“Well, old friend, it’s done,” he said, as Conroyd’s carriage rattled away. “I am again Prince Gar the Magickless.”
There were tears in Darran’s eyes. “Yes, sir.”
He willed his own eyes to stay dry. Forced his voice to remain steady and strong. “It’s for the best. What cap any of this be but Barl’s will, after all? My magic is gone, and that’s hardly Conroyd’s fault. In truth, none of this is his fault. I may hate him, but I can’t blame him. At least not for being the best remaining magician in the kingdom.”
“No, sir.”
“I’m going to the stables now. To say goodbye to the horses before—”
Darran touched his sleeve. “I’m so sorry, sir. They’re already gone. Men from the Livestock Guild. I couldn’t stop them, they had written orders from Lord Ja— from the king. It was all I could do to hide the little donkey. If we keep it in a pasture down the back no one will know we have it. I just thought... well... it may come in useful. As a lawn mower, if nothing else.”
Poor Darran. He looked so stricken, so brimful of guilt. “It’s all right,” Gar said gently. “Of course you couldn’t stop them.” Ballodair. Oh, Ballodair. “Well, if there’s no point visiting the stables I’ll go for a walk instead. Don’t fret if I’m gone for some time, Darran. I have a lot to think about.”
“Yes, sir,” said Darran. And, as Gar turned away, said, “Sir?”
Gar looked back. “Yes?”
“Be careful. Don’t... walk too far. Don’t give that man an excuse to take anything else.”
He smiled. “What is there left for him to take, Darran?”
Darran stepped closer, his face screwed up with pain and trepidation. “Your life.”
“My life!” He laughed. “Ah yes. My life. Do you know something, Darran? I’m beginning to think he can have it, and welcome.”
“Sir!”
Relenting, he patted the old man’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he said, and started to back away. “I was joking.”
Darran shook a finger at him, just as he used to when he worked at the palace and was scolding a younger, happier Gar. “Really? Well, as jokes go it wasn’t the least bit funny!”
Turning his back on Darran’s disapproval he walked away and kept on walking, until his family’s crypt appeared among the trees. Quite possibly he was breaking Conroyd’s rules by coming this far but he didn’t care. If Conroyd thought to keep him from his family he was very much mistaken.
As ever, the crypt was cool. Dark. Fumbling for lantern and matches, skinning his knuckles, he tried to forget that once light had been his for the asking.
The amplified candlelight cast attenuated shadows up the walls and across the faces of his family. He kissed his father, and his mother. Tickled his sister’s feet. Arranged himself uncomfortably on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said into the silence. “I’d have come sooner but... a lot has happened since you left.”
His mother whispered: That’s all right, dear. You’re a busy man.
“Not as busy as you might think,” he replied. “Father, I have a confession. I’ve lost the two best things you ever gave me: your crown and your horse. It seems you raised a careless son.”
A father’s disappointment. Very. Can’t you get them back again?
Of course he can’t. He’s useless. A sister’s angry scorn.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I did the best I could. Unfortunately my best proved inadequate to the task.”
Silence. Were they really speaking, or was his mind at last unhinged? And if it was ... did it even matter?
Typical, he heard Fane sneer. Whinge, moan, sigh. It’s a wonder you didn’t die years ago, drowned in a butt of self-pity. Don’t just sit there, idiot. Do something.
Even imagined, the sharp words stung. He grabbed hold of his sister’s stone foot and hauled himself upright. “Do what?” he demanded of her. “I am powerless. Exiled in my own City. Discarded, irrelevant and alone. What would you do, if you were me?”
The answer came not in words but as a spearing shaft of memory. Of intent, abandoned.
Barl’s diary. If Durm was right, their only hope. How or why, he had no idea. But he trusted Durm. He had to. He had nowhere else to turn.
Damn it, how could he have forgotten! He had to find that diary. Had to go back to the Tower, now, and search Durm’s books again before Conroyd discovered their removal and took them away. No matter he’d searched the collection twice, without luck. The diary had to be there. Cunningly hidden, as was Durm’s devious habit... Please, Barl, let me find it. Show me a way out of this disaster.
He dropped a grateful kiss on his sister’s cold stone cheek and ran all the way back to the Tower.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Blistered and weary, the knapsack on her back as heavy as an anvil, Dathne trudged along the empty road that led to the Black Woods. To Veira and her village, beating at their timber heart. There was dust on her face, turned streakily to mud by infrequent, unhelpful tears. She was chilled, she was hungry, she was eaten with despair. The sun had set two hours earlier, and weak moonlight was her only guide. She’d tripped and stumbled a dozen times, lost her footing completely and crashed to the roadway once. Her scraped knees and elbows stung viciously; her tired mind was one vast and aching bruise. Asher. Asher. Asher.
She hardly recognized herself, so diminished felt her spirit. Misery was a crushing weight, compressing her bones to chalk. She never knew she could feel so small.
Asher.
That catastrophe seemed worse even than the now unstoppable onslaught of the Final Days. Asher was flesh and blood to her, he was laughter and whispers and callused fingers, touching. Pleasure like magic coursing through her veins. The Final Days were unimaginable. For all her frightened dreaming, she couldn’t seem to make them real. But Asher was real. Asher was arrested. And unless some miracle intervened, Asher was dead ... along with any hope for the kingdom’s future.
The thought knifed pain through her whole body, so swift and severe she couldn’t walk. Gasping, hurting, she braced her hands upon her thighs and waited for the torment to ease. A kind of wild rushing wind stormed through her mind, blotting out thought, obliterating memory.
She welcomed it.
Gradually the pain eased and reason returned. She straightened, inch by hesitant inch. The night stretched for miles around her, inhabited by stars, and trees, and small rustling creatures.
Then, carrying keenly on the thin cold air, new sounds. Horseshoes ringing hollow on hard-packed clay, slowing from a brisk jog to a cautious walk. A wooden creak of turning wheels. Approaching round the bend ahead, a looming shape framed in dancing torchlight.
Heart pounding, she waited for the cart to reach her. Watched as the shaggy brown pony pulling it slowed, slowed then stopped in a puffing cloud of breath. She looked up into the hooded, mysterious face of the person holding the pony’s reins.
Gnarled hands pushed the hood back onto rounded, slumping shoulders. “Dathne.”
She nodded. Tried to smile. “Veira.”
“Well, child,” the old woman said, and sniffed. “If you were a few years younger and my joints a little less creaky I’d fling your skirts up over your head and put you over my knees for this.”
Dathne stared at her, speechless.
In the torchlight Veira’s face leapt and flickered with shadows. “But you’re a young woman, and I’m an old one, and I don’t suppose a paddling would make either of us feel any better. So don’t just stand there gawking. Come up here beside me and let’s get you home to bed.”
They traveled in awkward silence for nearly three hours, along the narrow road that drew them deep into the Black Woods like a crooked, beckoning finger. At first the trees grew thinly, with spindly trunks and lacy foliage, but the further the pony ambled them into the gloom-ridden forest the more robust and vigorous the djelbas, honey-pines and weeping noras became. The air grew close and still as more and more of the star-str
ewn sky disappeared from view. Even though she was miles closer now to Barl’s Wall and the mountains that anchored it, its golden glow was reduced to a smeary shadow. Anyone living within this sea of trees could easily forget the Wall existed.
She wished she could.
Her nose was tickled by the scent of rich rotting mulch. She caught the sound of trickling water somewhere to the left. Keeping herself distracted she let her gaze roam the encroaching forest as it rolled along beside her. Caught sight of a glowing orange fungus on a fallen tree trunk— newt-eye, good for enhancing concentration—and wished she could ask Veira to stop the cart. Newt-eye was hard to come by in the countryside round the City.
The City. Her home for six long years, but now a place of danger she could never visit again. At least not until... and always assuming there was anything left to visit afterwards. Was her absence noticed yet? Had anyone raised the alarm? Were they hunting for her even now? Well, let them hunt. Let them tarn the City upside down. They’d find no clue to help them. No guiding trail of breadcrumbs. She’d escaped. She was safe.
She’d abandoned Asher behind her.
The passing forest blurred and she rubbed a hand across her face. If Veira saw it she didn’t say so. All her attention was on the pony and the winding road ahead. Dathne pulled her coat more tightly round her ribs, wondering what would happen to her bookshop, that convenient mask she’d come to love, despite herself. And all her things, in her tiny rooms above it. Obeying Veira’s command she’d brought with her only the items that might raise suspicion. Her Circle Stone. Her orris root, the tanal leaf, other herbs and simples not generally found in an Olken pantry. A few clothes, too, for necessity. A dragonfly in amber, gifted to her from Asher the first Grand Barl’s Day after his arrival in Dorana.
She felt her heart hitch, and fisted her fingers in her lap. She would not think of Asher.
Beside her, Veira cleared her throat. “’Nother half-hour and we’ll be there, near enough,” she said.
Dathne nodded. “Good.”
It was strange to hear the old woman’s voice out loud, | a sweet and solid sound, after so long with nothing but i Circle Stone communication, mind to mind. Even seeing her was a shock. In the link she’d seemed younger. Smoother. Less ... wrinkled. Aware of the scrutiny, Veira chuckled breathily and glanced at her sidelong. “Told you I weren’t no oil painting, child.”
She felt her cheeks heat. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude, I—” Her fingernails were close to drawing blood, so tightly were they clenched against her palms. “I’m sorry.” And not just for staring. She was sorry for everything.
“I know,” said Veira, and patted her on one blanketed knee.
She blinked her vision clear. “You warned Matt all right? He’s safe?”
“As safe as any of us,” said Veira.
“I handled that badly,” she whispered, pinning her fists between her knees. The look on his face, as she sided with Asher... “I handled it all badly. I’ve no business being part of the Circle. Prophecy is falling to pieces and it’s all my fault!”
In the flickering torchlight Veira’s expression was a mystery. “You don’t know that, child. Best not to run ahead of ourselves. This business ain’t done with till the Wall’s fallen down, and last time I looked it was still standing.”
“Then we’re not lost? The kingdom can still be saved? Asher won’t—” She couldn’t finish the sentence out loud. Didn’t even dare complete the thought.
“I hope not,” Veira said at last. “We’ll do our best to save him. Though I fear it will come at a terrible cost.”
“You have a plan?”
Another long silence.
“I have an inkling of a possibility,” said Veira without looking at her. “I’ll not be speaking of it yet. I’ve others to consult, and hard thinking to do first.”
And that sounded less than encouraging. Sounded frightening. Dangerous. Likely to fail. In Veira’s comfortable voice, there tolled a premonition of sorrow.
She’d had enough sorrow for one day. “I can’t imagine living in a forest,” she said, staring at the branch-latticed sky.
Veira smiled, revealing crooked teeth. “I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Not any more.”
“Do you like it?”
“Well enough. A forest’s cool. Quiet. And there’s always fresh rabbit when the fancy takes me.”
“Yes, but what do you do! How do you live?” In all the time she and Veira had known each other, she’d never once asked. Once, it hadn’t seemed important.
“I’m a truffle hunter,” said Veira. “Means nobody asks me why I live so far out from the village. Why I spend so much time alone with my pigs.” A breathy chuckle. “Mind you, the pigs is more for company. I got easier ways of finding truffles than parading about the forest with a pig on a leash. Good listeners, pigs. Better than most people I know.”
“And the other villagers? What do they do? Why would they choose to live in such isolation?”
Veira shrugged, and rattled the reins to keep the pony up to its bridle. “It’s only isolated from the Doranen. The village is a happy, close-knit place. Lively. And there’s a mort of things to do in the Black Woods, child. Berrying. Mushrooming. Trapping. Herbals and dye-plants. Sweet-sap. Woodcarving. Clockmaking. Bees—some of this kingdom’s finest honey comes from our bees, you know. Oh yes. The Black Woods are full of bounty for those who aren’t afraid of the dark.”
“Oh,” she said, feeling ignorant. Feeling helpless. She should have brought some books to sell... “Well. I had no idea.”
“No reason you should do, child,” said Veira comfortably. “Is the village large?”
“Large enough. A hundred and fourteen families, last count.” Veira pointed ahead of them, to the right. “Over thataways, it is.”
“And how will you account for me? I’ve always been told villagers are a curious lot. They’ll want to know who I am, where I’m from ...”
“No, they won’t,” said Veira. “I’ve done a tidy job of keeping myself a loner. Folks know me, but only as deep as I want ‘em to, and only when I go to them. I discouraged visitors years ago.” Clicking her tongue, she once more rattled the plump pony’s reins. “Get on with you, Bessie. You ought to be smellin’ home by now.”
Not long after that they turned left onto a rutted grass-grown roadway. Followed it in silence, and at last reached Veira’s thatched stone cottage all alone in the wooded vastness of the forest. Warm light glowed through a curtained front window. The night air smelled of jasmine and moonroses, the flowers’ perfume mingling with the spicy sweet scent of honey-pine smoke drifting out of the cottage’s chimney.
Veira eased the cart to a halt by the open front gate. “Bessie’s bedroom’s round the back. Get yourself inside, child, while I see the poor beast settled. Stir up the hob and put on the kettle like a good girl. I’m parched for some hot sweet tea.”
Oh yes, yes, tea. Clasping blanket and knapsack Dathne clambered out of the wagon and made her unsteady way up the garden path. She felt stupid with tiredness.
More than anything she wanted quiet, and somewhere to rest her aching head. Just as she reached the front door, it opened.
Matt. Tall. Frowning. Swallowing all the space in the small doorway. Here? In Veira’s cottage? She felt the knapsack slip from her fingers. Heard a tinkling crunch as something broke inside it. Or did the sound come from inside her? She couldn’t tell. Couldn’t speak. Could only stare, and stare, and stare ...
“Hello, Dathne,” said Matt, unsmiling. “Welcome to the Black Woods.”
———
When Asher groped his way back to reluctant consciousness he found himself in a different cage. This one was outside. On a cart in the middle of the City Square—just as Jarralt had promised. The straw beneath his huddled body was fouled and stinking. There were heavy iron manacles on his wrists and his ankles, connected by a short, heavy chain. The manacles’ inner surfaces were rough and rusty. Chafing. The pain
was small compared to the enormous hurting in the rest of his abused body. Jarralt had been thorough. And enthusiastic. Bastard. Who knew he’d wanted that damned King’s Cup so bad, eh?
Pity I didn’t just let the mongrel have it. Might’ve saved me a lot of grief.
It was dark. Late. Hovering glimfire splashed shadows and soft light. Standing at attention a few feet from the nearest corner of his cage, a poker-backed City Guard. If he’d wanted to he could’ve called the man’s name out loud.
He didn’t want to. Also as promised, his throat was raw and swollen. Only one thing kept him from surrendering to despair: they hadn’t found Dathne. Orrick had returned to report his failure, refusing to look at Jarralt’s bleeding, moaning victim hanging in his chains.
So. No Dathne, and no Matt either. It seemed that sulking out of sight somewhere after their quarrel had saved him.
Thwarted of more victims, Jarralt had been furious. Had returned to his vengeance with greater vigor. Asher shuddered, remembering. He would’ve died happily then, knowing she was safe—that they both were safe—but Jarralt knew to perfection how to hurt, and hurt, yet keep him on the wrong side of death’s door.
He blinked, shivering, trying to clear his pain-blurred vision. Unfolded his arms and legs, needing to ease his cramped muscles. His putrid straw bed rustled, pressing against his filthy shirt and trousers, his burned and bloodied flesh. From somewhere quite close, a shout.
“He’s awake! The blasphemous bastard’s awake!”
He lifted his head. Four guards, not one. Four men who once had been his friends, matched to each corner of his cage. He strained to see past then blue and crimson uniforms. Slowly, achingly, the world swam into sharper focus. What he saw stopped his heart, or so it felt. Beyond the cage, beyond the guards, beyond the wavering circle of glimlight, a sullen shifting mass of silent faces.
The Olken of Dorana City had come to feast then eyes on the traitor.