by David Hair
‘What is it, sir?’
He weighed his words carefully, then decided to tell the truth. ‘It’s a mage, trying to escape the battlefield. And failing.’ He could imagine the scene – some battle-mage whose unit was destroyed, hiding amidst the fallen as long as he could, then trying to make a run for it before full daylight. But evidently the enemy magi were lying in wait. The Keshi have magi! He wondered how many more were out there.
‘Why don’t they come here, sir?’
‘They probably don’t know we’re here.’ Or don’t care. ‘Have any escaped?’
‘A few. The biggest balls of light usually make it across the sky. Pure-bloods, eh, sir?’
‘I expect so.’ He looked the ranker up and down, saw him make up his own mind – that Ramon was a Silacian low-blood and was probably little better off than himself. And he’s probably right. Though if I could get to a skiff … His own was lost on the battlefield.
‘Who’s in charge, sir?’ the ranker asked. ‘Any other plumes make it out?’
Plumes, the rankers slang for their commander-magi: Not exactly reverential, is it? Ramon shook his head. ‘Not many. We’ve got all manner of stragglers here, what’s left of five legions, I reckon. But no senior magi. The Keshi were buzzing around the centre like flies yesterday.’
‘So how many magi have we got, sir?’
Ramon eyed him steadily. ‘Enough to get us home, soldier. What’s your name?’
‘Magro, sir. Penn Magro.’
‘Well, Magro, you tell everyone that General Korion’s son is in charge and we’re going to get home.’ Ramon put all the calm coolness he could fake into the statement. Because I’m damned if I’m going to die here. And I’ve got to see Sevvie and our child safe.
Magro seemed to see something in Ramon’s face. His backbone straightened and his jaw strengthened and he punched his breastplate in salute again. Ramon realised that other men had been listening; he saw the frightened faces taking heart, merely because someone with rank seemed to be in control.
He raised his voice. ‘All of you, listen. We’re going to be moving soon – but not in the way our enemies think. Keep watch and gather your things. Seth Korion has a plan.’
The Hel he does! But I do.
He saluted them all as the desert skies swirled darker and the first rain-drops, large as walnuts, began to fall. The skies turned black in seconds, and the heavens emptied.
2
Taking Flight
Souldrinkers
Rumour reached us from the East, that our gnosis could be awakened in a terrible way. We had all been able to see them: the ghosts of the fallen, rising from bodies, then fading away. It was Vorn who tested whether the rumour was true. He kissed his dying wife and inhaled. Then he produced fire from his hand, just like the Keepers. Soon we were all doing it, without a thought of what it was we were actually doing: consuming one of our kind’s immortal soul!
NOTES FROM THE TRIAL OF JORGI HARLE, SOULDRINKER MAGUS, PALLAS 488
Dhassa, on the continent of Antiopia
Zulhijja (Decore) 928 to Moharram (Janune ) 929
6th and 7th months of the Moontide
Alaron and Ramita struck the coast of Dhassa during the night, somewhere east of Southpoint Tower, and kept going. They steered well clear of the line of torches below marking the road from the tower to Hebusalim. It would be packed with soldiers and traders commissioned to supply the army.
Food and water were their first priorities. Alaron had vague intentions of buying supplies, but he spoke neither Keshi nor Dhassan and had no coin. Neither he nor Ramita wanted to steal; they were both from trading families.
Away from the road the land looked empty until Ramita pointed out that the mounds he’d thought natural were the huts of poor farmers who were eking a living from the apparently barren desert. He picked out a small cluster of them near a small domed edifice and brought the windskiff down. Distant figures stared at them, someone screamed – a frightened woman calling for her children – and a bell started clanging. A man with a hunting bow appeared from behind a hut, but when he saw the skiff, he froze.
Alaron raised his shields, but tried to appear nonchalant as he helped Ramita from the skiff. The little Lakh girl was like a doll – a very plump doll, who walked with a waddling gait and still managed to look dignified.
An arrow rattled against his shields, but he didn’t react.
A young man burst shouting from a hut, waving what looked like a spade. Alaron gestured, and his kinetic-gnosis blew the young man over onto his back. The youth clambered to his knees, scrabbling for his spade again: he was brave enough to be prepared to die for his family. This time Ramita blasted him over backwards. The youth moaned, clutching his head dazedly as the two magi walked past him, heading towards the domed building.
Another attack came, four men at once, but they never got close. Ramita and Alaron made sure not to kill or wound them, though one farmer had to be subdued four times before he finally stopped trying.
When they got close enough to hear what the people were shouting, Ramita answered them in what Alaron presumed was Keshi. At her words the attacks stopped and the villagers gathered warily. There were some seventy people or so, mostly aged, mostly women or children.
They went to the tiny Dom-al’Ahm, where Ramita produced a Lakh sari, a gem-encrusted wonder from the markets of Aruna Nagar in Baranasi, and took control of the bargaining. The expensive cloth was worth far more than a bit of food and water in normal times, but these weren’t normal times. Alaron might not have understood the words but from the tone of Ramita’s voice as she argued it was clear she was a tough bargainer.
The women produced dried chickpeas, lentils and curry leaves while Alaron pumped brackish water from the well, far more than they needed, and Ramita used Water-gnosis to purify it all, so that the villagers would have some more useful gain from the transaction.
‘Tell no one we were here,’ Ramita told them.
Fat chance, Alaron thought, looking at the wide-eyed wonder and dread on the faces surrounding them.
Alaron managed to get her back to the skiff and airborne before she hunched over, wracked by another bout of internal cramping. She wasn’t due for another month, but apparently she had entered the period where over-exertion might trigger early labour. He spotted a dried-up riverbed with high banks that offered some shade and pointed the skiff towards it.
Once they’d landed he covered the skiff with the dun-coloured canvas sails, then gathered enough wood for Ramita to cook the lentils. It was plain fare, but it tasted like a feast after two days with no more than a few sips of water.
They resolved to fly only at night now – the Inquisitors would likely repair their windship quickly and the Dokken were shapechangers, so also capable of flight – and their pursuers would soon be hot on their tail. Before they bedded down, he scanned the expanse of brown around them and the dome of clear blue overhead. High-circling vultures were the only signs of life in all the world. Alaron’s last conscious thought was that one of them needed to stay alert.
*
Ramita woke to find Alaron sound asleep, slumped over like a corpse on the ground beside her. She studied his face: rather naïve and earnest when awake, childlike in repose. It was a pleasing face, she decided, despite his pallor – no wonder the Keshi called white people ‘slugskins’! Even his hair was fair: a light reddish-brown colour, flecked with gold – she’d never known people whose hair was not jet-black until Antonin Meiros brought her north. She wondered how many other strange things there were in the world, and then, Will I live to see them?
As if aware of her scrutiny, Alaron blinked awake and immediately clutched at the cylinder in his belt. He looks so young to be bearing such a responsibility as this ‘Scytale’, she thought as he rubbed his eyes and visibly collected himself. He doesn’t know what to do – and neither do I.
She had asked the Goddess for a sign, but there had been none. Parvasi-ji, she prayed quickly, don’
t forget me, please. She tipped a little water away as an offering.
‘This is so alien,’ Alaron said eventually, looking around. ‘I’ve seen a lot of the world this year, but this place – just look at it! It goes on for ever but it’s a wasteland – there’s nothing out here. What do people eat?’
‘This is desert,’ Ramita replied, ‘but all around Hebusalim there are wheat fields. And there are slave mines in the mountains to the east. Hebusalim trades with the east and the south. Trade is the blood in the veins of the world, my father always says.’
Alaron crinkled his brow. ‘My da once met a Lakh man; he told him the same words.’
‘Really? When did your father meet a man from Lakh?’
Alaron looked at her and smiled awkwardly. ‘I hadn’t wanted to mention it. Before he became a trader, my father was a soldier. This was in the First Crusade, you see. Da had no quarrel with the Dhassans, but they had to follow orders.’
Ramita felt her heart flutter. Her father’s voice echoed inside her head: Orders, the Rondian captain told me. They did it because of orders. ‘Your last name,’ she asked, her voice trembling a little, ‘what is it again, please? And your father’s name?’
‘Mercer. Vann Mercer.’
Her hand went to her mouth as a strange feeling enveloped her. She couldn’t believe that she and Alaron had not spoken of this before, but then, she’d been busy laughing at his first name – Al’Rhon; in Keshi “the Goat” – and she’d paid no attention to his family name. And anyway, what would be the chances that her father and his might have met, and then their children?
This is the sign I was seeking! Oh thank you, Parvasi-ji! A thousand blessings!
‘By all the gods—’ she started.
Alaron looked at her uncertainly. ‘What’s wrong? Are you all right?’
‘The Lakh man your father met? He was my father, Ispal Ankesharan. My father met yours … it is incredible!’
They hurriedly swapped accounts, and the fate of Alaron’s mother, blinded by her own spells, confirmed the tale.
‘Unbelievable!’ he murmured, awestruck.
‘Do you know what this means?’ Ramita asked him. ‘It is Fate!’
‘There’s no such thing,’ Alaron said with surprising vehemence.
‘But this is living proof – I tell you, Aum is watching us. This is Destiny.’
He stuck his chin out and declared, ‘No such thing.’
She snorted. ‘The gods are watching us, Alaron Mercer. Your father met my father in the middle of war-time and talked of peace. That is Fate. That is Destiny. We are Her instruments.’
‘Her?’
‘Fate is a goddess, a woman. This is known. The Goddess of Fate is Makheera, who has six eyes and six arms so that she can watch and manipulate past, present and future. She had brought us together.’
To her confusion Alaron looked increasingly upset. ‘It’s only a coincidence, that’s all.’ He jabbed a finger at her. ‘I refuse to believe that everything I do is determined by any god.’
‘Makheera is a grim but malleable goddess,’ Ramita said, to reassure him. ‘She can be bribed, by sacrificing sweets.’ A programme of prayers and sacrifices bloomed in her mind.
‘For goodness sake, listen to yourself!’
‘People sacrifice to Makheera all the time. Often she grants the person’s wish.’
His lip curled. ‘In other words, a fifty-fifty chance comes off about half the time.’
‘I don’t know why you are angry – this is very auspicious. We are favoured by the gods.’
‘Tell that to my mother: she had her eyes burned out.’ He turned his back on her and stared out at the barren landscape.
Your mother was sinning, she went to say, then thought better of it. It seemed rude, even ignorant, to make such a judgement. ‘Your mother still gave birth to you. This is the mirror of the story of my Kazim: his father burned, but his wife stood by him, just like your father did.’
He turned back and said angrily, ‘No! That’s just too trite – what sort of “higher being” would contrive so much pain just to prove a point? It’s disgusting. You’re just an ignorant peasant!’
‘Peasant? So that’s what you think of me!’
‘You know nothing about what my mother and father have been through.’
‘Yes, I do,’ she said patiently. ‘I’ve seen it first-hand. I’ve bathed Raz Makani’s burns myself. His children shared our house.’
‘Then you must have had your eyes closed the whole time,’ he said bitterly before storming away.
*
Alaron stared out over the featureless sands, seeing nothing, locked in memory. He remembered his mother’s rages, the nights when she would set fire to the bedclothes whilst in the throes of a nightmare, and the way she always tried to hide her marred face from her only child. Tears stung his eyes and he wiped them away angrily. He was aware that Ramita was watching him like a parent waiting for a child to calm down.
We can’t afford to argue. Kore’s Blood, I’ve got the Scytale of Corineus in my belt and the widow of Antonin Meiros in my care. But she’d better not talk about Destiny again. He inhaled deeply until he could speak calmly again. ‘I’m sorry. It still hurts.’
She did her Lakh head-wag, which could mean a lot things but today he thought meant ‘fair enough’. ‘What shall we do?’
He studied her as she spoke. Her Rondian was stilted, and she spoke in a thick Lakh accent, with heavy emphasis on the first syllable and a sing-song lilt that was accentuated by the way she waggled her head slightly as she spoke. She was about as tall as a fourteen-year-old in Noros, but apparently in her land she was full-grown.
But what she did to that Inquisitor …
He had learned of pregnancy manifestation in college: a human woman could develop a weak form of the gnosis from bearing mage-children. But Ramita Ankesharan was bearing the children of Antonin Meiros and there was nothing weak about her gnosis!
She’s going to give birth soon. The weight of his responsibilities felt enormous. ‘I don’t know,’ he said at last. ‘Cym took the Scytale to give to her mother – that was as far as our planning went.’ He shuddered at the memory of Justina Meiros’ death. ‘That’s all gone now.’
Ramita nodded composedly. ‘My husband told me that if something happened to him, I should go to Vizier Hanook, the adviser to the Mughal of Lakh, so that is my intention. But I am aware that it may not be yours.’
Alaron bit his lip. ‘When we were in Norostein trying to work out what to do with the Scytale, we pledged to protect it, and only let people we trust use it. There was General Langstrit, Captain Muhren, Cym, Ramon and me. Just the five of us. Langstrit and Muhren are dead now, Cym’s either dead’ – he swallowed – ‘or she’s a prisoner, and I have no idea where Ramon is.’
‘I too have lost everyone. I do not even know this Hanook. But my husband trusted him and that is enough for me, at least until I can go home.’
Home. Alaron was almost overwhelmed by the mere thought. He pictured lush green fields, and mountains glistening with snow. Familiar faces and voices. Buildings hewn from the rock, cobbled streets. His father. Where’s my father? For the first time it occurred to him that Vann Mercer might be in trouble too – if the Inquisition were hunting one Mercer, surely they’d be hunting them all … Ramon too, perhaps. But what can I do? If I try to warn either of them, I might draw the Inquisitors to us.
He quietly kissed goodbye to the lingering daydream that one day he might return to Silacia, to find a certain girl. A cheeky face with smiling eyes danced into his mind: Anise, whose life he’d saved. I’ve got Inquisitors after me, and there is no way they’ll let me live, even if I go to them of my own free will and hand them the Scytale. There’s no way I’ll ever be able to have that life …
He quietly resolved to go on and hope a solution presented itself, though that meant going into an alien land where he knew nothing and no one. ‘Ramita, whomever I give this Scytale to will become li
ke a god. I don’t know how it works, but there are people out there who do and if they got hold of it, they could become as powerful as the Emperor of Yuros. So I can’t just give it to a stranger, just to be rid of the burden. And you need my help, for now at least.’
‘I do,’ Ramita said softly. She took his hand. ‘Al’Rhon, I know you don’t believe me, but Destiny has brought us together. My husband was very wise, and a great prophet. He told me to trust Vizier Hanook with his own children – might not the vizier also be the right person to trust with the Scytale?’
‘I don’t know,’ he burst out, ‘I don’t know him – I’ve never even heard his name before! He’s not even from Yuros.’
‘Does that matter?’ she asked sharply.
He coloured. ‘No … I suppose not. But the Scytale could create a monster – if I give it to the wrong person …’
‘Then come with me and find out. My husband foresaw me going to the vizier. Come with me to Teshwallabad and at least see if he is the right man to trust with your burden.’
He stared away into space for a few moments, then made up his mind. ‘All right. I’ll come with you.’
*
They slept the remainder of the day. Ramita was awakened first by painful stirrings in her belly. It’s too soon. She clutched the tight mound of her stomach, fingering her belly button, which had popped out during the night flight from the Isle of Glass. Her whole womb was quivering; her skin was tight as a drum. But this was only the start of the ninth month. It was too soon. If the twins came early, they would likely die.
Stay safe, little ones. Stay inside your mother.
She had been frightened many times in the past year since Antonin Meiros had brought her north. She’d dreaded what awaited her in Hebusalim. She’d felt utter terror when Kazim and the Hadishah had murdered her husband. She still feared violence and imprisonment. Keeping her sanity intact through those long periods of doubt and stark seconds of terror had been a severe test – but fear of the impending births was worse than all the rest put together. Her husband had been a tall man – all these white people were giants – and she was sure his twins would be too big for her. If a woman could not push the babies from her belly, she had to be carved open, and that usually killed them. Every girl in Aruna Nagar grew up knowing that pregnancy would be the greatest trial of their lives. Some women were lucky and popped out children easily, but for most, every new child meant risking their lives all over again.