by Tim Stead
So who?
Three thoughts came to mind. The first was the Bren Alar. It was a creature of undoubted power, intelligence and influence. The first creation of Pelion would have to be so. Narak knew Pelion’s mind, understood his way. The old man would have tried to achieve perfection with his first attempt. Never shoot for the edge of the target, he had told Narak once. Perfection first, second and always was his rule. Compromise was defeat.
And that’s what we were, what the Benetheon was, he thought: a compromise.
So what was the Bren Alar? He needed to learn more, but there was no library old enough, no memory long enough to give him the answers that he craved, none but the Bren themselves. Yet perhaps there were questions that he could ask, questions that would seem innocent enough but may yield fragments of the truth. He would have to think about that.
Secondly he thought of Hammerdan. The Mage King of Durandar was a man of subtlety and consequence. He had power, and after their last encounter he was no friend of Narak’s. He could be playing the part of Seth Yarra. Yet Narak doubted it. Whoever his enemy was he had played a long game. He had studied Seth Yarra, he knew the language and the customs, knew what strings to pull to make them dance, and also how to play to their strengths. If Hammerdan had set out to do this he must have begun years ago, before he killed Baradan, and perhaps even before he had the skill he now possessed. No, he did not believe that it was Hammerdan. He was simply not old enough to have played so long a game.
The third possibility was the unknown; some remnant tinkering by one of Pelion’s race, some mage out of Seth Yarra lands, or still other lands across oceans yet undiscovered. Seth Yarra were a seafaring race. Their ships were finer than those of the kingdoms, more capable, and who was to say that they had not visited other lands, that the world was not more than Seth Yarra and the kingdoms?
It was the third possibility that disturbed him most. Hammerdan he knew; the Bren Alar he could explore, but with the unknown he was at a fundamental disadvantage. His ignorance was complete. He did not even know where to begin.
He poured another cup of wine and drained it down. He stood, stretched his limbs and closed his eyes, drawing a great breath into his lungs and all of Wolfguard with it, every secret scent.
His anger had not faded. It worried him that he was angry most of the time now. His temper seemed to be growing shorter, and sometimes he felt the need to apologise to the servants at Wolfguard, though he never did. They would not understand. He felt the weight of his responsibility crushing him. He remembered that Pascha had rebuked him for it, his refusal to share his worries, his solitary ways. It was true that he had found comfort in company in those days. He had talked to Remard, and they had shared the weight. He had talked to Beloff, and in his own way the bear had eased the burden with a nod of approval or a disbelieving snort. It was surprising how much so little could mean. Pascha, too, had been a friend to him in that regard. She was more subtle. She asked him questions. It was her way of pointing things out.
So it was true that he was not alone. Not now. Most of what was left of the Benetheon was above him in his own home. Why not ask them?
In his mind he heard Beloff snort. Ask Jiddian? Ask Sithmaree? He liked Jiddian. The Eagle was an honest and true friend, but he had seen the light of belief in Jiddian’s eyes. Jiddian believed in Narak. Jiddian knew that Narak would find the answer, even if Narak did not. Jiddian was just not that bright. And Sithmaree? Cunning, perhaps, but not clever. Sithmaree thought mainly of Sithmaree and what might benefit her, personally. He did not trust her.
Then there was Pascha; Passerina, the god of sparrows, the lady of a thousand eyes. She had rejected Pelion’s gift five hundred years ago. He did not think that she was foolish, or that she lacked courage. Had she not stood with the hard pressed army at the Fal Verdan? But he did not understand her any more. She had gone away and become a stranger. There was a time when he could have read her as easily as he read Caster and Poor, but now she was all twisted up, always looking both ways at everything, and he could not see what lay beneath.
He had loved her once. He still felt something when he looked at her face, but he could no longer put a name to it. What had been between them had been so worn by time that he could not recognise it, and he had let her go, lost himself in duty and the eternal pleasure of being the Wolf, of being the god of wolves.
Yet these were all he had; these three questionable heads were his only council.
He allowed the veil to roll over him again, and became just a man. The scents of Wolfguard disappeared. The darkness became darker. He called for Poor, and for light, and both came at once as though they had been waiting no more than a few yards beyond the door to the lair, which they probably had been.
“Have they eaten?” he asked. He did not have to name them.
“No, Deus,” Poor replied.
“Then carry my word to them that they are to join me in the throne room for the evening meal, but don’t call it the throne room. Plenty of food, Poor. Lots of light. Make it a good show. In an hour from now, say.”
“As you wish, Deus.” Poor was gone, leaving one lamp for Narak to carry. Narak knew that Poor would do the right thing, that he would be pleased with the result. He went back to his private room, lit candles, and changed his clothes. When he was done he sat down and read for a while. He read all the things he had read a hundred times before, all the words that had been written about Seth Yarra, looking for something he knew was not there.
It seemed no time at all had passed when Poor knocked on his door and told him that the food was ready and the others were gathering. He closed the text in his hand, a slim volume written by an Afaeli scholar about the organisation of Seth Yarra camps, and snuffed the candles.
When he reached the throne room, or what had once been the throne room, he could not suppress a smile. Poor had rearranged it as a formal dining space. The room was dominated by a great oak table, stacked with a bewildering array of food and wine. There were things there that even Narak struggled to name. The dais was exposed, the curtains drawn back, and a table set there covered with maps and charts, and all around them blazed light. There must have been five hundred candles and two dozen oil lamps scattered around, and it had become a room without shadows.
Jiddian and Pascha were there. The Eagle already had a plate and a glass, both filled, but Pascha was pacing the room with her arms folded across her chest. There was no sign yet of Sithmaree. Narak took a seat and poured himself yet another cup of wine. Pascha stopped pacing and looked at him.
“Why are we here?” she asked.
“Council of war,” Narak replied. It was the same phrase he’d used with Remard and Beloff centuries ago, and even though she’d been an outsider by then he saw that she recognised it.
“With us?”
“We are the Benetheon,” he replied, “or what’s left of it.”
She shook her head and poured a cup of wine for herself, picked up a fingerfull of nuts and took a seat. She said nothing more, and they waited in their three different silences for Sithmaree. At least Jiddian looked untroubled. He ate hungrily and studied the tapestries. He collected them, Narak recalled. There were hundreds of them at the Eyrie.
Sithmaree did not keep them waiting long. She arrived with a bit of a flourish, paused just inside the door and looked around. She had donned a spectacular black dress stitched with thousands of tiny lapis lazuli beads. They formed the shape of a serpent rising from coils around her ankles, turning once around her body with the head, adorned with ruby eyes, falling over her right shoulder.
She cast an obvious glance around the room and raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to impress someone?” she asked. She was right. It was all for show. On his own he would have eaten here by the light of perhaps three lamps and at a small wooden table. Narak shrugged.
“Are you?” That was Jiddian, and it was an unexpected but effective riposte. She was dressed for a royal ball, not a meal among friends. Sithmaree
abandoned her position by the door and moved to the table. She picked up an olive and bit it carefully.
“They always make these too salty, don’t you think?” she said, putting the rest of it down unfinished.
Narak didn’t wait for them to eat. He started talking at once, telling them in plain words what their situation was, the problem with the White Road, the different strategic options he had considered, and the problems with each of them. He laid it out as plainly as he could, but he did not mention the Bren, nor their reluctant promise of help. He watched their faces as he talked, and he saw three different reactions. Sithmaree became bored, or at least it seemed that she did. She started looking away, fidgeting, picking at the food. Pascha seemed to be concentrating, trying to understand every word he said, trying to build a picture. She was the only one who asked him to clarify anything, the only one who asked any questions at all.
Jiddian was waiting for the punch line. It was a sad thing to see. The Eagle had so much faith in Narak that he did not think for a moment that this was anything other than a demonstration of the Wolf’s strategic powers. Narak could see that confidence in his face, in his eyes, and when he finished speaking he could see it still there. Jiddian was waiting for him to present the solution.
“That’s it,” he said.
Jiddian’s look changed to a sort of blank surprise.
“It seems intractable,” Pascha said. “Unless they are so confident that they wait until summer is high before they move. Even then,” she shook her head. “Even then the numbers do not bode well. Are you sure about the numbers?”
“As sure as I can be,” Narak replied. “They spend men’s lives like water. It points to an inexhaustible supply.”
Sithmaree smiled. It was almost what he had expected from her, a political smile, a sly smile, and her words confirmed it. “I had not thought to see the great strategist so confounded.”
“It’s your life that depends on his strategy, you fool,” Pascha snapped.
“I can hide,” Sithmaree said. “It’s what I thought we should do all along.”
“Hide?” Pascha snapped at her. “You think Seth Yarra will go away? And without the Benetheon, where will you hide, Snake? The forest and the plain will be settled within twenty years, the trees will be cut down, and men will be stamping on snakes’ heads from the southern shore to the frozen waste. Where will you hide?”
Sithmaree did not reply. Her eyes blazed with anger, but she merely turned on her heel, wrapped in her pride and dignity, and walked from the room. Pascha didn’t look at Narak, but Jiddian did.
“Are we lost then?” he asked. He looked bewildered, shorn of hope. Narak slapped him on the back.
“Don’t worry, Jiddian,” he said. “There are months yet, and I will think of something.” He wondered if the Eagle could sense the lie in what he said. He was sure that Pascha could, the way she looked at him.
“I don’t know why you asked us,” she said. “Jiddian’s a fine soldier, but no strategist, I’m no more than a competent archer and Sithmaree’s only good at running away.”
“You belittle yourself,” Narak said. “You were always clever.”
“Clever?”
Narak remembered so many things in that moment. He remembered Alaran, the rejection of Pelion’s gifts, the isolation from the Benetheon, and all those years she had spent living in the Kingdoms, pretending, hiding.
“Yes,” he said. “You walked a different path, but it was not a crooked one. You followed your heart. No-one can do more than that.”
She looked at him. It was a look that he could not fathom. At best he would have described it as pain and incomprehension, mixed with some bitter herb, but he saw it for just a moment before she turned and left the room. He stood in silence and looked after her for a moment that stretched on and on.
“We seem to have the food all to ourselves.” Jiddian seemed quite recovered from his moment of doubt. He was stacking his plate again, filling his cup with the good Telan wine that Poor had laid on for them. Narak sighed and sat down at the table, the plans and maps forgotten, the war pushed to one side. The least he could do now was to keep this honest man company. If he, too, walked out and left Jiddian alone he would have somehow offended every remaining member of the Benetheon, with the exception of the lords of the sea, who were, as far as he knew, impossible to offend.
* * * *
It was evening. Hours had passed since the disaster of his council of war, and Narak was again reading through the Seth Yarra documents in his private room. Night and day blended within Wolfguard. There were no windows in the places where Narak lived, and so he slept when he was tired and worked when he was not.
At this particular moment he was reading an account of the fall of Afael written by an Afaeli lord. The man was long dead, of course, but Narak still remembered him. Taelan had been his name. He had been young at the time of the battle, a broad shouldered, fine featured man blessed with courage and considerable skill at both strategy and the messy business of swordplay itself. Narak had liked him.
There was nothing in the document, though. It was yet another paean of praise dedicated to Narak’s role on that day. It made him uncomfortable to read it, but he persisted to the end, thinking all the time that the man had been a better soldier than a writer, and a better killer than he had been a thinker. There were no hidden gems of insight, no cryptic clues to whatever it was that the Wolf sought. The words dismissed the armies of Seth Yarra as doomed, credited them with courage, but laughed at their tactics. It was all familiar to him. He had said much the same thing at the time, so perhaps it was his own opinions he was reading, parroted back at him by one of the men who had followed him.
He put the paper aside and closed his eyes, casting himself back, provoking those ancient memories. He saw again the camps of Seth Yarra soldiers, the way they walked, full of certainty and contempt, their weapons, their faces. He remembered hundreds of faces, and they were just men; men like those he had fought with in the east, like those at the wall. He remembered the rage, the grief, the blood; Remard’s death and his own grisly procession through the streets of the city, wrapped in the steel nimbus of death that his swords had become. He remembered the tireless strength of his body, and the weariness on his mind.
A knock on the door ripped him away from the carnage and back to Wolfguard. He sat for a moment, alone in the light of a single lamp, not certain if he had really heard it. Poor would never knock on this door when he was busy.
The knock came again: firm, three sharp taps – not the hand of a servant.
“Who is it?” he asked.
“Me.” Me was Pascha. He recognised her voice.
He rose, went to the door and opened it. She stood in the dim light of the hallway, her face lit by Narak’s lamp. She had not changed her clothes and her hair was still tied back and he studied her face for a moment. There was a need there, but he did not know what it was. Never the less he felt moved to help her if he could.
“Come in,” he said.
She did not move at once, but peered past him, her eyes taking in the landscape of his private room, touching the books and scrolls that lay scattered everywhere, the untidiness of it all. She had lived here for years, and he was sure that she remembered how jealous he was of his private space.
She stepped inside and he closed the door. There was only one chair, Narak’s chair, but Narak waved her into it. He pushed some papers aside and sat on the table. He didn’t say anything, but waited for her to speak. She seemed reluctant to do so. Words formed on her lips twice, and twice she swallowed them. On the third attempt she spoke.
“Seth Yarra tried to kill me in Benafelas. They sent an assassin. I should have told you.”
He saw what she was saying. That he could have done something, could have warned the Benetheon. He shook his head.
“It would have made no difference,” he said. “Someone in Telas guessed your secret. It was an obvious thing for Seth Yarra to do. They did
the same to Remard, but the attempt on your life did not foreshadow the killings that took place. I would not have guessed there was any link, and there probably was not.”
She studied his face, looking perhaps to see if he was telling the truth or telling comfortable lies, but he had no need to pretend. The assassin who had tried to kill Pascha had been a man. Failure was evidence enough. The thing that had killed Fashmanion and the rest of the Benetheon had been something else.
“You are sure?” she asked.
“As sure as I can be in uncertain times. Knowledge of what happened to you would not have averted what has befallen us.”
She nodded, apparently satisfied that there was no error on her part. “There was something else,” she said. “I wanted to come back; to be part of the Benetheon again.” He raised an eyebrow, but she went on. “I discovered the secret of my gift. I know how to use it now. I am not afraid of it.”