The Seventh Friend (Book 1)

by Tim Stead

  He released the wolf and moved again. Navigating through the darkness was a skill, and he was rusty. He moved what he thought was east, towards Bas Erinor, and touched another wolf. Now he saw the slopes of the Dragon’s Back, huge mountains topped with snow and ice. The wind was blowing chill and the pack was on the scent of an elk. This was further west. A mistake. He moved again, slipping a greater distance through the darkness and came across another mind, dimmer, smaller. A dog. He touched it and saw a street that needed cleaning, piled with garbage. He smelled food, human food past eating, but it smelled good. He had no control over the beast, and as much as he wanted it to do other things, to explore more populated streets, the dog carried on with its business, unaware.

  This was Bas Erinor, he was certain. The glimpses he caught when the dog looked up were enough. The style of the buildings was Avilian, and the street sloped up to a great dark mass which he assumed was the city of the gods. Not much seemed to be wrong here, but how could he tell?

  A burst of light and noise sent the dog running the other way, a glance back showing an open door, a square of lamplight spilling out into the street. He heard voices, but not words. The dog stopped when the door closed and looked back, staying still for a while, gauging the danger, the apprehension of which diminished steadily as the darkness continued to hold sway. It walked carefully back towards the door. There was a new smell of food here.

  The dog bent its head and sniffed at what had been thrown out. There was gravy, a smear, and a few scraps of pastry. Its tongue flicked out and they were gone, barely tasted. The dog looked up again, left, right. It trotted a drunken path down the street, following any hint that food might lie among the rubbish.

  Narak stayed with the dog for a while. It was mildly interesting to see how it differed from a wolf. It behaved with the caution of a prey animal, eating on the run, watching for danger even as it bent its head to feed.

  It came to the end of the street and paused. There was another dark alley, but to get to it the dog would have to cross a larger road. As it looked about Narak was able to see quite a few people. Several men were unloading a cart outside a tavern, man-handling barrels down through a trap into the basement. He could hear their voices clearly, speaking Avilian. One of them was talking about his wedding, asking the older men questions.

  “Once you’re married don’t spare your fists,” one of them was saying. “Make sure she knows what to expect if she gets out of line.”

  “You’re a bastard, Tegal,” one of the others said. “You hit your wife and all you get is a surly servant, and if she has brothers, well, you might get your own remedy back.”

  “What would you know?” the one called Tegal demanded. He stood up and eased his broad shoulders. He had a brutal, scarred face. A man used to fighting, Narak judged, a thug who spoke with his fists.

  “I’ve had more joy out of my marriage than you ever had of yours,” the other retorted.

  “Joy.” Tegal spat. “What are you, a fucking poet?”

  This was the moment that the dog chose to bolt across the road. It paused and looked again just before the cloak of shadows, listening to the sound of the voices. A shout brought the animal’s head round a half circle. It crouched lower, tense with alarm. There were men there, too, running up the street, one fitting an arrow to a bow. The animal could not recognise the actions, but the running and the noise was a threat, so it turned and ran into the alley, stopping after twenty yards or so to see if the threat was gone.

  The men, there were four of them, stopped at the junction and one of them struggled to light a lamp. The man with the bow raised it and an arrow clattered off the cobbles a few feet from where the dog stood and shot off down the dark alley. The dog turned and ran again.

  That was enough for Narak. What the note had said was true. They, whoever they might be, were killing dogs in Bas Erinor. He did not think that he would learn more by witnessing the dog’s death or escape. Being inside a dying animal was not something that he wanted to repeat too often. It was unpleasant. He left the dog.

  He inhabited the Sirash again. What now? It still meant very little, but if it meant anything at all it was that someone had sought to warn him, to tell him. He could see no way past that. The warning leant gravity to the fact.

  The four men had not been very effective. They had not been in uniform. In fact he could not see a point to the other two. The archer, yes, and the man with the lamp perhaps, but the others were just hangers-on. You’d be hard pressed to catch a dog with a knife, or to run it down on foot. These were not members of the city guard, then. Nor were they soldiers of the Duke’s. Not unless things had fallen away very badly.

  He could warn the others. But warn them of what? Did he dare cry Seth Yarra on the basis of a few ragged men hunting dogs at night in Bas Erinor? No. On the basis of the warning, then? Perhaps, but he knew that most of the Benetheon would not be inclined to credit such paper thin tales. Yet it had been Seth Yarra who had killed dogs before, so long ago in Afael.

  He reached out to Beloff. Of all the Benetheon the Bear was closest to him. They had both fought alongside Remard in the last war, had fought back to back in the streets of Afael. There was a bond between them, and he trusted it.

  It was like touching someone on the shoulder. He had experienced it himself many times, a touch inside the mind, a knock on the inner door.

  “What?” It was Beloff, suddenly a presence in the Sirash, riding in on the connection that Narak had developed. “Narak?” He was aware of the bear’s essence, a hairy, massive strength.

  “Yes.”

  “What do you want? I’m busy.”

  Narak couldn’t see out through Beloff. The Bear was closed to him, an equal. He wondered what Beloff was doing.

  “I am concerned,” he said. He explained about the note, about his experience with the dog in Bas Erinor. He mentioned Seth Yarra.

  “You think?” Beloff sounded sceptical.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I will send out agents. Have you noticed anything unusual?”

  Beloff snorted; a difficult thing to achieve in the Sirash. “Bears see nothing,” he said. “Wolves see almost nothing. You need to talk to the Sparrow.”

  “No. You know I cannot.”

  “Don’t be such a puppy,” Beloff was scornful. “She is the one you need to speak to.”

  Narak said nothing. It was a subject that left him without words.

  “You know what needs to be done. Do it.” Beloff finished and abruptly withdrew leaving Narak alone in the Sirash.

  The Lover’s Revenge

  The Great War echoes down our history like a beating drum. Every child knows tales of Fox Remard, and his name is heard often on their innocent tongues, for he is the hero, the general, the unblemished genius who won the war.

  Not so many speak of Wolf Narak, the Victor of Afael, The Bloodstained God. Narak is a darker power, a mighty warrior, certainly, and a hero, yes, but perhaps not for the reasons that drove Remard.

  Ancient scripts claim that Narak and Passerina were lovers, and that when he was spurned by her Narak plotted his revenge. Was it a coincidence that Passerina’s new lover, the fabled King Alaran, was slain in the war? And it also seems startlingly coincidental that Remard was slain on the eve of the allies’ entry into Afael City, giving Narak full control of the allied armies, allowing him to butcher at will on the final day.

  History is kind to Narak. It lays his excesses at grief’s door and claims that he was Remard’s equal, his brother, his friend.

  I will suggest a different interpretation. I will ask the questions that no other dares to ask.

  Was this war indeed the culmination of Narak’s revenge? Did Narak slay his own friend to complete his diabolical plan?

  With evidence taken from ancient documents not seen since the Great War itself I will show that it is so…

  Extract from The Secrets of The Bloodstained God

  By Coltan Faroo

  Popular
Author, Avilian.

  3. The Sparrow

  Beloff was right, of course. Wolves and bears lived in the forest, cut off from the world of men. The number of times that Narak had bothered to look at anything beyond the great forest in the last two hundred years he could count on the fingers of one hand. Sparrows were everywhere. They pecked beneath the tables of lords and ladies, perched on the windowsills of kings and priests. They heard everything. They saw everything. The problem wasn’t the sparrows.

  Passerina, the lady of the sparrows, had been his lover. They had been together for over two hundred years. It was a long time. But it was not even their distant past that was a problem. It was Afael. It was Alaran.

  Alaran Taelan was the king of Afael when the Seth Yarra first came to these lands. Like the king of Avilian who now reigned in Golt he was a man given over to the pursuit of pleasure and the joys of art, music and the dance. He was, by all accounts, a graceful man, full of charm, a scholar almost without equal, and Passerina had been his lover.

  There was no jealousy on Narak’s part. She had left Narak, eventually, because he was dedicated to the forest, to the wolves, and she had hankered more for the life of ordinary men. His ways left her unfulfilled. A century or more passed before she took up with Alaran, and in that century his love had evaporated to a thin residue of affection. She seemed happy in Afael, in the court of Alaran, and Narak did not resent it, although he was puzzled what she saw in the man beyond his superficial virtues.

  Bears notice nothing, but wolves do, eventually.

  Whispers came to him. At first he did not believe them He thought that there was perhaps some malice towards her in the court at Afael, but the whispers persisted, became louder, and he felt compelled to seek out the truth for himself.

  He discovered that Passerina had broken one of the few laws of the Benetheon. She had taken Alaran into her favour. In effect, she had made him immortal.

  It was a forbidden thing. All of them, all of their kind bestowed their favour on their households, and from time to time they gifted some small remission to those that had served them in the world of men, but a king? It was forbidden by Pelion himself; one of the few prohibitions that he had laid upon them. In effect she had made herself queen of Afael, eternal queen, because Alaran depended on her for his long life.

  There was an attempted uprising. Some of the Afaeli nobles, a volatile lot at the best of times, sought to end the reign of their monarch by intemperate means. It was a bloody affair, with hundreds dead and several of the noble houses of Afael wiped out.

  Narak remonstrated with her, certain that she would see the folly of her choices and accept the blame, but she did not. The others gods had refused to have anything more to do with her, and she withdrew from the society of the Benetheon. She remained with Alaran.

  But it did not end there.

  When the Seth Yarra came they came first to Afael, and Alaran, fearful of his own vassals, welcomed them, made alliance with them, not knowing the serpent that he embraced. They came in numbers, ships and men, more ships, more men. In no time at all there were ten thousand Seth Yarra in Afael. They built a great camp just outside the city walls and filled it with still more men. They strutted around the city streets in their black and green uniforms, and they made Alaran a prisoner in his own land.

  Avilian assembled its army close to the border, worried by this new threat, and the number of Seth Yarra continued to grow within their camps. Berash forgot the ancient enmity between itself and Avilian and made an alliance with its neighbour. Contingents joined them from Telas and Durandar, a thing unheard of. The army grew.

  Passerina begged for help, but the Benetheon refused. She said that the Seth Yarra were different, that they were evil, but she was not believed. She was protecting her lover, some said. But Narak listened. He became uneasy. He used dogs to see what was happening in the city, looking through their eyes, listening with their ears. He went to the city himself, spent time there unannounced.

  Everything that she said was true. The Seth Yarra were different from the men of the five kingdoms. They behaved according to a code that Narak could not comprehend. They treated everything in Afael as though it was worthless – the buildings, the people, the great library, even the precious stones and gold. They had not come to plunder, but to change the world, to rebuild it in the image of their own land. There was no place in their philosophy for the Benetheon, no place for Pelion, nor any of the ancient gods.

  Narak told the kings what he had discovered. He told the Benetheon. Some still refused to believe. They suggested that he was helping Passerina out of affection, even pity, but he denied this, pointed out that she could leave Afael at any time, and yet she did not.

  Of all the Benetheon only ten believed him, and they went to the kings and offered their services in the war that Narak now knew was inevitable.

  In fifteen months they took back what remained of Afael, and Alaran was dead, along with most of Afael’s nobility. Four of the Benetheon were dead, and the rest were split into two factions – those who had helped, and those who had not.

  Passerina blamed Narak for Alaran’s death. He was at a loss to understand her accusation. Had he not been the only one to look into the matter? Had he not put the case to the others? Had he not created the alliance? And had he not, in the days after the death of his greatest friend, led the army that drove the Seth Yarra from Afael?

  Now Beloff wanted him to talk to her. They had not spoken a friendly word for four hundred years, and only a few of any kind. It would be awkward.

  The Bear was right, though, for all that he did not wish it. If anyone could see what was afoot it was Pascha, if she chose to.

  He reached again. For some reason that he had never understood it was easy to find other members of the Benetheon in the Sirash. He touched her. For a moment he sensed her presence, a surprised glance, and then it was gone again, shutting off, a doused candle.

  “I need to speak with you.”

  There was no response, other than a slight thickening of the barrier between them, a sense of rejection. He pressed harder against it.

  “You are needed, Passerina.”

  The barrier suddenly dissolved into an angry push and he was thrust away, back into the Sirash. He returned to her again.

  “Go away, Narak.”

  “I must speak with you.”

  “I do not wish to hear you. Go away.”

  “I speak for the good of all men, Passerina.”

  “You are a liar, Wolf Narak. Since when did you care about anything that was not wolf or forest? Go away.”

  “Those things are my duty. Should I not care?”

  The barrier went up again, and he was shut out. How long should he try? She clearly still bore him ill will and had no desire to hear him. The matter was important, however slight his evidence, so he resolved to try once more.

  “Passerina, it bears upon Seth Yarra.”

  “History,” she replied.

  “Perhaps not. I was sent a message. I think it came from the Bren.”

  “It does not concern me. I am no longer part of the Benetheon. I no longer wish to be.”

  “Please, Passerina, keep watch. You have eyes better than all of us. Your ears hear every word. Keep watch for what is wrong.”

  The barrier went up again, more firmly that before. He had tried. She had heard what he wished to say to her. If she wanted to help she would do so, but he did not think it likely. He would have to do what he could without her. He had made his attempt, and it was all that could be done. Further effort would only serve to push her further from the desired course.

  He allowed himself to slide back, to drift again. He withdrew slowly from the Sirash, his breathing quickening, his eyes opened. They stung with lack of sleep. It was always like that with the Sirash. It drained even him.

  Sleep. Decide what to do in the morning. Sleep now.

  From Bento Nesser

  Learned Scholar

  Royal Col
lege at Golt

  To Jergan Cornic

  Learned Scholar

  Berashi Royal Institute

  My Dear Jergan,

  I cannot image what possessed you to send me Faroo’s disgusting little book. Perhaps you thought I would be amused. Well, I confess that I was.

  I have not seen such a concoction of half truths and invented slanders in any time period that you would care to name. The word ‘never’ comes to mind.

  What amused me the most was the thought that this should fall into the hands of ‘The Bloodstained God’ himself. Faroo clearly believes that Narak is dead, or he would not dare put such insulting and libellous tales down on paper. You have read Corisan’s ‘Fall of Afael’. I certainly wouldn’t want to be in the disfavour of the Narak described in that volume.