Neither.
Two unkempt, bearded men stood by the stern of her little boat, staring down at her with dangerous smiles. ‘This is she, sure, sure,’ one said to the other.
‘Just where Da said,’ the other man replied.
‘Don’t see what’s so special ‘bout her. We’ve had plenty prettier.’
‘Right, missa, you come with us,’ the second man said to her. He reached for the gunwale.
‘What—’ She cleared her throat. ‘What if I don’t want to come?’ As quick as she could, muscles still paralysingly slow, head thick with sun and tiredness, she half-stood and swung the oar at the closer of the two men. It hit his shoulder with a resounding thud and jolted free of her grasp.
‘You’ll regret that, missa,’ the man hissed. He hefted the oar, then swung it, handle first, towards her. She made to duck; her leg collapsed under her and she fell into the path of the oar, which took her behind the ear with a blow far harder than anything she could have imagined. She shrieked, her head exploded with pain, and a blurry white light swallowed everything.
Just before the light went out she heard a voice say, ‘Ramzy, you fool, you’ve killed her.’
The next she knew she was leaning over the bow, vomiting into the water, then some time later lying in the dinghy, staring into the sun, her head afire with pain, and later again lapping bilge water from the bottom of the boat.
‘She’s coming to.’
‘She should be dead, you dolt. Look at that oar. Five fingers thick and snapped in half. You hit me like that, I’d be dead.’
‘She fell into it. She’s witchy, like Da, no need to worry about her. Anyway, she got me a good one. Still can’t move my arm.’
‘Pah. You’ll move it quickly enough when the work’s over and the fun begins.’
‘Look at her, drinking her own blood.’
Oh. Stella eased her eyes open: the water in which she lay was cloudy and red, as though someone had poured a half-fermented Trenstane wine into the boat.
‘You hear us, missa?’
She did, but her body gave out again and she faded away into the light.
Her final awakening found her draped over a shoulder, presumably not that of the man she had hit with the oar. He walked slowly, but she felt every step. Her left ear buzzed loudly, damaged, no doubt, from the blow the brute had landed behind it. She could barely raise the energy to be worried about it.
She could see very little from her disorienting vantage. A few long-leafed plants, a gravel path, an almost-dry stream, a wooden doorstep. The man stood up straight: the sudden movement went to her stomach and she vomited over his back. Growls from him, laughter from his companion. He threw her onto a mattress of rushes and stripped off his filthy shirt. For a moment she feared…but no, he bent over and picked up the shirt, bundled it up carefully and threw it into a corner.
‘Here she is, Da. Ramzy bashed her head in but she’s all right, look.’
‘Silence, boy.’ So a snake would sound were it given voice. ‘Let me look at her.’
A grey-cloaked figure shuffled into her field of vision, then tossed back its hood. Stella’s breath caught in her throat. Oh no, no.
Depthless hollows for eyes, a nose cauterised by fire, skin cracked and weeping like a lake bed in a drought. So like her first vision of the Destroyer, when she had seen him unmasked at the extremity of his power. This was not he. The presence in her head remained remote, but she felt a stirring, as though someone ventured to look through her eyes.
The lipless mouth opened on a bright red throat. ‘It is she. The one who abandoned our lord. I have felt her drawing closer for a week or more, and here she is in my house.’ A pale tongue flicked out, flicked back in. ‘It took the best part of my power to draw her here. Ramzy, Tunza, you have done well.’
‘Our reward?’ one of the bearded men—Tunza—asked carefully, submission in his voice.
‘Very well. One prisoner each. Take them outside, but keep the noise down. There may be those seeking this one out.’
The two men left the room.
‘I would welcome your friends,’ the snake-man said, his eye-slits narrowing. His first words to her. ‘They would provide entertainment. Though not the sort I will derive from you.’ His ruined face hungered.
‘You know what I am, do you not?’ he said.
And she did, the bitter knowledge descending on her as he spoke, as the sorcery keeping him alive caked her with its familiar foul aroma.
A Maghdi Dasht, a Lord of Fear.
Like his fellow lords he had been used up in the service of his master, one of a hundred or more Maghdi Dasht who sacrificed their lives aiding the Destroyer to escape Instruere seventy years ago. The greatest magicians of their time, they had been drained of power by their master and reduced to empty shells.
The Falthans had assumed them dead—such a dangerous, erroneous assumption. Now proved false.
‘Yes, I know what you are,’ she said, terror and repugnance fighting for mastery of her voice.
‘But you do not know how much power I expended to place my thoughts in your head. On the river you followed my plan and thought it your own. So here you are.’
She stared at him, unable to speak.
‘And do you know what I want from you?’
The truth descended on her like a cage. The Lords of Fear had been a cadre of magicians high in the Destroyer’s service, familiar with the workings of power. Achtal, the renegade Bhrudwan who chose to serve Hal, had been merely an acolyte, not a fully trained Lord of Fear. Nevertheless he had served Faltha well, playing his part in bringing his former master down, and had served out his days training the guardsmen of Instruere in the battle techniques of the Maghdi Dasht. Achtal had never quite shed his strangeness, but Stella had forgotten the dread accompanying the Lords of Fear. Thirteen thirteens had been their number, and all had accompanied their master westwards on his journey of conquest. This one knew who she was, which meant he knew what ran through her veins. Could sense it, undoubtedly; it would smell like a sweet fragrance to him.
Wanted it.
Yes, she tried to say, I know what you want, but dark dread robbed her of her voice.
‘I see you do. I have waited ten and three score years in this hateful land. I will wait no longer.’
Reaching into the folds of his dirty grey robe, the monster drew out a dagger with a twisted blade. Stella tried to back away, but her body refused to cooperate. He raised the blade in front of his face, both hands on the hilt, point to the ceiling, and spoke a series of arcane words. The blade seemed to glow in his hands. He moved the dagger towards her throat, and his dreadful gaze, intense and ravenous, settled on her.
‘She came through the rushes here, I’m sure of it! Look, can’t you see the broken stems?’ Robal said angrily; unreasonably, in Conal’s opinion. ‘She must have pulled the boat along the riverbank.’
‘I see the stems,’ Conal replied, ‘but how can you tell what caused them to break? Couldn’t the wind have done it?’ He used his voice of reason, so difficult to find on this dreadful day, but it sounded like whining in his own ears and served only to inflame the guardsman.
‘The wind? A gust a pace wide beat a winding path through the rushes, beginning just where Stella came ashore? As likely as the wind blowing you over and breaking your arm. Stella thinks you intelligent: prove her right by using your brain, man! What else could it be but Stella pulling her boat?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ said the miserable priest. ‘But she’s in peril of her life, wherever she is.’
Since his arm had been broken Conal had inhabited an unreal world. He had never experienced any serious pain before, and the continued grinding agony of his left forearm had done something to his mind. It seemed all his priestly morality was a façade, a veneer quickly abraded by the constant ache. Unpriestly thoughts flowed through his mind like a flood: deep angers, towering resentments, fears fit to paralyse him, and a stream of curse-words in a
language he had never thought to hear again. The language of Andratan.
Madness.
Was he so weak that insanity could come from a broken arm? He had barely been able to prevent himself saying some of the things he had been thinking, and at one point while rowing across the river he had actually begun to tip the hateful guardsman out of the boat. Thankfully he had come to his senses before the man noticed, or Conal would be the one in the water, he knew it.
But no matter how much he fought them, the delusions grew worse. Perhaps because he fought, his callow mind told him. A voice had begun to speak to him, sounding for all the world like the voice that laughed at him whenever he entertained private thoughts about the queen. No, no, he could not let this happen! Voices, delusions, everything in his head would see him kicked out of the Koinobia. Here was the voice again, hoarse, breathless: she’s being held in a cottage, follow the broken reeds, you’ll find the boat soon, then a path to your left. The words came from a white place behind his eyes, like a nail driven through the back of his head into his brain, pulsing brightly, flowing through all his senses.
‘How do you know? What are you saying, priest?’
‘I’m sorry?’ He could barely see what lay in front of him. Another image—Stella on the floor of a hut, her face ashen-white—superimposed itself on his sight. He could barely hear the guardsman, his ears instead full of a hissing voice.
‘What is wrong with you? You just told me to follow the broken reeds until we find a path to a cottage, something like that. How do you know?’
I don’t know, I don’t know, please help me, his mind shrieked, but his voice said, ‘Do you think the Most High wishes the queen dead? If not, follow my lead.’
‘I wouldn’t follow you if you had the keys to a Sna Vazthan harem,’ the guard said, then added, as if to himself: ‘First sign of trouble and he goes to pieces.’
You’re right, I have, help me. ‘If you will not follow, I must go ahead alone.’ No, no, let me rest. ‘Keep up with me if you are able.’
As soon as the words were uttered the white spike burst into incandescence. Strength surged through his body. What, what is this? His arms and legs began pumping, propelling his reluctant body through the rushes. He closed his eyes, willed his muscles to stop, but he might as well have willed his heart to cease its staccato beating.
‘Hey, wait! What…where are you going?’ The voice came from a long way behind him.
Time became a confused smear of sound, vision and fear. His true sight disappeared, to be replaced by visions of grey cloaks, frightened faces and the cruel blade of a dagger held high. He heard nothing but cold words, the intoning of an incantation, overlaid with a woman’s pleading voice. And fear, above all fear, fear of plans ruined, of power lost, of revenge unsatisfied.
Robal staggered on, unable to keep up with the feral madman his companion had become. Despite his very best efforts, the ungainly, timid priest outpaced him, thrashing through the reeds and river shallows with absolutely no sense of self-preservation. Surely a man possessed, a thought that frightened him mightily. Had he heard the voice of the Most High speaking through the priest? Until a few moments ago he would have bet his life that the priest, with all his foolishness, was further from the Most High than he, a simple soldier.
But here was the boat, and there the path, just as he had said. And there the mad priest was, some way down the path, a berserker from the scrolls of legend, a huge branch in his left hand—the hand affixed to a broken arm, he reminded himself—making ready to deliver a blow. There it went! It lifted the recipient off his feet. He drew his sword, knowing somehow it would not be necessary.
Now he could hear the priest. The madman uttered a cry of rage, of pain, a tortured howl surely not from the Most High; and continued to scream long after his breath must have run out. Longer, longer. And still he screamed, as though all the agony in the world funnelled through one mouth.
Robal could barely speak, so exhausted was he when finally he reached the man, who howled still. ‘Conal! Priest!’ No response. He banged him on the back, once, twice, and jerked his hand away. The man burned! But at least the scream stopped.
‘Sword,’ the priest said in a voice like a falling mountain, and grabbed the hilt of Robal’s blade. Instinctively Robal grasped Conal’s hand, ignoring the heat pouring from him, but despite using all his strength could not prevent Conal twisting the sword from his grasp. The priest strode forward over the shattered head of the man he had struck with the branch, making for a small cottage a few dozen paces away. Sword in the left hand, the guardsman noted, though the priest wrote with his right.
Robal followed, badly frightened. For a moment there was no sound save the reluctant tramp of his own boots, then a woman’s shrill cry came from somewhere ahead of him. Two thumps, then another cry, a third thump and the cry cut off.
‘Stella!’ Conal bellowed, and rushed forward, blade outstretched as though it were a pike. As the priest disappeared through the door to the cottage, shrieking like a lunatic, Robal was sure he saw smoke coming from his hair.
INTERLUDE
In his extremity, Husk is forced to abandon prudence and draw power from anything he can find. All around the lower levels of Andratan rats drop dead, and outside the fortress birds fall from the sky. Prisoners drift into comas; guards find themselves on their knees, struggling for breath. It is far too late to worry if the Lord of Andratan will sense the disturbance; there is no possibility of disguising what is happening in his keep. The raw magic coursing through Husk and out to his three spikes is unmixed agony to him, his blood having turned to something like acid. His already maimed body begins to steam. He chuffs out a breath, fouler than a crypt.
Something is desperately wrong with the world outside Andratan. He has known this for weeks now, has bent his thoughts towards puzzling it out. Why now? he asks himself. Such cursed coincidence, this interference to the fabric of intersecting wills that lesser men know as magic. If coincidence it is. Have his actions, small as they are, drawn something opportunistic to nibble at his carefully laid plans like a rat at poisoned bait?
More, I need more.
In one of the cells a prisoner’s brain bursts. Blood dribbles from the woman’s mouth.
More.
A torturer collapses in the larger of the two chambers, falling across a brazier filled with glowing coals. He shrieks as his flesh begins to melt, but cannot roll away. Husk has stolen everything he has.
Could it be the Destroyer? Husk wonders. Is he even now manipulating events, aligning them in opposition to Husk’s own plans? It defies all logic. All the Undying Man has to do in order to snuff out Husk’s cleverness is to descend from his precious tower and come down to the dungeon. Husk has no real defence against a physical attack. Stealth, all must be done with stealth. But the strength of the one opposing him, whoever it is, leaves no room for stealth.
Another breath. His body, such as it is, begins to fail him. He will have to withdraw from one of his spikes, leave a third of his plan exposed to chance. If this is what his opponent intends, Husk is about to lose everything. But he cannot…
He hangs onto his sweet angel by the merest thread. She is in danger, yes, but not under the remorseless assault his captain and his priest are suffering. She has a degree of magic herself; perhaps she will draw upon it and keep herself alive until Husk can once again attend to her. He is left with nothing but hope.
He lets her go, hoping he can find her again.
The Most High himself, perhaps? Husk can imagine no other being capable of the immense power he has seen through the unwitting eyes of those he has spiked. Puissance so intense it has burned out some of the threads of the world’s tapestry. Who is capable of that but an immortal? And, as far as Husk knows, there are only three immortals. Soon to be four, he promises himself. But he has been in a dungeon for seventy years. Might the blessed contagion have spread?
No. He cannot imagine either the Destroyer or his one-time consort shar
ing their immortality. One is too jealous of his power, the other too caring to risk infecting others. Might then the Most High have begun a third kingdom? Dona Mihst and Faltha have both failed to a degree; it is possible, unknowable.
He curses his state, then counsels himself to patience. He has no energy to waste on anything other than preserving the Falthan queen. With a hiss he resumes his battle.
FISHERMAN
CHAPTER 9
THE NEHERIAN FLEET
THE COUNTRYSIDE NORTH OF Fossa glittered in the clear noonday sunlight, which played on the beaded remnants of a gentle midmorning rain. Grassy fields spotted with sheep and goats alternated with orchards, ploughed ground and newly planted fields to the west of the narrow, stony Fisher Coast Road, creating a pleasant tapestry spread over rumpled hill country. Here and there tree-fringed outcrops of bare grey rock poked obstinately through the fertile soil, the only land not harnessed in some way for agricultural use. This kind of landscape was widely known as Palestra Country, a reference to the nation nominally ruling over this section of the Fisher Coast.
Tall oak stands and groves of squat fruit trees filled The Champleve, the Palestran name for the narrow strip of land between the road and the eastern cliff-top. A gentle sea breeze ruffled the oaks’ budding crowns in the same fashion a genial father might tousle a favourite son’s head, shaking out sparkling drops of water. Certainly as Noetos watched the trees he could feel his own father’s hand in his hair, triggering an unexpected pang of loss.
He made his way north along the road, The Champleve to the right, Palestra Country to the left, and the Hegeoman stumbling reluctantly ahead of him. Noetos wasted a great deal of his breath ordering his captive to hurry, barking commands, even pushing him in the back; despite this, progress was far slower than he was comfortable with.
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