by Martin Davey
The Clerk seemed unperturbed by Landros’s silence. “Almost, I imagine, as terrible as being there when a Clerk is slain by a figure of death.” He was smiling, his black eyes still and watchful, his black hair smooth and sleek. “A Clerk who was there to see the fall of the Nameless One, who was there to pass judgement on him and his generals in the holy city of Eshotar.”
Landros hung his head over his bound hands, unable to meet that black gaze a moment longer. “I failed him, Master,” he finally said. “All I wanted was to serve Clerk Lovelin, serve the Five and to repay them their faith in me. But at every turn I have failed the Keepers and the Clerk.” He could have added his mother and Dorian and Feren and Elian to that, but he had said enough. He fell silent and nursed the self revulsion roiling in his breast like a restless serpent.
“Ricon Lovelin was beyond saving, Captain Landros. Why do you think I am here, leaving my home more than a month ago to arrive on the very day our own Clerk is slain?”
This made Landros look up, meeting those eyes once more. Doubt and hope and fear and hurt all warred within him until all he could do was blink at the Clerk. “Clerk Lovelin knew he was going to die?”
Clerk Killian smiled, though there was no humour in it. He moved around Landros, a tall thin man dressed all in black and with black hair. He rested a pale hand on the book Landros had been looking at, pulled it away to the edge of the table, though he didn’t open it. “We all know we’re going to die, Captain. Even we Clerks, even Clerk Lovelin, the first of us all, a man who saw the nine gods descend from the skies, knew he had to die. Just as our gods knew some of them had to die that we might live. All we can do, Captain, is to face our end without fear, with the knowledge in our hearts that we are true to the will of the Five.”
“But why? Why did the Clerk have to die? If he knew of the thing that waited down...down there, why would he go and face it alone?” Alone. Even with Landros down there with him, the Clerk had truly faced the Nameless One alone.
Clerk Killian trailed his fingertips on the cover of the book before he straightened and faced Landros, one torch fluttered in the corner, its light dancing in the Clerk’s smooth hair. “Clerk Lovelin became a secretive man in his latter years. He could have spent his days with the gods themselves in Eshotar, the most gloried city of them all. Instead he chose to come here to a dark town on the edge of the world. Why would that be, I wonder?”
Did all Clerks talk in circles? Did any answer a straight question? Landros tried to keep the impatience from his voice as he answered, “I wouldn’t know, Master. Maybe he tired of the wars and wanted to be somewhere quiet.”
“Then he didn’t find it, did he?” A smile which was little more than the merest twitch of his thin lips. “Tell me what you saw down in the cells when he died.”
The sudden change in subject had Landros mentally scrambling. He had to swallow and force himself to tell the truth rather than try and make himself look less of a failure. “He, the Clerk had his hands on the boy’s head, the boy who saw my mother murdered...” he stopped to see the Clerk’s reaction. There was none, only those black eyes fixed on him implacably. “And then I saw Feren, I mean the Nameless One, standing in the corner.”
The Clerk lifted a long, pale hand. “Just tell me what you saw with your own eyes.”
Landros took a breath, “Feren, he was rotting, his clothes were rotting, and he killed the boy, struck him on the neck with a sword.” His forehead felt pale and cold. “And then he, Feren, he attacked Clerk Lovelin, but the Clerk killed him and as Feren was dying, the boy, he, he...” Landros swallowed, his tongue felt thick in his mouth.
“And why did you go down there in the first place, Captain?”
Only now did Landros realize that the lone torch had been extinguished, the room was cold and grey and black eyes in a white face were fixed on him. “Because I thought I might discover something about the murder of my mother. But then, as the Clerk and I were leaving the dungeons, my mother waited behind a door, a sword in her hand. The Clerk didn’t have time to run...”
Clerk Killian nodded, walked over to the window, looked down at the atlas tree below and the grey skies overhead. “Captain of the Watch?” he asked.
It took Landros a moment to realize the Clerk was waiting for an answer, “Yes, Master.”
“You see the evil we are all fighting against, Captain. You see the evil your gods have saved our kind from? It lies and it curses and it kills and it possesses and it uses its tricks and its wiles, it uses our own weaknesses against us. That is the evil of the Nameless One, Landros. It came to you in the guise of your own friend knowing your grief and your weakness so it could use you to get close to our own Clerk. Never forget that, Landros. It even used and destroyed the body of your own mother to fulfil the curse it has been nursing for three thousand years. This is the evil that compelled man’s own Kings and Queens and Princes to bow before him, follow him into battle with his banners flying above their own.”
Landros bowed his head, his stomach rebelling in revulsion at the thought that he had stood so close to such a creature, that such a creature had been able to invade his dreams with its insidious words. “But why, why would the Clerk have gone down there if he knew what waited for him?”
Clerk Killian turned away from the window, his face long and thin, the collar of his coat high around his neck. “Because Clerk Lovelin knew our enemy. He faced him at the battle of Kara-Nou and he faced him in the halls of the Nine when the Nameless One knelt before the gods in surrender. He heard the curse laid upon all those who had followed the gods into battle, spoken by the Nameless One before he laid his sword at the feet of Keeper Jerohim.” Clerk Killian clasped his hands behind his back and moved towards Landros. “Clerk Lovelin knew our enemy Landros, and saw the threads and strands and plots that lie behind us and before us. He tried to weave the threads of time all around him, a subtle tug here, a gentle pull there, a word here, a smile there...” The Clerk smiled at the memory.
Landros frowned. “But if he could see all these strands of time, then couldn’t he have found a way to save himself?”
“Sometimes there is no escape, or, sometimes the price of life is too high to pay, or sometimes the inadequacies of the Keepers’ children are still a surprise to one who has served the gods for thousands of years.”
Pain, white and blinding, speared into Landros’s mind. A pain he remembered too well, a dark hall with Clerk Lovelin and a spike of white flame piercing his skull. A wind-whipped cliff and a lone woman standing there, her dark hair blowing about her narrow face, long skirts wrapping about her legs. And she was staring out to the Sea, standing on a cliff and watching the storm-tossed waves below, grey and black. Landros screamed as he saw the woman, the pain too much to bear as though a mighty fist was squeezing his brain, his eyeballs suddenly too large for their sockets and about to burst at any moment. He raised his bound hands to his face, pressing his fingers against his bulging eyes. He might have screamed, but all he heard was the sighing of the winds from the end of the world, the waves roiling below and the woman, a dark shawl wrapped around her thin shoulders, singing a song of soaring beauty. A song that spoke of love and sex and death and hope and redemption.
When the woman was gone and Landros opened his eyes once more, he was on his knees and pulling his hands away from his face and looking up at Clerk Killian standing over him like some judgemental god. “I am not so patient as Clerk Lovelin, Captain Landros.” His mouth was a thin straight line and his cheekbones sharp and angular in his pale face. “You remember the woman?”
Landros couldn’t trust himself to speak, he only nodded, the memory of the pain echoing in his skull like the scream of a loved one.
“You failed to find her before and it has cost a Clerk his life. Don’t fail again. Find her and bring her to me.”
Landros struggled to rise to his feet, the floor reeling before him and setting his stomach to churning. “But the woman...” Another spear of pain in his head and
he lifted the heels of his hands to his temples, “The woman, how could she be the cause of the Clerk’s...”
“Strands and threads, Captain. Clerk Lovelin was a patient man, which was to your benefit, but not his own. If one thread should fall then all his plans might come to nothing. The woman, if she is what Ricon thought she was, then she might show us past the Nameless One’s barriers, help us see where he hides and what he plots.” The Clerk flicked through some pages of a book on the table, fine paper whispering as each page turned, some of the black ink almost turned yellow with age. “There was a time when our enemy faced us across fields of battle. Now he skulks and sneaks and plots revenge from the shadows.”
“The woman,” every time Landros blinked he saw the image of her, standing on the cliff, her arms crossed beneath her breasts, wild hair flying against a sky of greys and blacks. “She ran. If she never returned, how will I find her?”
The Clerk’s smile was slight, filled with contempt. “Fortunately for you, I know exactly where she is. She is in a village forty miles east of here called Yerotan. I was going there myself until events here made it impossible. There is a young Guardian of Keeper Liotuk there called Cioran Marat who seems to have taken quite a liking to our young friend. Take the whole Watch with you. Trust me, Captain, if you fail me in this, you won’t ever want to return. The world is turning and Clerk Lovelin thought he had more time than he did in the end.”
“The whole Watch? But what about the patrols, Master?” The Clerk, Clerk Lovelin, had never allowed a single patrol of the cliffs along the edge of the world to miss for as long as Landros could remember. Even Dorian had said he had never known the Watch to miss a patrol.
The Clerk smiled again. A smile that Landros was beginning to like less and less, as though he could see the cold contempt behind eyes of the purest black. “A Clerk is dead, Captain, killed from beyond the grave by the Nameless One himself. If I have the time or the inclination, I’ll spare a few members of the Guard to go and stare at an endless stretch of water for an hour or so.”
A Clerk was dead. And still Landros was bound and still he hadn’t been punished. “And what of me? For failing the Clerk?”
Black eyes looked at Landros, the nose sharp and the lips thin in a face so pale it was almost white. “Ricon had grown soft, Captain. He was a man who had ridden by the side of gods, faced the Nameless One, the Black Prince, the Prince of the Marches in battle. But victory and old age made him soft. He thought to control the weaves of time with subtle touches and nudges. I prefer the sure sharpness of a silver blade.” Here the Clerk flicked his right wrist upward to reveal a silver-bladed knife with a red hilt darker than blood. The blade shone in the greyness of the room. When Clerk Lovelin had been alive the solar had seemed rich and warm. Now the gloom was a heavy and oppressive thing, furniture and carpets that had seemed vivid and lush before now looked old and worn. “If, in the great scheme of things, in the tapestry of life, something is dangerous or unneeded, or troublesome,” the Clerk held up the knife with another smile of pure cold, “Then cut it away.”
“If a limb is bad or poisoned, cut it off.” Landros said.
“Precisely.” Clerk Killian reached out for Landros’s hands and cut through the rope easily with the sharp blade. Landros tried not to swallow as the knife sliced near his wrists. The Clerk’s eyes met his, bright and black enough to see his own skewed reflection in them. “You failed Ricon Lovelin a number of times, Captain. He knew what you were capable of, what the future held for you, and forgave you, guiding you to the glory of the gods.” The rope fell to the ground. “Fail me once and you will never have the chance to do so again.”
Landros rubbed his wrists, the skin red and itchy. “And if the woman doesn’t want to return with us?” He remembered the woman at the farm; a writhing, screaming figure in the mud, running away, her clothes wild and wet under a flash of lightning.
“You are Captain of the Watch. Use your authority.” There was a shout from beyond the solar door, more feet scurrying about. “You’ll ride this afternoon as soon as you have gathered your men. At that time I will announce that the Clerk has died peacefully in his sleep. We will have a great day of mourning for the loss and then tomorrow we will have a Commune for him. I expect you to be back for that, Captain. No more failures.”
Landros had stopped listening. The town was to be told the Clerk had died in his sleep? Why had he been so foolish to have gone to Elian? Why couldn’t he have just left her out of it? He coughed, “And what about Elian, Master? Can I escort her back to the Mother’s house while I go to get the men?”
Another cold smile. Landros was beginning to dislike them intensely. “I think Elian will remain a guest of mine for a while longer yet, Captain.” Clerk Killian raised a long white finger, and for the first time, Landros saw some emotion in those blackest of eyes. Bright, black malice. “Remember, Captain, no more failures.”
CHAPTER 24
“Save the Keepers,” Retaj breathed as they crested the last hill and found the rutted road leading down to the Mahrata’s encampment. “She’s found even more.”
Marin looked out across a sea of fluttering canvas; greens, yellows browns, blues, whites and greys. Some with flags whipping in the wind, strange designs painted on cloth. More and more had copied the Mahrata’s own flag, a red tower on a field of black. The imitations of the flag flying above tents around the camp were cruder, painted with unskilled hands, but they still gave Marin a chill. He guessed there were about a hundred and fifty, maybe two hundred tents standing proud under the shadow of the enormous sound of the drums of the Paramin.
Marin grunted. “More are coming every day. Amazing what people will start to believe when they start finding bodies nailed to trees.” The soldiers of the Paramin were starting to mix more now. Not a few days ago, they would sit in huddled groups, watching each other with suspicious eyes, cradling their provisions like delicate children. Now southerners were sharing a joke with brown-eyed Feraniatans, dark skinned fisherfolk shared bread with cold-eyed Anarastians. Smoke hung thick over the camp mingling with the stink of burning meat and unwashed bodies and the chatter of a hundred different accents. It was almost beginning to look like an army. An army brought together by nothing more than fear. Marin was in the right place. He stroked the back of his hand along his jaw; it felt normal and the brown haired, thick-muscled soldier sitting alone and poking a stick into a small fire before his tent hadn’t given him a second glance.
“Might be enough to take those bastards up there.” Retaj jerked his head back the way they had come.
Marin shook his head and stepped over a tent wire, cold ash piled high before the tent, the sound of thick snoring coming from within. Shouting and laughter from a game of dice in the next tent, watched by a single southerner sharpening his sword, three daggers waiting turn on the ground next to him. “Those are people who’ve spent their whole fighting lives together. Proper fighting men with the gods on their side.”
“But we have the Paramin,”
Marin grunted. He seemed to be doing that more the older he got. “See how long this new found faith in the Paramin lasts when these men face an army of wild-eyed Canaristi charging at them.” It had only taken two Canaristi to break Marin in that damp cell with fat drops of water leaking down sodden green walls. The memory still left him cold in his stomach.
“You know,” Retaj nodded at a blue-eyed soldier wearing armour from at least three different countries, some of it old, most of it older. He was stroking a small furred creature lying next to him on the ground. It looked dead. When the soldier smiled, his teeth were black and broken. Retaj hurried on, “You know, after what happened back there, don’t you think there’s more to this Blood Lord of hers?”
A shout of laughter and then some singing, voices halting and broken before more singing erupted again. The men teaching each other songs from their homes, ancient songs still sung in forgotten languages. Marin felt a momentary pang of nostalgia for the sounds of
comradeship, the feeling of belonging. Not that he’d ever felt those things. “I’ve no idea what happened back there.” He had no idea if it even had been the Mahrata whispering to him as he faced his death. “All I know is I should be dead now and I’m not.” Memories of a riverbank and walking by the side of a woman with short dark hair. “Who are you,” she had said. Marin coughed and scratched at his throat, tossed another ferris root into his mouth. The taste of ancient woods and dark beasts, of whispers in the darkness and forgotten warriors kneeling before dark-eyed gods.
“And how thankful we all are for that. But she must get her power from somewhere. I’m guessing bathing in bitter old men’s blood will only get you so far.”
Marin eyed Retaj. He’d never seen Retaj fight like that before. The Canaristi were trained fighting men, fighting for the glory of the Keepers, and Retaj had been toying with the fighter. Had he? Or was his memory playing tricks on him? Had the Canaristi been all over Retaj and he’d just got lucky in the end? Marin scratched at his throat and spat, thick and brown, onto the ground.
“She doesn’t bathe in blood.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, bristles scratching his skin. She had the blood in jars, she might do a number of things with it, but he didn’t think bathing in the blood was one of them. Drink it, maybe. Marin chewed on his ferris root trying to tell himself that the taste of blood was only in his imagination, and resisted the urge to scratch at his throat.
“Whatever.” Retaj shrugged as he stepped aside for a hulking soldier with a scar on his chest and a sword on his back. “All I’m saying is there is something very wrong with a woman who cuts a man’s throat and then manages to keep him alive. If... well, she has some power, I’ll give her that. Or this Paramin of hers has power, anyway.”
They could see her tent now, the banner of the Paramin flying high above it: the red tower on the field of black. As always she had two men on guard at the entrance, southerners as usual, their blonde hair bright in the sun. One of them, Deima, Marin thought his name was, had killed a Seeker some miles past and claimed his armour. It was ill-fitting and the big southerner had had to discard the gauntlets and the leg greaves, but he still looked an impressive sight standing outside the familiar red tent of the Mahrata.