‘Lord …’ the servitor said again, but Tarsin turned on the man and woman and roared at them to leave the room. Again Glynn experienced a strange but potent sense of deja vu, as if she had seen this man say these words of dismissal in just this way before, though of course it could not be.
The man said gently, ‘Lord, you cannot intend us to leave you alone with this unknown …’
‘I do not fear a servitor. Now go or I will have you both chopped into pieces!’
The servitors bowed and withdrew.
‘I want to see what is in the casket,’ Tarsin said.
Glynn thought apprehensively of the darklin. The Draaka had claimed that he would appreciate the value of the gift despite his apparent dislike of the seer stones, but how could anyone predict how Tarsin would react? What if he flew into a rage at the sight of the stone and ordered Glynn to the cells? Still, what else could she do but obey? She bowed very calmly and formally and held out the casket.
To her surprise, he stepped back and pointed to the floor. ‘Put it down there and open it where I can see it, and stay down on your knees. Remember that, although we are alone, there are spies who never take their eyes from me, and who will act upon the slightest sign of a threat.’
Having no alternative, Glynn dropped to one knee, set down the casket and broke the seal on the key bottle, tipping it into her palm. Dusting the eggshell thin glass away, she fitted the tiny key it contained into the lock on the casket and the lid sprang open to reveal the gleaming orb on its nest of shredded gold cloth. She averted her eyes quickly, remembering what had happened the last time she had stared at a darklin, and tilted the open casket so that Tarsin could see the stone clearly.
‘What is it? Some sort of foamstone? Take it from the box.’
‘I can not touch it, Lord,’ she said softly. ‘It is a darklin and it may orientate to me.’
Tarsin drew in a hissing breath that made her look up to see what expression accompanied it. He looked furious but there was also a fascinated repulsion in his blue eyes as they rested on the darklin ‘So! A monstrously valuable gift, then, to poison the soul of a Holder. Yet fitting too, for one can never know if a darklin speaks true or false. I daresay it is a perfect reflection of the nature of she who sent it.’
‘Lord Holder, my mistress had no desire to offend you,’ Glynn said desperately. ‘She … she has heard that you lament the loss of the Sheannite visionweaver who saved your life, and she sent this so that you could have someone scry to find her. Indeed, my mistress offers herself for this task. She bids me tell you that, unlike others, she can determine whether a darklin vision is true or false.’
Tarsin gave a sneering smile. ‘And who shall determine if the truth-speaker speaks true?’ he asked.
‘Wouldn’t it be the truth if you found the visionweaver?’ Glynn ventured.
Tarsin’s brows drew together thoughtfully, but when he spoke, his tone was mild and the question innocuous. ‘Tell me why your mistress hires a single servitor?’
‘My mistress saw in a vision that she would have need of me.’
Tarsin grunted. ‘She dreamed of you, and I dreamed of you,’ he said.
‘I did not mean to suggest, Sire, that the Draaka dreamed of me,’ Glynn said quickly. ‘Only that she dreamed of a need for a servitor who was not Acanthan.’
Tarsin was silent for a time and then he said in a sudden hollow voice, ‘Do you know, I have dreamed of the visionweaver, too, since she disappeared. I saw her singing inside a fire. Her voice was very beautiful but her face was painted and she wore a veil over her eyes. What do you think it could mean that, even in my dreams, her face is hidden from me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Glynn murmured.
‘There was something about the visionweaver that made me feel that there was still time for me to become a good and wise Holder who would be remembered with love. Maybe it was only that her saving of my life seemed an ultimate kind of proof that I was worthy of saving.’ Again a burst of the uncontrollable, braying laughter. ‘She was dying and I wanted to help her … to save her as I had been saved.’
Glynn said nothing.
Tarsin straightened up and all at once a wild-eyed energy crackled about him. ‘You said that your mistress has the power to direct a darklin vision and know if what she sees is true?’
Glynn nodded. ‘What message shall I take to my mistress, Lord Holder? Do you accept her gift and her offer to scry for you?’
‘I accept the darklin,’ Tarsin said slowly, then he turned and frowned in displeasure at the sound of footsteps hurrying across the tiled floor. The displeasure turned to anger when he saw his mother come quickly round the aviary. Glynn’s feinna senses registered the woman’s anxiety even as they gibbered their revulsion of her.
‘My son?’ Coralyn sounded slightly breathless. ‘Where are your body servitors? I will have them whipped for leaving you alone like this.’
‘If there is any whipping to be done of my body servitors, I will order it, and in this case I will not because I sent them away,’ Tarsin snapped. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I bring important news, my son. Fulig has taken ship for Ramidan.’
Tarsin lifted his brows. ‘So. Fulig will witness the joining of his son to Unys. No doubt he is relieved to know that it is only a year-end bond, and not the life bond you desired.’ Coralyn paled with shock and Tarsin grinned nastily to see it. ‘I, too, have my spies, Mother, and not all of them lick your fingers under the table. It must have been a blow to your plans to find that, despite all of your honey, Kerd cleaves to his father. Myself I think he is wise to have Unys for a limited period.’
‘You misjudge me, Tarsin. I am very glad to see that Kerd is so devoted to his father,’ Coralyn said, and oddly, Glynn’s feinna senses told her this was true. But she also detected a suppressed and vicious stab of amusement and triumph.
‘I doubt that devotion to anyone besides yourself is of any interest to you, Mother,’ Tarsin said.
‘You are too hard on me, my son. Fulig will attend the joining ceremony that marks the end of a long and foolish enmity between our two septs with the joining of our beloved children. Is it so hard to imagine that I might be pleased by that?’
Tarsin laughed and this time he sounded genuinely amused. ‘Do you imagine that anyone would believe such mawkish sentiments of you, least of all, me?’
Coralyn bridled. Oh she did not like being laughed at, Glynn saw. She said tightly, ‘My son, it is not fitting that we speak so freely before a servitor.’
‘I have no wish to discuss anything with you, Mother, therefore you may take yourself back to your spy hole and watch me seek out the visionweaver.’
‘You will use the darklin?’ Coralyn asked.
Tarsin’s eyes narrowed. ‘I think you almost fear that. Is that why you ran here so fast that your bosom was still heaving when you stopped? Yet why should you fear me using the darklin? Is it because you had something to do with the disappearance of the visionweaver? After all it was your legionnaires – your honour guard – who escorted and lost her.’
‘They died for failing their duty,’ Coralyn said tightly. Glynn’s feinna senses told her this was the truth but she could also feel that the older woman was frightened. Yet her voice suddenly mellowed. ‘I spoke sharply only out of surprise that you would seek the dubious wisdom of a darklin after the last time.’
‘I shall not touch one of the foul things,’ Tarsin spat the words out. ‘But do you advise against using a gift offered by your own guest?’
Coralyns response was careful. ‘I know little of the Draaka other than is publicly known. As I have explained to you more than once, I merely invited her here to explain her apparent attacks on your rule.’
‘Is that why you invited her here, Mother?’ Tarsin sneered. ‘To enlighten me and to clear the name of an unknown Draaka? How altruistic you have become all of a sudden. Celebrating the end of sept rifts and righting wrongs. Of course, you are keeping your distance, as yo
u are careful to point out to me, in case this Draaka fails to convince me of her goodwill. I wonder how your continued absence pleases her.’
‘It is not me that she came here to see,’ Coralyn countered. ‘Why not see her and question her about this ability she professes to have? Let her scry for your visionweaver.’
‘How you would like that,’ Tarsin snarled. ‘An audience, whereupon the formalities would be satisfied, leaving this woman and her followers free to roam in my realm. No, Mother. For the time being, the woman and her followers can continue to languish in your care.’
‘If you will not see the Draaka, you will lose the chance to learn if she can find this visionweaver who so obsesses you.’
‘Perhaps,’ Tarsin’s voice was mild and suddenly pleasant. ‘But it will not matter for I shall have this servitor invoke the darklin now and scry for me.’
‘No!’ Glynn cried, horrified.
Tarsin glared at her. ‘You dare to refuse me?’
‘Sire, would you waste the power of the stone on one who will have no idea if what she sees is true or false?’ Glynn stammered. ‘One, moreover, who could not even be sure that she would vision of what you wished her to vision. My mistress can control …’
‘I know very well what she would like to control,’ Tarsin snapped. ‘But I am not Jurass. Do as I have bidden. Invoke the stone and find out the whereabouts of the visionweaver.’
‘You can not be serious!’ Coralyn cried.
‘Are you afraid of what I will learn, Mother?’ Tarsin hissed. ‘I am sure that the Draaka would not have told me anything that would harm you, but this servitor is a nevvish who will speak the truth of what she sees.’
‘But Sire …’ Glynn began, sickened at the thought of letting the darklin’s strange power again possess her.
‘Invoke the darklin,’ Tarsin commanded. ‘Do it now!’
Glynn had no choice. She let out her breath slowly and looked down into the casket. Then she took up the darklin, repelled as before by the blood heat of the stone and the strange shifting heaviness of it. She looked into it deeply and suddenly, she was sliding forward …
Glynn found herself following a woman in a green cloak down a dark street at night. It was cold and very, very quiet.
As the gap closed between her and the other woman, someone above opened a window and flung water out. For a second, candlelight from above slanted down and Glynn saw the glimmer of green painted scales and knew it was the Iridomi Aluade that she was following.
All at once, her future self froze in a pool of shadows and, a split second later, Aluade stopped and looked behind her.
Apparently satisfied that she was not being followed, Aluade turned into a wide doorway set in a stone arch and knocked three times and then another two times. The door opened immediately, and Glynn stepped into deeper shadows against the wall of the building as Aluade vanished inside. The door closed behind her and Glynn waited. Presently a cloaked man appeared from the other direction. He, too, stopped and looked behind him before coming to tap the same sequence. Again he was swiftly admitted. Two women came next, walking furtively and looking constantly behind themselves. Another man came along almost running and was admitted. This time, Glynn stepped from the shadows as soon as the door closed and knocked as the others had done. The door opened and a hand snaked out to pull her into a pitch-black hallway.
‘Hurry up, it is about to begin,’ the man hissed. Glynn was glad of the darkness for she felt certain it was the voice of the draakira Gif. He gave Glynn a push and she groped her way along the passage until her feinna vision took over and allowed her to see that she was in a stone corridor which ended in an open doorway some way further along. As she neared the door, she saw that a reddish light glowed. Oddly, she had the feeling that the light was visible only to her feinna sight.
Glynn came to the doorway and, after the slightest hesitation, stepped through it.
She found herself standing at the top of a set of steps leading down into a long, high-roofed building where hundreds of cloaked people stood facing what looked horribly like an altar. The room was almost completely dark except for the eldritch red glow, and the light of a few candles on the altar. Glynn spotted the Draaka entering through a door on the right, and realised with horror that she had just joined a draakan ceremony.
She could not possibly guess what would possess her to come here. After all, if she was creeping about, she could no longer be a prisoner of the Draaka. Why would she risk recapture and worse?
A flurry of movement made her turn and her heart gave a frightened lurch at seeing the senior draakira, each with a candle, streaming in through the very door she had just entered. Cringing behind a big man, she watched them file through the crowd to the front of the room. Some of them were carrying long heavy-looking cloth-wrapped bundles between them, and these were laid upon the altar. Glynn had a moment of fright until the draakira unwrapped the first bundle to reveal the darklin pole that had stood in the audience room. This was set up on one side of the altar and the other was deftly unwrapped, but Glynn was distracted by a sighing sound from the people about her. She shifted her eyes to the Draaka, who had flung up her long white arms so that the cloth would fall back from them. In each pale hand, she grasped a thin black knife and Glynn felt sweat ooze from her brow and lip, and prayed she would not vomit, for these were sacrificial knives.
The Draaka began to make gestures with the knives and the room moaned as one and swayed with the sound, so perfectly in accord that Glynn turned to look at the man next to her. She had intended a quick look, for fear of drawing attention, but when she saw the man’s face, and his pin-point pupils, she realised that all of the people about her were intoxicated. It had to be olfactor dust in the candles since she could not imagine how else all these people could have been intoxicated. Of course she was not affected because she was not really there, and her future self was clearly as capable of nullifying the effects of the drugs as she was, which meant that in this future, at least, the feinna link had not been broken.
Now the two darklin pedestals were in place and, confirming this with a backward glance, the Draaka stabbed the knives into the air again. At the same time, there was the sound of drum beats – monotonous, perfectly in time. Two of the draakira were beating small drum rounds. Now Aluade came from the crowd to kneel in front of the Draaka, who touched her forehead with both knife tips.
The audience moaned orgasmically when blood trickled down the pale forehead from two knife pricks, and Aluade looked exultant. She held out her hand and the Draaka laid one of the knives into her palm. She rose and went to the third bundle which still lay on the altar and Glynn’s heart began to pound with horror at the realisation that it was moving. The crowd bayed like a pack of rabid wolves as the Iridomi woman began to slash at the bindings on the bundle, and then they parted and slid away to reveal a hooded and half-naked man struggling wildly.
Glynn prayed the, poor devil would die fast because, no matter what she felt, Glynn could do nothing to help him. One move and this maddened pack would fall on her as well. She felt the edgy madness of the group mind skittering along the edge of action. But all at once, Glynn began to edge forward.
‘Welcome …’ the Draaka said, and began to speak in detail of the new Ramidani haven, bestowed upon them by the Iridomi chieftain. Her lovely rich voice was deliberately subdued into a dull monotone that Glynn quickly realised made it hard to focus on her words and their meanings. It was like listening to someone read very badly on a hot Friday afternoon in school. You couldn’t take in what was being said even if you wanted to. Before long, all you heard were the droning cadences of the words, the sing-song quality of them. In minutes, the entire audience was rocking on its feet. The darklin pedestals began to operate as they had done in the audience chamber in the Iridomi apartment, drawing the energy in the room into a swirling force that became faster and faster and more and more alluring.
Glynn behaved like everyone else, but inside her h
ead, she began reciting the nine times tables to herself. She had timed her swaying motion so that it would look as if she was synchronised with the rest, but in fact, she was very slightly out. She forced herself to listen to the words flowing over the rapt crowd, and found a lot of empty rhetoric, half of it contradictory and senseless.
‘… the Void spirit knows of your unhappiness and shares it, for the world is awry. A lunatic leads us, who is led in turn by the arrogant soulweaving hags who will never willingly relinquish their power. Yet be assured that the time of madness draws to an end.’
But after a time, Glynn began to notice that certain words were repeated and given emphasis and that, taken alone, these words were communicating something other than the sentences of which they formed an innocuous part. The words, Glynn gradually realised, were a raw summoning and an invoking of blood and pain and darkness.
Suddenly there was a gust of icy wind and all of the candles were extinguished in a single instant, the huge chamber plunged into a womb-like red glow.
‘I am here,’ hissed the Chaos spirit.
Glynn’s blood tried to run backwards in her veins, for the voice came from Aluade. The Iridomi stood rigid, head arched back. Her arms were out-flung, fingers grasping at nothing, for she had dropped the knife given her. Her eyes were rolled horribly far back into her skull so that only the whites showed, and saliva dribbled from the edge of her wide-stretched lips.
‘The Unraveller iss now upon Iridom.’
‘Iridom?’ the Draaka asked with sharp doubt. ‘Are you sure?’ Almost before the words left her mouth she gave a piercing shriek.
‘Do not quesstion me,’ the Chaos spirit breathed.
‘No, Master, forgive me,’ the Draaka babbled.
‘The Unraveller was bound for Darkfall, but I ussed thosse mindss open to me to divert the ship to Iridom.’
‘I will speak with Coralyn …’ the Draaka began eagerly.