He turned away from the parapet and towards the bulk of the city, most of it still tiered above him. It looked plausible enough, but he knew better. He swayed slightly and fixed his attention on his immediate surroundings. There was a wide flight of steps leading up from the promenade to the main avenue of the first level. A gold-covered gate had been placed between the promenade and the stairs, cutting off the outer wall from the rest of the city. A man stood on the other side of the gate, a mantle made of feathers covering him from shoulders to ankles; he was wearing silver beneath. There was a sword at his side and a leopard at his feet. The guard stepped up to the gate and eagerly asked, ‘Have you brought tidings from Wolf Country?’
Tarquin did a double take. ‘Wolf Country? No, I have come from the slopes above Ristale.’
As if he had suddenly caught himself and realized he’d shown too much emotion, the guard’s face stiffened to become a mask, and he said formally, ‘That is one of the king’s horses. What is your rank, and why are you alone?’
Tarquin halted, biting back an angry response when he realized it was only fatigue that made him resent the question. If he had been allowed to get this far, he had already been identified as a friend. Everything else was formality.
‘I’m called Tarquin,’ he said shortly. ‘The king knows me.’
The guard was barely more than a boy, Tarquin noticed now, seeing past the costume. At the mention of his name, three successive thoughts transited across the guard’s face as clearly as if they had been written in words: (1) Tarquin must mean Tarquin the Free, returned from exile; (2) but what has become of the great hero? he looks like a goatherd; (3) this must be some other Tarquin, therefore—
‘You have not answered my questions, sir. You have been admitted because you ride one of our horses, and we know you are not Sekk, for the Sekk are beautiful. However, you are in the king’s home in a time of war – you will have to give more than your name. You wear the garb of a warrior, so I ask again: what is your rank? And who gave you permission to take a messenger horse?’ The young man’s lips were set in a taut line.
‘I have no rank in your army. I’m not a member of it. I wore these leathers in battle years ago, when I had the honour to serve Queen Ysse. As for the horse: there are convenient message posts in a dozen villages between here and Ristale, so I have been riding nothing but the best for several days.’ Here the guard began to temporize, and Tarquin held out a hand. ‘I would not be so impertinent, except for the urgency of my message. I must see the king immediately. It will not go well for you if he finds I have been kept cooling my heels outside the first level.’
The young guard did not look impressed, and the leopard’s tail lashed from side to side. ‘I will have to ask permission for you to go up. Wait here.’
There was little else he could do, other than climbing over the parapet and jumping to his death. He turned his face away from the moodily staring cat and leaned against the horse, who was already dozing in the sun. Above them, wall upon wall climbed towards the sky, towers and fortifications designed to repel what kind of enemy Tarquin had never understood. Even assuming one could see it from outside (which was assuming a lot), Jai Khalar was all but inaccessible: the thought of an army trying to swarm up the cliffs with ropes and grappling hooks was ridiculous, and even a siege would be difficult, given the vast storage caves behind and below the Citadel. Yet the builders, unsatisfied with astonishing heights and impregnable outer walls, had been driven on by some architectural frenzy to create a fortress that baffled and astonished the eye at every turn. Jai Khalar had been constructed on a grand scale, and it could easily have held twenty times the number of people who actually lived there now, rattling around the place like children in a giant’s playhouse. While Tarquin waited, he pictured the guard travelling up through the first level, across bridges, up and down flights of stairs, along winding avenues and through buildings until he found some lieutenant or captain who could advise him, and then the two making their tortuous descent through tunnels and parlours, places where the light changed and the distant laughter followed them …
The gate shrieked open, startling Tarquin awake. The guard was returning, and behind him came not a senior officer, but a scrawny, grey-haired man in blue robes leaning on a stick.
‘Hanji?’ Tarquin hadn’t expected to see anyone he knew, not so soon – not looking so much the same, as if eighteen years meant nothing …
‘Aye,’ Hanji said to the young guard. ‘That’s him. Better let him in before he makes trouble.’
The guard unlocked the gate and Tarquin walked in leading the horse, which shied when it passed the leopard. Hanji took the reins from him and cast a critical eye over Tarquin.
‘You look like hell,’ he said. ‘Have you been living under a rock?’
Hanji began to lead the horse along the avenue; Tarquin sagged against his mount as they went. Focusing his bleary eyes on the older man’s face, he opened his mouth to make a rejoinder but instead of words, a thin croak issued from his throat.
‘I’d always suspected you were truly of the Frog Clan,’ Hanji remarked amiably. ‘That skin, those eyes …’
Tarquin cleared his throat and said nothing, aware that his mind was too numb to cope with Hanji. Radiating the air of someone who shouldn’t have to be doing this sort of thing, the old man brought the horse to a small guard house and surrendered it to a boy there; then he turned to Tarquin and wrinkled his nose fastidiously.
‘Don’t even start!’ Tarquin said, holding up a hand palm outward. ‘I have no time for your bathhouses. I’ve been riding day and night and I need to see the king at once.’
Hanji fixed him with a deceptively mild eye. ‘Are you feeling fit enough to climb the approximately two thousand steps to his audience chamber?’
‘No, I’m not.’ Tarquin stumbled to the nearest wall and slid down it until he was sitting on the pavement. ‘I’m going to sit here and wait for him.’
Hanji rapped his stick impatiently on the wall. ‘Quintar, this has gone far enough. Your timing is atrocious. We are beset by problems with the Eyes that no one can fathom, and Jai Khalar is acting as tetchy as a pregnant ferret. What makes you think you can swagger in here after eighteen years’ absence and demand an immediate audience?’
Tarquin spoke slowly, afraid that he would slur or skip words otherwise. ‘There is a Pharician army massing on the plain at Ristale. I have seen them with my own eyes. They march south towards our borders. No, old man, I don’t think I’ll be climbing any steps. I think I’ll sit here and wait for the king to come down personally and speak with me, and after that he can send the most beautiful women to come and treat my saddle sores.’
Hanji said nothing at first, thinking. ‘How many troops?’
Tarquin snorted. ‘More than I could count. They covered the plain from the west road to the hills and a mile to the north. Like flies on rotting fruit.’
‘How many days ago?’
‘Four. I was in the mountains when I saw them.’
‘Four days from the plain of Ristale? How many horses did you kill to get here?’
Tarquin didn’t feel obliged to answer; he again felt sleep like a vice closing on him …
‘Get up. Come on – do I have to carry you? Quintar!’
‘That’s not my name,’ he snarled.
‘Tarquin, then. Get the hell up.’
Tarquin struggled to his feet, dimly aware that people were staring at him as they passed. Hanji crossed beneath an arch and stood beside a doorway.
‘Where are you going?’ Tarquin demanded. ‘That passage leads to the armoury.’
‘The armoury? You are in Jai Khalar now, and eighteen years have passed. Jai Pendu draws near at the other end of the White Road. Things change here almost every day.’
Tarquin passed under the arch and followed the old man into a room he didn’t remember. It was small, windowless, and made of blood red stone. A large egg sat in the middle of the floor. Hanji stooped and pic
ked it up, and the flagstone where the egg had been turned black.
‘Follow me,’ Hanji said, and stepped down into the black stone as if it were a hole, disappearing from view by degrees.
‘I despise these enchantments,’ Tarquin muttered, reluctantly lowering a foot into the darkness, which flung itself up at him and wrapped him like a soft velvet curtain. He thrashed it to one side and found himself entering the already crowded council antechamber, which he knew very well was nowhere near the gates of the first level. He stood there dazed until Hanji dragged him forward, recruiting attendants to help. The old man took one of the yellow-robed Council secretaries aside and they spoke quietly together.
‘Drink this. It’s sita.’ A young woman put a steaming cup in his hand. He swallowed the bitter drink and handed her the cup for a refill. After three cups, his head began to clear. He blinked slowly. The place looked as he had remembered – and yet different. For one thing, there were small trees in white and yellow bloom all around the perimeter of the room, and pink birds moved in their branches but did not sing. The trees seemed to grow directly out of the stone.
‘I will take you inside in a moment,’ Hanji said. He and the secretary were standing at a stone plinth, poring over the contents of a large ledger. ‘As it happens, the king is in closed conference, hearing testimony on other war matters, but they will open the doors to allow one group to exit and the next to enter. It is almost time for the next hearing.’
Tarquin looked at the people assembled in the antechamber. There were a number of young soldiers, including a woman in battle gear – an Honorary, presumably – in addition to the clerks, whom Tarquin automatically discounted as useless appurtenances. Some stared at him, although the Honorary and two of her companions had their heads together and seemed oblivious to whatever else was going on in the room. Revived temporarily by the strong sita, he sat tapping his foot anxiously and looking at the chamber doors.
‘What was that you said about the Eyes, Hanji?’ he said. ‘What problems?’
He was met with a blank look. ‘Did I say that? I don’t remember saying that.’
Tarquin sighed. ‘I see your memory has not improved over the years. In fact, if—’ The words died in his throat. A flight of stairs had appeared where before only a blank wall had been. In a weak tone he asked, ‘Where did those stairs come from, Hanji?’
‘You’re hallucinating. How long since you slept?’
‘I don’t recall. You must talk to me so that I can stay alert.’
‘All right. Pick a topic. My herb garden, for example. Shall we discuss calendula versus comfrey, or—’
‘How goes the war? On my way here I saw dead soldiers but few living. Every village has been drained of men and lives in fear of the Sekk and their monsters. Yet the king sits in council and his girls brew sita. Why are the border posts unmanned? There should be guards posted in the hills above Ristale, no matter how great you think your friendship with Pharice. How can you monitor the Sekk without men on watch?’
‘All this and more can be done from the Eye Tower,’ Hanji said absently. He had concertinaed his spindly bones into the seat beside Tarquin. ‘Or so it has been until recently. What do you think is the point of having the Water of Glass, if not to use it to connect all the Eyes?’
‘Do not speak to me of the Water of Glass,’ Tarquin said. The Water of Glass was the Artifact he had brought back from Jai Pendu, alone and broken in spirit after all his men were lost. It had awakened the translucent lumps of crystal left behind in the abandoned monitor towers of the Everiens, so that visions appeared in them; but compared to the Fire of Glass, it seemed a mere toy. At the time Tarquin renounced his original name and Clan and turned his back on Everien, the Water of Glass had remained mysterious. It had not, as Ysse once hoped, helped the Clans exterminate the Sekk once and for all – or at least drive them so far back into the wild heights that they would never haunt Everien again. He well remembered how he had felt when he realized all his Company were lost for the sake of an object that had no martial value, but merely offered visions of Everien – and those only to the Scholars who understood how to use it.
Tarquin had no use for visions or the Knowledge that imparted them. His eyes had taken in more than enough in Jai Pendu; in fact he would have happily gone blind after that.
‘You may wish to forget your part in bringing the Water of Glass here, but you would be a fool to deny its power. Over the years we have located several large, fixed Eyes scattered throughout the remains of the ancient Everien structures, and there are many more smaller ones that can be carried from place to place. We think that each of these was once a part of the Water of Glass, which is a sort of Mother Eye. All of the lesser Eyes offer up their sight to her, so that we can See all across Everien from the Eye Tower.’
‘It all sounds like damned nonsense,’ Tarquin shifted impatiently. ‘Is that how you knew I was coming?’
Hanji gave a little start and squirmed visibly in his blue robes.
‘No,’ he said curtly. ‘I did not know you were coming.’
‘Then what bloody good are these Eyes of yours? I might have been an enemy.’ He swung his head from side to side, cursing under his breath, too worried and exhausted to even attempt to curb his temper. ‘This whole land lives under the curse of foolishness and vain hope. I never should have come back. Everything I try to do goes afoul.’
‘You were wrong to leave,’ Hanji retorted sharply. ‘Your sacrifice – the sacrifice of your men – it was not in vain. We have held on to Everien, and only thanks to you. The Water of Glass is crucial to our defence, and without your effort we would not possess it.’
‘But have you the Knowledge to really use it? You are not the Everiens, and I fear their Artifacts can only give you an illusion of safety.’
From across the room, the Honorary was staring at him intently; her gaze was neither hostile nor friendly, but there was something about her that made him uncomfortable. She must have overheard. He was about to go over and speak to her when the doors to the king’s audience chamber opened and a knot of people slipped out; the old man shut up abruptly and hustled Tarquin inside ahead of the next group, and before he knew it he was back in the room where he had sat sobbing at the feet of Queen Ysse, confessing the loss of his Company and vowing to leave Jai Khalar forever. But the queen was dead, and forever is a long time. He lurched after Hanji to a seat in the back row of chairs, hidden from the sunlight that spilled over the king and his councillors.
Coddle the Messenger
‘Wait a little while and I will introduce you when I see an opportunity,’ Hanji murmured in his ear. ‘It will be better to handle this quietly. The king’s secretary is telling him an emergency messenger is here, but I thought it wise not to give your name. Yet.’
The room was circular, so although they were in the back row, Tarquin, and Hanji had a side view of the proceedings. The king was seated at an oval stone table, surrounded by various advisers, some of whom Tarquin recognized. Lerien himself had lost condition but retained his bulk, which made him look older than he was. Instead of Bear Clan colours he wore the black of Clanlessness, and he had cut his blond hair to a short bristle. He had generous features and large hands, which now pawed slowly through documents on the table before him. The half sphere of the room behind Lerien had the look of having been appropriated for all-night meetings and hasty meals: the Council sat rather informally in armchairs and at desks, some of them writing or conferring quietly but paying no attention to the citizens in the rows of seats. Ajiko was there looking like a small mountain, talking informally with a couple of young officers, and Tarquin saw that he wore the rank of general now. The yellow-robed secretary bent down beside the king and whispered to him, and the ruler gave a brief nod. Lerien did not look old enough to be king, Tarquin thought, and calculated his age from memory. It did not please or reassure him to arrive at the conclusion than Lerien was older, now, than Tarquin had been when he had led his Company to Ja
i Pendu. He sagged in his seat, feeling geriatric.
A Snake Clan soldier was speaking.
‘There were fifty of us. We were guarding the high lands on the border of Snake Clan territory east of here, where people had been disappearing and stock had been mysteriously dying without a mark on them. The thing … it came on us in the night. I never saw it. I simply woke up and five of my comrades were advancing on me with their weapons already blooded. I didn’t know what was happening. Krestar came running – to help me, I thought, but he shot at me! The others had begun to get up and fight. Then Taniki engaged the five Enslaved with the sword and they simply cut him down where he stood. I … I know it is dishonourable, but I could see no chance against so many, so I ran. The last time I looked back, even more had joined the mob and Ruarel was trying to fight but he was surrounded.’ His voice broke and he halted, looking at the floor.
Ajiko had been listening with the attitude of a dormant volcano. ‘What did you do next, soldier? Did you run straight home to mother?’
Ashamed and distressed, the Snake did not meet the general’s gaze. He swallowed repeatedly, attempting to master his expression. ‘I got out of bowshot and found a vantage point above them. I watched them. Of fifty there were now only about thirty-five alive, and they were packing up the camp and getting ready to move.’
‘Do not lie to us, boy!’ Ajiko growled. ‘The smallest child knows that the Enslaved do not behave rationally. Packing up camp! And thirty-five alive of fifty! If they had been Enslaved, they would have murdered each other down to the last man.’
Lerien snapped his fingers at Ajiko to silence him. He addressed the Snake.
The Company of Glass Page 3