there. It was the despair that won.
“What have you done?” His voice was a whisper, close to a scream.
“I have destroyed your army, killed over two thousand men and women.”
“My brother…”
“All are dead, Regani. I asked you twice to depart. You denied me twice. I asked the army to depart, they denied me. I do not repeat myself indefinitely.”
The king turned back, and his eyes were full of hatred.
“I will go,” he said. “But one day you will see me again. There will be payment for this.”
Serhan smiled a cold smile. “You invite your own end, Sarata, but I will not oblige. Go home.”
He turned to the Faer Karan, who had watched all with quiet patience. “Come with me,” he said. “I have tasks for you to perform.”
“As you wish, my lord,” Borbonil said.
Looking at the Faer Karan Darius was sure that he could see a smile on Borbonil’s face. The lord of Ocean’s Gate appreciated the game and the role that he was playing.
He had never thought of the Faer Karan as possessing a sense of humour, had seen no evidence of it, but perhaps they were more human – no not that, the Faer Karan were completely not human – more like us, then, than he had imagined.
Whatever Serhan’s intent, the tone of the negotiations changed. The stubborn denial of the royalist camp disappeared, and most of the talking was done by Calaine, with frequent reference to her father, who sat quietly and looked into space, seemingly elsewhere. Serhan himself did not join them until much later when they took a break from talking.
On seeing the mage, Simon Tarnell approached him at once.
“My lord,” he said. “May I speak with you?”
“It seems that you already do.”
“I hope that your regard for my daughter will permit you to accept my apology, Lord Serhan.”
“No, Regani. There has been no offence.”
“I insulted you, My Lord.”
Direct as ever. The king seemed incapable of anything else.
“If men of power took revenge for every slight against them the world would be a bloody place indeed. I do not like you much, Regani, but you are who you are, and your lineage makes you the most acceptable ruler of Samara, even if your actions do not. It is the law that matters here, and the people, and peace.”
Serhan turned and walked away, leaving the king still seeking an appropriate reply.
By the end of the day they were arguing over the constitution of what had become the advisory council, and the way in which it would function. It was only a matter of time before they agreed.
Darius would remember this day for the rest of his life, he was certain. A day of destiny indeed.
That night the Faer Karan were gone again, and Serhan left, saying that he had a promise to keep.
53 Cabersky
Cabersky stepped from the black door and, as he had expected, was greeted with surprise followed by hostility, and fear. These men had not been told. It was all part of Serhan’s lesson. At least these northern men were bold enough to look him in the eye and speak.
“Faer Karani,” one of them said. “I am the Lord Ardin Wasric, master of this fortress. You are not welcome here. We are under the protection of Serhan of White Rock, and await him even now.”
He looked at the men. There was certainly courage enough here. They did not retreat from him, nor did they quake with fear as he had seen other men do.
“I am Cabersky of Ocean’s Gate,” he told them. “I am here at the lord Serhan’s bidding to help you. You are besieged?”
The room relaxed a degree, and looks were exchanged among the men. They were amazed and astonished. Serhan certainly understood drama.
“In that case you are indeed welcome, my lord. Yes, we are besieged. The bulk of our force is in Samara, and our neighbour to the south has taken advantage of our weakness, as we feared.”
“I shall speak to them.”
“Speak to them?”
“The lord Serhan believes that there has been enough death. He wishes me to speak to them, and ask them to withdraw.”
“They have killed some of my men. Is this justice?” Wasric seemed annoyed, even angered, by his words.
“If you disagree with the Lord Serhan’s strategy I can take you back to Samara to speak with him, but he is tired and irritable, I believe, after destroying the armies of Sarata.”
“Sarata?”
“Yes. Two thousand and some men, and not one survives.”
“Yet he baulks at a few men besieging an ally?”
Cabersky turned away from the men and looked out at the flat land that stretched away before the sheer faces of Skycliff. He could see men out there, defensive positions being built even as they stood talking. The besiegers were digging themselves in, but there was no immediate danger.
He had never been a great lord among the Faer Karan. He had been a fetcher and carrier, a servant, a minion, exceptional neither in intelligence nor power, close to the bottom of the Faer Karan hierarchy. Already there was something about this new order that he liked. Now he was a great power, and one of only two Faer Karan in the world. He still accepted the judgement that he was subordinate to Borbonil, who exceeded him in every way, and now to Serhan, the man, because Borbonil assured him that this was so. Even so, he represented greatness.
“You will lower me out of the fortress in the way that you would lower yourself,” he said to Wasric. “I will speak with those men.”
This was something that he had learned from Serhan. The human mage never flaunted his greatness unless pressed to do so. People seemed to forget the extent of his power, or perhaps they never knew. Anyway, Cabersky of Ocean’s Gate would do the same.
The men obeyed him, and he was taken to a platform suspended by ropes on which he stood while guardsmen pulled and strained to lower him down the side of the fortress. He eschewed a flag of truce because it was not necessary for him. They could not harm him in any way.
When the platform reached the ground he stepped out and walked steadily towards the men he had observed earlier. His form was human, so it would not be immediately apparent to them that he was not.
They called on him to stop when he was thirty yards short. He stopped. Well within bowshot, he saw, but at a distance they considered safe.
“What do you want?” a voice called out.
“I come with a message from the lord Serhan,” he called back, his voice almost human.
“You should know better than to approach without a f
lag of truce,” the voice called. “We should have shot you by now.”
It had been a mistake. Still, a mistake is a lesson learned. There was no point in being coy about who he was now.
“I am the Faer Karani Cabersky of Ocean’s Gate,” he called back. “I will speak with your leader.”
Heads ducked down below the sparse cover of their positions, and even from thirty yards he could hear urgent voices arguing. He waited.
This was not the Faer Karan way, but it was…different. There was a sense of secret knowledge, hidden power. He knew, and they doubted. It was a seductive and, he supposed, a very human feeling.
“My lord, forgive us, but how can we be certain that you are who you say?” The voice doubted. The words were there, but there was no fear or respect.
“Well, I could destroy you all…”
“No,” the voice said quickly. “Something else.”
“Very well, one of you may approach me, look me in the eye and tell me that I am a man.”
The voices conferred again, briefly, and a man stepped out cautiously, drawn sword in hand. Someone back there was still expecting some kind of trick or attack. The man walked slowly towards him, glancing from side to side, but mostly keeping his eyes on Cabersky. When he was close enough to know, he knew, and dropped to his knees.
“Forgive me, my lord,” he said, and calling back to the waiting men, “Colonel, he does not lie.”
At once the colonel himself was striding forwards. Cabersky waited until he had knelt.
“It is no longer required to kneel before the Faer Karan,” he said. “The lord Serhan has decreed it. Stand.”
They stood, and looked at him with an appropriate mixture of fear and confusion.
“I come with a message from the Mage Lord Serhan of White Rock,” he told them. “Skycliff is under his protection, and you make war against it at your peril. You will withdraw back to your own domains and remain there. You will not make war. It is forbidden. That said, you will be permitted to rule within your borders as you wish. Will you do this?”
The colonel did not hesitate.
“We will, my lord.”
Again, not the Faer Karan way. He would have obliterated these men, thinking it message enough. The law was the law, even if they did not know it. He itched to wield his power, to burn and crush, but instead he spoke.
“You have a day to be gone from here, and three to be out of this domain. Do no more damage here, and kill no more men. The lord Serhan permits me to act more punitively if you disobey.”
They understood.
Cabersky stood in the same spot and watched them as they withdrew from his presence and hastily dismantled their camp. They did not wish to face him, and that was a little disappointing, though he had expected them to do as they did.
In two hours they were gone, and Cabersky opened a black door to take him back to Ocean’s Gate. He did not want to see the men in Skycliff again. Their new lord was one that he would have snuffed out if he had been permitted. He would go back to Ocean’s Gate and await Borbonil. His old lord had a task of his own, and it was a more complicated and subtle thing. He was glad it had not been asked of himself.
54 Pek
Borbonil stepped from the black door and was recognised at once; not for who he was, but for what. People screamed, some fell to their knees, others ran. He waited a moment until panic had fled or been replaced by simple fear. He approached one of the kneeling men.
“You may stand,” he said.
The man remained prostrate and did not speak. He was too scared to move. Borbonil approached another. He had seen this one lift his head to glance at him.
“Stand,” he said to the man. The man stood, slowly, cautiously.
“Faer Karani, why do you come here? Has our city not suffered enough?” He was well built for a man, looked strong and able with steady eyes.
“It has,” Borbonil agreed. “Show me where the soldiers of Sarata have made their home.”
“It is not safe to go there,” the man said. “For me, anyway. Will you protect me if I show you?”
“I will. What is your name?”
“I am called Finn san Petro Candros.”
“I am Borbonil, lord of Ocean’s Gate, servant of the human mage Serhan, who is himself master of White Rock, conqueror of the Faer Karan, and destroyer of the armies of Sarata.”
The man looked at him for a moment. It was a lot of information to take in.
“You serve a man?”
“Such a man as that one, yes.”
“The armies of Sarata: destroyed?”
“Yes.”
“And you say a man did this?”
“You question me too much, Finn Candros. Take me to the soldiers of Sarata.”
Finn Candros nodded and began to lead the way through the city. They passed through narrow lanes, wide streets, and even up a stairway between tall whitewashed buildings. There was much here that had been destroyed, some buildings just blackened shells, others broken like fallen eggs, crushed on one side and spilling out onto the street. Everywhere the small things of everyday life were scattered and abandoned in the road. Borbonil saw furniture, clothes, broken crockery. It looked as though things had been smashed for the pleasure of the breaking.
“There is much damage here,” he said.
“Looting, my lord,” Candros replied.
Borbonil had never seen it before. Men do this to each other? It was a few weeks, not even a season since Serhan had broken the rule of the Faer Karan, and already men had set about each other as though they had been waiting for the chance for four hundred years.
They arrived.
The Saratan soldiers had taken over one of the two great squares of the city, probably because it had a large tavern on one side. Tables had been dragged out into the open and now men sat around, weapons to hand, drinking, breaking things. They saw Borbonil and Finn Candros almost at once, but it was a moment before they saw that he was Faer Karan. In that moment Borbonil learned to dislike them. It was the way they stood, smiled, laughed, picked up their weapons, and began to walk slowly towards him. There was violent intent in every step. They thought that this was fun.
I am not permitted to kill them. Not yet.
Then they saw, and knew him for what he was, and the transformation was complete. Their world changed from one in which they and Sarata were the predators into one where they were the prey. They shrank back, weapons were dropped, some bowed.
“I am Borbonil,” he told them. “Who commands here?”
A man stepped forwards half a step, and from the glances of the others he knew that this was their captain. He was shaking with fear and his face was drained of all colour.
“You are the one?” The Faer Karani demanded. The captain nodded. It seemed that he was unable to speak.
“I bring a message from the Mage Lord Serhan of White Rock, whom I serve. Your army is defeated at Samara. You are to leave the city of Pek at once. You are commanded to make camp outside the city and await your king, who still lives. You have until the sun sets. Any who are left within the bounds of the city at that time, and any that return will be killed. Do you understand?”
The man nodded again. Borbonil dismissed them from his thoughts. They would go, and the pleasure of killing them must be foresworn. He turned to Finn Candros.
“Is there a place where you take the sick and the wounded?”
Candros seemed startled at the question.
“Why?” he asked.
“Must I find another guide?”
“No, my lord. There is such a place, for all the good it does. There are too many injuries and too few physicians with too little skill.”
“Show me.”
Again they trekked through the streets, moving down this time towards the sea. It was only a few minutes before they broke free from the narrow streets and white walls and came into an open space that had once been a park. What had been grass was trodden to dusty earth, and the trees supp
orted dozens of temporary shelters to protect people from the hot sun. Here at least cool breezes blew in off the sea. The sheets and blankets draped and hung about the place flapped gently in the air like an ocean of truce flags, an entire city surrendering to death.
“These were once called the summer gardens,” Candros said. “I avoid it now because it is a place of death.”
Borbonil walked among the dying. Many had relatives with them, and he saw that they did not run or cry out when they saw him. They stared, as though he were a thing not of their world. Many times he had been told that despair conquers fear, indeed that despair was to be feared more than courage, but he had never seen it before on such a scale.
They know what I am, and that I have the power to help them. Still there is no hope. They do not expect help from the Faer Karan.
For some reason he felt a pang of guilt. Standing in the midst of so much pain and suffering he breathed in the scent of blood, septic wounds, gangrene, burned flesh and disease. He knew that Borbonil of Ocean’s Gate would not have helped, would not even have seen this, but the servant of Serhan was charged with this mission, specifically this. Heal the sick.
He spoke the words of the healing spell, and spoke them again, and again. He felt the power flow through him, rushing out across the dead grass and into the damaged life all around him. It was like a hot wind, and he heard people cry out at the sensation. Borbonil felt the pain diminish, burns heal, cloaked again in flesh and skin, felt illness depart.
In just a short while it was done.
He stood among them, and they looked at him as though waking from a dream. They knew he had cured them, saved their lives, and they approached shyly, carefully, not quite believing perhaps.
“My lord, thank you.”
One man said it, and the words were taken up by hundreds across the sea of flapping cloths. They came to him in gratitude, still afraid because he was Faer Karan, but grateful for life. He turned away from them, walked back to the edge of the park where Candros waited, he was pushed away by a flood of unfamiliar emotion.
Candros looked at him, not understanding.
“Why are you doing this?”