In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’ asked Duncan.

  ‘Find out how they jumped the wall, what drunken route they weaved through the minefield, and then give them a few good stripes for their cheek,’ said the sergeant. ‘Fifty lashes apiece should send their caravan master the message that a house’s hold isn’t a free camp site. Teach them to keep a tighter leash on their scroats.’

  Duncan walked over to the cage. Jacob Carnehan clung to the bars like a wild animal, his eyes filled with an icy madness that Duncan didn’t think any human could hold. ‘Where are they, where’re the others?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s Carter and the people the raiders took?’

  ‘They’re not here,’ said Duncan. ‘Just myself and Willow, you remember, my sister?’

  ‘Where’s Carter?’ He said it like a man dying of thirst in the desert mouthing the word water.

  ‘They’re working in the sky mines,’ said Duncan. ‘The empire has a giant volcano where metals and ores are still pumped out from the world’s deep heart. There are mining stations and stakes tethered above it on antigravity stones. Everyone from Northhaven is serving there.’

  ‘Serving?’ snarled Jacob. ‘How much choice do they have in that?’

  Paetro pulled Duncan back a step. ‘Careful there, lad. You’re close enough for him to snap your neck.’

  ‘He’s a pastor,’ said Duncan. ‘He’s not dangerous, I promise you. What in the world are you doing here, Father Carnehan – inside the empire? How did you even find me?’

  The gask came forward to the bars. ‘We are an expedition of mercy, manling. Funded by the town and the people of the great forest to track down everyone seized by the slavers. We have money to purchase those taken, to buy them back from their new owners.’

  ‘You,’ said Duncan, still stunned by the shock of seeing Weylanders in the castle. ‘You’re Kerge’s father?’

  ‘I am!’ said the gask. ‘I have come for him!’

  ‘Your people are owned by the mistress of this house,’ said Paetro. ‘And you’ve come a long way for nothing, my quill-skinned friend. Because their labour means a lot more to her fortunes than a camping pack filled with exotic trading coins.’

  ‘Your father sent us, boy,’ said the pastor, his hand reaching out pleadingly to Duncan. ‘Check the stamp on those coins. It’s Benner Landor’s money we’ve brought to buy our people back with!’

  ‘How did you get here,’ demanded Paetro. ‘Here and the empire?’

  ‘We started out flying on merchant carriers. On one of the ships we met this old rascal who had dealings with the skels, scouting soft targets for the raiders. The old coot told us all slaves taken by the skels eventually ended up in Vandia. A few months later we came across a guild library in the wilds,’ said Jacob. ‘The library had plans for a craft powered by rockets, one that could travel faster and further than anything we thought possible. We spent most of the Landor fortune building it. But the ship ran out of fuel and crashed on the empire’s borders. The rest of the way we travelled using Khow’s homing sense. But the damn gask’s led us to the wrong Weylanders!’

  ‘His nose’s led you to the wrong country,’ said Paetro, uneasily. ‘The imperium takes slaves from a respectable distance so it never has to deal with strays, rescue missions and expeditionary forces. You’re the first who’ve made it this far. And I reckon you’ll be the last too.’

  So the pastor came here searching for the wrong Weylanders? Duncan felt the anger rising inside him; so strong it threatened to overwhelm him and choke his words. ‘Where’s my father?’ demanded Duncan. ‘You’re it? You’re the entire expedition? The town’s pastor, a single mountain pilot, a woodland gask and this filthy old tramp? Where’s my father? He lost his only son and daughter… where is he?’

  ‘We started out with a company of the king’s guardsmen,’ said Jacob, ‘but some of them were killed and the rest deserted along the way. We had Constable Wiggins with us, too, but he was murdered by savages during the journey.’

  ‘To hell with the king’s men!’ shouted Duncan. ‘Where’s my bloody father? Was he badly wounded in the raid? Did he lose his legs?’

  ‘His people needed him back home,’ said Jacob. ‘The workers, everyone who relies on your house for their work and livelihoods. Benner funded our outfit and we’ve come on his behalf.’

  Tears rolled down Duncan’s cheeks. ‘We needed him. Willow and I needed him here. You came! You came for Carter! Even this gask came for his son, didn’t he?’

  ‘We would never have made it this far without your pa’s assistance,’ said Jacob.

  ‘He didn’t give you his money for us,’ said Duncan. ‘That was just a cheque he wrote so he could forget all about his children, wasn’t it? He knew you were going to die! Nobody escapes from the sky mines… nobody ever turns up here searching for slaves.’

  ‘We’re not dead yet,’ growled the pastor.

  The pastor didn’t answer Duncan’s accusations. But then why should he? Jacob Carnehan was a churchman. He only told the truth. And what he’d left unsaid was enough to make Duncan’s mind up for good. ‘I’ll see what I can do for you, Father Carnehan. You can take Willow back home with you if she wants to leave. I’ll pay for your passage myself. But I barely had a home worthy of the name to return to even before I was snatched by the skels. This is my place now – I’m needed here. I’ve seen wider horizons than the tiny little corner of our undeveloped backwater. Northhaven would seem small now.’

  ‘You’re needed here? I need my son!’

  ‘He will never be freed,’ said Duncan. ‘Carter’s still alive. That’ll have to be comfort enough for you, Father; and for everyone else in Northhaven. Tell them back home that quite a few of us are still alive. I doubt if anyone at Hawkland Park will be interested in the news, but there’ll be families on the hill that will care to know. And you tell my father that I’m not a slave anymore. I’m a citizen. I’m my own man. And I freed Willow too. I did it without him, without Landor money, or his name, or his precious house.’

  ‘You’re a renegade,’ snarled the pastor. ‘That’s what you call a man who sells out his own people to join the enemy.’

  ‘I’m the man who’s going to try and save you and your friends’ lives,’ retorted Duncan. He looked with astonishment at the churchman. Jacob Carnehan’s features twisted and contorted. Nothing like the stern, straightforward man who preached peace and gentleness in Northhaven. ‘You can thank me for it later.’ Duncan turned his back on the cage and stalked away with Paetro. Behind him, the churchman howled and shook the cage’s bars as though the prison chamber was an asylum. Duncan couldn’t help but feel pity for the pastor. The journey, its travails and the battles his party had fought on the way had clearly left him deranged. But there was little Duncan could do. Not for the pastor’s peace or those still trapped inside the sky mines.

  ‘That was a hell of a trip they must have undertaken,’ said Paetro. ‘All this way for nothing. The first to have made it. That’s the stuff of legend, lad.’

  ‘He’s a priest. Perhaps he prayed for a miracle,’ said Duncan. ‘But I don’t think his master is kind enough to grant two.’

  Paetro glanced forlornly back towards the holding chamber. To where his daughter awaited her torturer’s arrival. ‘Aye, there’s truth in that. The gods love nothing better than to play with the fates of honest families. It’s always the ones like Apolleon, Circae and Machus who’re given wings to fly above the rest of us.’

  ‘Jacob Carnehan was lucky getting this far,’ said Duncan. ‘But it’s run out now.’

  ‘Chance, you say? I’m not so sure. You’re certain he’s a priest?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve sat in his church enough times to know he can preach until his congregation’s eyelids start to nod.’

  ‘I’ve seen a man stare at me with those kinds of eyes on the battle­field,’ said Paetro. ‘Never inside a temple.’

  ‘You can give Lady Cassandra the bad news,’ said Duncan. ‘I’ll see h
ow my sister’s taking hers. My father sent those idiots out here? I’ll send him Willow back for his money.’

  ‘You don’t want to swap?’ asked Paetro.

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘The young Highness will take the word about Hesia better if she hears it from you,’ said Paetro. ‘And telling your sister she’s going home… well how bad can that be?’

  You don’t know my sister, thought Duncan. But he acquiesced. In truth, he was glad not to have to see Willow again for a few hours. He’d had more than enough of witless Weylanders judging him, when he was trying to do his best for the cretins. Maybe Willow and the pastor would have been happier if Duncan Landor had stayed in the sky mines to be worked to death? Stayed a slave rather than earning his freedom; confounding their low expectations of him. Poor useless Duncan Landor, who was no good to anyone without his family’s wealth and reputation backing him. A purposeless tool to be discarded by women like Adella as soon as a surer bet appeared. What Duncan had achieved, he’d earned on his own. With nobody to help him. They should have admired him for it, not been filled with jealousy for his feats.

  FIFTEEN

  UNHAPPY ARRIVALS

  ‘Oh, my dear vile-tilted crown,’ said Sariel, clutching his head in his hands. ‘My mind feels as though it has been torn in twain. It was a shaky bridge he established… curse the great diviner.’

  ‘How did it happen?’ demanded Jacob. ‘I remember the gads’ stone circle, their ritual. Then being woken up here, inside another circle, in the grounds of this giant Vandian fortress.’

  ‘You were thinking of them, weren’t you?’ said Khow. ‘This young manling Duncan Landor and his sister.’

  ‘Yes, they were on my mind,’ admitted Jacob. ‘The very last thing before I passed out. My boy Carter had quarrelled with Duncan over a girl and they’d fought a duel. A little while later the skels arrived for them both.’

  ‘Your thoughts were the homing sense that directed us here. My people have always known the stones were ancient, beyond our understanding,’ said Khow. ‘But this? They are gateways, are they not? They pass information.’ The gask talked to Sariel, but the old bard affected not to have noticed his cellmate. They spoke low so the gaoler couldn’t listen in on their conversation, but still, Sariel had heard the question well enough.

  ‘We’re not damn information,’ said Jacob. ‘We’re people!’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said the gask, ‘we are merely points of data. And in a manner of speaking, the entire universe is. Otherwise my people’s calculations could not be brought to focus on mortal matters. Think of the stones as a radio set, but a radio that allows people to be transmitted from one location to another.’

  ‘You’re right about one thing, this is beyond your woodland magic,’ said Jacob. ‘Sariel, the gads seemed to think you know about the stones and their use…’

  ‘I knew once,’ whispered Sariel. ‘But the sorcery that controls the runes has been burnt from me. It comes and goes like a dream.’

  ‘A dream you must remember!’ said Sheplar, the pilot lifting Sariel off the cell’s floor and shaking him in frustration.

  ‘It is a nightmare. Leave me alone! There are things best forgotten.’

  ‘Come on, old man,’ urged Jacob. ‘We need your help. If the stones carried us here, they can carry us back home too.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ whined the bard. ‘How do you think I ended up with a fraction of my memories and the rest of my head filled with naught but echoes? There are demons that haunt the passages those stones use to pass travellers across the world. Terrible entities. You call them stealers! Devils… evil and capering and endlessly hungry. They caught me using their strange bridges and they almost burnt me to ashes. That’s why I wander the land… why I can never slow, so they might never catch up with me. I am marked by the stealers for the sins of my trespass.’

  ‘Just tell me about the damn circles!’

  ‘Sometimes the stones open a gate for me, sometimes they don’t,’ said Sariel, tugging frantically at his beard. ‘The stones have a will of their own. You can only use the stones as a portal to depart once. Each circle draws power from the underworld, immense and terrible energies. The stealers feel it ripped from their hellish plains and trace the energy’s thread to the circle, then they overload the stones in a fierce explosion so there is one less source to rob them in future.’

  ‘So we can still use those stones out in the grounds to escape?’ asked Jacob.

  ‘Maybe, maybe,’ said Sariel. ‘But the stones outside will be destroyed by the stealers soon enough. Exiting a gate doesn’t rob the stealers of their power, but it does leave a ripple in their world, a current they can track. It may take a day or two, but the stealers will hunt down the stones we exited by and overload them too, place the circle beyond our use.’

  ‘Then we have to make sure the Landor boy releases us to his sister’s care before then,’ said Jacob. He wasn’t sure what to believe of the tale the mad old bard had told them. But there was one thing that certainly wasn’t one of Sariel’s crazy stories. They had crossed an impossible distance faster than anything alive should have been able to. Maybe they had trespassed into hell to reach Vandia? Jacob would gladly strike a deal with the stealers to get Carter back. You might yet have to.

  ‘We must escape,’ begged Sariel. ‘The stealers will come in search of me. They loathe the prince of players for tapping into their dark powers. They will hunt me and try to incinerate me again.’ He gazed out at the gaoler lounging behind his table, tucking into a plate of steaming meat. ‘They could come to us as anyone. That is why they’re called stealers… you can’t trust your friends, your family. It is the faces and bodies of those closest to you that they steal to cavort in.’

  ‘And their souls,’ said Jacob. ‘And we’re here to save my son’s. Damned if I’ll be packed off home by that Landor whelp like a piece of unwanted baggage.’ He remembered a passage from the Bible he used to work into his sermons. Beware the devils that steal into your heart and turn your hand to evil. Beware such stealers and turn your hand only to good deeds. If that was a warning for him, he was about to throw it out of the window. Nobody was going to stop him getting to the sky mines. Not Duncan Landor or the Vandians. And good deeds weren’t what it was going to take.

  ‘There will be nothing left of me this time,’ moaned Sariel. ‘Nothing left of my mind once they have crushed me again.’

  ‘Stop bleating, smelly one,’ said Sheplar. ‘It will not free us from here.’

  In the cage next to theirs, its sole prisoner, the woman, called out to their gaoler. She sounded loud and desperate. ‘Lend me your blade. You used to be in the legion, didn’t you? Grant me a clean death.’

  ‘And reserve a bad one for me, when the torturer arrives and finds only a corpse to question?’ He laughed. ‘Better you than I, Hesia!’ She fell back to the floor, hugging her legs.

  ‘Misery loves company,’ said Jacob, shaking his head. The woman had looked wretched enough before. Jacob and the expedition had been the main audience when a young girl had slipped inside the cell block… the chief imperial’s daughter, as it transpired, obviously used to getting her way, shrieking and crying about the imprisoned woman’s base treachery. Until a party of guardsmen turned up, summoned by the gaoler to whisk Lady Cassandra far away from the dungeon level. Jacob sighed. So near, only to end up trapped here. Waiting on the good graces of Duncan Landor to convince his new friends the expedition posed no threat and deserved to be allowed home. We’ll be lucky if they don’t turn up with a firing squad. He paced the cell, waiting hours for Duncan to return. But when a new visitor did arrive inside the holding chamber, it was Willow Landor, her face streaked with tears and red from crying.

  ‘Dear god! Father Carnehan, it is you. I thought that they had made a mistake – that Duncan had asked the Vandians to mock me, telling me a pack of complete nonsense. But you’re here!’

  ‘So it seems,’ said Jacob. ‘We�
��ve come for you, for Carter, for everyone.’

  ‘The Vandians won’t free the sky miners for money,’ said Willow, her eyes glancing between the prisoners in the cage. He could see the hope dying in her eyes. Just the four of them against an empire. ‘As slaves we can mine more trading metal in a single hour than you can have possibly carried here.’

  ‘We used our funds getting to the empire and the rest was stolen,’ admitted Jacob.

  ‘It’s a wonder you are here at all. Duncan’s soldier friend told me you built a rocket-powered aircraft, similar to the Vandians’ vessels. Is it still operable?’

  ‘Would you want to come back with us?’ said Jacob. ‘Your brother seems to have turned native.’

  ‘He thinks he’s a Vandian lord now,’ said Willow. ‘He’s a fool.’

  ‘And Carter’s alive?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, holding back her tears again. That was when Jacob knew he could trust her. There were a lot of things you could fake. The lie behind their strange arrival, maybe, but not what this girl felt towards Carter. ‘He’s in a bad way, though. They flogged Carter for trying to escape and have been punishing him ever since. It’s not just his body that’s broken either. He believes he’s being sent visions, seeing terrible things. I think captivity is driving him insane.’

  Jacob glanced back to Sariel, moaning and shaking on the floor. He imagined Carter, freed and broken, wandering the world far-called, tramping down an endless road in search of a long lost life like poor, mad Sariel. Looking for his mother and his dead brothers. Comforting himself with alcohol. Never finding them. Tears came to Jacob’s eyes. He wished Mary was still here. She would know what to do, how to heal him. Jacob understood what was needed to free his son, but how to mend what had been broken? He reached through the bars, touching the girl’s fingers. ‘Nothing we can’t fix, Willow.’