‘I am well guarded, brother, whilst you are not.’
‘Nonsense! I have Bugg!’
The manservant looked up at Brys with a bland smile.
‘Tehol, this is not time for jokes—’
‘Bugg resents that!’
‘I do?’
‘Well, don’t you? I would, if I were you—’
‘It seems you just were.’
‘My apologies for making you speak out of turn, then.’
‘Speaking on your behalf, master, I accept.’
‘You are filled with relief—’
‘Will you two stop it!’ Brys shouted, throwing up his hands. He began pacing the small confines of the room. ‘The threat is very real. Agents of the queen will not hesitate. You are both in very grave danger.’
‘But how will killing me change the fact of Hull forsaking our homeland?’
‘It won’t, of course. But your history, Tehol, makes you a hated man. The queen’s investments suffered thanks to you, and she’s not the type to forgive and forget.’
‘Well, what do you suggest, Brys?’
‘Stop sleeping on your roof, for one. Let me hire a few bodyguards—’
‘A few? How many are you thinking?’
‘Four, at least.’
‘One.’
‘One?’
‘One. No more than that. You know how I dislike crowds, Brys.’
‘Crowds? You’ve never disliked crowds, Tehol.’
‘I do now.’
Brys glowered, then sighed. ‘All right. One.’
‘And that will make you happy, then? Excellent—’
‘No more sleeping on your roof.’
‘I’m afraid, brother, that won’t be possible.’
‘Why not?’
Tehol gestured. ‘Look at this place! It’s a mess! Besides, Bugg snores. And we’re not talking mild snoring, either. Imagine being chained to the floor of a cave, with the tide crashing in, louder, louder, louder—’
‘I have in mind three guards, all brothers,’ Brys said, ‘who can spell each other. One will therefore always be with you, even when you’re sleeping on your roof.’
‘So long as they don’t snore—’
‘They won’t be asleep, Tehol! They’ll be standing guard!’
‘All right. Calm down. I am accepting, aren’t I? Now, how about some soup, just to tide you over until you break your fast?’
Brys glanced at the pot. ‘There’s wine in it, isn’t there?’
‘Indeed. Only the best, at that.’
‘Fine. Half a bowl.’
Tehol and Bugg exchanged pleased smiles.
Chapter Fifteen
Black glass stands between us
The thin face of otherness
Risen into difference
These sibling worlds
You cannot reach through
Or pierce this shade so distinct
As to make us unrecognizable
Even in reflection
The black glass stands
And that is more than all
And the between us
Gropes but never finds
Focus or even meaning
The between us is ever lost
In that barrier of darkness
When backs are turned
And we do little more than refuse
Facing ourselves.
Preface to The Nerek Absolution
Myrkas Preadict
Light and heat rose in waves from the rock, swirled remorselessly along the narrow track. The wraiths had fled to cracks and fissures and huddled there now, like bats awaiting dusk. Seren Pedac paused to await Buruk. She set her pack down, then tugged at the sweat-sodden, quilted padding beneath her armour, feeling it peel away from her back like skin. She was wearing less than half her kit, the rest strapped onto the pack, yet it still dragged at her after the long climb to the summit of the pass.
She could hear nothing from beyond the crest twenty paces behind her, and considered going back to check on her charge. Then, faintly, came a curse, then scrabbling sounds.
The poor man.
They had been hounded by the wraiths the entire way. The ghostly creatures made the very air agitated and restless. Sleep was difficult, and the constant motion flitting in their peripheral vision, the whispered rustling through their camps, left their nerves raw and exhausted.
She glared a moment at the midday sun, then wiped the gritty sweat from her brow and walked a few paces ahead on the trail. They were almost out of Edur territory. Another thousand paces. After that, another day’s worth of descent to the river. Without the wagons, they would then be able to hire a river boat to take them the rest of the way down to Trate. Another day for that.
And then? Will he still hold me to the contract? It seemed pointless, and so she had assumed he would simply release her, at least for the duration of the war, and she would be free to journey back to Letheras. But Buruk the Pale had said nothing of that. In fact, he had not said much of anything since leaving the Hiroth village.
She turned as he clambered onto the summit’s flat stretch. Clothed in dust and streaks of sweat, beneath them a deeply flushed face and neck. Seren walked back towards him. ‘We will rest here for a time.’
He coughed, then asked, ‘Why?’ The word was a vicious growl.
‘Because we need it, Buruk.’
‘You don’t. And why speak for me? I am fine, Acquitor. Just get us to the river.’
Her pack held both their possessions and supplies. She had cut down a sapling and trimmed it to serve as a walking stick for him, and this was all he carried. His once fine clothes were ragged, the leggings torn by sharp rocks. He stood before her, wheezing, bent over and leaning heavily on the stick. ‘I mean to rest, Buruk,’ she said after a moment. ‘You can do as you please.’
‘I can’t stand being watched!’ the merchant suddenly shrieked. ‘Always watching! Those damned shades! No more!’ With that he stumbled past her on the trail.
Seren returned to her pack and slung it once more over her shoulders. One sentiment she could share with Buruk: the sooner this trip was over, the better. She set out in his wake.
A dozen paces along and she reached his side. Then was past.
By the time Seren arrived at the clearing where the borders had been agreed over a century ago, Buruk the Pale was once more out of sight somewhere back on the trail. She halted, flung down her pack, and walked over to the sheer wall of polished black stone, recalling when she had last touched that strange – and strangely welcoming – surface.
Some mysteries would not unravel, whilst others were peeled back by fraught circumstance or deadly design, to reveal mostly sordid truths.
She set her hands against the warm, glassy stone, and felt something like healing steal into her. Beyond, figures in ceaseless motion, paying no attention to her whatsoever. Preferable to the endless spying of wraiths. And this was as it had always been. Seren settled her forehead against the wall, closing her eyes.
And heard whispering.
A language kin to Tiste Edur. She struggled to translate. Then meaning was found.
‘—when he who commands cannot be assailed. Cannot be defeated.’
‘And now he feeds on our rage. Our anguish.’
‘Of the three, one shall return. Our salvation—’
‘Fool. From each death power burgeons anew. Victory is impossible.’
‘There is no place for us. We but serve. We but bleed out terror and the annihilation begins—’
‘Ours as well.’
‘Yes, ours as well.’
‘Do you think she will come again? Does anyone think she will come again? She will, I am certain of it. With her bright sword. She is the rising sun and the rising sun ever comes, sending us scurrying, cutting us to pieces with that sharp, deadly light—’
‘—annihilation well serves us. Make of us dead shards. To bring an end to this—’
‘Someone is with us.’
&n
bsp; ‘Who?’
‘A mortal is here with us. Two Mistresses to the same Hold. She is one, and she is here. She is here now and she listens to our words.’
‘Steal her mind!’
‘Take her soul!’
‘Let us out!’
Seren reeled away from the black wall. Staggered, hands to her ears, shaking her head. ‘Enough,’ she moaned. ‘No more, please. No more.’ She sank to her knees, was motionless as the voices faded, their screams dwindling. ‘Mistress?’ she whispered. I am no-one’s mistress. Just one more reluctant… lover of solitude. No place for voices, no place for hard purposes… fierce fires.
Like Hull, only ashes. The smudged remnants of possibilities. But, unlike the man she had once thought to love, she had not knelt before a new icon to certainty. No choices to measure out like the soporific illusion of some drug, the consigning invitation to addiction.
She wanted no new masters over her life. Nor the burden of friendships.
A croaking voice behind her. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
She shook her head. ‘Nothing, Buruk.’ She climbed wearily to her feet. ‘We have reached the border.’
‘I’m not blind, Acquitor.’
‘We can move on a way, then make camp.’
‘You think me weak, don’t you?’
She glanced over at him. ‘You are sick with exhaustion, Buruk. So am I. What point all this bravado?’
Sudden pain in his expression, then he turned away. ‘I’ll show you soon enough.’
‘What of my contract?’
He did not face her. ‘Done. Once we reach Trate. I absolve you of further responsibility.’
‘So be it,’ she said, walking to her pack.
****
They built a small fire with the last of their wood. The wraiths, it seemed, cared nothing for borders, flitting along the edges of the flickering light. A renewed interest, and Seren thought she knew why. The spirits within the stone wall. She was now marked.
Mistress of the Hold. Mistresses. There are two, and they think I am one of those two. A lie, a mistake.
Which Hold?
‘You were young,’ Buruk suddenly said, his eyes on the fire. ‘When I first saw you.’
‘And you were happy, Buruk. What of it?’
‘Happiness. Ah, now that is a familiar mask. True, I wore it often, back then. Joyful in my spying, my unceasing betrayals, my deceits and the blood that appeared again and again on my hands.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘My debts, Acquitor. Oh yes, outwardly I stand as a respected merchant… of middling wealth.’
‘And what are you in truth?’
‘It is where dreams fall away, Seren Pedac. That crumbling edifice where totters self-worth. You stand, too afraid to move, and watch your hands in motion, mangling every dream, every visage of the face you would desire, the true face of yourself, behind that mask. It is not helpful, speaking of truths.’
She thought for a time, then her eyes narrowed. ‘You are being blackmailed.’ He voiced no denial, so she continued, ‘You are Indebted, aren’t you?’
‘Debts start small. Barely noticeable. Temporary. And so, in repayment, you are asked to do something. Something vile, a betrayal. And then, they have you. And you are indebted anew, in the maintenance of the secret, in your gratitude for not being exposed in your crime, which has since grown larger. As it always does, if you are in possession of a conscience.’ He was silent a moment, then he sighed and said, ‘I do envy those who have no conscience.’
‘Can you not get out, Buruk?’
He would not look up from the flames. ‘Of course I can,’ he said easily.
That tone, so at odds with all else he had said, frightened her. ‘Make yourself… un-useful, Buruk.’
‘Indeed, that seems the way of it, Acquitor. And I am in a hurry to do just that.’ He rose. ‘Time to sleep. Downhill to the river, then we can trail our sore feet in the cool water, all the way to Trate.’
She remained awake for a while longer, too tired to think, too numb to feel fear.
Above the fire, sparks and stars swam without distinction.
****
Dusk the following day, the two travellers reached Kraig’s Landing, to find its three ramshackle buildings surrounded by the tents of an encamped regiment. Soldiers were everywhere, and at the dock was tethered an ornate, luxuriously appointed barge above which drifted in the dull wind the king’s banner, and directly beneath it on the spar the crest of the Ceda.
‘There’s a cadre here,’ Buruk said as they strode down the trail towards the camp, which they would have to pass through to reach the hostel and dock.
She nodded. ‘And the soldiers are here as escort. There can’t have been engagements already, can there?’
He shrugged. ‘At sea, maybe. The war is begun, I think.’
Seren reached out and halted Buruk. ‘There, those three.’
The merchant grunted.
The three figures in question had emerged from the rows of tents, the soldiers nearby keeping their distance but fixing their attention on them as they gathered for a moment, about halfway between the two travellers and the camp.
‘The one in blue – do you recognize her, Acquitor?’
She nodded. Nekal Bara, Trate’s resident sorceress, whose power was a near rival to the Ceda’s own. ‘The man on her left, in the black furs, that’s Arahathan, commander of the cadre in the Cold Clay Battalion. I don’t know the third one.’
‘Enedictal,’ Buruk said. ‘Arahathan’s counterpart in the Snakebelt Battalion. We see before us the three most powerful mages of the north. They intend a ritual.’
She set off towards them.
‘Acquitor! Don’t!’
Ignoring Buruk, Seren unslung her pack and dropped it to the ground. She had caught the attention of the three mages. Visible in the gloom, Nekal Bara’s mocking lift of the eyebrows.
‘Acquitor Seren Pedac. The Errant smiles upon you indeed.’
‘You’re going to launch an attack,’ Seren said. ‘You mustn’t.’
‘We do not take orders from you,’ Enedictal said in a growl.
‘You’re going to strike the villages, aren’t you?’
‘Only the ones closest to the borders,’ Nekal Bara said, ‘and those are far enough away to permit us a full unveiling – beyond those mountains, yes? If the Errant wills it, that’s where the Edur armies will have already gathered.’
‘We shall obliterate the smug bastards,’ Enedictal said. ‘And end this stupid war before it’s begun.’
‘There are children—’
‘Too bad.’
Without another word the three mages moved to take positions, twenty paces distant from one another. They faced the slope of the trail, the rearing mountains before them.
‘No!’ Seren shouted.
Soldiers appeared, surrounding her, expressions dark and angry beneath the rim of their helms. One spoke. ‘It’s this, woman, or the fields of battle. Where people die. Make no move. Say nothing.’
Buruk the Pale arrived to stand nearby. ‘Leave it be, Acquitor.’
She glared at him. ‘You don’t think he’ll retaliate? He’ll disperse the attack, Buruk. You know he will.’
‘He may not have the time,’ the merchant replied. ‘Oh, perhaps his own village, but what of the others?’
A flash of light caught her attention and she turned to see that but one mage remained, Nekal Bara. Then Seren saw, two hundred paces distant, the figure of Enedictal. Twisting round, she could make out Arahathan, two hundred paces in the opposite direction. More flashes, and the two sorcerors reappeared again, double the distance from Nekal Bara.
‘They’re spreading out,’ Buruk observed. ‘This is going to be a big ritual.’
A soldier said, ‘The Ceda himself is working tonight. Through these three here, and the rest of the cadre strung out another league in both directions. Four villages will soon be nothing but ashes.’
/> ‘This is a mistake,’ Seren said.
Something was building between the motionless sorcerors. Blue and green light, ravelled taut, like lightning wound round an invisible rope linking the mages. The glow building like sea foam, a froth that began crackling, spitting drawn-out sparks that whipped like tendrils.
The sound became a hissing roar. The light grew blinding, the tendrils writhing out from the glowing foam. The twisting rope bucked and snapped between the stationary mages, reaching out past the three who were still visible, out beyond the hills to either side.
She watched the power burgeoning, the bucking frenzied, the tendrils whipping like the limbs of some giant, wave-thrashed anemone.
Darkness had been peeled back by the bristling energy, the shadows dancing wild. A sudden shout.
The heaving chain sprang loose, the roar of its escape thundering in the ground beneath Seren’s feet. Figures staggered as the wave launched skyward, obliterating the night. It crest was blinding green fire, the curving wall in its wake a luminescent ochre, webbed with foam in a stretching latticework.
The wall swallowed the north sky, and still the crest rose, power streaming upward. The grasses near the mages blackened, then spun into white ash on swirling winds.
Beneath the roar, a shriek, then screams. Seren saw a soldier stumbling forward, against the glowing wall at the base of the wave. It took him, stripped armour, clothes, then hair and skin, then, in a gush of blood, it devoured his flesh. Before the hapless figure could even crumple, the bones were plucked away, leaving naught but a single upright boot on the blistered ground in front of the foaming wall. The crimson blush shot upward, paling as it went. Until it was gone. Air hissed past her, buffeting and bitter cold.
She sank down, the only response possible to fight that savage tugging, and dug her fingers into the stony ground. Others did the same around her, clawing in panic. Another soldier was dragged away, pulled shrieking into the wave.
The roaring snapped suddenly, like a breath caught in a throat, and Seren saw the base lift away, roll upward like a vast curtain, rising to reveal, once again, the battered slopes leading to the pass, then the pallid mountains and their blunt, ancient summits.
The wave swiftly dwindled as it soared northward, its wild light reflected momentarily in a patchwork cascade across reflective surfaces far below, sweeps of snow near the peaks and ice-polished stone blossoming sickly green and gold, as if awakened to an unexpected sunset.