The Raven Collection

by James Barclay

  ‘But the kills weren’t clean,’ said Hirad.

  ‘We’re mages, not knifemen,’ said Ilkar a little sharply. ‘I have never done anything like that before and I doubt you have.’

  ‘I guess not,’ said Hirad. ‘But I still need to show you the best killing thrusts. It would have helped.’

  ‘When we’re on dry land, I’ll be glad to undergo training,’ said Ilkar. ‘But right now, I’m trying not to be violently sick.’

  Hirad laughed. The boat was barely pitching, its passage very smooth, yet there was an uncharacteristic paleness about the elf’s face.

  ‘You’ll be all right,’ said the barbarian.

  ‘Look at the horizon,’ said The Unknown. ‘It moves less than the inside of the boat. It’ll give you some sense of stability.’ Ilkar nodded and dragged his gaze out over the water towards the eastern shoreline where the sea met the sky.

  Apparently satisfied with what he saw on land, Thraun turned, knocking the tiller briefly from Denser’s hand. He ambled up the boat, pausing to stare at each member of The Raven as he passed. Hirad met his gaze, seeing the yellow flecks in Thraun’s eyes but none of the repressed humanity that Will assured him was there. Yet there was an intelligence in that stare that had nothing to do with anything animal and, curiously, Hirad felt no threat despite being one lunge from death.

  He watched as the wolf leaped lightly on to the decking of the prow, moving in between Erienne and Will. Will’s hand reached out and stroked the length of his back. Thraun’s head turned and his tongue licked out, plastering the little man’s face.

  ‘Affectionate, isn’t he?’ said Hirad.

  ‘I wonder if he’ll be embarrassed to hear about that when he changes back,’ mused Denser, his mood at odds with his behaviour of the last few days.

  ‘How long will we be sailing?’ asked Ilkar.

  ‘Half the night, maybe a little more,’ replied The Unknown.

  ‘Oh, Gods,’ muttered Ilkar, tightening his grip still further. Hirad put a hand on his shoulder, patting him gently.

  In the prow, Will wiped his face, anxious to keep the wolf saliva from his lips. He didn’t quite succeed. He scowled and grabbed Thraun’s muzzle with a hand, giving it a shake.

  ‘Do you have to?’ The wolf licked his lips and gazed mournfully back, eyes sad and far away. Will’s scowl turned to a frown. ‘What is it, Thraun? What’s wrong?’ Thraun dropped his eyes to the decking. ‘You could change here. You don’t have to wait until we land. Remember.’ It was the word that triggered the human deep within the body of the wolf. Or should have. But Thraun merely hunkered down, resting his head on his forelegs, head pointing out to the Inlet.

  Will glanced across at Erienne. Worry lined her face as it lined his.

  ‘It’ll be all right,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘He’ll change when we land.’

  ‘You saw him the last time,’ said Will. ‘He changed the moment we were clear of Dordover. Couldn’t wait. The longer he goes, the harder it gets to remember he can.’ He stroked Thraun again, pushing his hand in hard against his spine. Thraun’s tail flipped languidly, for all the world like a dog relaxing by his master’s feet.

  Will shook his head. Thraun always changed back so quickly. He hated the form of the animal, he was frightened by it. Or so he said. But this time . . . Maybe the motion of the boat unsettled him. Maybe. But he looked comfortable. Comfortable. That was a state he had never seen in the wolf and he’d witnessed Thraun change at least a dozen times over the years he’d known him.

  ‘Thraun, come on, look at me.’ The wolf obliged, blinking. That was something at least. ‘Remember. Please.’ Thraun raised his head slightly, sniffing the air. He growled deep in his throat and returned to his scan of the water in front of him. Will turned to The Raven; all eyes were on him.

  ‘Can’t this boat go any faster? I think we’ve got a problem.’

  Chapter 15

  It had been a sunny enough morning. The light cloud that had covered the sky at dawn had been blown away by a fresh breeze from the north-west, leaving clear blue skies, a gently warming sun and the ever-roiling and growing shadow.

  The fifteen soldiers and three mages of the monitoring party in Parve had chosen for themselves one of the grand houses that lay just off the central square. It was a large, two-storey building with rooms enough for each to be shared by just two men. A well-stocked pantry and cellars, partly harvested from other nearby dwellings, made living comfortable. But not too comfortable.

  Each of the men who had volunteered for the duty was aware that they were unlikely to see the Colleges again. Between them and home lay the entire Wesmen invading armies and the Blackthorne Mountains. Above them, the rip to the dragon Dimension posed unguessable threat, and in the dead city they knew that not everyone was dead.

  Outside of the billet, the platoon officer, Jayash, forbade them to walk in groups of less than three. Mages had to have two guards each. Patrols leaving the relative sanctuary of the square were always six strong with a mage in support. The streets weren’t safe.

  Not that they had actually seen anyone. But the sounds were there. The echo of a footstep, the slap of a door on a windless day, the hurried scrabbling of hand in dirt, the ghost of a voice carried on the breeze. Some, probably acolytes, had escaped Darrick’s net. Parve was an eerie place.

  It was approaching noon on the eleventh day of measurement. Having long since calculated the rate of increase of the noon shade and the dimensions of Parve, it was now a question of monitoring, of completing the chart each day, of checking for errors and watching the sky.

  No one had actually said it but they were the early warning system of another dragon attack. An attack they would not be expected to survive.

  Jayash and three soldiers watched while the duty mages prepared the ground for the day’s measurement. Inside an area covering almost a thousand paces on its long side, and seven hundred on its shorter, the paving of the central square had eight lines of metal spikes driven in to its surface. Each line represented a compass point and the distance between each spike and their progression towards the edges of the square marked the expansion of the shadow.

  Jayash strolled around the perimeter of the marked area as the shadow moved across the ground, a monstrous blot on the earth that sent shivers through his body and cooled the fledgling warmth of the day.

  Turning in the area, he walked along one line and back down another, noting the distance between each peg. It was not an exact science, of course. If the cloud was heavy, the shadow’s edge was more indistinct and inevitably there was error.

  He paused at the end of the second line he’d tracked, the one representing south-east, frowning. The final two spikes seemed a little further from their adjacent cousins than the rest, like the line was becoming stretched. He glanced left and right. If his eyes didn’t deceive him, the pattern was repeated in the south and east lines.

  ‘Delyr?’ he called. The Xeteskian looked up from his conversation with Sapon, a Dordovan colleague.

  ‘Jayash.’

  ‘Have we had a problem the last couple of days?’

  Delyr shrugged. ‘Not really. We’ve seen what is a significant but probably small acceleration of the rate of shadow increase but some of it has to be to do with cloud effect blurring the edge of the shade.’ He glanced up into the sky, blue but for the rip overhead.

  ‘Today we’ll know.’

  Jayash nodded. ‘But you’ve known of this possible problem for a couple of days.’

  ‘Five actually. Look, I appreciate your desire to be told every minute detail, but in scientific terms, it was not worth mentioning, so I didn’t.’

  ‘But today.’

  Delyr smiled thinly. ‘You will receive instant assessment followed by a full report. Now, if you wouldn’t mind, time is short.’ He gestured at the rip and the shadow at the base of the pyramid that was all but gone.

  Jayash waved a hand vaguely and stepped back to watch. Delyr and Sapon trotted aroun
d the edge of the spike field, leaving a peg lying at the end of each line. Both mages then walked briskly to the base of the pyramid and knelt close to the sun shade marker, a long piece of polished wood fixed to the ground where the pyramid’s east wall met the earth. When the last vestiges of natural shadow had left it, the measurements were made.

  It was a good enough system but, Jayash considered, it had a flaw. At present, the shade was relatively small and the pyramid close. The movement of the sun between the moment the mages agreed it was noon and the measurement of the shade was negligible.

  But soon, the pyramid would be covered by the rip’s shadow and the agreement of noon would have to be made more distantly. What was more, the area of the shade, growing larger, would mean more time to make the measurements.

  He could foresee, firstly, all his men being co-opted into taking readings rather than securing lives and later, a hopelessly inaccurate measurement, leaving The Raven with a margin of error that ran into days. Delyr seemed oblivious. He alone still thought he was going home once the rate of increase of the shade had been clearly established.

  He didn’t realise he’d been marked as a martyr, not a hero.

  It was noon. Delyr and Sapon straightened and walked quickly back towards the spikes. The rip hung in the air, waiting, its shadow wide and clear, uncluttered by the fog of cloud, its edges hard and distinct.

  Swiftly and without conversation, the two mages took up opposite positions, north and south, and began their task, leaning close to the ground to gauge the exact end of the shade and the beginning of light. Once satisfied, they placed spikes in their marks and, with small iron mallets, drove them into the earth beneath the paving of the square. Moving around the compass points anti-clockwise, they repeated the operation in less than five minutes.

  Jayash could see the mages’ consternation immediately, saw the anxious glance they exchanged and began walking towards them. Delyr and Sapon met by the south line and measured the distance the new spike sat from yesterday’s using both a length of carefully marked rope and a carved length of rod-straight wood in which they made two marks. In this way they took readings from three points before Delyr consulted a parchment he fetched from a leather bag lying on the ground.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Jayash but he knew the answer already.

  ‘Just a moment,’ said Delyr. He and Sapon scribbled on the parchment, re-took their measurements and entered the figures in the log. Delyr looked up.

  ‘Instant assessment?’ suggested Jayash.

  ‘We’re in deep trouble.’

  ‘Justification?’

  ‘We’ll check again tomorrow but the rate at which the shade is growing is increasing. It’s not stable, or doesn’t appear to be.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning the bigger it gets, the faster it grows.’

  Jayash pushed his tongue into the inside of a cheek. ‘So, time is shorter than you originally calculated.’

  ‘Yes, much,’ said Delyr. ‘And we have no way of knowing whether the rate of increase will continue to rise. I suspect that it will.’

  ‘So what’s the new estimate?’

  ‘Yes, hold on . . .’ Delyr looked at Sapon who had been writing furiously. He underlined a figure on the parchment and handed it to Delyr, whose eyes widened.

  ‘Are you sure?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes.’ Sapon nodded. ‘I’ll refine it later but it’s not far away from accurate.’

  ‘Well, before, we had thirty days before the rip covered Parve. We now have eight.’

  Jayash said nothing, just stood at the rip above, shuddered and imagined the dragons pouring through.

  It was the longest night of Ilkar’s life. Between them, The Unknown and Denser set a direct course across Triverne Inlet, using the stiffening breeze to drive them on a single tack towards the meeting of water and the Blackthorne Mountains on the eastern side of the Inlet. At least the Xeteskian was making good on his desire to learn to sail. Further out into the expanse of tidal sea, the swell deepened, making the quiet choppiness near the shore a distant memory. The small boat, never in danger under the stewardship of its dual skippers, pitched and yawed through the swell but made good headway, sail taut and full.

  But something was wrong. Ilkar had always thought himself naturally empathic but even he was taken aback that Hirad in particular seemed to have no inkling that it was much more than the fact that Thraun had not returned to human form.

  For Ilkar though, it was as obvious as the sun in a cloudless sky. He had taken The Unknown’s advice and kept his eye on the horizon, feeling an initial wash of sickness slowly subside as his brain registered normality forever just out of reach. But increasingly, he found his attention straying to the boat’s other occupants. It was the quiet. At first, Hirad had quipped away, talking the irrelevancies that were his trademark in relaxed situations, but received at best low chuckles and short answers in response. Ultimately, there was no reaction and he had shrugged and joined the silence. But quiet was so unlike The Raven. There had been little discussion of their direction on reaching the eastern shore save to try and find horses quickly for the ride to Julatsa. Beyond that, there seemed no plan and, without The Unknown to drive the discussion, the energy to talk was lacking.

  Ignoring his protesting gut and swimming head, Ilkar turned to look at the Big Man and felt a chill in his body. Never given to joviality, The Unknown typically had his eyes everywhere in every situation, playing the role of the guardian angel with consummate skill, snuffing out threat to his friends before it became deadly. But now he was inside himself. Ilkar saw him glance occasionally in their direction, or up at the sail and even more rarely murmur to Denser to trim the tiller position or release a handful of mainsheet.

  Aside from that, his head was angled forward, his eyes closed or fixed firmly on the timbers between his feet and the set of his body slightly slumped. Ilkar knew what had to be troubling him and there was nothing any of them could do about it. He had changed during his brief time as a Protector. Not because of the harsh regime under which the demons held them in thrall but because of the closeness of souls in Xetesk’s Soul Tank.

  He had hinted as much in the days after his release and had appeared to shake off the memories of the bonding he had undergone but now, as they returned to the East, the memories resurfaced. Because every passing moment brought them closer to the Colleges, closer to Xetesk and closer to the Soul Tank from which his soul was wrenched. Ilkar wondered if he could still hear them calling him.

  ‘Unknown?’ said Ilkar. The Big Man looked up, his eyes heavy and full of pain. ‘Can you feel them?’

  The Unknown shook his head. ‘No. But they are there and I am not. Their voices still sound in my memory and tear at the strings of my heart. The emptiness has not filled inside my soul. I think it never will.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Please, Ilkar. I know you want to help but you can’t. No one can.’ The Unknown returned to his examination of the bottom of the boat, his last words directed at none who could hear them. ‘To reach the dragons I will have to walk by my grave.’

  Ilkar felt a pang in his chest and drew in his breath sharply. He caught Denser’s eye. The Dark Mage looked no better than The Unknown and Ilkar felt despair. He had hoped the manner of their escape from the camp would have rekindled his enthusiasm. But it was clear now that it was a spark derived from the innate desire for self-preservation.

  Denser believed he had already served his life’s purpose: Dawnthief was cast and the Wytch Lords were gone. But they had to close the rip in the sky or there would be no hiding place from the hordes of dragons that would eventually fly through it. Not for Denser, not for The Raven and not for Erienne and their child.

  Why then, would he not take his place in the heart of The Raven and drive like he had done all the way to Parve? Ilkar understood very well that he must be fatigued but his mana stamina had returned and any bone-weariness was surely shared by them all.

  �
�Thanks for not dropping me back there,’ said Ilkar.

  ‘No problem. I’d rather have you alive than dead at the hands of the Wesmen.’

  Ilkar took that as a compliment but it saddened him at the same time. The old Denser, that which had surfaced to such spectacular effect in the Wesmen camp, had quickly disappeared beneath the waves of his own self pity once again. It took all the elf’s control not to tell him so.

  ‘You must be tired.’

  Denser shrugged. ‘I’ve been worse. When you’ve cast Dawnthief, any other exhaustion rather pales.’

  ‘Good effort though, Denser,’ said Hirad. Ilkar glanced down at the barbarian, half-sprawled and half-asleep on his bench, a cloak under his head, his eyes closed. Thank the Gods for Hirad. At least, in his ignorance of the mood suffocating The Raven, he was not affected by it. They would need his strength and aggression in the time ahead, that was clear.

  Ilkar opened his mouth to speak but found he couldn’t be bothered to try and engage Denser in any further conversation. Nothing was coming back but the lethargic utterings of a man searching for a reason to keep on fighting. The elven mage shook his head. Surely Erienne and their unborn child were enough. But even she had found his mood impenetrable and their physical distance on this small boat was stark indication of the difficulties they faced.

  At the bow lay the most immediate problem. Will had not taken his hand from Thraun’s back nor his eyes from the wolf’s head for hours. A deep anxiety crowded his face and his whisperings in the ears of his friend did nothing more than bring twitches and low growls. Thraun didn’t want to listen.

  What would they do if he never changed back? Ilkar almost laughed at his own question but feared the noise of his fleeting good humour. It was, of course, not their decision to make. They could not order the wolf to leave them or to stay with them. They couldn’t tell him what to do. They couldn’t control him. The longer he stayed a wolf, the more wild he would become. Eventually, Ilkar presumed, he would cease to recognise them. At that point, they would become as much prey as the next man and they would have to try to kill him.