by Tim Stead
He had chosen the harder route, the academic discipline of the green robe, and having taken that one step he had looked down upon his black robed brothers with their swords and lances. How much less divine to simply destroy?
Now he wished otherwise.
He watched as the demon’s acolytes left. They were young men and women clothed in good cloth, adorned with jewels. They laughed at the rain, talked merrily among themselves as they minced around the puddles, peered up at the sky as though it might tell them when dry weather would come. But they had not all gone. One stayed in the doorway, called after them, and looked in his direction.
She was a pretty young girl. Like the others she was well dressed, and he guessed she was of noble blood. Now he might strike a blow for Seth Yarra. It could not be wrong to strike down a worshipper of the demon itself. He gripped his dagger, but his hand would not pull it out. He stared at the building, at the girl, unable to act. He spoke the words of a prayer for strength, but nothing changed. She took fright and went within, but still he stood there.
It was the same decision, he realised. For all his pious horror he was still unable to destroy. She was still a pretty girl more than she was a heretic. He was still wedded to the green robe, even faced with a deed suited to his meagre destructive talents he could not use the blade. It was shame that he felt, for all his looking down on the black robe he saw that they did something that he could not do, had a purpose that he was unable to fulfil. Yet the thought of the girl’s death at the hands of one of his brothers did not lift him. In a perfect world it would not be the girl that would die, but her misapprehension, her ignorance.
A voice startled him. A young man approached, cloaked against the rain. He found that his knife had pulled itself, abandoning its earlier reluctance, and the young man stopped, pulled his cloak aside to reveal the hilt of a sword. He did not close, however, but stood and watched. He was warning Keb, telling him that it would not be worth his while to try anything.
Keb ran. He was suddenly afraid that he had put everything in jeopardy. To do anything now would be a greater sin than his inability to strike at the enemies of Seth Yarra. He was not even a soldier, certainly not a cleanser. His duty here was to do certain things, to say certain words in the right ears.
Now he stood apart from the walls, waiting in the passageway, and his grip upon his duty tightened. His faith was his strength, and his duty the staff that he leaned upon when he grew weak.
A door opened. A man stepped out. He was dressed in the robes of a priest of Ashmaren, red and white, the gold chain around his neck his badge of office. Thinning grey hair, cut short, topped his head, and he was clean shaven, his wrinkled face hinting at kindness and arrogance in equal measure. His name was Baltho Hermandis, and in addition to his high standing as high priest, or perhaps because of it, he was a councillor to the Duke of Bas Erinor. He smiled when he saw Keb.
“Have you been waiting long, Pelas?” he asked.
“No, my lord,” Keb said. “I have taken the opportunity to contemplate my duty,” he added.
“Have you indeed? And have you learned anything more from this contemplation?” Baltho leaned forwards peering at Keb with a practiced look of interested condescension.
“Nothing remarkable, my lord, only that my duty is certain.”
“Very pious, very pious indeed,” Baltho muttered. “Are we safe to speak here?”
“Quite safe,” Keb said. “The door leads only to the tower, as you know, and to hear us a man must open one of the doors that we can see at either end of the passage, so we cannot be overheard.”
“There is news,” the older man said. “A rider has come to the Duke, one of his men who watch the border with Berash. They have heard news from the Berashi court that got it from the guardians of the Green Road.”
“What news, my lord?”
“Wolves,” he said. “A pack of wolves has passed through the pass. The word is that they were under compulsion, that they barely spared a glance for the men there, but rushed through the gate without a sideways glance.”
“You think the Wolf God moves against us?”
“I fear it. He is a bloody creature who holds a grudge.”
“I think not,” Keb said. In fact he thought the opposite. He hoped the opposite. “We have done nothing that is not justified.”
“So you say, so you say.”
Keb despised the man. He was indecisive, given to compromise and easily influenced. These were not admirable qualities in a high priest, but made him a perfect tool for Keb, a compliant lever to tip events how he wished.
There was a sickness in Bas Erinor, in the grubby streets of the city that clothed the land below the city of the gods. It was not a plague, and for the most part it did not kill, but it laid people low for days, stopped bakers from baking, smiths from hammering, shopkeepers from selling. It had become a grave concern to the city merchants, and the Duke, and so the priesthood.
Keb had told them the disease came from dogs, that they carried it. He told them it had swept through Telas Alt the year before while he was in that city, and that they had traced the source to dogs. Killing the dogs was the only solution.
It was not true. The illness came from a small bottle that he carried on a thong around his neck. It was a clear liquid, and only a drop or two was required to make a well bad for a couple of days.
It was easier to persuade them than he had expected. There was resentment at the renewed popularity of the Benetheon, and especially of Narak. War threatened, and the folk memory of Avilian remembered the Wolf at the head of their army, not the god of war, they remembered that it was the Benetheon and Narak that protected the forests, not Ashmaren.
Killing dogs, he had hinted to Baltho, would also make the city a blind spot for the Wolf, and what he could not see would not concern him.
“You are worried, my lord,” Keb said; a statement of the obvious.
“You say the Wolf has not been abroad for centuries,” Baltho said. “He did not come to Telas Alt?”
“No, my lord, and almost all the dogs were killed there.”
“Perhaps we should suspend the work,” Baltho murmured, as though to himself. He fingered his chin and adopted a piercing expression, designed to indicate deep thought.
“My lord, the disease is in decline. The merchants are most pleased.”
“Are they? Well, that is good.” The old priest’s eye shifted easily onto the advantage Keb presented, and the distant threat of the wolf god faded. “Best carry on then,” he said. “Best carry on if it pleases them, do you think?”
“As you wish, my lord.”
The high priest nodded, touched Keb absently on the head in blessing and went back through the door, up to his tower room.
Keb shook himself when the man had gone, something between a shudder of disgust and laughter at how easily the doubts had been circumvented.
The Wolf would come. He was certain that the Wolf would come, drawn to Avilian as helpless as Baltho in the grip of the First Servant’s plan. And then we would see.
7. The Low City
The sun was bright. Narak stood in the thin green forest that clothed the slopes of the great scarp and looked down on Bas Erinor. He blinked against the brightness. It had been many years since he has stood in the full light of the sun, and it surprised him. A moment before he had been standing outside Wolfguard in the dappled light of the great forest and a wolf had been here. He sipped at the water flask he carried and squinted out at the city that lay before him.
The city at the mouth of the Erinor River, Bas Erinor, was the greatest city of Terras, though it was better described as two cities, and from here that was quite apparent.
He stood at the foot of the scarp which bounded the great plateau. Above him it stretched away to the north and east; a flat table land that lay two hundred and fifty feet above the coastal plain. It had, in some ancient time, been cut back by the sea, and for this last short reach the river was free to wander acr
oss a natural plain, curling broadly among a patchwork quilt of fields in its brief old age, disgorging its muddy sediment in a plume that reached as far as the eye could see out into the green ocean.
The river emerged from a broad, steep gorge to his right. Thirty miles up that gorge lay the Kale Falls where the Erinor stepped down from the plateau in a thundering wall of white water.
All that remained of the plateau in the mile or so that lay between him and the ocean was a raised, flat, steep sided platform, a butte, walled and crowned by towers and spires. It cast a long shadow over the plain. This was the city of the gods. Beneath it lay the other city, the common city, the low city: a mass of huddled buildings, devoid of heroic architecture.
Some areas were better than others of course; bigger houses, wider streets, lanterns that lit them at night, men who swept and kept them, guards against the inevitable crime. Such places were given over to prosperous merchants, exalted city officials, physics of the better sort and others with sufficient wealth.
The low city was unplanned, chaotic, and dangerous. Those who dwelled in the better parts had sought permission from the Duke to manage the city, and he had granted it, and for seven hundred years the merchants had tried to improve their home. They had dug new wells, widened streets, regulated markets – somewhat to their own advantage – installed lighting, and paid for the men of the watch to hunt down criminals. The city was a better place for it, and their efforts at least preserved the illusion of justice, order and prosperity.
He had not been here for four hundred years. Generations of men had come and gone.
When he had grown accustomed to the light Narak began his long walk. It was a mile to the foot of the Divine Stair, and he had a choice of a winding path through the city from the north gate, an exploration of taverns, markets and flop houses, or a longer walk to the river gate and a straight, triumphal procession up the Sacred Avenue, lined with trees and fine houses.
He chose the former. He wanted to recover his feel for the place, taste the mood of the people, and there would be none of that on the swept, paved highway that was the Sacred Avenue.
The guards at the north gate looked him over, but did not stir from where they slouched against the pitted stones of the wall to stop him or ask him questions. He was just one of many passing through. Once in the city he was glad to be a man, and not a wolf. The smell, even dulled, was overpowering. It was a smell that he remembered; sweet, sour, rotten, filled with the scents of unfettered human activity.
He made his way to a tavern, one he had known an age ago. He was almost surprised to find it still there. The name had changed. It was no longer the King’s Hand. Now it bore a sign that announced it was the Wolf Victorious, and an image of what he supposed was Afael burning. It was so reminiscent of his dreams that he almost turned away, uneasy at the portent.
Inside it was much changed. He did not recognise it at all. The bar was on a different wall, the old long tables and benches had been replaced by smaller tables, scattered throughout the space, and the gallery, a raised area of the floor where musicians had sometimes played, was gone. It looked cleaner than he remembered.
“You have Telan wine?” he asked.
“Telan?” The man behind the bar laughed. “Who’d bother to bring in Telan muck when we have our own fine Avilian wine?”
“Your finest, then,” he said. “You will bring it to the table?”
The man put a bottle and a mug on the bar. “Carry it yourself,” he said. He told Narak the price, and was paid.
Narak selected a table set apart from the others, and sat, surveying the clientele. Even at this early hour there were twenty or so people occupying the tables. It looked as though they too wished to be apart from others. They had spaced themselves out around the room, none too close to another. A couple of groups made social noises, but the majority were solitary drinkers. It was quite unlike the old place that he remembered. Then it had been warm, cheerful, a backslapping, shouting, singing sort of place. The beer had been good, and the wine had been better.
He poured wine into his mug. He wished it were a glass. Between the dark bottle and the pottery mug he could not see the colour. He sniffed it and found the odour unpromising. There was an acid taint to it. One sip confirmed his diagnosis. This was a poor, cheap wine. He threw a look at the landlord, but the man was busy picking dirt from beneath his fingernails, oblivious to his dissatisfaction.
He noticed another man was looking at him, one of a group of three. He was old, grey haired, thin. Narak returned his stare for a moment, and the man looked away. A sour feeling came over him. He had thought to relive old times, to touch the spirit of people he had once known, to drink with their like again, but this was as far from his memories as that time was from this.
He was about to stand, intending to leave, when the door opened and a man came in. He was a big man, broad at the shoulder and heavily muscled. Narak was shocked to recognise him. He was a man that the dog had seen, the man who advocated the beating of wives. He searched for the name. What had it been? Teal? Teral? Tegal? That was it. Tegal. Seen through human eyes he was no more appealing. His face was scarred, brutish, fixed in a permanent sneer. He stood just inside the door and surveyed the clientele, and his eye quickly settled on Narak. He crossed the room and stood before him.
“That’s my table,” he said.
“You’re welcome to it,” Narak said. “I was just leaving.”
The man’s mouth split into an ugly, broken-toothed grin. “Sure you was,” he said. “But the way I’m thinking you owes me rent.”
Narak almost burst out laughing, and could not prevent a smile from surfacing. The man was trying to intimidate him. He leaned back in the chair.
“On the other hand,” he said, “perhaps I’ll stay a little longer.”
Tegal looked surprised. He had expected fear. Narak saw heads come up around the tavern. People were watching.
“A guinea,” Tegal said. “Give me a guinea.”
“No.”
The big man looked puzzled for a moment. Perhaps nobody had ever been unafraid before. His fists were clenched, and Narak could see that they were like hammers, bruised and broken until they were only good for one thing. One of the hammers opened up and the short fingers reached for the front of his tunic.
Tegal was quick for such a big man, but Narak was quicker, much quicker. He caught the man’s wrist and pulled, dragging Tegal forwards, slamming his face violently into the table top. In the next moment he gripped the man’s belt, shifted his other hand to his throat and lifted him high in the air above his head, slamming his back down onto the table.
The table shattered and Tegal lay gasping among the debris and broken glass, winded and shocked. The bottle of cheap wine had not survived the impact. No great loss. He drew both blades and tickled Tegal’s throat with one of them.
“If I ever see you again, if I ever hear of you again Tegal, I’ll cut you so you’ll never walk again. You understand?”
Tegal looked up at him, uncomprehending, still gasping like a fish waiting to be gutted. Narak shook his head and walked over to where the landlord stood open mouthed behind the bar. The swords went back in their sheaths.
“How much for the table?” he asked.
“The table?”
“Yes. I seem to have broken it.”
He could see the landlord doing a quick calculation in his head. He subtracted fear from greed and got the right answer.
“No charge,” he said.
“By all the gods on the hill, I swear you’ve made my day, my week, my month!”
Narak turned to see who had spoken. It was the old man who’d been looking at him before. He had approached the bar, and now stood a respectful distance from Narak, his face split by a considerable smile.
“Not a friend of yours then?” Narak suggested.
“Nor of any man,” the old man confirmed. “Tegal is a bastard, a bully, the worst kind of brute.”
“Can’t
argue with you there, Deadbox,” the landlord said.
The old man stepped closer to Narak. “Can I buy you a drink?”
“Not if it’s all that slop he sold me,” Narak said, looking pointedly at the landlord. The man stepped back, just enough that he was out of reach if Narak intended some violence against him.
The old man laughed. “Not at all,” he said. “Cherat hides the good stuff, don’t you, Cherat?”
The landlord muttered something that Narak didn’t catch and took a bottle out of a cabinet on the back wall. He opened it with exaggerated care and put it before the old man he’d called Deadbox. He fetched two glasses, quite fine examples of the glass blower’s art, and placed them next to it.