The air was bitter cold and thin. Yet those Nerek worked half naked, the sweat steaming from their slick skins. If a stop-block failed, the nearest tribesman would throw his own body beneath the wheel. And for this, Buruk the Pale paid them two docks a day. Seren Pedac was Buruk’s Acquitor, granted passage into Edur lands, one of seven so sanctioned by the last treaty. No merchant could enter Edur territory unless guided by an Acquitor. The bidding for Seren Pedac and the six others had been high. And, for Seren, Buruk’s had been highest of all, and now he owned her. Or, rather, he owned her services as guide and finder – a distinction of which he seemed increasingly unmindful.
But this was the contract’s sixth year. Only four remaining.
Maybe.
She turned once more, and studied the pass ahead. They were less than a hundred paces’ worth of elevation from the treeline. Knee-high, centuries-old dwarf oaks and spruce flanked the uneven path. Mosses and lichens covered the enormous boulders that had been dragged down by the rivers of ice in ages past. Crusted patches of snow remained, clinging to shadowed places. Here the wind moved nothing, not the wiry spruce, not even the crooked, leafless branches of the oaks.
Against such immovable stolidity, it could only howl.
The first wagon clattered onto level ground behind her, Nerek tongues shouting as it was quickly rolled ahead, past Seren Pedac, and anchored in place. The tribesmen then rushed back to help their fellows still on the ascent.
The squeal of a door, and Buruk the Pale clambered out from the lead wagon. He stood with his stance wide, as if struggling to regain the memory of balance, turning with a wince from the frigid wind, reaching up to keep his fur-lined cap on his head as he blinked over at Seren Pedac.
‘I shall etch this vision against the very bone of my skull, blessed Acquitor! There to join a host of others, of course. That umber cloak of fur, the stately, primeval grace as you stand there. The weathered majesty of your profile, so deftly etched by these wild heights.
‘You – Nerek! Find your foreman – we shall camp here. Meals must be prepared. Unload those bundles of wood in the third wagon. I want a fire, there, in the usual place. Be on with it!’
Seren Pedac set her pack down and made her way along the path. The wind quickly dragged Buruk’s words away. Thirty paces on, she came to the first of the old shrines, a widening of the trail, where level stretches of scraped bedrock reached out to the sides and the walls of the flanking mountains had been cut sheer. On each flat, boulders had been positioned to form the full-sized outline of a ship, both prow and stern pointed and marked by upright menhirs. The prow stones had been carved into a likeness of the Edur god, Father Shadow, but the winds had ground the details away. Whatever had originally occupied these two flanking ships had long vanished, although the bedrock within was strangely stained.
The sheer walls of rock alone retained something of their ancient power. Smooth and black, they were translucent, in the manner of thin, smoky obsidian. And shapes moved behind them. As if the mountains had been hollowed out, and each panel was a kind of window, revealing a mysterious, eternal world within. A world oblivious of all that surrounded it, beyond its own borders of impenetrable stone, and of these strange panels, either blind or indifferent.
The translucent obsidian defied Seren’s efforts to focus on the shapes moving on the other side, as it had the past score of times she had visited this site. But that very mystery was itself an irresistible lure, drawing her again and again.
Stepping carefully around the stern of the ship of boulders, she approached the eastern panel. She tugged the fur-lined glove from her right hand, reached and set it against the smooth stone. Warm, drinking the stiffness from her fingers, taking the ache from the joints. This was her secret, the healing powers she had discovered when she first touched the rock.
A lifetime in these hard lands stole suppleness from the body. Bones grew brittle, misshapen with pain. The endless hard rock underfoot soon sent shocks through the spine with each step taken. The Nerek, the tribe that, before kneeling to the Letherii king, had dwelt in the range’s easternmost reach, believed that they were the children of a woman and a serpent, and that the serpent dwelt still within the body, that gently curved spine, the stacked knuckles reaching up to hide its head in the centre of the brain. But the mountains despised that serpent, desired only to drag it back to the ground, to return it once more to its belly, slithering in the cracks and coiled beneath rocks. And so, in the course of a life, the serpent was made to bow, to bend and twist.
Nerek buried their dead beneath flat stones.
At least, they used to, before the king’s edict forced them to embrace the faith of the Holds.
Now they leave the bodies of their kin where they fall. Even unto abandoning their huts. It had been years ago, but Seren Pedac remembered with painful clarity coming over a rise and looking upon the vast plateau where the Nerek dwelt. The villages had lost all distinction, merging together in chaotic, dispirited confusion. Every third or fourth hut had been left to ruin, makeshift sepulchres for kin that had died of disease, old age, or too much alcohol, white nectar or durhang. Children wandered untended, trailed by feral rock rats that now bred uncontrolled and had become too disease-ridden to eat.
The Nerek people were destroyed, and from that pit there would be no climbing out. Their homeland was an overgrown cemetery, and the Letherii cities promised only debt and dissolution. They were granted no sympathy. The Letherii way of life was hard, but it was the true way, the way of civilization. The proof was found in its thriving where other ways stumbled or remained weak and stilted.
The bitter wind could not reach Seren Pedac now. The stone’s warmth flowed through her. Eyes closed, she leaned her forehead against its welcoming surface.
Who walks in there? Are they the ancestral Edur, as the Hiroth claim? If so, then why could they see no more clearly than Seren herself? Vague shapes, passing to and fro, as lost as those Nerek children in their dying villages.
She had her own beliefs, and, though unpleasant, she held to them. They are the sentinels of futility. Acquitors of the absurd. Reflections of ourselves forever trapped in aimless repetition. Forever indistinct, for that is all we can manage when we look upon ourselves, upon our lives. Sensations, memories and experiences, the fetid soil in which thoughts take root. Pale flowers beneath an empty sky.
If she could, she would sink into this wall of stone. To walk for eternity among those formless shapes, looking out, perhaps, every now and then, and seeing not stunted trees, moss, lichen and the occasional passer-by. No, seeing only the wind. The ever howling wind.
****
She could hear him walking long before he came into the flickering circle of firelight. The sound of his footfalls awakened the Nerek as well, huddled beneath tattered furs in a rough half-circle at the edge of the light, and they swiftly rose and converged towards that steady beat. Seren Pedac kept her gaze fixed on the flames, the riotous waste of wood that kept Buruk the Pale warm while he got steadily drunker on a mix of wine and white nectar, and fought against the tug at one corner of her mouth, that unbidden and unwelcome ironic curl that expressed bitter amusement at this impending conjoining of broken hearts.
Buruk the Pale carried with him secret instructions, a list long enough to fill an entire scroll, from other merchants, speculators and officials, including, she suspected, the Royal Household itself. And whatever those instructions entailed, their content was killing the man. He’d always liked his wine, but not with the seductive destroyer, white nectar, mixed in. That was this journey’s new fuel for the ebbing fires of Buruk’s soul, and it would drown him as surely as would the deep waters of Reach Inlet.
Four more years. Maybe.
The Nerek were mobbing their visitor, scores of voices blending into an eerie murmur, like worshippers beseeching a particularly bemusing god, and though the event was hidden in the darkness beyond the fire, Seren Pedac could see it well enough in her imagination. He was trying, o
nly his eyes revealing his unease at the endless embraces, seeking to answer each one with something – anything – that could not be mistaken for benediction. He was, he would want to say, not a man worthy of such reverence. He was, he would want to say, a sordid culmination of failures – just as they were. All of them lost, here in this cold-hearted world. He would want to say – but no, Hull Beddict never said anything. Not, in any case, things so boldly… vulnerable.
Buruk the Pale had lifted his head at the commotion, blinking blearily. ‘Who comes?’
‘Hull Beddict,’ Seren Pedac answered.
The merchant licked his lips. ‘The old Sentinel?’
‘Yes. Although I advise you not to call him by that title. He returned the King’s Reed long ago.’
‘And so betrayed the Letherii, aye.’ Buruk laughed. ‘Poor, honourable fool. Honour demands dishonour, now that is amusing, isn’t it? Ever seen a mountain of ice in the sea? Calving again and again beneath the endless gnawing teeth of salt water. Just so.’ He tilted his bottle back, and Seren watched his throat bob.
‘Dishonour makes you thirsty, Buruk?’
He pulled the bottle down, glaring. Then a loose smile. ‘Parched, Acquitor. Like a drowning man who swallows air.’
‘Only it’s not air, it’s water.’
He shrugged. ‘A momentary surprise.’
‘Then you get over it.’
‘Aye. And in those last moments, the stars swim unseen currents.’
Hull Beddict had done as much as he could with the Nerek, and he stepped into the firelight. Almost as tall as an Edur. Swathed in the white fur of the north wolf, his long braided hair nearly as pale. The sun and high winds had darkened his visage to the hue of tanned hide. His eyes were bleached grey, and it seemed the man behind them was ever elsewhere. And, Seren Pedac well knew, that place was not home.
No, as lost as his flesh and bones, this body standing before us. ‘Take some warmth, Hull Beddict,’ she said.
He studied her in his distracted way – a seeming contradiction that only he could achieve.
Buruk the Pale laughed. ‘What’s the point? It’ll never reach him through those furs. Hungry, Beddict? Thirsty? I didn’t think so. How about a woman? I could spare you one of my Nerek half-bloods – the darlings wait in my wagon.’ He drank noisily from his bottle and held it out. ‘Some of this? Oh dear, he hides poorly his disgust.’
Eyes on the old Sentinel, Seren asked, ‘Have you come down the pass? Are the snows gone?’
Hull Beddict glanced over at the wagons. When he replied, the words came awkwardly, as if it had been some time since he last spoke. ‘Should do.’
‘Where are you going?’
He glanced at her once more. ‘With you.’
Seren’s brows rose.
Laughing, Buruk the Pale waved expansively with his bottle – which was empty save for a last few scattering drops that hit the fire with a hiss. ‘Oh, welcome company indeed! By all means! The Nerek will be delighted.’ He tottered upright, weaving perilously close to the fire, then, with a final wave, he stumbled towards his wagon.
Seren and Hull watched him leave, and Seren saw that the Nerek had returned to their sleeping places, but all sat awake, their eyes glittering with reflected flames as they watched the old Sentinel, who now stepped closer to the fire and slowly sat down. He held out battered hands to the heat.
They could be softer than they appeared, Seren recalled. The memory did little more than stir long-dead ashes, however, and she tipped another log into the hungry fire before them, watched the sparks leap into the darkness.
‘He intends to remain a guest of the Hiroth until the Great Meeting?’
She shot him a look, then shrugged. ‘I think so. Is that why you’ve decided to accompany us?’
‘It will not be like past treaties, this meeting,’ he said. ‘The Edur are no longer divided. The Warlock King rules unchallenged.’
‘Everything’s changed, yes.’
‘And so Diskanar sends Buruk the Pale.’
She snorted, kicked back into the flames an errant log that had rolled out. ‘A poor choice. I doubt he’ll remain sober enough to manage much spying.’
‘Seven merchant houses and twenty-eight ships have descended upon the Calach beds,’ Hull Beddict said, flexing his fingers.
‘I know.’
‘Diskanar’s delegation will claim the hunting was unsanctioned. They will decry the slaughter. Then use it to argue that the old treaty is flawed, that it needs to be revised. For the lost seals, they will make a magnanimous gesture – by throwing gold at Hannan Mosag’s feet.’
She said nothing. He was right, after all. Hull Beddict knew better than most King Ezgara Diskanar’s mind – or, rather, that of the Royal Household, which wasn’t always the same thing. ‘There is more to it, I suspect,’ she said after a moment.
‘How so?’
‘I imagine you have not heard who will be leading the delegation.’
He grunted sourly. ‘The mountains are silent on such matters.’
She nodded. ‘Representing the king’s interests, Nifadas.’
‘Good. The First Eunuch is no fool.’
‘Nifadas will be sharing command with Prince Quillas Diskanar.’
Hull Beddict slowly turned to face her. ‘She’s risen far, then.’
‘She has. And for all the years since you last crossed her son’s path… well, Quillas has changed little. The queen keeps him on a short leash, with the Chancellor close at hand to feed him sweet treats. It’s rumoured that the primary holder of interest in the seven merchant houses that defied the treaty is none other than Queen Janall herself.’
‘And the Chancellor dares not leave the palace,’ Hull Beddict said, and she heard the sneer. ‘So he sends Quillas. A mistake. The prince is blind to subtlety. He knows his own ignorance and stupidity so is ever suspicious of others, especially when they say things he does not understand. One cannot negotiate when dragged in the wake of emotions.’
‘Hardly a secret,’ Seren Pedac replied. And waited.
Hull Beddict spat into the fire. They don’t care. The queen’s let him slip the leash. Allowing Quillas to flail about, to deliver clumsy insults in the face of Hannan Mosag. Is this plain arrogance? Or do they truly invite war?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And Buruk the Pale – whose instructions does he carry?’
‘I’m not sure. But he’s not happy.’
They fell silent then.
Twelve years past, King Ezgara Diskanar charged his favoured Preda of the Guard, Hull Beddict, with the role of Sentinel. He was to journey to the north borders, then beyond. His task was to study the tribes who still dwelt wild in the mountains and high forests. Talented warrior though he was, Hull Beddict had been naive. What he had embraced as a journey in search of knowledge, the first steps towards peaceful coexistence, had in fact been a prelude to conquest. His detailed reports of tribes such as the Nerek, and the Faraed and the Tarthenal, had been pored over by minions of Chancellor Triban Gnol. Weaknesses had been prised from the descriptions. And then, in a series of campaigns of subjugation, brutally exploited.
And Hull Beddict, who had forged blood-ties with those fierce tribes, was there to witness all his enthusiasm delivered. Gifts that were not gifts at all, incurring debts, the debts exchanged for land. The deadly maze lined with traders, merchants, seducers of false need, purveyors of destructive poisons. Defiance answered with annihilation. The devouring of pride, independence, and self-sufficiency. In all, a war so profoundly cynical in its cold, heartless expediting that no honourable soul could survive witness. Especially when that soul was responsible for it. For all of it.
And to this day, the Nerek worshipped Hull Beddict. As did the half-dozen indebted beggars who were all that was left of the Faraed. And the scattered remnants of the Tarthenal, huge and shambling and drunk in the pit towns outside the cities to the south, still bore the three bar tattoos beneath their left shoulders – a m
atch to those on Hull’s own back.
He sat now in silence beside her, his eyes on the ebbing flames of the dying hearth. One of his guards had returned to the capital, bearing the King’s Reed. The Sentinel was Sentinel no longer. Nor would he return to the southlands. He had walked into the mountains.
She had first met him eight years ago, a day out from High Fort, reduced to little more than a scavenging animal in the wilds.
And had brought him back. At least some of the way. Oh, but it was far less noble than it first seemed. Perhaps it would have been. Truly noble. Had I not then made sore use of him.
She had succumbed to her own selfish needs, and there was nothing glorious in that.
Seren wondered if he would ever forgive her. She then wondered if she would ever forgive herself.
‘Buruk the Pale knows all that I need to learn,’ Hull Beddict said.
‘Possibly.’
‘He will tell me.’
Not of his own volition, he won’t. ‘Regardless of his instructions,’ she said, ‘he remains a small player in this game, Hull. Head of a merchant house conveniently placed in Trate, with considerable experience dealing with the Hiroth and Arapay.’ And, through me, legitimate passage into Edur lands.
‘Hannan Mosag will send his warriors after those ships,’ Hull Beddict said. ‘The queen’s interest in those merchant houses is about to take a beating.’
‘I expect she has anticipated the loss.’
The man beside her was not the naive youth he had once been. But he was long removed from the intricate schemes and deadly sleight of hand that was so much the lifeblood of the Letherii. She could sense him struggling with the multiplicity of layers of intent and design at work here. ‘I begin to see the path she takes,’ he said after a time, and the bleak despair in his voice was so raw that she looked away, blinking.
He went on, ‘This is the curse, then, that we are so inclined to look ahead, ever ahead. As if the path before us should be any different from the one behind us.’
Aye, and it pays to remind me, every time I glance back.