by Anthony Ryan
“Aspect Korvan,” Elera said. “Last of the First Order.”
“The Departed are captured souls,” Vaelin told the old man. “Gifted ensnared in the Beyond by a being of vile purpose. Is that a lie?”
Aspect Korvan sighed, lowering his head in momentary weariness. “For five decades I was Master of Insight at the House of the First Order,” he said. “Today I find myself an Aspect, a title derived from the varied character of our Faith. And the Faith is but a reflection of what awaits us in the Beyond.”
“I’ve been to the Beyond,” Vaelin returned. “Have you?”
The old man’s hand twitched on his stick and he took a moment to answer. “Once, long ago. You are not the first to taste death and return, young man. The Beyond is a place that is not a place, both form and mist, endless and yet finite. It is a crystal formed of many facets and you have seen only one.”
“Perhaps,” Vaelin conceded. “And perhaps the Faith is but a fumbling attempt to understand a thing beyond understanding. But I saw enough to know that our enemy is not done, he wishes our end and will not stop. The queen sees the key to his defeat in striking at the heart of the empire he built to crush us. Be assured that the queen’s intent is also mine.”
“Though it may lead us to ruin?” Dendrish asked.
“Ruin has already befallen us,” Vaelin replied. “Queen Lyrna offers a chance to avoid utter destruction.” He turned to Caenis with a questioning glance. “Are there no signs and portents to guide us, brother? No messages divined from the swirling mists of time?”
“Brother Caenis is now Aspect Caenis,” Elera said, somehow contriving to retain her smile.
“Congratulations,” Vaelin told him.
Caenis’s lips formed a small smile and he got to his feet. “My brother knows well scrying is not an exact art,” he said. “And there are few left in our ranks with gifts capable of aiding us in this decision. I can only speak for my own Order, and I have already sworn us in service to the queen’s purpose, regardless of where it might lead us.”
Vaelin turned at the scrape of a chair, finding Master Rensial on his feet. He stood casting his gaze around them for a few seconds, frowning in concentration. When he spoke his voice was free of any shrillness or quivering uncertainty. “They tortured me first,” he said. “But stopped when it became clear I could tell them nothing. They chained me to a wall and for four days I listened to my brothers’ torment. The same question was asked, over and over, ‘Where are the Gifted?’ Through it all I heard no answers given.” His gaze lost focus again and he hugged himself tighter, sitting down once more, adding in a whisper, “Where is the boy? The forest is burning and the boy is gone.”
Sollis rose, placing a hand on the mad master’s shoulder as he continued to mutter to himself. “By assent of this conclave,” Sollis said. “I speak for my Order until Aspect Arlyn is recovered or proved dead. We will follow the queen’s course.”
“As will the Fourth Order,” Brother Hollun stated.
Aspect Dendrish slumped into his seat, waving a plump hand in either dismissal or assent. It was Master Benril who spoke, standing to regard them with a grim visage. “War is ever the folly of the ignorant. But I have seen much to convince me some wars must be fought, to the bitterest end if need be. Our Order, such as it is, will support this endeavour.”
The Second Order was represented by a pair of sisters from their mission in Andurin, both tired from the journey and clearly overawed by the occasion. They apparently had no knowledge of their Aspect’s fate though rumours told of all their brothers and sisters perishing when their House burned to rubble. They conferred for a second before the older of the two confirmed their agreement in a strained voice.
“Aspect?” Sollis asked Elera.
Her smile had faded completely now, her face, always so open and bright as to defy signs of age, now told of a tired woman of middling years with eyes that had seen too much. She stood in silence for some time, hands clasped together and face downcast. “So much has changed so quickly,” she said eventually. “So many certainties overthrown in the space of a few months. Lord Vaelin is right to speak of our past crimes, for we are guilty of grievous errors. I myself said nothing when my brightest pupil was taken to the Blackhold for speaking against the desert war. There is blood on our hands. But I fear what crimes await us should we take this course. Every day people come to my Order for healing but burning with a hatred I have not seen in all the troubled years to beset this Realm. When the queen takes them across the ocean, what manner of justice will she ordain?”
“I am Battle Lord of the Queen’s Host,” Vaelin said. “And will allow no violence to be visited on those who do not raise arms to oppose us.”
She raised her gaze, smiling at him once more, but with something behind her eyes she hadn’t shown him before: regret. I delivered you, she had told him once. Perhaps she wonders what she pulled into the world? “I will trust your word, Vaelin, as I always have.” She turned to the others, speaking formally. “The Fifth Order pledges to support the queen’s course.”
He said farewell to Reva at the south gate, pulling her close to plant a kiss on the top of her head, finding himself both surprised and heartened when she returned the embrace. “No doubts?” he asked her as she drew back. “No hesitation in following the queen’s orders?”
“Doubts I have aplenty,” she replied. “But that’s nothing new. At Alltor I saw enough to convince me this fight is to the death. They won’t stop, so neither can we.”
“And will your people see it that way?”
Her expression grew sombre, her tone soft with reluctant admission. “They will when they hear the Blessed Lady speak with the Father’s voice.”
She mounted up and rode off with an escort of House Guards. Watching her go, he was struck by a sudden sense of loss, a knowledge he might never see her again.
“My lord.” He turned to find himself confronted with one of Lyrna’s ladies, the taller one with dark eyes, though her name escaped him. “The queen requests your presence at the palace.”
Her eyes flicked to the left, a slight frown of unease on her brow. He followed her gaze to where the Gifted folk from the Reaches had established themselves in a half-ruined wineshop. A couple of passing Realm Guard were recovering their composure, clearly victims of Lorkan’s love of surprising the non-Gifted, the young man bowing in apparently sincere apology as Cara smothered a laugh in the background. Lorkan caught Vaelin’s eye and gave a weak smile before turning and walking to a shadowed corner where he seemingly blinked out of existence.
He turned back to the lady, finding her narrow gaze still fixed on the shadow where Lorkan had disappeared. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said, recapturing her attention. “I don’t believe I know your name.”
“Orena, my lord.” She bowed again. “In truth, Lady Orena Al Vardrian, by the queen’s good graces.”
“Vardrian? From south of Haeversvale?”
“My grandmother was from Haeversvale, my lord.”
He was about to inform her that they most likely shared some blood but the evident discomfort in the woman’s face gave him pause. She clearly didn’t relish the prospect of remaining so close to the Gifted and there was a tenseness to her demeanour that discouraged further conversation. “These people are our allies,” he said, nodding to the wineshop. “They offer no threat.”
Her face took on a bland neutrality and she bowed. “The queen waits upon your attendance, my lord.”
She was in the palace grounds surveying the part-completed marble relief carved by Master Benril. A short way off the Lady Davoka stood alongside another Lonak woman, younger and considerably less tall. The younger woman straightened at sight of Vaelin, her face curious, as if voicing an unspoken question.
“My lord,” Lyrna greeted him brightly. “How went the conclave?”
He was unsurprised by her knowledge. She had all of her father’s gift for accruing intelligence and more subtle ways of exploiting it. “The
Faith seeks to rebuild itself,” he said. “And will, of course, support your endeavour with all their remaining strength.”
“And Lady Reva?”
“Also unrelenting in pursuit of your purpose, Highness.”
She nodded, her gaze still fixed on the marble relief. Although it was unfinished Vaelin found the carvings remarkably lifelike, the expressions and poses of the figures possessed of a precision and verisimilitude surpassing even Benril’s other work. The faces of the Volarian soldiery and Realm folk alike were riven with all the fear, rage and confusion of people truly faced with the horrors of war.
“Remarkable isn’t it?” Lyrna observed. “And yet Master Benril has formally petitioned me to have it destroyed.”
“No doubt it serves as a painful reminder of his enslavement.”
“But in years to come, perhaps we will all require something to remind us of what provoked our course. I think I’m minded to leave it as it is. If the master’s temper cools in time, he may be persuaded to finish it, to his own design of course.”
Lyrna raised a hand to call Davoka and the other Lonak woman forward. “This is Kiral of the Black River Clan. She has a message for you.”
“You speak my tongue very well.” He had taken her to his father’s house where he and his sister made a home of sorts amongst the less damaged rooms. Alornis was absent, gone to the docks on some errand, probably keen to paint the panorama of ships crowding the harbour. They sat together under the sheltering oak in the yard, its mighty branches bare of leaves as winter’s chill grew deeper by the day.
“She knew your tongue,” Kiral said. “So I know it.”
He had heard the story from Lyrna and could scarcely credit it: a soul possessed by one of the Ally’s creatures and now freed. And a singer with a message. Yet somehow he knew the truth of it, just by looking into her face he knew she heard a song and found himself shamed by the jealousy it stirred.
“She remembered you,” the Lonak girl went on. “You barred her from a kill. Her hatred was great.”
He remembered Sister Henna’s enraged, hissing face as he held her to the wall. “You possess her memories?”
“Some. She was very old, though not so old as her brother and sister, nor so deadly. She feared them and hated them in equal measure. I have the healing arts she learned in the Fifth Order, the rites performed by a priestess somewhere in the far south of the Alpiran Empire, the knife skills of a Volarian slave girl sent to die in their spectacles.”
“Do you know when she was first taken?”
“Her early memories are a mist of confusion and fear, chief among them the sight of mud huts burning under a broad night sky.” Kiral paused to give an involuntary shudder. “The vision fades and she hears his voice.”
“What does he say?”
She shook her head. “She always shrank from the memory, preferring to dwell on her many lifetimes’ worth of murder and deceit.”
“I’m sorry for you. It must … hurt.”
Kiral shrugged her slender shoulders. “When I dream, mostly.” She looked up at the branches of the great oak above her head, a small smile coming to her lips. “There,” she said, pointing to a wide fork near the main trunk. “You would sit there, watching your father groom his horses.” Her smile faded. “He was afraid of you, though you never knew it.”
He stared up at the oak for a time. His memories of playing in its arms had always been happy, but now he wondered if his child’s eyes had seen more than he recalled. “Your song is strong,” he told her.
“Yours was stronger. I can hear its echo. To lose such strength must be hard.”
“As a younger man I feared it, but in time I knew it as a gift. And yes, I miss it greatly.”
“So now I will be your song, as the Mahlessa commands.”
“And what does she command?”
“I hear a voice calling to me from a great distance, far to the east. It’s a very old tune, and very lonely, sung by a man who cannot die, a man you have met.”
“His name?”
“I know not, but the music carries an image of a boy who once offered him shelter from a storm, and risked his life to save him and his charge.”
Erlin. It all tumbled into place in a rush, the rage Erlin had been shouting into the storm that night, his world-spanning travels, and his unchanged face when he came to share the truth about Davern’s father. Erlin, Rellis, Hetril, he’s got a hundred names, Makril had said, though Vaelin now knew he had begun with only one. That day at the fair as he stared at the puppet show … “Kerlis,” he said in a whisper. “Kerlis the Faithless. Cursed to the ever death for denying the Departed.”
“A legend,” Kiral said. “My people have another story. They tell of a man who offended Mirshak, God of the Black Lands, and was cursed to craft a story without ending.”
“You know where to find him?”
She nodded. “And I know he is important. The song is bright with purpose when it touches him, and the Mahlessa believes he is key to defeating whatever commands the thing that stole my body.”
“Where?”
Her scar twisted as she gave an apologetic grimace. “Across the ice.”
CHAPTER THREE
Frentis
She pauses to survey the Council before taking her seat, twenty men in fine red robes seated around a perfectly circular table. The council chamber sits halfway up the tower, each member having been hauled to this height by the strength of a hundred slaves working the intricate pulleys that trace the length of this monolith. Blessed by endless life though they are, no Council-man relishes the prospect of climbing so many stairs.
She sits through the tedium of the opening formalities as Arklev intones the formal commencement of the fourth and final council meeting of this, the eight hundred and twenty-fifth year of the empire, the slave scribes scribbling away with their unnatural speed as he drones on, introducing each member in turn, until finally he comes to her.
“…and newly ascended to the Slaver’s Seat, Council, ah, Woman…”
“I am to be recorded as simply the Ally’s Voice,” she tells him, casting a meaningful glance at the scribes.
Arklev falters for a moment but recovers with admirable fortitude. “As you wish. Now, to our first order of business…”
“The only order of business,” she interrupts. “The war. This council has no other business until it is concluded.”
Another Council-man stirs, a silver-haired dullard whose name she can’t trouble herself to recall. “But, there are pressing matters from the south, reports of famine…”
“There was a drought,” she says. “Crops fail and people starve. Have any surplus slaves killed to husband supplies until it abates. All very sad but survivable, our current military situation may not be.”
“Admittedly,” Arklev begins, “the invasion has not progressed according to plan…”
“It’s been a miserable failure, Arklev,” she breaks in, smiling. “That preening dolt Tokrev orchestrated his own death and defeat with more efficiency than any of his victories. Sorry about your sister by the way.”
“My sister yet lives and I have no doubt as to her facility for continued survival. And we still hold their capital…”
“No.” She reaches out to pluck a grape from the bowl nearby, popping it into her mouth, savouring the sweetness. Although not entirely to her liking, this shell does possess an impressively sensitive palate. “As of three days ago, we don’t. Mirvek lies dead along with his command. The Unified Realm is lost to us.”
She enjoys the shocked silence almost as much as the grape. “A tragedy,” one of them says in cautious tone, a handsome fellow of misleadingly youthful appearance. She remembers killing a man at his request forty years ago, husband to some slattern he wanted to wed. She never thought to ask if the marriage was a success.
“But,” the handsome Council-man continues, “whilst the disgrace of defeat is hard to bear, surely this means the war is at an end. For now at least.
We must gather strength, await a suitable opportunity to launch another attempt.”
“Whilst an entire nation with every reason to hate us gathers its own strength.”
“They are weakened by our invasion,” Arklev points out. “And an ocean stands between us.”
“I imagine King Malcius entertained the very same delusion up until the moment he felt his neck snap.” She gets to her feet, all humour vanishing from her face as she looks at each of them in turn. “Know, Honoured Council-men, that the Ally does not indulge in conjecture. I speak unalloyed fact. The Unified Realm now has itself a queen and she sees no more obstacle in an ocean than she would a shallow stream. When the seas calm she will be coming, whilst we have spent our best forces on an invasion commanded by a fool, one chosen by your vote, as I recall.”
“General Tokrev was a veteran of many campaigns,” the silver-haired Council-man begins, falling quiet at her glare. She lets the silence linger, feeling a familiar lust build in her breast as her song senses the burgeoning fear, clenching fists to keep it at bay. Not yet.
“It is the Ally’s wish,” she says, “that reserves be mustered to meet the threat. Former Free Swords will be recalled to their battalions and the conscription quotas for new recruits are to be tripled. The garrisons in Volar are to be reinforced by troops drawn from the provinces.”
She waits for dissent, but they all just sit and stare, these men who own millions, ancient cowards for the first time realising the depth of their folly. She considers leaving with a final veiled threat or humiliating barb, but finds herself possessed of a great desire to be away from them.
Was this how it was for you? she asks the uncaring ghost of her father as she turns and walks wordlessly from the chamber. Did they see how sickened you were by their stench? Is that why they had me kill you?
He was woken by the harsh clatter of the lock in his cell door. His principal gaoler, like all his guards, was drawn from the Queen’s Mounted Guard, a veteran sergeant with a distinct disinclination to conversation who glared at Frentis with unabashed detestation every time he opened the door. The queen had been punctilious in choosing guards unlikely to be swayed by the legend of the Red Brother. Today, however, the man’s hatred was slightly muted as he pulled the heavy door ajar and motioned for him to come out. To his continued surprise, Frentis had not been shackled, or in fact subject to any mistreatment. He was fed twice a day and provided with a fresh jug of water each morning when the sergeant came to fetch his waste bucket. Otherwise he was left to sit in darkness, absent any company or conversation … save her of course, waiting every time he succumbed to sleep.