Their Friend and Lord had turned his eyes to them. An hour prior, they had told him they had important news, but he had angrily bade them be silent while he explored the thoughts floating through his mind like fast-moving clouds, sometimes assuming shape, sometimes all murk and vagueness, often stormy black. He would not make it clear whether he wished them to speak or not, but Ghost seemed determined to take a risk. If Vous angered, they would probably flee. ‘We have heard strange news,’ they said.
Vous stood, his hand reaching for the wine glass. It was all still there, every drop. He lifted it to his lips, wanting, suddenly, to shock Ghost.
‘Friend and Lord!’ cried four of the five faces in distress, the fifth gaping in mute shock. ‘Friend and Lord! Please! Take care! Are you sure you should drink that? Is it safe?’ They all spoke at once, their voices a jumble.
Vous’s hand clenched tight around the finely wrought crystal glass. His arm shook and he gazed around the room in defiance, lip curled, teeth bared. ‘Watch,’ he snarled, though he didn’t speak to Ghost. ‘You go ahead and watch.’ In his bed at night, tossing and turning, he’d toyed with the theory that Shadow’s stealing his wine was an accusation of simple cowardice. Now he threw back the drink in one swallow, spilling blood-red drops of it down his chin. The glass he flung to the wall near the mirror, where it broke.
Ghost’s faces were in shock to see their Friend and Lord break so drastically with habit. The familiar display of rage hardly registered.
Vous stepped towards the mirror. He paused only to grab a handful of green vegetables from the plate before his throne and stuff it into his mouth, pleased at having shocked Ghost and wishing for more. Ghost obliged him with more fearful gasps and whispers, until he came near and stood, hands tensed halfway to making fists.
‘Grim news,’ said the face in the middle, recovering from its shock first. It was the sad-looking round face with big eye sockets, otherwise nearly featureless. Vous had forgotten what its name had been in life. He’d forgotten the rest of their names, too.
Speak, Vous thought, then realised he hadn’t given the command aloud. They may have interpreted his posture, for they spoke. ‘We heard a conversation, when we ventured to the Arch Mage’s window.’ Ghost then told him of how the Arch Mage, arguing with two Strategists, had dismissed the importance of the word ‘shadow’ being found on the rock face where a patrol had been ambushed and killed, a day’s march from here. No survivors were reported.
Vous listened with fists tightening. He could not be told all tidings, and many things of import escaped his notice. But this? Why had this been hidden? ‘I was not told,’ he said, beginning to shake.
‘The Arch Mage claimed … he claimed …’ Ghost had become nervous; the round middle-face lost the ability to speak, so the female face took over, ‘claimed it was better for your health, not to trouble you so. And he further said it was best not to show you what he called “the letter”. One Strategist believed otherwise. They argued fiercely. Then the Arch Mage struck his face and banished him. And bade him never again mention “the letter”.’
Vous paced before the mirror for a full hour. Ghost watched every step, waiting. At last: ‘Did he know you were present in the window glass?’ referring to the Arch Mage.
‘Nothing indicated yes or no, Friend and Lord. The curtain was halfway drawn, and we hid behind it.’
Another hour’s pacing, his body regular as a pendulum back and forth.
Ghost said hesitantly, ‘Aziel, she wailed beautifully this morn—’
‘Shhh.’ Vous strode from the chamber without a further word. He went down to the Arch Mage’s room, a place of white bricks and many special iron grids in the walls to facilitate the magic air. It had been too long since he’d visited. A vast library stretched along shelves on the side walls: books on lore of all kinds, magic of all known schools detailed here and only here with such comprehensiveness. Jars were filled with black twisting smoke or fluttering light. Cages held living things that scuttled about or crawled, attacking the glass walls when they felt Vous pass by. A small red drake, perhaps the last of its kind, was imprisoned in an iron cage in the corner. It made a mixed whine and growl, pleading sadly for freedom. Old scorch marks spread out from the floor near its cage, but its fire was used up long ago, and it surely knew by now that it waited here to die. When Vous sat and ignored it, it lay down to sleep, with a long sad sigh.
The Arch Mage wasn’t home, yet again. Vous picked at the chair’s arms in irritation, then pissed out the wine right there where he sat. He thought of tearing through the room, ruining everything, all the fragile instruments, the glass orbs filled with their mysterious smoky liquid, the charts and diagrams and sculptures, setting loose the creatures. He recalled having done such a thing before, and that the Arch Mage had not reacted other than with a displeasingly mild sadness, hardly even speaking about it afterwards.
Hours passed, then a full day. At last, the sound of familiar limping footsteps. Around the door came the half-melted face, the forked tip of a silver staff, the three horns on his head emitting a light curl of smoke each — he had flown in, then, most likely assuming the shape of a bird or bat. Behind his head was a long trail of black feathers. The one good eye took in Vous in his chair and scanned briefly around to make sure all was in order, before the Arch Mage cringed back from the hostile effects of Vous’s charms and wards like someone who’d been shoved hard.
Vous’s lip curled; he always enjoyed the sight. ‘I left the bad ones in my chamber,’ he said, which was untrue — they were in his pocket, where they would be harmless enough unless he put them on.
‘What you wear still serves you well, Vous. It is good to see you. How your eyes glow — it shan’t be long, I sense. Is something the matter?’
‘The letter,’ said Vous.
The Arch Mage began to speak, then didn’t.
‘Where have you been?’ said Vous, standing. Spit sprayed from his lips. ‘Ugly, foul thing. Disgusting, filthy thing stinking of shit.’ Vous’s rage spiralled away from him and spilled into the room like a small hot wind.
Sparks of fire erupted around the Arch Mage and sent little tendrils of flame up his gown. He winced and frantically patted them out. Hurriedly he said, ‘There are things I feared to tell you … things which I felt you would take badly, which could jeopardise—’
The rage was gone as swiftly as it had come. Vous’s eyes shut, his face curdled in pain and infinite weariness. ‘The letter. Where is the letter?’
The Arch Mage pointed at his far shelf. Vous ran there, snatched off a sheaf of folded paper, snarled deep in his throat, and sprinted from the room. The Arch Mage gently shut the door behind him.
In his chamber, it was a long week before Vous read what was written therein. He left the letter sitting at times on the floor, as though it were an unimportant piece of litter. His hands moved to rip it to pieces, but always stopped. Most of all, he marvelled that this thing could command his attention solely above all else, that it could have such power over him, though he didn’t even know what message it held. That such an object of power over him had come from the Arch Mage’s chambers was not lost on him … not lost on him at all.
Finally he picked it up, startled at the lack of ceremony, the plainness of the act: it was just paper, light and dry in his hand. And the writing was of an ordinary, jagged script, though what it said burned through his mind like fire.
I WILL DESTROY THE WALL. MY NAME IS SHADOW. THERE IS WORSE THAN DEATH. I WILL DESTROY THE WALL. THERE IS WORSE THAN PAIN. I WILL DESTROY THE WALL. THERE IS WORSE THAN MOCKING LAUGHTER. I WILL DESTROY THE WALL. I WILL DESTROY THE WALL.
—Shadow
29
The light of afternoon was beginning to dim, but they were able, still, to keep an eye on the forest floor for more of the distinctive marks they’d seen by the hall. They had not yet found any. Loup led them, sometimes changing directions for no apparent reason, once even leading the group in a wide circle, and it seemed
he’d done so on purpose. The others traded exasperated looks but didn’t question the magician.
The cult girl — Lalie, as they began to call her, despite her ignoring this at first — kept a sullen silence, but briefly inclined her head in thanks when Anfen passed her a strip of dried meat. She ate it ravenously. She warmed to no one, but Sharfy was the one to whom her looks were the most venomous. No one questioned her yet. Nor did Anfen decide — after some murmured debate with Loup — to keep her hands tied, not yet.
When we get near a town, perhaps, he thought. Inferno cultists were not permitted in most cities, Free or Aligned, which meant they were usually killed on sight. Lalie did not bear many of the tribal scars or tattoos of long-standing cultists, but nor did she yet seem willing to lie about her beliefs, or forsake them. The Mayors would hear her story, and they would resort to torture, if she kept it to herself. War was war; no one had to like it.
The doomed hall and its museum of death had done the expected bad things to Anfen’s mind. Only Sharfy’s face, Sharfy with whom he’d travelled most out of this group, was free of being split and cracked open in his eyes. Lalie and the Pilgrims he tried not to look at. Lalie especially was the stuff of nightmares, not helped, he guessed, by the dried blood that had caked her real face for so long. And these trees, these fucking trees, how he hated them, more than the old Pilgrim Case did, no matter who complained and who didn’t. When he came close to one he had a strong lust to hack into it with his blade. It didn’t matter that they’d come through the haunted part of the woods unscathed.
Anfen also knew Case was battling to keep pace with the group, and seemed on the brink of a one-man mutiny. It would be a challenge, when the peevish complaints ceased being quietly muttered and began being grumbled aloud, to keep from cuffing the old man’s head, or screaming at him, or more. He didn’t want things tense with both Pilgrims. But it was too late now — they would not avoid another night in these woods, and largely because of that one old man’s lagging legs.
‘We’ll be safe if we’re quiet,’ said Loup as they set up camp for the night on a rise in the ground, away from the mist. ‘Could be that the noise and whooping and hollering was what drew the beasties from the ground.’
‘Maybe so. Lalie, what time did they attack? During your ritual?’
She answered, to Anfen’s surprise. ‘After. Late.’
‘Go on,’ he said, deciding to press her. ‘You’ve been fed. Earn it.’
She shut her eyes and spoke hesitantly: ‘We had collapsed, spent, around the fire, when they came. They … they stood by our sleeping bodies, we didn’t know for how long. Hours or minutes. They were perfectly still, in our midst. Watching us. Someone woke and saw them. She screamed. We others woke and ran. They didn’t follow. They stayed still, perfectly still.’ She swallowed and her voice quavered. ‘We went to the hall. Barricaded it. They didn’t come, not for a while. Morning was not far. We began to wonder if … we had imagined them. Then, out the window. I was the one who saw it. Right outside, peering in. It moved strangely. We didn’t hear them come. It looked right at me.’ She was shivering.
‘What then, Lalie?’ said Anfen, but she fell quiet and he let her stay that way.
They had a small fire with carefully treated wood but after their broth was heated that was all, cold night or not. ‘And we’ll have two on watch, all night. Siel and Eric first. Case and myself second. Sharfy and Loup third.’ Eric’s possible link to Siel was one way to nip in the bud any potential mutiny …
Lalie tossed and turned, whimpering in her sleep. Loup crouched by her, laid a hand on her forehead and murmured a few words. She soon lay quiet. Whatever Loup had done caused a drop of blood to trickle from his ear. ‘Another thankless deed,’ he muttered, holding his head in pain. ‘But she needs it. Us too, with that moaning. Dreaming of beasties and blood. Silly girl.’
Who needs thanks and praise? They’re just accusations of what good you haven’t done, Anfen thought before drifting to oblivion, where colourless dreams awaited, the kind mercifully overlooked by his memory each morning.
Eric sat by the dead fire and Siel — to his surprise — sat behind him with her back pressed against his. The night woods were quiet around them, save the odd scuffling noise as a small creature lingered now and then at the edge of their camp, sniffing them out.
‘You aren’t a prince,’ said Siel after a few quiet minutes. ‘Or nobility.’
To lie or not to lie … ‘No, I’m not. But I’m the next closest thing, an unpublished novelist. That’s a joke. How could you tell anyway?’
‘At the hilltop. You know of my talent?’
‘At the hilltop, I discovered your talent, yes.’
She laughed quietly, which was fine music to his ears. ‘I see things,’ she said. ‘Glimpse through windows into the past. I don’t like it. Here where bad things have happened, it’s awful. I walked into a room at our old house and one day saw a man strangling an old woman. That was the first time it happened. I was five. Sometimes I can block it out, sometimes I can’t. When they found I had talent, they tried to make me a mage in Happenstance. But my tutor was killed by bounty hunters. I’m not glad about that; she was nice. But I’m glad not to be a mage. Glimpses are bad enough.’
‘Happenstance … that’s what your magic’s called?’
‘It’s Wisdom’s school. Or it was, before they destroyed all the temples and burned the books.’
‘Wisdom — another Great Spirit?’
She sighed as if annoyed to be drawn onto an objectionable subject of discussion. ‘Yes, but it’s misleading. She doesn’t really have much to do with their spell craft, though they thought otherwise at first. She’s connected to the raw kind of magic they use, but not to the ways they use it. It’s complicated to explain.’ She waved a hand to brush the subject away. ‘Anyway. When we mated, I learned things about you. One is that you lied about yourself.’
Mated. That word seemed a fitting description of their encounter on the hilltop. He nodded. ‘Is that why you did it, to learn about me?’
‘The main reason. I also like it, sometimes.’
‘Ouch.’
‘Though it is different for me, I think, from how it is for most women.’
‘Did you learn also that I’m scared to death here? I was marched to your camp at knife-point, for fuck’s sake. I thought this group was likely to kill me, unless maybe they thought I was important.’
‘Yes, I knew that too. But you are important. You are a Pilgrim.’
‘What does that mean? What’s going to become of me?’
She paused so long before answering he wasn’t sure she’d heard him. ‘You’ll decide what becomes of you,’ she said. ‘I don’t know. I can’t see the future. Almost no one can, not clearly, or the magic schools would still be here and Vous would never have taken the castle. And I don’t know what it means that you’re a Pilgrim. Only that it’s important.’
‘Are you going to tell Anfen I lied?’
‘Not if you massage my shoulders.’ She wasn’t joking, he saw, as she planted herself in front of him and loosed the shirt about her neck.
He worked his thumbs into the knots and tension of her shoulders and neck. He took it no further, not here while they were on watch duty, though he itched to reach around and squeeze her to him, and had an odd feeling she would allow that much, at least.
‘I also know you have a weapon,’ she whispered. ‘I learned it at the hilltop and I think I’ve seen it. What is it?’
‘It’s called a gun.’ He took it out of its holster and showed her.
She held it. ‘But this is small. Is it powerful?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘How is it enchanted?’
‘It’s not. It shoots out a small piece of metal very, very fast. Much faster than your arrows. Don’t tell them about it please, not yet.’
‘If you carry it to protect us, I won’t.’
‘Of course I do. I have a feeling it would take care even
of a war mage, if it had to.’
When his hands were too tired to go on kneading her shoulders, she turned to face him with her legs apart, reached into his pants, took hold of his penis with no ceremony at all and tugged it until he came, which didn’t take long. She did it with about as much passion as a farmer milking a cow. ‘You can perhaps relax a little, now,’ she said, ‘and think more of the dangers around us, less about me.’
He laughed. ‘It’s a deal.’
They said little more for the rest of the watch. He jumped every time something scuttled through undergrowth or flew with swooping wings from a high branch, but soon enough it was time to wake Case and Anfen, then, all too soon, time to rise and set out again.
As they put some distance behind them, the forest floor gave way like a balding scalp to the dark grey rock beneath. Ridges of it battled with the forest for turf. The place felt like distant, remote wilderness, the middle of nowhere; there was no sign of human habitation, no ruins or beaten paths.
Loup, who’d been in a foul mood all morning since they’d asked him to bless the biscuits they had for breakfast (he’d refused), finally perked up at the sight of rocky cliffs, and bounded towards them without a word, gesturing frantically for Eric to follow him.
Anfen, displeased, halted the rest of the company. ‘Loup! Don’t get my Pilgrim killed, and don’t be long.’
Loup held Eric’s arm and practically dragged him down a steep slope to the tallest part of a sheer wall of stone, out of sight of Anfen and the rest. The old magician held his palms to the flat wall, muttering, ‘Somewhere round here, bound to be one. Bound to be. This far from cities and the road, oh aye! No one to bother him out here, he’ll reckon he’s safe. There’ll be one: cranky, old and lazy.’
Part of the cliff face bulged outwards, and it was here that Loup stopped. ‘Here! Here’s one! Now let’s wake him up.’ He stood some way back from the bulge and threw small stones at it. ‘Back here, Eric. You won’t see him from right close. We got a stoneflesh golem here! Ho boy, this far north’s a rare treat. Didn’t think we’d actually find a live one!’
The Pilgrims: Book One (The Pendulum Trilogy) Page 18