They set off with renewed cheer, Pallo now loquacious and full of verve. ‘I wonder how the Everiens moved all this white stone from across the range.’
‘Or why,’ put in Pentar. Kassien had dropped back to support Anatar, and Pentar now strode ahead. He, at least, seemed no worse for the beating he’d received yesterday. Istar caught up to Xiriel, who was talking to Pallo.
‘I did not know any of their works had survived outside Everien. There are the Floating Lands, of course, but I thought that the miles between Everien and the Floating Lands were empty.’
‘That’s what I was taught in Pharice,’ Pallo agreed. ‘I will have to set some people straight when I return there. What else haven’t the old Scholars bothered to tell us, or forgotten themselves? I wonder where this road goes.’
‘Under the mountains,’ Kassien said tensely.
‘Does it? Why didn’t we take it instead of doing all that climbing?’
‘There is a dead end before you come to Jai Khalar. And it would have been many miles spent in darkness.’
‘Really?’ Pallo had begun to get excited, but Istar could see that Kassien was uncomfortable with the conversation. ‘What about the other way?’
‘I have never walked on it. The Seahawk Clan avoids this road like a plague; they are superstitious about it. There is something unsettling about it, like all things built from the Knowledge. They say it goes towards the sea, but whether it arrives there I do not know.’
Pallo’s eyes bulged. He threw up his hands towards the sky. ‘It is joy!’ he exulted, turning and walking backwards to address the others. ‘Who needs cross-country slogging through marshes, up and down cliffs, when we could walk on a road? Hey, if only we had some horses …’
It was pure coincidence, Istar later convinced herself, that the manifestation should occur at the precise instant when Pallo uttered the word horses.
From around a bend in the road behind Pallo appeared a band of riders. Judging by the variety of armaments and face-paint, the group was comprised of a mixture of Clans, but all the saddle skirts were a uniform crimson, and the horses cantered in strict formation. Three Wasp archers with their painted bodies formed the first line, but ahead of them on a grey battle charger was a swordsman, his braided hair beneath the leader’s helmet flying back with the wind of his passage.
As they approached, Istar strained to identify the riders, but the striped paint obscured their features and their standard was tightly furled. The leader’s teeth were bared and the Seahawk paint brought a storm of triumph to his face. They were making as much noise as a landslide and within a few seconds they were almost upon Istar’s party, who flattened themselves against the wall that bordered the road even as the host swept by. The horses’ breathing and grunting was audible above the racket of hooves, and light flashed off weapons and armour. Istar could smell the hot animals, which bore aspects as fierce and ungentle as their riders despite their disciplined formation.
Pentar had the presence of mind to wave his arms in an attempt to attract their attention, but none of the warriors so much as glanced at him. The blue-eyed Wolf fighters passed, the Bear warriors passed on their heavy horses, the half-naked Snakes with their poisons and charms netted about their torsos, and the Seahawk swordsmen – all passed oblivious to the presence of the small, sodden band of travellers by the roadside. It was a lucky thing that they were not trampled, in fact; or so Istar thought at the time. But after the strange force had gone by, riding hard up the valley towards the mountains to disappear around the next curve in the road, Pallo wiped the rain from his face and said:
‘That’s funny. Did you notice the sun was shining on them?’
The Smell of Night
‘Prisoners.’ Lerien ignored Tarquin’s challenge, gripped with an anger of his own that aged his face ten years. ‘You were to take prisoners. Now these men are dead and can tell us nothing.’
Tarquin raised his gory blade and pointed it at the king. ‘Prisoners? What would you have them tell you? Why they betrayed you to Pharice? Or why they blindly followed their leaders to do the same? Ajiko could better answer that for you. He has spoiled them with obedience and order – did you see them march? It makes me sick.’ He drew breath to lay into Ajiko again and then caught himself. In a different tone he said, ‘How did they get here from Wolf Country?’
Lerien blinked. ‘H’ah’vah tunnels,’ he said grimly. ‘Now it makes sense. There are new H’ah’vah tunnels in Wolf Country.’
‘H’ah’vah are servants of the Sekk – or they used to be.’
‘Those men did not fight like Slaves!’ Lerien protested. ‘They fought with spirit.’
‘Yet they showed no dismay to cross weapons with their own king. I cannot read these riddles, Lerien – have affairs in your country come to this?’
Lerien didn’t have a chance to respond; the escaped mules had been found and a shout went up. Both men fled, Lerien leading the way back along the river and up a small stream, where the scent dogs might lose them. They threw themselves into the high grass and waited for sounds of pursuit. Horses galloped by fifty yards distant, and then returned going the other way. In a whisper Lerien said, ‘If they wish to attack Jai Khalar, why didn’t they use the tunnels to go the other way, to bring the Pharician army into Everien? They must have known they could come down from Wolf Country and take Everien one piece at a time. Why cross Ristale – especially when commanders like Jenji and Vortar know about the monitor towers in the western range? They would know we could See them.’
‘Perhaps someone has sabotaged your Eye system.’
‘Or perhaps,’ said Lerien, ‘they are not going to Jai Khalar after all.’
‘Explain.’
‘There is a secret political faction in Pharice called the Circle. They collect Everien Knowledge and Artifacts with a passion. Sendrigel has traded with them covertly; I allow it to go on because Hezene is too aggressive for his own good – I think he’s riding for a fall.’
‘So you are lining yourself up with revolutionaries? A dangerous game, Lerien.’ Nevertheless, Tarquin was pleased at the thought that Lerien had something up his sleeve.
‘The Circle is a mysterious group. I suspect their leaders are high up in Hezene’s government. I know that they are obsessed with the secrets of ancient Everien.’
‘There is too much wealth in Pharice,’ Tarquin agreed. ‘Too many rich men with nothing to do but make trouble. But it may be that Sendrigel has traded away your kingdom this time.’
‘What if they are trying to go to Jai Pendu?’ Lerien mused as if he hadn’t heard Tarquin.
‘With three-quarters of the Clan army in their back pocket? Why? The White Road has only ever come to Everien – to Jai Khalar, specifically. They know they can’t get to Jai Pendu by sea, and the Floating Lands cannot be taken by ten thousand any more easily than by ten.’
‘Every answer I can think of only brings more questions,’ Lerien said. ‘Come on. Let us round up the others before they get themselves captured or killed.’
They crept back the way they had come, hugging even closer to the cliff this time. The army moved on, laboriously crossing the river and continuing southward. Lerien and Tarquin trudged to the base of the next monitor tower, where they found Ketar and Kivi already waiting for them. They had horses.
Kivi said, ‘We went to the rear of the army and stole two of their spare horses. Ketar got us a couple of cloaks and we passed ourselves off as outriders. We worked our way up the columns. There is a Clan soldier for every five Pharicians. Our officers are mixed in with theirs. The Pharicians hold no special standard; nothing to show allegiance to anybody but Hezene.’
‘Well, we know where our army is now,’ Lerien said resignedly. ‘At least there is no doubt. Yet I don’t understand any of it.’
‘Treachery,’ said Tarquin darkly, thinking of Ajiko and his damned maps.
Kivi said, ‘It was all very strange. As you know, Ajiko’s soldiers are outfitted in dress not
unlike that of the Pharicians, but we also saw Clan warriors on Everien mountain horses, and they wore no uniforms, but they were painted for high battle, just as they would have been of old.’
‘On horseback? How would they have got horses across the mountains from Wolf Country? What horse would enter a H’ah’vah tunnel?’
‘Kivi is dreaming,’ Ketar snorted. ‘I saw no such men, and we were together all the time.’
‘You can only perceive them if you first See them through the Eye. You refused to do so.’
‘The Eye which has been proved false? Why should I look in it?’
‘They were perfectly clear in the Eye,’ Kivi said to the others. ‘And then after a while, I was able to detect them without the Eye, like ghosts. They were terrifying.’
‘To you, maybe,’ Ketar said. ‘I saw many Pharicians and some Clan infantry, but they looked too tired to be terrifying.’
Tarquin had gone cold. Lerien said, ‘Describe the riders you saw, Kivi.’
‘One of them was about your size, Tarquin, with a shaven head and blue bands painted across it, and he was wearing leather armour inlaid with Everien smooth-stone, and riding a white horse. The horse had spikes on its hooves. The other one was quite dark, hair all braided, and he wore practically nothing. His body was painted in red and gold, and he rode a small brown horse that had a long blanket covering it.’
‘What’s the matter, Tarquin? Have you encountered these men before? Are they Clan or not?’
‘I don’t know,’ Tarquin said faintly. He felt dizzy. He walked a little apart from the others.
‘Ketar, did you see the Pharician chariot squad? Did you see their leaders?’
‘They have a strong chariot corps,’ Ketar said. ‘It wasn’t merely ceremonial. We caught a glimpse of the leaders, but they were all packed together and surrounded by the cavalry. I couldn’t tell you anything about them, other than that they fly a Pharician Imperial standard.’
‘The riders I saw,’ Kivi persisted. ‘There was something strange about them. They weren’t exactly … solid.’
‘That’s because they didn’t exist,’ Ketar scoffed, and then snapped his mouth shut as Lerien glared at him.
‘They flashed in and out of view,’ Kivi continued. ‘Then one of them came along, a Deer on horseback. He had blood all over his fighting sticks! They were actually dripping, and his clothes were torn. I stared at him; I thought maybe I’d recognize him, but I’ve never seen any of my kinfolk look so vicious. Then he was gone. He reappeared three columns away, and he spurred his horse and brandished his sticks even though there was no one for him to fight. The foot soldiers behaved as though he wasn’t even there. Then he charged and I swear it, he passed through a chariot carrying a Pharician officer. I could see him flailing the air with his sticks. They were just a red blur, and the horse was striking out as well.’
Tarquin said, ‘Was he wearing a yellow shirt?’
‘You saw him, too?’ Kivi spun to face him, wide-eyed.
‘Tarquin, what is it?’ Lerien caught his arm, for he’d reeled back on his heels.
Tarquin composed himself, stony and fatalistic. He loosened his sword.
‘Then I saw the Sekk,’ said Kivi. His eyes slipped away from Tarquin, who lunged forward and grabbed Kivi by both shoulders. ‘What Sekk? What Sekk?’
Kivi’s teeth chattered. ‘I couldn’t look at it directly. It wore all black, and it rode in a chariot at the back of the chariot ranks.’
‘What Sekk—’ began Ketar.
‘Shut up, Ketar!’ The Seer glared at the Seahawk. ‘I know it was a Sekk. All the army behaved strangely.’
‘Here come the rest,’ Lerien said, shading his eyes. By now it was late evening, and the shadows were sharp and warm on the summer grass. ‘If only we had more horses, we might easily keep pace with this army.’
Taro had spent half his arrows in a fight with the Pharicians, Stavel glowered, and Jakse dragged himself along as one exhausted. Tarquin was too preoccupied with the sinking feeling in his own stomach to speak; but this did not stop him from listening to Stavel’s report, delivered in a voice grey with despair.
‘I saw our brothers like Slaves, and yet not like Slaves. What controls them? They have maintained their self-control but their faces are empty.’
‘What about this supposed Sekk of yours, Kivi?’ asked the king. ‘Tell us.’
‘As I said, it was in a chariot,’ Kivi said in a low voice. ‘It turned towards me. It was attractive, like a Sekk … But it—’ He made a strangled sound and looked away. ‘It had no eyes.’
Tarquin stopped breathing. He could not understand how the others could keep talking so calmly; it seemed to him that the very world was surely coming apart before his eyes.
‘It could not have been a Sekk which Kivi saw,’ Ketar said. ‘The whole army would have self-destructed by now if infected by the Slaving spell.’
‘It’s true,’ Jakse put in. ‘Sekk can sometimes rule over a handful of Slaves for a time, but never an entire army – not like this.’
‘Something else is going on,’ Lerien agreed and fell into a pensive silence.
‘Let us debate it a little longer while they march towards Jai Pendu,’ said Stavel. ‘Kivi, are you taking notes?’
‘Close your mouth, Stavel.’ Lerien’s face showed white around the dark holes of his eyes and mouth; night was being gently run to ground by a prescience of sun.
‘Stavel is right,’ Tarquin said. ‘Better to dive in headfirst, I think.’
He strode away, Kivi hastening at his heels. They walked past the horses and climbed the side of a rock formation that jutted from the slope to look down on the army, which had passed them and camped to the south. Now quiescent in the shadow of the mountains, it was defined only by pinpricks of torchlight. The plain looked like a starry sky, but there were no stars above, only clouds that did not ever seem to move, despite the unceasing wind.
‘Kivi,’ he said. ‘The rules are going to change now. I have no way of explaining this to you except to say that you must be prepared to do what you have never done, to see what you have never seen. You are young, and fast, but don’t trust yourself. Not for a second.’
Kivi looked uneasy. ‘Don’t trust myself? What—’
‘The Sekk have many tricks. When you have seen a few or a dozen, you begin to learn to recognize them; you begin to have immunity. But if you are taken in the first time, there never will be a second chance. You will be Enslaved.’
Kivi looked affronted. ‘I was taught how to avoid the Slaving spells.’
Tarquin guffawed and gestured to the army camped below them. ‘So were they. You hear me, Kivi?’
‘I don’t understand what you want me to do.’
‘In a fight against a man,’ Tarquin said, jumping down from the rock and tightening the girth on one of the grazing horses, ‘the problem is simple. He is only like yourself. His needs and means for killing are obvious. You are made of fear, of course, and if you have trained well and stayed alive in the past, then your technique and your skill will never avoid that fear, but rise out of it. Out of necessity, yes, Kivi?’
‘They say it’s like falling very fast,’ Kivi reflected. ‘There’s no time to contemplate. You are reacting, and you’ll grab on to anything that you can.’
‘And that,’ said Tarquin, ‘is where the Sekk can enter you. You cannot succumb to their sense of time. You cannot treat them as you would a bad dream and go about your business. Nor can you treat them like men. They are not men, and they will have you if you make that mistake. You must seek to understand them as something alien, unlike you.’
‘Seek to understand them? But Tarquin, isn’t that how they take you? I mean, I thought—’ He broke off, disconcerted.
‘You thought what?’
‘The Knowledge is like a wall. It is to repel the Sekk. What you are saying, it’s like climbing over the wall. Going into their territory.’
‘The Knowledge excites them,’ said
Tarquin, and began examining the contents of the saddlebags. ‘Have you not observed this? Does no one among you Seers trouble to make a study of the Sekk?’
‘You cannot study them,’ Kivi said fervently. ‘They’ll draw you in. They’ll take you. Tarquin, if that’s what you’ve been doing, you must stop.’ Exercised, he followed Tarquin around the far side of the horse, his voice trembling. ‘These fits you have. I respect you, so I have said nothing to the others. But I say it to you, and you must listen to me. I have worked with the Artifacts. I have read the texts in Jai Khalar and I have moved through the Knowledge in ways that I can’t begin to describe to you. You have been adventuring hither and yon, but I have been in Jai Khalar, and I have seen as much of the Knowledge as anyone except Mhani. And I tell you that you are in peril. Do not study the Sekk. Do not seek them out. Do not attempt to penetrate their minds. It is more dangerous than even you can know.’
Tarquin dug the blade of his hand into his thigh, separating muscle from tendon. ‘I have not asked for your company or your advice. Stay with Lerien if you are afraid of me.’
‘No. You can’t get rid of me so easily.’
‘Do you understand my instructions?’ Tarquin demanded. ‘Do you hear me?’
‘Yes. I hear you. What do you want me to do?’
‘Pay attention. Stay alive. It’s not as easy as you think. The first time, you were allowed to escape.’ He lengthened the stirrups. ‘The Sekk wished for you to be a messenger.’
‘Messenger? How so?’
‘This is not an ordinary Sekk. It can move the entire army with its mind, flex its muscles and swing men like you swing your sticks. It detected us some time during our assay. If it wanted us dead, we would have been overwhelmed. We were not. Therefore, it wants something else.’
‘Are you saying this is a trap?’
‘That’s what I’m saying.’ He swung into the saddle.
‘Where are you two going?’ Lerien shouted. ‘Those horses are important!’
The rest started running towards them. Tarquin nudged his horse to a trot.
The Company of Glass Page 22