by David Hair
The rest would be up to Cym.
‘It’s better if I go into camp alone,’ he told her. ‘We know nothing about the dynamics of the army. We must be cautious who we approach, and how.’
‘How will I know what is happening?’
‘I’ll send birds.’ He put his hand on her arm in reassurance. ‘Cym, this is the right thing to do. My brethren are part of this shihad, but the hatred of western magi runs deep. I can’t take you into another camp of my people; I’d end up having to defend you all over again, just as I had to within my own pack. And then I was packleader.’
‘I know.’ She looked away, because looking at him was too hard. So much was unresolved between them.
They’d been trailing Salim’s army west, the opposite direction to where they thought they should be going, though they had no idea where Alaron and the Scytale were; it was the only way they might find sympathetic Dokken prepared to leave the shihad to hunt for the artefact.
And as for what lay between them . . . her body was still recovering from purging her womb of his child, and that act had badly damaged the burgeoning trust that lay between them, but she could no longer see any future that wasn’t with him.
Damn my vendetta pledge . . . I may never entirely forgive him for killing my mother, but there must be a better way. I want to be his. He’s lost a child, and it’s true that he killed Justina in battle, not cold blood. Surely he’s been punished enough? Surely the gods will let us be now . . .
‘Zaqri, must we do this?’ She swallowed. ‘Once we rejoin the hunt for the Scytale, there’ll be no escape, no peace. It could destroy everything we have left.’
Zaqri looked at her curiously, rare indecision on his visage, he who had walked like a god into her life. ‘Cymbellea, the Scytale means everything for my people. I cannot walk away from the chance of salvation for them.’
She bit her lower lip, then raised her eyes. ‘Not even for me?’
He stared, surprised. Ever since they’d met, she’d been resisting him. The death of her mother, in combat, but at his hands, had lain like a shadow over them, though he wanted her and she him. She’d fought her instinctual need for him for so long, then succumbed anyway.
‘Stay with me,’ she said, suddenly tired of resisting her heart. She indicated the hearth of the hermit’s cave, and the cot within. ‘Forget the Scytale. Stay, and I’m yours.’ A new future blossomed in her mind, of an impossible love between Souldrinker and mage, made possible because he was perfection, despite his condition.
‘Cymbellea, I don’t understand you. Everything you’ve done since we met has been to find your friends and the Scytale – and now you want to just forget it? I don’t understand.’
She didn’t fully understand herself just now, but she had a vision of another future, vivid as a gnostic Divination: it was full of betrayals and death if they continued to pursue the artefact. ‘You must stay,’ she begged. ‘You must.’ She leant in, inhaled his scent, whispered in his ear, ‘I can feel it. They’re out of our reach. If we go after it, we’ll both die.’ She was suddenly certain that this was so, and her vehemence gave him pause.
‘It is said that the strongest foretelling comes spontaneously,’ he breathed. Then his eyes narrowed. ‘Cymbellea, I would be a traitor to my kind not to follow this through. And I do believe we can find them. Their lives may depend on us finding them first.’
She tried to believe he might be right, but the notion didn’t take root. Instead she did something she’d never done before; she tried to use her body to get what her arguments couldn’t. She seized his face, kissed him hard.
In the past she’d withheld her kiss even when letting him between her legs, but now she held nothing back. Her growing sense of foreboding – that if she let him go, they’d have no future at all – drove her to increasing desperation as she guided him into her, rode him and was ridden, all to try and persuade him to stay.
And still when she woke he was gone.
*
Zaqri saw the skiffs first, their triangular sails quite distinctive from Rondian windcraft as they fluttered lower and vanished with the light. Then he saw riders on pale horses, wrapped in flowing robes, pale against the brown lands. He skirted them in lion form, a dun ghost padding silently to an outcropping where he could overlook the sultan’s army as it approached. After the cavalry came the infantry, who set up camp below him. Unlike the Rondian legionaries there was no fortifying the camp, and far less order. These men weren’t professional soldiers but conscripts.
Their numbers were incredible, though: a sea of men flowing across the ground like a dirty stain, and as twilight fell, the campfires made a river of flame stretching out of sight down the valley. The soldiers looked poorly armed and fed, but there were so many, in dozens of different native attire from all over the continent of Ahmedhassa; it was bewildering.
As the night fell he engaged his senses, seeking the glimmer of gnostic wards that would mark out the Keshi magi and Souldrinkers. He marked out the command pavilions, which were pegged out near the windskiffs, row upon row of them. He shifted to human form, dressed from the satchel he’d carried strapped to his back, then walked into the vast camp. He found the magi first, the Ordo Costruo Bridge-sigils of Rashid Mubarak’s renegades sitting uneasily alongside the Hadishah jackal-head. He skirted them warily, then found what he sought: rough-clad gnosis-users without heraldry, in a camp warded by lines of faint light, invisible to the naked eye. They were erecting a wooden palisade about their tents with sylvan-gnosis: driving staves into the ground then conjuring them to greater heights and shaping them together, sprouting thorns that dripped poison. Some were clearly adept at Animagery and morphic-gnosis too, like Zaqri’s old pack, but the affinities in this group were more varied, and their clothing was of the towns, not the wilds. They were mostly Keshi, and the women wore bekira-shrouds. Many prayed openly to Ahm, on mats facing Hebusalim. Zaqri watched until he saw a familiar face: as a former packleader, he had at times met others of similar rank, to resolve disputes and forge tenuous links.
There were only a few thousand Souldrinkers in all of Ahmedhassa, almost all of them users of elemental or hermetic gnosis, the most tangible forms of magic. His own pack had been chiefly Hermetic and Fire or Air, making Animagery and Morphism their prime attributes: hence the facility for controlling and shifting into animal form. As shapeshifters they’d been drawn to the wilds, but Souldrinkers with more elemental skills were better able to hide in human society. Dokken Earth-magi clans dwelt secretly in most Keshi cities, hiding behind a respectable façade as masons. Fire-, Water- and Air-wielders found similar ways to blend in.
Zaqri paused, recalling the previous night, the hours of increasingly desperate love-making by which Cym had sought to make him stay. She’d given up on the Scytale and saving her friends: her ambitions had collapsed; now it was all about trying to find any kind of life in peace . . . with him.
He couldn’t deny he was tempted to turn around and return to her. No one had ever moved him the way she did, and to have her so passionate and yielding in his arms was a gift from the gods. But somehow, in trying to be everything to him last night, she’d ceased to be herself. The woman he’d fallen in love with didn’t give herself easily; she gave grudgingly, and demanded a price. She made you earn her. This other Cym was a lesser being.
So he’d left her sleeping, to try and save his kindred.
I cannot let the Scytale vanish again. We must seize this chance for our salvation.
He couldn’t put that aside for such a selfish thing as love.
So he stepped to the edge of the camp and called the clan-leader’s name. ‘Prandello!’
*
The Souldrinkers in this camp were Earth and sylvan gnostics. Prandello, their leader, was a builder from a village near Medishar, but he was of Silacian stock. His town was outside the territory of Zaqri’s pack, but they’d met when moving fugitive Dokken. Prandello had lank grey hair; his olive skin was sun-darkened and
his eyes so deep-set they were black holes. He’d dwelled all his life in Medishar: his keffi headscarf was bound in the native way, and he embraced Zaqri as a Keshi, kissing both his cheeks and his lips.
‘Sal’Ahm, my friend. How come you here?’ he asked as he ushered him into his tent. Zaqri had been seen by Prandello’s people of course, and some probably recognised him; that couldn’t be helped. But Prandello had been honest in their past dealings. A woman worked within, preparing the bed – a human woman, Zaqri noted in surprise, no longer young, and clearly scared of Prandello as she scuttled away, leaving the two men alone.
‘I had heard that your pack were sitting out the shihad.’ Prandello remarked, without condemnation: many Dokken had regarded the alliance offered by Rashid of Hall’ikut as a trap.
Zaqri grimaced as his first lie approached. How much to reveal was difficult, but it sounded like Prandello didn’t know about This pack’s destruction. ‘I’ve left them to Wornu while I undertake a quest of great importance to our people.’
‘A quest? Quests are for ballads, my friend, not the real world.’ But Prandello still sealed the tent flap closed with a gesture, then sat on a cushion, motioning Zaqri to another. He produced a metal flask and poured them both a thimble of the bittersweet lemon liquor of Silacia. They each took a sip while Zaqri marshalled his story. From outside came the crackle of a fire and someone struck up a traditional Rimoni song that set his heart-strings humming to the tune. He began to feel that he was among kin.
‘I need your help, Prandello, and that of any you can trust to put their loyalty to their Brethren first, ahead of the shihad or any other allegiance.’
The Silacian glanced at his own hands, which were tattooed with lines from the Kalistham. ‘That is most of us, brother. Tell me more: a packleader doesn’t leave his charges lightly – your “quest” must be of grave import, yes?’
Here we go . . . ‘Brother, I have gained information about something of great moment to our people.’ Zaqri proceeded to give an edited version of the truth: that the Seeress Sabele had sought his aid, guiding them to an island-refuge where they’d found magi concealing a famed artefact, one that could cure the Dokken of their need to consume souls.
‘My pack tried to seize the artefact, but two magi escaped with it,’ he said as Prandello listened intently. ‘Sabele guided my pack in pursuit, but they’ve evaded us – I had to leave my people in Dhassa, and the Seeress is dead, but the hunt goes on.’
Prandello was intrigued. ‘A cure for our condition? Is that possible?’
‘I can scarcely believe it myself, but when you hear the name of this thing, you will be convinced.’ Zaqri leaned forward and whispered, ‘It is the Scytale of Corineus.’
Prandello was stunned. ‘Sol et Lune! But surely the Scytale of Corineus resides in the deepest vaults of Pallas? The pillar of Urte would crack before it left there.’
‘Nevertheless, it is beyond all doubt. It’s been stolen, and it’s here in Ahmedhassa!’
‘And Sabele is lost?’ Prandello rubbed his brow. ‘She’s been with us for ever. The tales say it was she who discovered how to unlock our gnosis.’
‘A Keshi girl named Huriya took her soul, then vanished, seeking the Scytale for herself.’ Zaqri looked at Prandello enquiringly: it was quite possible that Huriya had also sought him out.
‘Huriya? I don’t recognise the name. Who else knows of your quest?’
‘The Inquisition, or parts of it,’ Zaqri admitted. ‘They showed up during our attempt to seize the Scytale for ourselves and caused the confusion that enabled the two magi to escape. Presumably there are forces within the Rondian Imperial Court that are aware, but the emperor must fear revealing the loss, lest it trigger a revolt.’
‘So Rashid doesn’t know, nor the Hadishah?’ Prandello mused.
‘I presume not. I’d fear them knowing: they are magi, after all.’
‘They have promised a new era between us.’
‘And now they know your names and where you live. Will you be safe in Medishar after the war?’
‘I acknowledge your point. But there were Rondian Inquisitors in Medishar during the Second Crusade. That was too close for us; we needed to make a stand. The shihad was our best option, but we aren’t blind to the risks.’
‘I’m not criticising,’ Zaqri said mildly. ‘I’m just glad you’re here now.’
Prandello toasted him. ‘What is it you want, amici?’
Zaqri exhaled slowly. ‘I have a trail gone cold: I need hunters, loyal to the Brethren and willing to leave the shihad and accept my command. The future of our people is at stake, brother. Imagine a world in which our affliction is cured and we stand as the new power, a host of Ascendant magi united by our shared suffering and ready to right the wrongs of the past.’
‘May it come to pass,’ Prandello declared. ‘I am with you.’ He waved a hand to encompass the camp outside. ‘Salim is close by, a lion attended by jackals. The sultan is a rare leader, a man to inspire anyone, but the alliances that bind this camp are weak. There are Ordo Costruo rebels here, and Hadishah, and all the sultan’s human warlords. We Dokken know that our welcome here is tenuous at best, and that someday soon we will have to leave. Your coming is a sign that the time has come for us to disappear into the night.’
*
It became a pattern: a messenger bird, usually a sparrow, would arrive just before dawn as Cym sipped a weak tea made from dried astera leaves, boiled pre-dawn because she couldn’t risk a fire during the day lest the smoke draw unwanted eyes. The bird would land beside her hand and wait, trembling and afraid, until she picked it up. Then the message implanted in its aura would flow into her and she would hear Zaqri’s voice.
The news sounded good: a Dokken packleader named Prandello was sheltering him. The army was delaying to sort out some problems in the supply lines before they pushed on to the river. Prandello had agreed to help, but they were under constant surveillance by the sultan’s magi, so they must prepare their move carefully. She should stay put, Zaqri told her, and await his instructions.
He missed her. He loved her.
It was strange how he could find the courage to say such things when he wasn’t with her.
I love you too. She whispered it in her mind, but without the skill to implant a message in the bird’s head as he had, she didn’t know how to reply. It was too dangerous to move from her hideout in a faceless mass of rocks in the midst of nowhere. Whenever she went to the fringes to watch, she glimpsed riders passing in the distance. The sultan’s army were near, and foraging – if they found her, a young woman alone, they would misuse her, so she stayed hidden, even when she was certain she was alone.
The rocks were snake-infested, but she had enough Animagery to drive them from the areas she frequented. The cave where she slept away most of each day and night wasn’t big, and once she had rested and recovered, she was bored.
Zaqri’s latest message said.
Then no bird came, and worry made her frantic. She prowled her little camp, fretting, convinced he was going to appear from any direction, right now. She sweated and prayed and cursed and couldn’t sleep, no matter what she tried. Dawn found her covered in grime, rock dust sticking to her skin and her hair, itching and filthy. She hadn’t washed in eight days, and her stores of food were running low.
Finally a wren swooped onto the rock above and bobbed to her hand. She almost crushed it in her desperation as she opened her mind and Zaqri’s voice filled her head.
She found herself silently bawling, wracked with grief and utter fru
stration, so much that she could barely breathe. Eventually she calmed enough to wipe her swollen eyes and think.
How can you send me ‘all of your love’ when they are just words? All of your love means your face and your hands and your body and your smell and your taste and your heat!
Having broken through all of her self-punishing hate, and the cruel bonds of vendetta, she needed him all the more. Finding Alaron and the Scytale and freeing the Rimoni were like pallid shadows against the desire to see his face. And now Ramon was in danger too. The army is moving, he said. And she was running out of food.
That night she slipped from the cave and padded toward the sultan’s camp.
My place is with him.
*
There was a spider in the corner of Alyssa Dulayne’s pavilion, a big, sleek thing with purple swirls on its distended abdomen. Deadly poisonous, but she didn’t mind. She understood spiders and their webs. You filled your world with strands, so thin and gauzy the creatures blundering past didn’t notice. You wove patiently, repaired and tended constantly, then retreated to the shadows, always touching your web, waiting for it to tremble.
When Rashid Mubarak had gone north after Shaliyah, he’d left her behind in the sultan’s court. Some fools wondered if Rashid was tiring of his white-skinned concubine, but she knew her value. She was his eyes and ears at the heart of the most vital web of all.
I’m the most powerful woman in Ahmedhassa. I’m the Lucia Sacrecour of the East.
If she’d been born in Pallas, she would have been spinning her webs at the centre of the empire. Instead she’d been born among the Ordo Costruo of Pontus, where intellect and seriousness were prized and beauty regarded as merely skin-deep. She’d shown them skin-deep: she’d gone deep under their skins, those pompous geniuses; they could be reduced to quivering jelly like any other man.