The Shamer's War

by Lene Kaaberbøl

  “How? You have no more money than the rest of us. Or do you?”

  “No. But your friend Azuan has. And apparently nothing is too good for his little princess.”

  The goose suddenly looked a lot less tempting, despite its spicy fragrance. I really shouldn’t eat it, I thought. But when the rest of them dug in, so did I.

  That night I dreamed of Shadow. Of his greedy hands, and the way his skin came off in flaky patches. But his face was different. In the dream, his face was Azuan’s.

  We ate the remains of the goose for breakfast. And during the night, Nico had made his decision.

  “Rikert, do you know how we might find the Foxes?”

  “Yes. Do you want to do it today?”

  “Yes, please. If you can.”

  Rikert nodded.

  “Stay in the house,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  DINA

  More Than Darkness

  Rikert returned late that afternoon, and he brought someone with him.

  “This is Tano,” he said. “He can help.”

  The boy was dark-haired, a few years older than me but big and strong for his age, with wide shoulders and large hands. You could tell he would be quite a giant of a man when he reached his full growth.

  And I knew him.

  I think he was as taken aback as I was.

  “You!” he said, and suddenly didn’t know what to do with his eyes. I had my difficulties too. I didn’t much want to look at him either. Once… once Valdracu had forced me to use my Shamer’s eyes on Tano just because he wouldn’t stand meekly by while his friends at the Weapons Mill were injured, one after the other, by the hazards of their work.

  Valdracu had hit Tano with his wicked chain, right across the palm, where it had to hurt like hell. But that hadn’t brought Tano to his knees. No, it took me to do that.

  “Do you two know each other?” said Rikert.

  I nodded mutely. Tano didn’t say anything either. Nico looked from Tano to me, trying to figure out what was going on. But as neither of us volunteered an explanation, he decided to press on as if nothing had happened.

  “Do you know who I am?” he asked Tano.

  “Yes, Lord.”

  Nico shook his head impatiently. “Don’t call me that. There is no reason to, and I don’t like it.”

  This seemed to surprise Tano, but he didn’t reply.

  “Who I am is only important because I would like to see the Weapons Master. And I think he would like to see me.”

  Tano nodded. He gave me a sidelong glance. “Is she coming too?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I don’t know.”

  Nico raised an eyebrow. “Why? What do you mean?”

  “It’s just… I’m not sure we can trust her.”

  “Trust Dina? Of course we can—”

  “What he means,” I interrupted hoarsely, “what he means is that he doesn’t dare trust someone who used to be Valdracu’s tame witch.”

  Tano raised his head in surprise for a moment, and I caught a glimpse of his dark eyes. Possibly he hadn’t expected me to reveal myself like that, without being forced.

  “But, Tano, Dina was Valdracu’s prisoner. His hostage. If she did anything that—If she obeyed him, it was only because he would have killed a small boy if she didn’t. Didn’t you know that?”

  Tano shrugged his shoulders evasively. “Some people said that.”

  “But you didn’t believe them?” Nico had spotted the doubtful note in Tano’s voice just as I had.

  Another shrug. “I don’t know. But I’m just not sure we can trust her. How do I know she can keep the kind of secrets that can cost people their lives if they get out?”

  “Dina is a good girl,” said Rikert suddenly. “Tano, Dina is not one to play you false.”

  I could have hugged him—Rikert and his steady nature, his big smith’s hands, and his steadfastness. And Tano actually seemed to listen.

  “Are you certain, Master?”

  “Dina is all right, son. I’ve known her since she was born.”

  Tano nodded slowly and reluctantly.

  “All right, then. If we hurry, we can be there before dark.”

  “Someone is following us.”

  Tano was the one who said it, but I had been thinking it for a good long while. It wasn’t that I had really heard or seen anything; it was more a sensation. I had hoped I was imagining things, but if Tano had caught it too…

  “I suppose it’s Azuan,” said Nico, grimacing. “He did threaten to do it.”

  “Azuan?” said Tano. “Who is that?”

  “Dina’s uncle,” said Nico.

  “Your uncle?” Tano gave me a brief, cautious glance. “Why is he following you around?”

  I shook my head. “He wants to… oh, it’s hard to explain.”

  “He wants to wait on her hand and foot and protect her against all the dangers of this world,” said Carmian acidly. “But Dina won’t let him.”

  Tano didn’t look as if this was very enlightening. “Why not?”

  “That’s not all he wants,” I said, hoping to avoid any talk of the serpent gift.

  I think Tano understood it differently. “Does he want to hurt you?” he said, clenching his fists. “Don’t you let him, Dina! You just tell him to keep his hands to himself.”

  Surprised, I looked at him. At first just because he looked ready to defend me tooth and nail. And then because I finally realized what he meant.

  “But he’s old!” I burst out. “He must be thirty or something.”

  “That doesn’t always stop them,” he said bitterly. “Not the worst ones.”

  … one of the weaver girls, Miona was her name, who used to smile at him when she saw him. Until she grew all pale and silent and scared and wouldn’t look at anybody. And when he found out what the Loom Master had done to her…

  “But it wasn’t your fault!”

  “I should have looked out for her,” he said. “She… she had no one to look out for her at all. And he knew that.”

  “Tano, you can’t look out for every unprotected being in this world.”

  And then we both realized what had happened.

  “You saw it,” he said accusingly. “You saw it in my head.”

  Denying it would do no good. I had already admitted it.

  “I didn’t mean to,” I said, remembering how incensed Carmian had been when I had caught a hint of her inner thoughts. “I can’t control it. It comes and goes whether I want it to or not.”

  He kept looking at me, with that same furious, courageous pride that had made him face down Valdracu.

  “Do it, then. Go ahead and look. See it all. I don’t care!”

  He had very dark eyes. Dark like a midnight sky. How could he stand there looking into my eyes when he knew better than anyone what that might cost him? Not even Nico could do that, though he sometimes tried.

  I think he was expecting things to happen. But my capricious gift had gone back into hiding.

  He frowned. “Something has happened,” he said. “You’re different.”

  “I don’t have Shamer’s eyes anymore,” I said. “Not really.”

  He didn’t believe me, I could see that right away. And who could blame him, when I had just looked straight into his mind like that?

  “Your uncle,” he finally said. “We can’t have him trailing along when we get to… to the place we’re going to.” He didn’t want to name it out loud, obviously, and perhaps that was wise. Who knew how close Azuan was?

  “No,” said Nico. “We can’t. But what do we do?”

  It was a good question. We were on foot, and the snow was at least ankle high almost everywhere. We couldn’t run from Azuan, and he would have no trouble following our tracks.

  “Call him,” said Carmian suddenly.

  “Call him? Why?”

  “He is your dog, isn’t he? If you call him, he will have to come.”

  “He is not my dog.” I g
lared at her. What a thing to say.

  “Protector, shadow, bodyguard, call it what you like. You are his little princess, right? So call him, darling, so that we can have a little talk.”

  No way. Why would I call out to an uncle I didn’t want anywhere near me?

  “It might be a good idea,” said Nico. “Perhaps we can come to some sort of arrangement with him.”

  “With Azuan? I don’t think so.”

  Nico smiled. “Oh, most people will talk to you if you can give them something they want.”

  And what would that be, except for me? I knew Nico well enough to know that he would never just hand me over to Azuan.

  “Go on, Dina. Call him.”

  I felt like an utter idiot. What would I call him? Uncle Azuan?

  “Azuan?”

  No answer.

  I tried again, with the same lack of results.

  What if we were wrong and he wasn’t there? How long did they expect me to stand here yodeling like a fool?

  “He is out there somewhere,” said Tano. “Or someone is. I’m sure I heard a horse.”

  “Do it again, Dina,” said Nico. “Just so that we are sure he has heard you.”

  I took a deep breath and called at the top of my lungs, “Azuan!”

  But only the trees surrounded us, black and silent, and I could neither hear nor see any human presence other than our own.

  “It’s Dina he is following,” said Carmian. “If she doesn’t go, neither does he.”

  “And what good is that going to do us?” I snapped. “Do you expect me to stand here forever, while the rest of you go off to take care of Drakan?”

  Nico frowned. “That might be the only way. No, Dina, we aren’t going to leave you here alone, or even for very long. But Tano and I might go on together for the last little bit of the way.”

  I thought it was a terrible idea, and I opened my mouth to say so. But at that moment we all heard a horse whinny, a lonely, plaintive sound in the stillness of the woods. And after that, there was no doubt. Tano stopped.

  “We can’t risk it,” he said. “I cannot lead so many strangers to the Foxes’ Lair without permission from the Weapons Master.”

  The Foxes’ Lair? Well, if people called them the Foxes, I suppose it was an apt enough name. I sighed.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll stay here. Just see that you come back and get me before I turn into an icicle.”

  “I’ll stay too,” said Rikert. “Can’t leave you here all alone, can we?”

  I smiled at him gratefully.

  “It’ll be only Tano and me,” said Nico. “Carmian will stay behind as well.”

  “Oh, will I?” said Carmian, not at all meekly. But Nico drew her aside and said something to her very quietly, and when he and Tano walked on, she stood with Rikert and me, hands on her hips, watching Nico disappear among the trees.

  “Well, well,” she muttered to herself. “Sweet words and candy smiles. But that’s not enough to feed a grown woman.”

  Then she spun on us.

  “What are you waiting for?” she said. “If we are to stay here till our strays come home, at least we have to have a fire.”

  We moved away from the road a little way and chopped down some pine boughs to make a shelter. After a couple of vain attempts, Rikert managed to light us a fire. We had neither food nor cooking gear, but I had brought a few of Ellyn’s dried herbs, and we had two pewter mugs. We filled them with snow and set them on the fire, and soon the tea was brewing.

  “How long do you think they’ll be?” I asked Rikert.

  “A few hours,” he said. “Depends how long they talk.”

  Carmian was restless. She still had a cough, but I think the night’s rest in the warm smithy and the tea I had made had probably helped quite a bit.

  “Can you play that thing?” she asked, pointing at my father’s flute, which I wore in my belt. “Or is it just for decoration?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t play what you might call real music,” I said. “That takes a lot of practice. But what the flute wants me to play, I can do.”

  “Give us a tune, then,” she said. “It doesn’t have to be anything I’ve heard before.”

  It wouldn’t be, I thought. But I set the flute to my lips and started playing.

  Tonight, the notes that came were lonely. A song full of snow and darkness and silence.

  “It sounds so sad,” said Carmian in the end. “Can’t you give us something a little more cheerful?”

  I shook my head. “Not tonight. The flute is not in a cheerful mood.”

  “Nonsense,” she snapped. “You are the player, right? Flutes don’t have moods. Not of their own, anyway.”

  But whether the mood was in me or the flute, the lonely twilight tune was the only thing I could play.

  Suddenly there were four of us at the fire. “Why do you play like that?” said Azuan. “Why do you play so that no human creature can stand being alone tonight?”

  Carmian leaped into the air like a cat with its tail on fire. Suddenly there was a knife in her hand, a long thin one, almost the length of a small sword. But before she had time to do anything with it, she gave a strange gasp and flailed her arms wildly for a few moments before keeling over into the snow, the knife still clutched in her right hand. She crabbed her way forward with awkward movements, as if she had suddenly gone deaf, dumb, and blind.

  “Stop it!” I yelled at Azuan, because I was certain this was something he had done to her. “Take it off her!”

  “She is dangerous,” he said. “And she is your enemy. Can’t you see that?”

  Carmian didn’t like me much, that was true, but my enemy? No, I didn’t think so. And no one deserved to be as she was now, creeping blindly through the snow. I seized one of the pewter mugs from the fire, though the handle was so hot it burned my fingers. And then I flung the hot tea into Azuan’s face.

  I didn’t know whether I had hit him or not. Because at that moment, something hit me.

  It was more than darkness. It was blindness and deafness and more. I could feel nothing, sense nothing whatsoever. And yet I wasn’t unconscious. I was aware that something had happened. I was aware that time was passing. But darkness covered all my senses like a blanket, and I felt as if I might as well be dead.

  DINA

  Clipped Wings

  I don’t know how long it lasted. It felt like forever. When I could see again, there was snow and moonlight, and a horse’s neck in front of me. I was sitting on a horse, and someone was holding me. And I was as seasick as I had ever been aboard the Sea Wolf.

  I didn’t have time to say anything or do anything. I just threw up.

  That darkness. That more-than-darkness. It was one of the most revolting things that had ever happened to me.

  The horse stopped. Azuan got off and lifted me down from the saddle. That nearly made me throw up all over again.

  “It will be better in a little while,” he said. “Rest for a moment.”

  “Disgusting. That was disgusting.”

  “Yes. Nobody likes it. Here, lie on my cloak.”

  I was so dizzy and weak at the knees that lying down was not a choice.

  “What is it?” I asked. “The darkness.”

  “My gift. The only thing I can do, apart from a certain resistance to the illusions of others.”

  “You take people’s senses away from them?”

  He nodded. “Not as refined and delicate as what your father could do. But quite effective all the same.”

  “Disgusting.”

  He shrugged. “It is the only weapon I have. Is it any prettier to slice people up with a knife, as your long-legged friend intended?”

  “She wouldn’t have used it.” Or would she? I was rarely on certain ground where Carmian was concerned.

  “She looked as if she meant to,” he said.

  “Where is she? And where is Rikert?”

  “Still by your little campfire, or so I assume. Unless they are hard
ier than you are and have started following our trail already. But we have a nice lead.”

  I tried to sit up, but I was still too dizzy. Azuan put his hand on my shoulder and held me back. It wasn’t hard for him.

  “You’ve abducted me!”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Then what do you call this?”

  “I saved you.”

  “Saved me? From what, if I may ask?”

  “From people who took no proper care of you. The Highlands are at war now, Dina. Why would you go there? It is no place for you.”

  “My family is in the Highlands!”

  “Only part of it, Dina. You have family elsewhere. You have a House. In peaceful, civilized lands, not this savage country.”

  He made it sound as if we were all wearing bearskin and carrying big clubs. But perhaps savage was the word for what Drakan had done to Skay-Sagis, turning it into one huge dragon pit where big beasts ate the smaller ones.

  “I want to go back,” I said, trying to sound firm and determined, or as firm and determined as one can be when one’s stomach is still floating about a little too close to one’s throat. “I want to go back to the others.”

  He shook his head. “We ride on as soon as you’ve caught your breath. It’s for your own good, Dina.”

  Could I run from him? Not on legs that felt like overcooked asparagus. But the flute, perhaps?

  The flute.

  “Where is my father’s flute?” It was no longer in my belt.

  “You’ll get it back” was all he said. Like Nico, he had apparently decided it was wiser to disarm me. “Come on. Let’s get you back on the horse. We have to ride till we find a place where we can spend the night.”

  In the end, we found a log cabin with just a single room, a fireplace at one end and a sleeping loft at the other. People had been living there until not too long ago, but now there were none. Where had they gone? Had they fled to more peaceful lands, like Azuan wanted us to? Or had it become too lonely and too cold to live here, in the woods so close to the Highlands and so far away from other people? Perhaps the cabin was only used during the summer. I knew some herders built shelters near the summer grazing; this could be one of those.